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The Kenedy semi-pro baseball team could beat anyone except Runge. They played on Sundays in
a pasture on the south side of Highway 181, halfway between Kenedy and Karnes City. The wooden bleachers could hold about 50 fans.
A home run was anything over the barbed-wire fence.
Blocky Alexander owned a drugstore, and his son became a noted Houston physician and officer of the
Texas Medical Association.
Archie Davis Ammons was the father of the author.
Left-handed first baseman E. D. Red Holchak later became Kenedy Postmaster. His brother Max owned a tailor shop.
P. R. Potts Goff, Jr. and his brother-in-law Loyd Boog Martin were in the
outfield. W. L. Bill Goff was a brother. Their father Percy R. Goff was the Englishman who built the famous three-story Goff Hotel in
Kenedy in 1912. He had come to America at age 16 to work on the railroad in Seguin.
The pitcher was Elmer Rose, who married Valda Ruhmann, granddaughter
of Pleas Butler and great-niece of William Green Butler.
Not pictured is shortstop Dode Young. Dode ran the pool hall which was above Lawrence Reasoner’s
grocery store, and in the same block there was the bank, the Day brother’s drug store, Ferguson’s Five & Dime,
Archer-Gilley barber shop, the meat market, Max Holchak’s tailor shop, and Mendlovitz Department Store which later
became Raymer’s.
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Dode had three pool tables, four "Moon" domino tables, and a Coke machine. The 8-foot tall
pool hall windows were usually open, and provided an excellent seat. They looked out at the boiler behind Slaughter’s
Tailor Shop, and the outhouse behind the meat market. The author was 12 years old.
Moon is not a difficult game to learn. The first player slaps a domino down in the middle of the table,
hard enough to make a noise, and then laughs all over, and loudly, and then makes a chalk mark in the blackboard square
located in the corner of the table, to his right. The second player slaps a domino down with a loud crack in the middle of the
table, and laughs all over until his shoulders shake, and he makes a chalk mark in his own little blackboard square. The third
player then slaps a domino - - but then, I believe you get the idea. Moon is not a difficult game.
To start a new game, each player wiped his blackboard clean with a piece of
old rag provided by Dode. The dusty white cloud would gag an EPA inspector.
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