The Junkies Were Valiant-Crying Out For Repentance And God Save Us Sinners-The Junkies Have Always Been With Us-The Fixer Man Too-Hell, No, I Don’t Want No Whores Out On 8^th Avenue

By Fritz Taylor

Yes, I am still on my high horse about the subject of my last piece, supposedly about Lem Kane’s switch over to police procedurals from the previous slam bang of private detection he built his reputation on but really about the hard reality of what the public coppers in places like Fort Point Estates down in Fulton County Georgia do about crime and criminals. Basically nothing except maybe hold their grubby little hands out for whatever pocket change they can scoop up from the fixer man, grifters, and pimps. I mentioned in that short piece that the public coppers worked hand in hand with the local owner of the only variety store, the only place in the area to get provisions especially if like lots of residents including my family at times you had no automobile to get to other places. That guy, Jimmy Bob Carter (and his wife always called Lady Vivian but I am not sure why) not only sold milk and bread but ran the local “book,” ran the whores out of his upstairs space and was the fixer man for the junkies and hopeless who needed a little something for the head, a little something to get through the day, days really. And sitting there hands at the ready and not accepting cheapjack crap like free coffee and crullers were the local public coppers who freely placed their bets in the “book,” grabbed a whore or two upstairs and looked the other way when Jimmy Bob did up his bindles and grams.        

Funny though when memories get churned, seemingly forgotten memories from a time when I, and all the kids I grew up with down there, learned way too early about the hard side of life how some stuff comes up to the surface. Like the time I was standing at Carter’s Variety, at Jimmy Bob’s front really for all the overpriced provisions he actually had in the store, trying to decide on what kind of cheapjack candy I wanted when a couple of coppers came in straight from their patrol car, in uniform picked up Jimmy Bob’s “book” and put down their bets and nobody said nothing. Or the time that Captain Dorian, the head of the police substation at Fort Point, grabbed Jimmy Bob’s lead whore, Lula and ran her up the stairs to do what of course then I didn’t know but it wasn’t to pray to the Lord like the Captain did on Sunday morning with his wife and five children at 7^th Street Baptist. Here’s a last example, a couple of coppers sitting in their squad car when a couple of known local junkies (they were notorious even among us kids who didn’t know squat about drugs or the seamy side of life for going “on the nod” at the little beach front about fifty yards down from Carter’s) walked into Jimmy Bob’s  looking like hell and coming out like they had just found Jesus (and maybe they had). Got “well” in any case.

Once you start dredging though who knows. I have had plenty of reasons not to trust, and at times to hate the public coppers no matter how nice and pretty they make them appear to be on cop television shows (although usually not on the daily news where they get the old see-saw). I had almost forgotten about the most notorious case that came out of the Fort Point Estates no good copper racket, the case of Tara Lee Parker. The murder most foul of Tara Lee Parker, which was never solved, maybe they never wanted solved. Tara Lee had been a classmate of my oldest brother, Lester, so he knew more about what happened than I did as a twelve-year old boy hardly up to date on sex and sexual depravity and sheer craziness. Tara Lee was maybe sixteen when she dropped out of school, according to Lester who had her in some of his classes.

I guess Tara Lee, was never much of a student, was known to the older crowd as a girl who liked to walk on the wild side, who ran away from home who knows how many times. Got a reputation for all kinds of depraved doing but that stuff I learned later for the word around the Estates when her name came up was slut, whore, pig and cocksucker, stuff like that. Eventually she got into Jimmy Bob’s stable, his good time girls, his girls who would go to the “game room” which is what he called his upstairs operation to do whatever. Now Jimmy Bob’s probably wasn’t the only whorehouse in town, probably far from it but it was well-known to be frequently by richer guys from the Cherokee Hills section of town, the old money cotton and textile mills money that kept that section afloat. You would see cars, American cars, expensive American cars like Cadillacs and Lincolns, definitely not Estate cars, in front of Carter’s Variety day and night. And young stuff like Tara Lee was there to service their needs.                

Now I didn’t know, still don’t, know all the arrangements that Jimmy Bob had had with his clients, but I guess for a price guys could take their whores elsewhere to do what they were going to do. (What Seth Garth, maybe Sam Lowell too, called “doing the do” in their Acre neighborhood after somebody heard bluesman Howlin’ Wolf sing a song using that phrase for having sex.) That turned to be the downfall for one Tara Lee Parker. One morning some early morning fisherman found her body against a sullen tree truck along the swollen Dam River cut up bad I heard, cut up in a very sexually depraved way when I understood such things better later. The last guy seen with her was Gary Lyons, the son of the major mill operator in town in those days who employed a number of Estate fathers in his works for cheap pay, who had a serious reputation as a wild boy with the women.   

Here is where I will rant, here is where even over fifty years later I cry out for some closure for Tara Lee Parker. The coppers, Captain Dorian in the lead knew that she had a few wiggy clients, including Gary, from the Cherokee Hills. Knew she had been out with some guy from there that night. Did they ever do anything to check Gary out but close down the investigation after about two days. No, and I would hear from a shaken Lester once he heard what had happened to her that some two-bit copper said that more than two days was too much time to spent on the murder of a bent whore, that she was doomed anyway so forget about it. Yeah, run that on cop television shows what don’t you. RIP, Tara Lee Parker, I really hope you have had some rest sister.