The first story concerns an attempted bank robbery in Bartlett. It happened - or actually didn’t happen - in the early ‘70s, if memory serves correctly. It’s another in a seemingly never-ending series of stories about gangs that can’t think straight, much less shoot.
Our would-be robbers supposedly knew the MO of successful desperados. They had getaway cars, fake license plates, guns - all the necessary accessories for the discriminating bank robber.
On the appointed day they rolled into town and walked up to the town’s old bank building only to find that it was just that - an old bank building. The bank that had once done business there was long gone.
Of course, they got caught but I’m not sure if they were charged with attempted bank robbery or not, since there wasn’t actually a bank to rob.
--
Back in 2001, Bob Jones, who has owned the Cellar Bookstore for more than 20 years, talked about the days when the building served as a combination bar and pool hall. He said old-timers come in every now and then to tell stories about the building’s less sedate past.
One of those stories was from a man who said he walked into the bar because he had been told the bartender was looking for him. He entered via the back stairway, walked past the pool tables and announced, “Here I am!”
The bartender regarded the man with no small amount of distaste. “For two bits, I’d shoot you,” he declared.
The man reached into his pants pocket, pulled out a quarter and slammed it on the bar. “There you go,” he said cockily.
The bartender, good to his word, pulled out a pistol and shot the man in the chest.
Many years later, in telling Jones the story, the man pulled up his shirt to reveal a scar from the gunshot.
“Did you learn anything?” Jones asked the man.
“I sure did. I learned never to pay anybody to shoot me!”
Talk about hard-earned wisdom.
--
In researching the origin of some place names in the area I came across a place called Dare Buzzard, which I had never heard of.
It turned out to be the name of a tavern at the long-gone community of Macedonia. It served as a landmark for early settlers in the mid 1850s. The saloon was about 150 yards west of the confluence of Opossum Creek and Yankee Branch, not far from Pope Springs, near the site of early camp meetings.
The Georgetown Independent newspaper lobbied for a new mail route with Dare Buzzard smack dab in the middle of the proposed route. There might have been a reason for this that had little or nothing to do with actual delivery of the mail.
Anyway, one story about how the tavern got its name was that Dare Buzzard was such a rough place that people said its patrons were venturing where even buzzards dare not tread.
Another story passed down about how Dare Buzzard got its name concerns a dimwitted boy who once pointed to a buzzard flying overhead and said, “Dar’ buzzard.”
So dar you have it.
ccoppedge@temple-telegram.com
