In fact, he learned the bootlegging business from a young buddy, Clem Connally, and Clem’s father, Dee, who operated out of a service station front. Worth, ostensibly to live with a grandmother and finish public school. He had dropped out of school by age 16, and soon drifted to Ft. More important, it took him no time at all to learn that hotel guests would pay handsomely for booze in a dry town, a lesson he took to heart. As a bellboy at the local hotel, he was exposed early on to sins of the flesh, and their first cousins, whiskey and gambling. He worked in his father’s drugstore before making a youthful career move that would forever shape his life. Like no other, he shaped the crazy-quilt laws governing how, where, what and when Texans buy and drink their booze.īorn at a hardscrabble settlement named Chalk Mountain in 1911, Pinkie Roden spent much of his childhood at nearby Glen Rose, a small, riverside resort and spa 60 miles south of Ft. Perhaps the last of his special if not always noble breed, Pinkie is gone but his legacy will be with Texas for generations to come. “He kept assuring us he was shutting it down, but there may have been some games we didn’t know about.”
“We never did catch him running the casino operation,” concedes retired RangeP.
A guy who spent a lifetime outfoxing or befriending Texas cops, sheriffs, Rangers and liquor agents, as much for fun as profit.
