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- - Red died in Thomas Sphan Clicnic.
"No Eared Joe" hung around with the drunks and the roughest crowd in town. His usual haunt was the Duval Club, a beer parlor on Main Street. He was known to be a decent fellow until he got drunk, then he could be a real scoundrel. Most people thought he had lost his ears in an oil rig fire, but the fact is he was born without them.
One of "No Eared Joe's" good buddies and drinking partners was in a drunken rage in Saunders Cafe on Main Street on the Fourth of July about 1938. He was stacking furniture, tearing the place apart and had cleared everyone out. Carl Pugh, the local peace officer, was a stocky cigar-chewing man, who was known to be a pretty tough hombre himself. Pugh arrived at the scene with gun in hand and faced the roughneck, but he ignored Pugh and continued his one-man riot. Pugh then shot once over the man's head to frighten him, but he was too drunk to scare and came at Puth with a vengeance. Pugh then stopped him with a bullet right through the stomach, and turned to a companion of the brawling man and said, "Do you want some of the same or do you want to go peacefully to jail?" The bullet had passed through the man's stomach, severing his spine, which paralyzed him. He died later that night.
Renee's Note: The above was taken from the History of Freer, and can be found under Chapter Two, Goings-on Around Town. The man that was killed was Red Tilley. I had heard bits and peices of this story growing up. When my friend Don Crawford had mentioned that he owned the book I asked him to look for the story. Red died in 1938 or 1939.
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1904 - 1938 (34 years)
