Crystal Wise
The White Elephant Saloon has carved out a place of distinctive excellence in identifying as something out of an Old West drama.
I’ve spent many an afternoon down there in this Stockyards dive. Today, really, it’s an institution. However, never once have I witnessed two fellers setting parameters to settle a disagreement over, say, a card game.
A: I mean to kill you in one minute, Ned, or see you hang downtown at Judge Gallagher’s convenience. Which shall it be?
B: I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man.
A: Fill your hands, you son-of-a-bitch!
None of that. The closest you’ll get to John Wayne is the museum down the street.
The second iteration of the White Elephant has more in common with a tourist attraction than the original version, located in downtown, which hosted cowhands and gamblers, not the mostly international tourists flashing American Express that we see today. (Well, at least during the day drinking hours.)
Crystal Wise
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. The purveyors of spirits prefer the pacifist to the fist of liquid courage.
The first White Elephant is the site of the lionized showdown between Luke Short and Jim Courtright. It made both famous, though Courtright paid the ultimate price for his infamy, and put Fort Worth on the map for, well, gunfights and myths and legends.
Yet, the bar has the look and, ahem, smell of yesteryear. And to any visitor there, the first thing they notice is the cowboy hats. There most certainly were no cowboy hats hanging from the original White Elephant.
In the White Elephant in the ’Yards, however, they line the walls and ceilings, a hall-of-fame display of sorts of the notable who have planted roots at one time or another at the bar at the White Elephant. Represented are rodeo cowboys, singers and songwriters, and public servants, from firefighters and lost police officers (Don Manning), to mayors (Bob Bolen), police chiefs (Ralph Mendoza).
When this tradition began is unclear, memories having either been rusted by time or corrupted by the hooch, the very tasty beverages that are the business of the White Elephant.
Or both.
Crystal Wise
This version of the White Elephant arrived on East Exchange in the mid-1970s. Our new friend, Ellis Aldridge, owned Coker Hats across the street, in the location of the H3 restaurant during that time and into the mid-1980s. He believes it started in the 1980s.
It is believed that a hat owned by a gentleman by the name of Jupe Allen was the first to hang. His hat, which looks as if it has stories to tell, is smack-dab in the middle of the bar, facing it.
As best as we can tell, this Mr. Jupe Allen was from Beaumont, an Aggie in every sense of the word. He graduated from Texas A&M in animal husbandry, where he was also in the band. After that he took a detour overseas to do what the very best Aggies did in those days: fight Hitler and the forces of fascism and their evil designs. He served in the U.S. Army in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy, according to his obituary.
We’re first introduced to Mr. Allen at a convention of the Texas Sheep and Goat Raisers Association in College Station. At the rodeo, we’re told that Duke Harrison and “Jupe Allen of Beaumont clowned the show and did an Australian whip-cracking number.”
Hoyt Fincher’s Western headgear has a place at the Elephant. Fincher and family ran the family’s retail Western stores, including Fincher’s White Front Store in the Stockyards, for years.
Rather than cow punching, Fincher’s pursuit was bass. He is a Texas State Bass Tournament hall of famer and spent years taking trips to the Amazon chasing a world record for peacock bass.
Dave Coffey’s hat hangs on the ceiling over the part of the bar closest to the front door.
CIA agents are always thinking ahead.
Coffey was a graduate of Diamond Hill Jarvis and earned a degree in chemistry from UT Arlington in 1962 before going off to Vietnam. After his service there, he was recruited by the CIA, according to easily accessible documents online, including his 2008 obituary.
He served in the CIA from 1968-95, including working undercover in Europe, Africa, and the Near East on communications, counterterrorism, and nonproliferation of weapons. His work included the development of a covert communications system for intelligence operations.
In 1997, Coffey earned the CIA’s Intelligence Medal of Merit and later was recognized as one of “50 Trailblazers” of the agency.
Now, that’s something to hang your hat on.
