Postcards

A Johnson County, Texas, corrections officer was arrested in July and charged with first degree murder of his drinking buddy. According to Reuters, the two men — residents of a trailer park in Godley — had been arguing about who was going to Heaven and who was going to Hell. Saying he would settle the argument, the corrections officer placed a loaded shotgun in his mouth, but his friend pulled the gun away just in time to be shot in the chest.

A Texas court declared a mistrial in the August case against Jim Bob Hargrove, a mason accused of castrating the mayor of Lajitas. According to The New York Times, witnesses told the court that Hargrove threatened to castrate Mayor Clay Henry III, who happens to be a goat, after the mayor drank Hargrove’s beer. The morning after the beer-drinking incident, the mayor’s testicles were discovered in the home where Hargrove lived. Henry eventually recovered from the incident and resumed his regular drinking habits, which include downing a few brewskies in his pen.

Lajitas elected its first goat-mayor (Clay Henry Sr.) in the 1980s, and the joke carried through to the last election, when the current mayor defeated a wooden indian and a dog for office. Clay Henry IV, the mayor’s only offspring, is the sole heir to the political dynasty.

In July, Chatham County (Ga.) Superior Court Clerk Susan Prouse adopted a dress code banning hair styled in twists. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, a deputy clerk, an African American who typically had her hair professionally styled that way, was sent home from work the day the policy was adopted. Prouse, who is white, claimed the hair style ban was necessary because she did not want to “be faced with decisions as to whether [the twists] were well-maintained, neat and depicted a professional image.”

In July, a 72-year-old man filed a lawsuit against Hennepin County, Minn., claiming he was falsely imprisoned in March 2001. Fritz Herring, who had dressed as a cowboy to deliver a singing telegram to a county employee, was arrested at the county Government Center because he carried a fake gun as part of his costume. According to the Star Tribune, the lawsuit also claims the county violated Herring’s constitutional rights and intentionally inflicted emotional distress.