WORKING IN THE OLD BASEMENT
SALOON. MR. HENRY GOODE ET.AL.

With further references to the Henry Goode affair

The officers did not pay any attention to the underground saloon or went there to keep order. In those days the saloon keeper had to make a thousand dollar bond to keep the peace.

Every Monday morning Mr. Williams when bar tender would go over to old Squire Loyd’s justice court and plead guilty to the cases where he had had to keep fellows out or punish them in to keep order. Would go over when the old Squire would get there about nine o’clock, coming in on his horse from his home a couple of miles down the creek, usually like old men with the flap of his pants unbuttoned and come in to open his court. He would say, "Well, Cad, have you been fightin’ again" He would say, "Yes, Square, they have been trying to run it over me." Then he would jew the old squire down to a dollar fine and costs. The squire would tell him to pay about a dollar six bits in cash, and would just put on the books the five dollars for the county attorney and the dollar fine. The squire would just pocket his part of it. Mr. Williams said he never expected to pay any more, though the squire would say, "I ought to fine you five dollars for this. Unfortunately they later got a new county attorney, a sort of stranger, named Rdney, who for some reason got it in for Mr. Williams, and went back on the books toted up the balance still due, and made Mr. Williams fork over and pay about four hundred dollars back fines and costs. He had to sell of some of his horses to raise the money. I told him that maybe he didn’t really owe this county attorney anything, that it wasn’t his fee, hadn’t worked for it, and that limitations might have run, but he said he made him pay it

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~