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. 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 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. Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch The Definitive Account of the Best Little Whorehouse By Jayme Lynn Blaschke The History Press Copyright © 2016 Jayme Lynn Blaschke All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-4671-3563-4 Contents Acknowledgements, 1. A History that Grows in the Telling, 2. Aunt Jessie, 3. Miss Edna, 4. Trixie, the Throw-Away Dog (and Other Societal Rejects), 5. Hullabaloo!, 6. Big Jim, 7. Everybody Who's Anybody, 8. What Doesn't Kill Me ..., 9. The Wagon Wheel, 10. Marvin Zindler, Eye! Witness! News!, 11. Wheels within Wheels, 12. Not with a Bang, 13. Hell to Pay, 14. Didn't See That Coming, 15. Enduring Legacy, Appendix A, Appendix B, Notes, About the Author, CHAPTER 1 A History that Grows in the Telling The Chicken Ranch was a brothel, pure and simple. Not so pure, and nowhere near as simple, were the motives of those who closed it down. Therein hangs this tale. Not that this story hasn't been told before, after a fashion. Four decades removed from its spectacular, primetime closure by a crusading Houston television station, the "Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" remains one of the most infamous brothels ever to operate in the United States, if not the world. Yet the trappings of the tawdry, media-driven sex scandal — titillation, notoriety, celebrity — are ill suited to what never amounted to anything more than an unassuming little country whorehouse tucked back amidst the post oaks and cedar trees just beyond the city limits of La Grange, Texas, less than a mile off State Highway 71 on an unpaved county road. The Chicken Ranch, unlike the personalities that came to dominate its final days, was never larger than life. The owners kept their heads down and noses clean, paid their taxes and stayed on the good side of the law and politicians. The brothel's relations with the community at large were helped immensely by its madams being generous civic benefactors. The fact that prostitution flourished in La Grange for well over a century did not make the town unique. In that aspect, at least, La Grange claimed no different pedigree from the scores of other cities and small towns across Texas that found a booming trade in illicit sex. What set the Chicken Ranch apart was its venerable history. By 1973, it was the last man standing, so to speak, the lone holdout against changing times that shuttered pretty much all of its one-time contemporaries. The story of the Chicken Ranch is very much the story of Texas, in a literal as well as metaphorical sense. From the earliest days of the Republic of Texas, long before vast oilfields covered the landscape and "black gold" made the state rich, the Texas economy depended on three industries: cattle, cotton and timber. A casual observer of the time could not be blamed, though, for thinking of prostitution as a fourth major cash crop. As Texas' frontier society developed, sex followed se