DUANE
Duane's take
Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about the Site of the O.K. Wagon Yard in Scurry County. Now settle in, because this one's got layers.
The address alone ought to tell you something. Jackass Avenue. That's what they called it — and that's what the marker says, plain as day.
You pull up to a place on Jackass Avenue in the early nineteen hundreds, you already know it's going to be a certain kind of establishment. No pretense. No frills.
Just honest commerce and the kind of hospitality that comes with a price tag of two bits. Two bits. Twenty-five cents.
That's what it cost you to rent a room for the night. And if your horse needed the same consideration, that was another two bits for a stall. Fair enough.
The O.K. Wagon Yard was a stopping place for travelers, a waypoint in that long stretch of Texas where the land keeps going and you start to wonder if everything else stopped. You came in tired, your animal came in spent, and the yard was there to handle both of you.
But the yard wasn't just beds and stalls. They did blacksmithing out there. Harness repair too.
And if your animal situation required something more — well, the O.K. Wagon Yard kept a horse, a Jersey Bull, and a Missouri Jack on the premises as stud animals. That Missouri Jack, by the way, was a donkey.
The marker makes sure you know that. On Jackass Avenue, a Missouri Jack feels right at home. Now here's where you had to know somebody.
With the right contact at the yard, a cowboy could also buy himself a jar of White Lightning. That's home-brewed whiskey, in case anyone's asking. The marker puts White Lightning in quotes and explains it right there — which tells you the marker writer had a sense of occasion.
You didn't just walk up to any stranger and ask about the jar. You needed the right contact. That's the kind of detail that makes a stopping place a destination.
On Saturdays, the yard turned into something else entirely. Citizens would pass the hat — just go around collecting — to finance a rodeo right there at the yard. Think about that for a moment.
Not a promoter, not a sponsor. Just people pooling two bits here and two bits there until there was enough to make a rodeo happen. That's a community finding its own entertainment on a Saturday afternoon, and they were doing it at the O.K.
Wagon Yard. In later years, the yard took on another tradition: First Mondays. On those days, farmers and ranchers, mule skinners, and the just plain curious all gathered to swap and exchange produce, livestock, and other goods.
The whole county, it seems, had reason to find its way to this yard at one point or another. The O.K. Wagon Yard closed in the nineteen thirties.
Two bits a night, White Lightning in the back, rodeos on Saturdays, and First Mondays full of mule skinners and curious folk — and then one day, it was done. The marker stands now on what was once Jackass Avenue, holding the memory of a place that, for a few good decades, was exactly where you needed to be.
What the marker says
(Formerly on Jackass Avenue) Stopping place for travelers in early 1900s. Rented rooms and horse stalls for two bits (25 c) each. Provided blacksmithing and harness repair and kept a horse, Jersey Bull, and a "Missouri Jack" (donkey) as stud animals. With right contact here, a cowboy could also buy a jar of "White Lightning" (home-brewed whiskey). On Saturdays citizens "passed the hat" to finance a rodeo at the yard. In later years "first Mondays" were held here, where farmers, ranchers, mule skinners, and the curious met to swap or exchange produce, livestock, and other goods. Yard closed in 1930s. (1971)