Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch: The Definitive Account of the Best Little Whorehouse

by Jayme Lynn Blaschke

Overview

Thanks to the classic Dolly Parton film The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas and ZZ Top's ode "La Grange," many people think they know the story of the infamous Chicken Ranch. The reality is more complex, lying somewhere between heartbreaking and absurd. For more than a century, dirt farmers and big-cigar politicians alike rubbed shoulders at the Chicken Ranch, operated openly under the sheriff's watchful eye. Madam Edna Milton and her girls ran a tight, discreet ship that the God-fearing people of La Grange tolerated if not outright embraced. That is, until a secret conspiracy enlisted an opportunistic reporter to bring it all crashing down on primetime television. Through exclusive interviews with Milton, former government officials and reporters, Jayme Lynn Blaschke delivers a fascinating, revelatory view of the Ranch that illuminates the truth and lies that surround this iconic brothel.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781467135634
Publisher:	Arcadia Publishing SC
Publication date:	08/01/2016
Series:	Landmarks
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	1,020,135
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Jayme Blaschke grew up less than twenty miles from the former Chicken Ranch and heard stories about it his entire life. He was the only person to conduct extensive interviews with former Madam Edna Milton Chadwell prior to her death in 2012. Mr. Blaschke's fiction and nonfiction writing appears in Electric Velocipede, Cross Plains Universe, San Marcos Mercury and more. He earned his BA in journalism at Texas A&M University and studied fine art photography at Texas State University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements 9

1 A History that Grows in the Telling 11

2 Aunt Jessie 27

3 Miss Edna 47

4 Trixie, the Throw-Away Dog (and Other Societal Rejects) 60

5 Hullabaloo! 82

6 Big Jim 96

7 Everybody Who's Anybody 114

8 What Doesn't Kill Me… 137

9 The Wagon Wheel 154

10 Marvin Zindler, Eye! Witness! News! 168

11 Wheels within Wheels 184

12 Not with a Bang 197

13 Hell to Pay 221

14 Didn't See That Coming 240

15 Enduring Legacy 261

Appendix A 289

Appendix B 295

Notes 299

Index 329

About the Author 335

Editorial Reviews

Up to now it's been very difficult to tell truth from half-truths and outright fiction when it comes to the Chicken Ranch, but that's been made much easier with the recent publication of [this book]. Waco Today

"Jayme Lynn Blaschke writes [an] action-packed history of the brothel that inspired the Broadway play and film "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" and the ZZ Top hit "La Grange." The New York Post

"Blaschke's book, to be released on the 43rd anniversary of the closing of the brothel, looks to set the record straight about the famed whorehouse, which was the inspiration of a Broadway musical and film, "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas." My San Antonio

From the Publisher