Pinkie Roden: The Bootlegger King

Season: 1 \ Episodes: 2-3

In these episodes, host Jody Slaughter investigates the life of Pinkie Roden, who built a West Texas bootlegging empire in Prohibition that lasted all the way into modern times. From moonshiner to political influencer, Pinkie's story is a blend of daring escapades, high-stakes chases, and a relentless pursuit of fortune. Seldom talked about today, Pinkie's mark is all over West Texas, if you know where to look.

Pinkie's Liquor Store. Brady, Texas.

Texas Historical Commission. [Historic Property, Photograph 4636-03], photograph, Date Unknown; University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas Historical Commission.

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PART 1:

Cold Open: We set the scene in Ector County, Texas, on May 21, 1951. A state liquor agent hides in a cornfield, eyes fixed on the back of Pinkie’s Liquor Store—a beacon of neon pink glowing in the vast, dry landscape. This isn’t your average liquor store; it's a hub of illicit activity, sitting just 20 miles from any town, strategically positioned on the border of a dry zone where liquor is outlawed. Enter Roy Maxey, a seasoned runner, navigating the treacherous world of bootlegging.

Chapter 1: Getting a Taste

• Early Life: Thomas Watson Roden, later known as Pinkie, was born on March 28, 1911, in Chalk Mountain, Texas. With bright orange hair and freckles, he quickly earned the nickname "Pinkie."

• Prohibition Era: Growing up in Somerville County, surrounded by moonshine operations, Pinkie’s early encounters with the bootlegging world began while working at a hotel in Glen Rose.

• Leaving Glen Rose: Various stories about why Pinkie left Glen Rose as a teen, leading him to Fort Worth where he delved deeper into bootlegging.

• Early Career: Pinkie’s rise in the bootlegging world in Sweetwater during the late 1920s.

• Economic Collapse: The impact of the Great Depression on Texas and Pinkie’s operations.

• First Arrest: Pinkie’s arrest, conviction, and subsequent pardon by Governor Ma Ferguson.

• Post-Prohibition: Navigating the post-Prohibition era and establishing new bootlegging routes across West Texas.

• Big Spring: Pinkie’s initial successes and setbacks in Big Spring, including the challenges of a dry referendum.

Chapter 2: Odessa

• Odessa: Moving to Odessa and leveraging the city’s burgeoning oil boom to expand his bootlegging empire.

• Farm Store: Establishing the infamous Farm Store in Ector County, equipped with advanced warning systems and surrounded by an 8-foot wall.

• Bootlegging Operations: Detailed description of Pinkie’s sophisticated distribution network, decoy tactics, and methods for avoiding law enforcement.

Chapter 3: Taking their Shot

• Investigations: The grand jury investigations in Lubbock and Amarillo, spearheaded by District Attorney Waggoner Carr.

• House Crime Investigating Committee: Subpoenas, hearings, and Pinkie’s strategic testimony before the committee.

• Corporate Structure: Insight into Pinkie’s complex financial arrangements and how they shielded him from legal repercussions.

PART 2:

Cold Open: Roy Maxey speeds east on a dirt Farm to Market road towards the tiny community of Sands, Texas. His 1951 Lincoln, with the back seat removed, is loaded with cases of whiskey and beer. After evading the liquor control agents staking out Pinkie's Farm Store, Roy pulls into the gravel driveway of his cousin, Samuel Riley. Amidst family chatter and a house full of children, Roy proposes a job opportunity with Pinkie's bootlegging operation, leading to a spontaneous trip to Lubbock.

Chapter 4: The Wizard of West Texas

• Political Influence: Pinkie dives deeper into politics, founding the Texas Package Stores Association and becoming a key figure in Austin’s legislative scene. Along with Sidney Siegel of Dallas and James Leggett Jr. of Fort Worth, Pinkie forms a powerful legislative committee known as the “Three Musketeers.”

• Legislative Impact: Pinkie personally writes significant portions of Texas liquor laws, influencing package store legislation and local option elections. His most notable achievement includes a 1971 compromise allowing "liquor by the drink" in local jurisdictions, with all liquor purchases routed through local package stores.

• Social Tactics: Pinkie wines and dines legislators, mastering the political game and ensuring laws favor his operations. His ability to navigate and manipulate political landscapes solidifies his power.

• The Strip: Establishing a highly profitable yet tightly controlled series of liquor stores known as The Strip, notorious for its high prices and strict competition enforcement.

• Federal Indictment: In 1976, a federal grand jury indicts several Strip stores, including Pinkie’s, for illegal price fixing. Pinkie, not listed as an owner or officer, avoids direct charges but faces increased scrutiny.
  

Chapter 5: Impact

• Abilene: Pinkie’s strategic efforts to control liquor sales, including orchestrating local elections and utilizing legislative loopholes culminate in the creation of his own city
  

Chapter 6: The Golden Rooster

• The Inn of the Golden West: Pinkie renovates the Lincoln Hotel in Odessa into a luxurious club featuring illegal gambling and high-stakes poker games. The Golden Rooster becomes a hotspot for professional poker players and celebrities.

• Local Tolerance: Despite occasional raids, Pinkie’s operations continue with the tacit approval of local authorities, ensuring his gambling and bootlegging activities thrive.

Chapter 7: Bringing Home the Bacon

• University and Hospital Efforts: Pinkie’s advocacy for the University of Texas Permian Basin (UTPB) and efforts to modernize Medical Center Hospital in Odessa. His political acumen secures necessary funding and legislative approval, bringing higher education and advanced medical facilities to West Texas.

• Water Rights: Pinkie’s involvement in securing a reservoir project to provide water for West Texas, overcoming opposition from downstream developers and ensuring long-term regional growth.

Chapter 8: Riding Off Into the Sunset

• Family Contributions: Pinkie’s support for his siblings’ education and careers, highlighting notable achievements in medicine, business, and engineering.

• Later Years: As the bootlegging business fades, Pinkie focuses on civic projects and enjoys life at his Madera Springs ranch. Despite declining health, he remains a key figure in West Texas until his death in 1989.

Cold Open 2: Roy Maxey, running late for his liquor delivery and without headlights, runs a stop sign colliding with a car to devastating consequences.

Epilogue: The tragic car accident involving Roy Maxey near Tahoka, resulting in the deaths of 5 people and the orphaning of 12 children and highlighting the human cost of Pinkie’s bootlegging operations. The long-term consequences for the affected families are explored, offering a sobering counterpoint to Pinkie’s otherwise celebrated legacy.

Closing: Thank you for tuning in to the WTX Podcast. If you enjoyed these episodes, be sure to subscribe and leave a review.

Media:

Tom "Pinkie" Roden, date unknown

Pinkie, a West Texas Legend, by Walter Harold Gray & Don Hudgpeth, 2000, p 54.

The Somervell County Moonshine Bust. Courthouse lawn, 1923. Somervell County Historical Society

Governor Miriam "Ma" Ferguson with Texas Rangers on the Capitol steps. 1925.

Jordan Company. [Texas Rangers with Governor Miriam "Ma" Ferguson], photograph, 1925-01-20/1927-01-17; University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Austin History Center, Austin Public Library.

Crawford Hotel, Big Spring. postcard. Source unknown

Pinkie's Liquor, Odessa, 1950s. Source unknown

The Farm Store Ector County. Date unknown.

Pinkie, a West Texas Legend, by Walter Harold Gray & Don Hudgpeth, 2000, p 79.

Officers Buck Luttrell and Leon Bowman seizing bootleg beer in Abilene, 1953.

University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Abilene Library Consortium.

Lubbock District Attorney and Texas House Representative Waggoner Carr, chair of Amarillo organized crime hearings.

Texas Legislature photo.

The Lubbock Strip at night. Undated photo by Africaneze101 on flickr.

Impact, TX in 1961. Hutcheson, Don. Aerial Photograph of Impact, Texas (1961), photograph, September 7, 1961; University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Hardin-Simmons University Library. A portion of the photograph has been highlighted by the blogger.

Matchbook from the Inn of the Golden West. Blogger's collection

Dean Martin in Odessa, 1966. The Odessa American. "Dean Martin Enters Odessa Pro-Am." Odessa, Texas. January 1, 1967, p. 30.

Pinkie Roden in 1980, closing the sale of his hotel, The Inn of the Golden West.

The Odessa American; Odessa, Texas; July 13, 1980; Page 49

Pinkie's plaque on the Odessa Walk of the Entrepreneurs. Bill Kirchner. "Tom 'Pinkie' Roden Marker," photograph. Credit: HMdb.org PhotoID=318375. Copyright: http://www.hmdb.org/copyright.asp.

Further Reading

• Pinkie: A West Texas Legend - Walter Harold Gray & Don Hudgpeth, 2000

• The Wizard of the West - Mike Cochran, LA Times, 1992

• A Texas Tragedy: Orphaned by Bootleggers - Dr. Elva Edwards, 2001
  

Credits:

Writer: Jody L. Slaughter

Producer: Jody L. Slaughter

Editor: Jody L. Slaughter

Engineer: Jody L. Slaughter

Music (in order of appearance):

• Part 1:

  • The Stakeout - Gentry Ford & the Homeless Lobos

  • Sweetwater Station - Gentry Ford & the Homeless Lobos

  • Boomtown Sunrise - Gentry Ford & the Homeless Lobos

  • It's Drunk Out Tonight - Butterball Brown & His Orchestra

  • It's All West Texas (WTX Theme Song) - Gentry Ford & the Homeless Lobos

• Part 2:

  • The Stakeout - Gentry Ford & the Homeless Lobos

  • Dreaming of Pinkie - Gentry Ford & the Homeless Lobos

  • Boomtown Sunrise - Gentry Ford & the Homeless Lobos

  • Pinkie, My Darling - Gentry Ford & the Homeless Lobos

  • Fighting Falcons - Gentry Ford & the Homeless Lobos

  • Dam That Damn River - Gentry Ford & the Homeless Lobos

  • Distant Horizons - Gentry Ford & the Homeless Lobos

  • It's All West Texas (WTX Theme Song) - Gentry Ford & the Homeless Lobos
    

Contact:

• Email: lubbockistATgmail.com

• Twitter: @Lubbockist

Listen on:

• YouTube

• Spotify

• Apple Podcasts

Thanks for listening, and so long...from West Texas.

Full Show Scripts

s01e02 - Pinkie Roden: The Bootlegger King pt .1

COLD OPEN

Ector County Texas, May 21, 1951. A state liquor agent huddles in a cornfield. His eyes, sharp and wary, are fixed on the rear entrance of a modest metal frame building. Pinkie’s Liquor Store with its trademark neon pink sign out front. Except this isn’t a normal liquor store. This store, located 20 miles from any town, sits on the border of a vast dry area stretching thousands of square miles up to Oklahoma, where liquor sales are outlawed.

A 1951 Lincoln rumbles up the road and pulls through a gate in the back. An 8 foot wall, weather-beaten and sturdy, conceals the cars that drive into the back from the prying eyes on the Andrews highway outside. Roy Maxey, a lean man with a face weathered by sun and worry, pulls into the large warehouse behind the store, and an overhead door closes behind him. Roy gets out and hands the warehouse manager a crumpled piece of paper - the order he was given for whiskey and beer. The men begin to load the order into the two-door Lincoln, its backseat removed to hold even more product.

Roy, unhurried and confident, saunters to the front of the retail store, the smell of dust and corn mingling in the dry air. He pushes open the swinging doors, the creak of old wood echoing in the stillness.

Inside, Pinkie Roden, the store’s namesake, is chatting with another runner, his presence commanding but relaxed. Pinkie turns, a grin spreading across his sunburned face. "Hello there, Roy."

"Hidee, Pinkie," Roy replies, tipping his hat.

Pinkie leans casually against a case of beer, the bottles clinking softly. "How's your car running?"

Roy brightens, "Just fine. Ain't noticed no trouble."

"That's good! How's the heat up in Lubbock?" Pinkie asks, his tone lazy but his eyes sharp. Roy knows Pinkie is asking about the Liquor Control boys.

"They haven't been too bad," Roy mutters, chewing on a wad of tobacco.

The men take their time, shooting the breeze and letting the minutes slip by. Roy grabs a Coke, the cold bottle sweating in his hand, and chats with Pinkie and the other runners waiting for their cars to be loaded. The easy banter fills the small store, a moment of calm before the storm.

"I best be gettin' going," Roy finally says, heading towards his car. He spits a stream of tobacco juice outside, a dark stain on the dusty ground. Satisfied with how the boys have loaded his car, he checks the other two vehicles. Everything is ready. One problem though, a warning light bulb on the wall is off. That means there’s trouble outside.

He signals to a kid manning the door. The garage door creaks open, and out lunges a late-model red Cadillac, its engine growling like a caged beast. Tires squeal, kicking up a flurry of dust as the driver spins the wheel sharply and speeds off.

Within seconds, the liquor agent and his colleague, who have been waiting in the cornfield, race off in pursuit, their own tires screaming as they take off. The red Cadillac leads them on a wild chase down a lonely country road. A few minutes later, Roy glances over at the light. It illuminates. The coast is clear. Roy and the other vehicle quietly emerge from the garage and head in the opposite direction.

The agents soon overtake the Cadillac, their frustration palpable when they find nothing inside. "A damn decoy," one agent grumbles, kicking the dust.

Meanwhile, the real cargo is on the move. Maxey turns northwest in his 1951 Lincoln, the other car veering southeast towards Abilene. Roy’s backseat is crammed with half-pints of bootleg whiskey and beer, bound for the thirsty clientele in Lubbock, the bootlegging capital of the world. The game was getting riskier, the stakes higher with each passing day. Roy couldn't shake the feeling that someday, his luck would run out - and when it did, the price would be steeper than any of them could imagine. For now, though, the wheels kept turning. Roy takes dirt roads, traveling with his headlights off, a phantom in the night up farm to market and county roads he has down by heart. Normally he would avoid towns all together, but tonight he’s got a one stop to make on his way.

#Intro

Hey y’all. I’m Jody Slaughter and welcome to West Texas. Where the sky stretches on forever, and the stories are as vast and rugged as the landscape itself. On this program, we will explore the characters who have etched their names into the sun bleached history of this region. From outlaws and lawmen, to everyday folks who dared to dance with destiny, we’ll explore the legends, the truths, and the tall tales that define this undefinable region.   

On this episode, Part 1 of our series on Pinkie Roden. From his early days as a Prohibition -era moonshiner and bootlegger, to walking the halls of the Capitol in Austin, bending governors to his will. Pinkie embodied the best and worst of the West Texas independent spirit.

So grab a seat, kick off your boots, and settle in...because this...is West Texas. 

#Chapter 1: Getting a Taste

Thomas Watson Roden was born on March 28, 1911, in Chalk Mountain, Texas. His parents, A.H. and Allie Roden, were quite the pair. A.H. was a cowboy on cattle drives before settling down and becoming a leader in the Primitive Baptist movement. He even earned a pharmacy degree and opened a drug store in Glen Rose where the family moved soon after Tom was born.

Tom had fair skin, bright orange hair, and freckles. He’d sunburn almost immediately in the summertime, which earned him the nickname "Pinkie" that stuck with him for life. He also had a unique speech impediment. It wasn’t exactly a stutter, more of a halting rhythm. His friends used to say his mind worked so fast that his mouth couldn’t keep up.

Now, Somerville County, where Glen Rose is located, had a bit of a reputation. Moonshine was a big deal there, bootlegged straight into Dallas and Fort Worth. During Prohibition, things got pretty wild. There was this one bust where Rangers dumped 195 barrels—55 gallons each—of whiskey right on the courthouse lawn. They also found seven stills! Charges were filed against 31 residents, including the sheriff and county attorney. And, one witness was even gunned down during the investigation.

So Pinkie grew up in this mix of outlaws and bootleggers, while his parents were practicing one of the most strict faiths you could find, even by Baptist standards.

At some point, young Pinkie got a horse named Skinny. Glen Rose was becoming a tourist draw for folks from Dallas and Fort Worth, and by the time he was 13, Pinkie was renting out Skinny to tourists at 50 cents an hour. Pretty enterprising, right?

As the oldest child, Pinkie spent a lot of time exploring the area on Skinny. He often got chased off still sites by moonshiners who'd fire shots at him. Imagine that for a childhood!

Described as shy and awkward in social situations, Pinkie was fearless, especially when he was on Skinny. His father, though, was a stern disciplinarian. He wasn’t thrilled with Pinkie’s wild streak. Once, when Pinkie came home late for supper, his dad locked him in the family’s storm cellar.

A.H. tried to keep Pinkie under his watch by employing him at the family drugstore. But Pinkie wasn’t having it. Eventually, he found his own gig as a bellhop at Glen Rose’s small hotel.

Now, with Prohibition in full swing, the local moonshine became a tourist attraction, just like the nearby sulfur springs and dinosaur tracks. Pinkie got his first taste of bootlegging by fetching bottles for the thirsty hotel guests.

There are a few conflicting stories about why Pinkie left Glen Rose as a teen. Some say he was accused of stealing money from the hotel, though his family insists he was innocent. Others say there was trouble between him and his 9th grade teacher, making it tough for him to continue school. Either way, he ended up in Fort Worth, living with his widowed grandmother.

Fort Worth was an education in itself. The stockyards and Hell’s Half Acre still had that wild, 1800s feel. Pinkie befriended Clem Connally, the son of a Glen Rose bootlegger, Dee Connally, who had set up shop in Fort Worth, running his operation out of a service station.

The two boys started out running errands and doing odd jobs around the service station. Pinkie quickly earned a reputation as someone who could keep a secret — a valuable trait in the bootlegging world. Before most of his classmates had even graduated high school, Pinkie had climbed the ranks from errand boy to bookkeeper of the operation, dropping out of school in the process.

He was soon offered a job managing the bootlegging operation in Sweetwater, which was a hub for distributing moonshine to small towns and rural communities further west. So, in the summer of 1928, aged just 17, Pinkie hopped a freight train to Sweetwater, marking the start of the first chapter of his adult life.

Sweetwater at that time was just a scaled down version of Ft Worth with the same lot of cattlemen, gamblers, and outlaws. Lots of opportunity to peddle his wares.

But Pinkie could have no idea as he peered out of that box car at the unyielding West Texas landscape, that he was steaming towards the largest economic collapse in history. Luckily for him, he was in a recession proof industry.

Sweetwater, as an economic hub for cattle, crops, and the fledgling oil industry, was hit particularly hard by the Great Depression. Texas oil, priced at $1.10 a barrel in 1930, had fallen to 10 cents a barrel by 1931. Cotton went from 18 cents a pound in 1928, to six cents in 1931. The market for live cattle was nonexistent. Add on top of that the Dust Bowl, where the dirt from fresh West Texas farms blacked out the sun, and families were known to eat dinner under large sheets to keep it out of their mouths and stomachs

This was an era when honest men turned into thieves to feed their families. Murderers and robbers like Bonnie and Clyde became folk heroes, and labor riots erupted around the state.

When law and order finally came, it was the bootleggers who had been operating basically out in the open, who were a convenient target.

In 1932, Pinkie was Arrested, convicted, and sent to prison for bootlegging. Offered a plea deal in exchange for handing over his employers, he refused to turn stool pigeon. Prepared to serve his sentence in silence.

Wanting to spare his family and especially his parents the shame of all this - no one in his family even knew what his true job was, Pinkie somehow managed to serve his sentence under an alias - Tom Boyd. He even set up a mail forwarding operation where he would send letters to his family, routed through accomplices in Sweetwater where they would postmark and mail the letters from there.

Now, Luckily for Pinkie, the 30s were also the era of abject corruption in Texas government. And governor Ma Ferguson, in office after the impeachment of her husband Pa Ferguson for embezzlement, bribery, and coercion, kept the family business going by allegedly trading bribes and favors for clemency declarations and pardons. She granted almost 3,600 clemency requests during her two terms.

It doesn't take a big leap in logic then to understand why Pinkie, a convicted bootlegger who had refused to implicate his rich and powerful co-conspirators, was pardoned and released in 1933, less than 2 years into his sentence.

There is little information about Pinkie’s time in prison. In a biography commissioned by his family, it's stated that he never talked about it. Not to anyone. Not ever.

By the time he was released, Prohibition had ended, and the crimes of which he had been convicted were no longer even crimes.

So now Pinkie, aged 22 and already an ex-con, had a choice to make. Return to the seedy world of bootlegging, or find a new, legitimate career. With Prohibition over, was bootlegging even still a viable career path?

To understand the choice he made, it helps to understand how the liquor laws worked in Texas (which is something few at the time could even do, but we'll try).

In the days of the Old West - if you listened to our first episode about Roy Bean that would have been this era - alcohol was totally unregulated in Texas. Saloons could spring up overnight with a tent and barrel of whiskey.

Then in 1876, with the drafting of a new Texas Constitution, the option was put in place for cities or counties to hold elections to become wet or dry. So you could have a wet city within a dry county, or vice versa.

In 1887 that was amended to allow these wet/dry decisions to be made only at the county level. The whole county was either wet, or dry.

This was all made moot in 1920 when the Volstead Act made the manufacture and sale of alcohol illegal across the US.

After repeal in 1933, Texas reverted back to the 1887 law. Where wet/dry elections were made by counties as a whole.

By 1935, all 254 Texas Counties held elections. And, with few exceptions, the northern half of the state voted completely dry, while the southern half of the state voted wet or semi-wet (some allowed beer but not liquor, etc.)

In Lubbock, for instance, one would need to drive at least 4 counties in any direction to buy a legal drink.

So the way Pinkie saw it, Prohibition wasn't dead in West Texas - it wasn’t even injured. And there was still plenty of opportunity for a seasoned bootlegger to ply his trade.

Not only that, but due to the wet/dry patchwork of counties, he could set up a totally legal retail operation in a wet county, shielded from most legal jeopardy, while he distributed into the dry counties. The way he saw it, as long as the “sale” happened in a wet county he had no culpability for what the purchaser did with it or where he took it afterward.

One problem though, in 1935 the state established a new agency, the Texas Liquor Control Board (now known as the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission or TABC).

So as Pinkie made his plans, the one thing he knew, was he wasn't returning to Sweetwater and he wasn't working as anyone else's employee ever again. The only question that remained, was where to plant the seed for the empire he wanted to build.

In early 1934, he set out to find his new home, while also exploring the vast expanses of West Texas and meet the men and women who would soon be his customers.

He took highway 84 up through Snyder, Post, Lubbock, and Littlefield. He took highway 87 down from Amarillo through Plainview, Lamesa, Big Spring, and San Angelo. Then West to Midland, Odessa, and Andrews.

He was known to only put 5 gallons of gas in his car at a time, giving him an inconspicuous reason to stop in every town. There he visited with anyone he could, chewing the fat about politics or the weather, while silently making mental notes of economic conditions, law enforcement presence, church influence and names of any important people he may want to ingratiate himself with in the future.

After his West Texas tour, he selected San Angelo as his new base of operations. Ranching and oil economy, railroad access, A military base, and legal packaged alcohol sales. It was perfect.

Just one problem. A bootlegger had already established himself there, and had already built the political and law enforcement apparatus to keep a startup like Pinkie out.

Unable to ever establish himself in San Angelo, he pivoted quickly to his second choice, Big Spring.

Upon arriving there he booked a high corner room at the 7 story Crawford Hotel. From his vantage point, binoculars in hand, he was able to watch the comings and goings of the liquor enforcement agents at their offices across the street. He also became a fixture at the local hot spots around town. The coffee shop, the barber shop, and the pool hall. Making friends and immersing himself in the town gossip.

Either due to his disapproving parents or his criminal history, Pinkie permitted his operation under the name of a childhood friend, Morris “Dave” Davis and opened “Dave's Liquor Shoppe”

It was an immediate hit with travelers and townsfolk, as well as attracting bootleggers from nearby dry counties, as designed.

If Pinkie loved traveling the highways and gladhanding in cities all over WTX, he also worked at night to find bootlegging routes across the region that avoided highways and towns. It was later said that he could drive better in darkness than daylight, and could drive from Odessa to Dallas without crossing a major highway.

He also managed to concoct a route from Big Spring to Lubbock without going through a single town, of any size. At one point, even convincing a rancher to give him a gate key so he or his drivers could cut through the property on their deliveries.

He may have been too successful, too quickly however, as voters in “wet” Big Spring were, apparently, not ready to go this wet.

After a referendum in 1938, Big Spring voters chose to go dry and Dave's Liquor Shoppe had to close its doors.

Pinkie told the local police chief at the time that “if it stays dry, I'll still be selling whiskey in Big Spring. You know that.”

But officially, Pinkie was done in Big Spring. For now at least. On down the list to his 3rd choice, Odessa.

Chapter 2: Odessa

If San Angelo and Big Spring made sense from an economic standpoint for Pinkie’s headquarters, he would soon find that Odessa had the heart and soul of an outlaw’s paradise. AP journalist Mike Cochran, who would report extensively on Pinkie, called Odessa at that time “Young and brash and prone to wink at any law that might intrude on the good times.”

If West Texas was the last part of the country to be “tamed” then Odessa was the last place in Texas to do so. Even into the 60s and 70s it was rife with illegal bars, gambling, and general vice, due in no small part to Pinkie Roden. There’s a reason why Odessa was the single wet jurisdiction in a vast expanse stretching from the Panhandle to the Pecos.

And if that naive young boy riding a boxcar to Sweetwater a decade earlier had no idea of the economic Depression he was riding into, surely a seasoned operator like Pinkie in 1938 saw the opportunity spreading out before him in Odessa.

Intensive oil drilling had begun in Ector County just a handful of years earlier, and Odessa was in the very early stages of one of the largest oil booms in history. One that, with periodic pullbacks, continues even to this day.

Mesquite scrub fields transformed overnight into lines of pipe yards, equipment companies, and impromptu housing. Dust bowl era farm boys became rig hands. Wildcatters from East Texas made their way across the state to stake their claim, and when they hit it rich, the whiskey flowed and high stakes card games sprung out of the desert like a prickly pear fruit.

Within a year, Pinkie had established not one, but two package stores and   was free to operate under his own name. Pinkie’s Liquor, plastered above the stores in bright pink neon paint.

As expected, Pinkie’s was a smashing success. With World War 2 and its insatiable thirst for oil, Odessa’s population skyrocketed. The cowboy town of just 2,400 in 1930 would grow to almost 25,000 by 1950.

Pinkie, maybe as much as anyone outside of a few lucky wildcatters, cashed in on this boom. Just a few years after the war, as more wet precincts were springing up, Pinkie had stores in Coahoma, Monahans, Carlsbad, San Angelo, Menard, and was back in business in Big Spring. This time with two stores there.

He didn’t run his bootlegging operation out of all of them. That was too many variables. One store would service the bootleggers and the others would be totally clean. Now no one will admit to this, but there is a compelling narrative that can be pieced together from his financial records, later subpoenaed by the state.

By December 1950, one of his Big Spring stores was doing $150,000 a month in sales. That’s a jaw dropping revenue number even by today’s standards. But in 2024 dollars, that’s almost $2 million dollars per month from a city with a population of just 17,000.

Big Spring voters, not able to make up their minds, went dry again in 1951 and the Big Spring store closed. Again. Overnight, Pinkie’s “Country Club” store in Odessa went from revenues of $50,000 per month to $200,000 per month. In April of 1952, Pinkie opened a brand new store in Ector County, known as the “Farm Store” and, wouldn’t you know it, the Odessa store went back to $50,000 while the fledgling Farm Store posted revenues of almost $230,000 in its first month of operation.

In a biography of Pinkie, commissioned by his family after his death, the authors allude to bootlegging, but treat Pinkie’s role as a legitimate businessman who, may have looked the other way, but was never an active participant in any illegal sales outside of the wet areas. Going as far as stating outright that, “he never sold liquor in dry jurisdictions, he just sold to those who did.”

Obviously, people from dry areas were traveling into the wet precincts to purchase alcohol to take back home, and that was perfectly legal. But that does not explain why about $150,000 in monthly sales moved from specific Pinkie’s store to specific Pinkie’s store overnight, as if by magic. It doesn’t take a government auditor to look at these records and see exactly what was going on.

So let’s assume Pinkie really was the kingpin of a multi-million dollar bootlegging empire. That’s a lot of product to move in and out of busy city locations in populated areas with law enforcement always watching. The solution: The Farm Store.

In April 1952, Pinkie opened a new store in Northwest Ector County in the absolute middle of nowhere, right on the county line, as near as legally possible to the vast dry area to the north. Ostensibly a retail operation, it was also 25 miles from the nearest city.

Gabe Lewis, who managed the Farm Store for a time, told Mike Cochran, “It was a fantastic store, sittin out there in the boonies. There wasn’t nothin’ else out there. You’d have to see it to believe it.”

The Farm Store featured a small retail space in the front, with vast loading and storage warehouses behind it, surrounded by an 8-foot wall. Pinkie would later testify that this wall only served to protect his delicate rosebushes from the wind, as well as to hide the eyesore of stacked beer crates from passersby—yeah right, Pinkie.

The Farm Store also featured the cutting edge of technology—a police-style CB radio as well as a warning light placed inside the walls. Pinkie’s drivers, in radio-equipped cars, would patrol the highway from Odessa to Andrews, and radio back to the store if they saw any suspicious (aka government) vehicles. As long as that light stayed lit, bootleggers were free to come and go. If it turned off though, time to hunker down and wait for the fuzz to skeedaddle.

As time went on though, the Farm Store operation became even more brazen. Often, liquor control agents would just park across the highway, hoping to catch someone in the operation making a mistake. A two-door, souped-up Cadillac would roar out of the loading area and onto the highway at high speed. Finally, a catch. The agents would take off after them, trying to catch up to the top-of-the-line performance automobile in their aging government sedan. A few minutes later, back at the Farm Store, several other vehicles, sagging at the axles from weight, would slowly pull out and disperse between various dirt roads leading up into the vast expanse to the north. When the agents were finally able to catch up to the Cadillac, they would find it empty. A decoy. These were the tactics of Prohibition-era mobsters of decades earlier, still alive and well in West Texas.

That’s not to say that none of Pinkie’s bootleggers ever got caught, but they didn’t get caught at the Farm Store. And when they did get caught, Pinkie, who supplied them but didn’t have them on his official payrolls with the store, would often bail them out of jail, supply them with his personal attorneys, or provide any other assistance however he could.

One story, relayed by Texas Ranger John Wood, was the night he busted a bootlegger traveling through Coahoma on his way to Sweetwater. He took the man and the booze to the Mitchell County jail in Colorado City. The next morning, when he returned to fill out the paperwork, he found that both the man, and all the booze, were gone. No one at the jail except Ranger Wood could remember them even being there.

Rumors of bribery pervaded, never proven, but he certainly had friends in law enforcement, mayors, judges, jailers, clerks, and even Liquor Enforcement agents. He saw it as a game. Any money he made was secondary to the thrill of eluding his hunters.

Pinkie was so confident in his abilities, he was even purported to guarantee delivery of his wares. Unheard of in the black market world where the law was always right around the corner. If Pinkie’s liquor didn’t show up, you didn’t pay. It was this kind of business acumen that allowed him to build a near-monopoly in West Texas bootlegging.

His vehicle fleet was legendary. Brand new, top-of-the-line Cadillacs, Lincolns, and Buicks, overhauled for peak horsepower and speed. Coke Stevenson Jr., for a time the statewide administrator of the liquor control board, relayed a story of one of his agents asking for funds to purchase newer vehicles because they couldn’t catch Pinkie’s bootleggers. That request was denied, but a compromise was reached. The liquor agents were given funds to purchase some of Pinkie’s used cars. “They’re faster than anything we’ve got,” the agent was quoted as saying.

A reporter for the A-J in the 50s said that his distribution infrastructure even featured fake bottom cattle trucks, taxis, and a hearse.

Pinkie also kept stash houses in the dry areas that could be used for storage and distribution. His Farm Store owned a filling station in Levelland that Pinkie would later tell investigators he didn’t even know existed. He must’ve learned from his days in Ft. Worth that a filling station with cars coming and going all the time was the perfect cover.

Some of these stash houses even had elaborate mechanisms to conceal Pinkie’s booze. In a Big Spring house, likely acquired during one of the dry stints, Pinkie had a contractor dig a basement accessed from within a closet. The dirt was carried out at night to avoid suspicion. A hydraulic lift and bucket system was installed, covered by a false floor in the closet. Up to 100 cases of whiskey could be stored there, ready to go around the clock.

At a motel in Sweetwater, Pinkie had crews dig a 20-foot well and install a stringed assembly of buckets that could hold whiskey bottles. An electric motor rotated the apparatus. An emergency button was installed in the motel lobby that, if activated during a raid, would automatically dump the bottles down to the concrete bottom of the well, shattering them. Glass bottles of ammonia were interspersed with the whiskey, designed to also break and discourage any attempts at retrieving the evidence.

As Pinkie’s empire grew, so did his wealth and power. It got to the point where he could place a phone call and have a particularly meddlesome liquor enforcement agent transferred out of his domain. He began to dabble in politics, supporting local option elections to go wet if it suited him to put a store in that location, but also opposing those same votes in other cities where he didn’t want his bootlegging activities disturbed. This would be the beginning of an unholy alliance with many churches who opposed going wet on moral grounds. Pinkie was more than happy to make donations where needed to support these efforts when it suited him, even while he was viciously fighting them elsewhere.

By the early 1950s, Pinkie was on top of West Texas, and by definition, the world. But getting on top is the easy part. Staying on top is much harder.

Chapter 3: Taking their Shot

Pinkie’s success was bound to attract attention, and while you can bribe and befriend a lot of folks, a guy like Pinkie is always going to have enemies. With their caseload overflowing with busts for bootlegging, as well as the other associated vices that go along with underground alcohol, surely local district attorneys were questioning how dry their communities really were. From this backdrop, district attorneys in both Lubbock and Amarillo convened grand juries to investigate organized crime in their communities, and particularly bootlegging. Some of his lieutenants were charged and jailed, and Pinkie’s name surely came up more than once, but hard evidence linking Pinkie to any of these crimes was near impossible to produce.

That Lubbock district attorney, Waggoner Carr, would be elevated to state representative in 1951 and shortly thereafter, appointed to the Texas House Crime Investigating Committee. Formed to investigate illegal gambling and other organized crime in Houston and Galveston.

The committee’s purview was soon expanded, as these committees tend to do, to encompass crime all over the state of Texas. From gambling in Galveston it was now general vice in Waco and Dallas and, oh yeah, we got a request from the Amarillo grand jury to look into some bootlegging kingpin in West Texas—Waggoner, you know anything about that?

The committee subpoenaed Pinkie’s business records and phone records. In the landline era, phone call locations were as good as GPS at figuring out where someone was. So not only were state auditors able to build a total picture of Pinkie’s business empire and its massive revenues, they were also able to build a timeline of Pinkie’s travels across the region. A known bootlegger’s house in Amarillo, a known bootlegger’s house in Lubbock, a club in Sweetwater, a call to a known bootlegger in Sundown, a visit to one in Levelland, a call to Amarillo bootlegger George Aaron, who would later be convicted of attempting to bribe the Crosby County Sheriff to allow bootleggers to operate. Maybe it was all circumstantial evidence, but boy howdy did it look bad for Pinkie.

On top of the records, the committee also issued 50 subpoenas to Pinkie and a host of employees and associates to testify, under oath, about Pinkie’s chain of stores and their activity, scheduling two days of hearings in Amarillo, broadcast via radio around the state.

Before these subpoenas could be served, however, 14 of the witnesses fled the state and were unable to be located. One of those subpoenaed was found in New Mexico, coincidentally having an appendectomy performed at the exact time he was to testify. Now that takes guts…

Pinkie did show up to testify, accompanied by his lawyer. He was friendly, soft-spoken, and polite to Carr, who questioned him for 2 hours. He was asked directly, and blatantly denied, ever having paid off any public officials or liquor enforcement agents. Carr even blatantly asked him if he ordered the murder of a Lubbock man earlier that year, which Pinkie denied and said he only knew about it from reading it in the paper.

Pinkie, on advice of counsel, “refused to answer on grounds that it may incriminate himself” over two dozen times. On questions as basic as “Do you or your corporation own a filling station, anywhere?” or “Do you have any financial interest in Pinkie’s corporation?”

We should take an aside here to quickly discuss the financial structure of Pinkie’s. Without getting into the weeds, at some point in the early 50s, Pinkie set up holding corporations for his stores and transferred ownership into those corporations. He held no stock in these corporations, wasn’t an officer, and wasn’t a board member. Now the president of these companies, a Pinkie associate, held almost all of the shares and issued a promissory note to Pinkie against those shares—basically on paper Pinkie wasn’t the owner, he was the banker. In one instance outlined in the hearings, the president, who made $600 per month managing the stores, owed Pinkie $160,000. So no hope of ever repaying the note and taking the stock free and clear. Instead, the stores diverted their profits to Pinkie every month as a payment on the note. This allowed Pinkie to take all of the financial upside from the operation, with none of the liability if things went south. He, in essence, could have total control of the businesses without owning any part of them—as far as the government was concerned.

So with this background, it makes a lot more sense how calm and collected Pinkie acted in his testimony. The committee knows everything, he knows that they know everything, but he also knows that as long as he doesn’t say the wrong thing…they couldn’t touch him. And they didn’t.

The committee eventually published a lengthy report with their findings from all of the hearings held around the state. They outlined all of Pinkie's dealings, excoriating him and his associates. But at the end of the day, they didn't forward any charges for prosecution, instead focusing on the failings of the state in allowing this to happen, and recommending new legislative solutions to address the state's enforcement shortcomings.

Now if Pinkie was calm and mild-mannered in front of the committee, behind the scenes he must have been furious. This was a fiercely private man putting on the public facade of a reputable businessman, who without being charged with any crime had his business records, phone calls, meetings, and whereabouts published in the House Journal, not to mention broadcast around the state. While being accused of everything from bribery to murder.

He may have had powerful friends in Lubbock and Amarillo and Odessa, but they didn't protect him from this humiliation. What he didn't have were powerful friends in Austin. That would have to change.

Outro

You’ve been listening to Part One of Pinkie Roden: West Texas’ King of Bootlegging on the West Texas Podcast. I’m Jody Slaughter. 

In Part Two, we'll dive deep into the high-stakes world of Pinkie’s political maneuvering and his relentless pursuit to shape Texas liquor law to his advantage, even writing the very laws he was expected to abide by.

From building an underground casino in West Texas that could rival anything in Las Vegas, including high stakes poker games that drew professional players from all over the world. To founding universities, hospitals…and finding love.

But there’s a dark side to Pinkie's empire that's barely talked about, even today. We'll expose the ruthless tactics, from price-fixing to gun play and mysterious fires, and the lengths he went to maintain his control over the liquor industry. Join us next time as we uncover the complex legacy of Pinkie Roden, man who, for good or bad, forever shaped the very fabric of West Texas. You won’t want to miss it!

You can find this and all episodes on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Visit our website at wtxpodcast.com for companion articles, show notes, and photos for each episode. To get ahold of me with questions, comments, or show ideas you can email me at lubbockist@gmail.com or on Twitter @Lubbockist. L-U-B-B-O-C-K-I-S-T.  

This episode was written, produced, engineered, and edited by me, Jody Slaughter. 

This episode was scored by Gentry Ford and the Homeless Lobos. You can find our theme song “It’s all West Texas” by Gentry Ford and the Homeless Lobos on their new album West Texas Werewolves, wherever you stream music. Additional music “It’s Drunk Out Tonight” by - and I can’t even get this name out without laughing - Butterball Brown and his Orchestra. Special thanks to the Texas Tech Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library where the Texas Crime Investigating Committee Records are housed.

Thanks for listening, and until next time...so long...From West Texas.

s01e03 - Pinkie Roden: The Bootlegger King pt. 2

#Cold Open 2

Roy Maxey, windows down, and music blaring speeds east on a dirt Farm to Market road towards the tiny community of Sands, Texas. Located between Big Spring and Lamesa. His 1951 Lincoln, back seat removed, is loaded with cases of whiskey and beer. He has successfully evaded the liquor control agents staking out his loading point at Pinkie's Farm Store in Ector County.

He pulls into the gravel driveway of his cousin, Samuel Riley. “Come in and take a load off Roy” Sam beckons as he walks up the porch. Sam's two year old daughter runs up and jumps in Uncle Roy's arms. The house is small but abuzz with activity. The Rileys have 10 children. A couple grown, but many others still crammed into the humble country home.

Samuel has recently lost his job and is struggling to support the large family. That's why Roy is here today.

“What would ya think about drivin up to Lubbock with me and talking to my boss about comin to work with us?” Roy asks. Hes referring to the man he reports to in Lubbock, a lieutenant in Pinkie Roden's bootlegging empire.

Sam's wife comes in from the other room with beers for both the men. “You think he'd be interested in working both of us?” she asks.

“I wouldn't doubt it.” Roy replies. “Business is real good.”

“We sure could use the money,” she says, giving a somber glance to her husband.

“Why don't yall ride up there with me now and I'll bring ya back tomorrow?” Roy suggests. Some of the older children are mature enough to watch the little ones for the night.

“But we gotta go pretty quick, I'm already runnin real late.”

Sam and his wife nod at each other. They give quick goodbyes to the kids and the three squeeze in the front seat of Roy's Lincoln and head North towards Lubbock.

#Intro

Hey y’all. I’m Jody Slaughter and welcome to West Texas. Where the sky stretches on forever, and the stories are as vast and rugged as the landscape itself. You are listening to, Part 2 of our series on Pinkie Roden. If you haven’t listened to Part 1 yet, you’ll definitely want to start there. I’ll wait.

So on the last episode we talked about Pinkie’s early life as a bootlegger, the liquor empire he created in West Texas, the Farm Store where they would move millions in booze every year up to the dry area north of Ector County, his cozy relationships with local community leaders, politicians, and sheriffs, and the Texas House Crime Investigating Committee dragging him before them and accusing him of everything from bribery to murder, before cutting him loose without so much as a jaywalking charge.

Today we’ll tell the rest of Pinkie’s story, and if you think it was unbelievable before, just wait. So grab a seat, kick off your boots, and settle in...because this...is West Texas. 

Chapter 4: The Wizard of West Texas

If Pinkie had dipped his toe into politics before, swaying an option election his way, or helping the voters choose the right mayor or sheriff, he would spend the rest of his career in the deep end. Determined to write the laws he was expected to abide, and rewarding those who played ball with public office. Those who didn't as Pinkie was quoted as saying, were “relieved of the burden of their office.”

He helped found the Texas Package Stores Association and, along with Sidney Siegel of Dallas and James Leggett Jr of Fort Worth, made up the group's legislative committee. The trio was a force in Austin, known around the capitol as the “Three Musketeers”.

Pinkie personally wrote much of the Texas Liquor laws, many of them still on the books today. And played a leading role in shaping package store leg islation, including hours of operation and in 1971, with a statewide push to allow restaurants and bars to serve “liquor by the drink” without having to be a private club, Pinkie developed a brilliant compromise — liquor by the drink could be allowed (if local option elections approved it), but all of that liquor had to be purchased through local package stores instead of through a distributor. Like any good Don, Pinkie had to have his piece.

One legislator would later note that, “you just didn't cross him on liquor law.”

Now if Pinkie walked around the halls of the capitol with a stick, he also had a carrot. A smooth, velvety carrot with waves of honeyed sweetneess, mingled with robust oak and just a whisper of cinnamon spice. Finished with an enduring and satisfyingly warm note with echoes of caramel sweetness.

Pinkie would throw lavish soires for the legislators in Austin when congress was in session, and wine and dine them back in Odessa when they werent.

After a few years of playing the game in Austin, Pinkie had mastered it. He knew all the players, he knew all the moves, and he knew the laws like the back of his hand - and where the loopholes were.

He was also beginning to grow tired of the bootlegging game. For one, it was expensive. He had bootlegger distributors, they had smaller bootleggers under them. Everyone had to take their cut. He had to spend constantly to stay ahead of the law. And when he failed to, he had to spend even more for bail, lawyers, and fines. As more jurisdictions went wet, and more stores were opened, he could sell directly to the end customer and rake higher retail prices.

Now since Prohibition, Texas had taken the stance that wet/dry decisions were only made at the county level. Individual cities within couldn't be wet if the county was dry. With his newfound network of liquor store owners around the state and a team of Package Store Association lawyers by their side, Pinkie believed that this stance should be challenged on Constitutional grounds. They just needed a test case.

They found it in the small town of Asherton, south of San Antonio, in Dimmitt County. There a grocery store owner gathered petition signatures to turn Asherton wet. He presented it to the county to hold an election. Commissioners refused to do so. The Texas Attorney General backed them up.

Pinkie's attorneys helped Asherton appeal, taking the case all the way to the Texas Supreme Court. The state's decision was overturned. The game was now afoot in Texas. And Pinkie, more than anyone, saw the opportunity that presented.

Across the state individual cities, and even smaller precincts within counties, started to go wet, while their counties remained dry and the package store association helped to support those efforts.

Pinkie's bread and butter were Lubbock and Abilene. Lubbock in particular, could have been called the Bootlegging Capitol of the World up until a tiny precinct just south of town voted wet in 1960. The gold rush was on.

Wiley landowners with prime frontage on Highway 87 charged outrageous prices to lease their land. Pinkie was first in line.

He wasn't the only one. As liquor stores scrambled to scoop up the leases and The Strip was born. Lit up in neon like Las Vegas, as many as 7 liquor stores opened within feet of each other.

You would be excused for assuming that these close quarters would spur intense competition and great prices for the consumer. But that assumption would be incorrect. Instead, the strip had, across the board, some of the highest prices in the state. With every store offering the same bottle for the exact same high price, down to the penny.

If a store did offer lower prices, they might find their store burned down overnight. No one was ever arrested in connection with these fires. But they happened more than once. One longtime resident, remaining anonymous, told Mike Cochran “if you had a sale, you had a fire.”

In 1972, Lubbock as a whole was ready to go wet. At that time it was the largest dry city in the entire country. The push was motivated by hotel and restaurant interests, and fiercely opposed by the local church community.

Pinkie met with the hotel and restaurant group, and proposed a compromise. Petition for mixed drink sales, but NOT package sales in the city limits. Thanks to his work in the legislature a year earlier, he knew they would have to purchase everything from him and his buddies on the Strip anyway. In return, he would put his apparatus to work for them supporting the petition and defeating the churches, something he had done successfully all over West Texas.

He did, and it passed. Prohibition was, for all intents and purposes, over in Lubbock. You just might have to drive 15 miles to the Strip and pay the highest prices in the state if you wanted to celebrate.

Someone, somewhere finally got tired of the price gouging and the mysterious fires though. And in 1976, a federal grand jury in Lubbock indicted four Strip stores, including Pinkie's, three of their officers, and the Lubbock County Beverage Association for illegal price fixing. All 8 entered no contest pleas. The three officers were jailed, and the businesses were fined. The Beverage Association promptly dissolved.

Pinkie, not listed as an owner or officer of Pinkies on any records, was not named.

Regardless, the Strip would flourish for three more decades, with countless Lubbockites making their solemn pilgrimage to the Short Road to stock up on party supplies. At some point, Pinkie's added a BBQ market, another genius move because it gave customers a reason to choose them over the competition next door. Generations of Tech students subsisted almost entirely on budget beer 30 packs and fried gizzards from Pinkies. Even the most pious church ladies might be found grabbing BBQ sandwiches - and certainly nothing else - from Pinkies for family dinner.

Chapter 5: Impact

Okay, so let's backtrack to 1960 again. While south Lubbock County was voting in package sales, Pinkie's other white whale, Abilene, would need a little more help.

I mentioned before that Pinkie knew every liquor law and every loophole, many of which he had inserted himself.

While in Lubbock an entire county precinct had voted wet, Abilene didn't have a precinct that wanted to do that. No problem, he would just create one himself.

That's where the tiny community of Impact came in. Located on the northern city limits of Abilene, the neighborhood of Impact by any logic, should have been incorporated into the city years ago. It wasn't, because it was a rundown area with unpaved a lot of trailers and neglected housing. Not a lot of money there. Abilene didn't want it because it wouldn't bring in the tax revenue to offset the expense to extend city services to it.

So Pinkie and local resident Austin Perkins hatched a scheme. They would quietly circulate a petition to incorporate Impact as it's own municipality.

The County, quickly realizing what was going on and who was behind it, protested the incorporation. Pinkie's lawyers descended and another case ended up working it's way through the court system.

Perkins, now the mayor of Impact, and before the incorporation challenges had even worked their way through the court system, presented a petition to allow alcohol sales in Impact in 1961.

Abilene residents were incensed. The county didn't want it, the city didn't want it, no precinct in the county wanted it, but here was an impoverished neighborhood of 200 people with a team of high priced lawyers behind them, about to bring the evils of alcohol to their front porch.

Pinkie meanwhile, never one to play a completely straight hand, used his legislative might to pass two amendments to the state municipal code that would close avenues the county might use to win the incorporation dispute.

This case too, made it all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled in Impact's favor in 1963.

There's a line I like to quote from The Departed where Frank Costello says, I don't want to be a product of my environment, I want my environment to be a product of me. After the humiliation of the Amarillo hearings, this was certainly a philosophy that Pinkie tool to heart. Less than a decade after being dragged before legislators and branded a criminal mastermind, Pinkie had turned the tables. He was now crafting laws and shaping Texas to fit his vision of a boozy utopia, bending the state to his will.

Impact would thrive until 1978 when Abilene voters narrowly approved package sales within the city limits. One enterprising local reporter reached Pinkie by phone. Asking him, will this decision break you? Pinkie responded, “It would have, had I not long prepared for it. But thanks to the good Christians of Abilene, I will die a wealthy man.”

He would successfully block passage of a bill to legalize liquor by the drink sales in 1963, 1965, and 1967. Besting the powerful Texas Restaurant Association and Governor John Connelly. When the bill finally did pass in 1969, he still managed to win, by losing. Negotiating a provision where restaurants and bars had to buy their liquor from local package stores like his instead of going through a distributors or distilleries directly.

His final and, arguably most impactful piece of legislation also came in 1969.

Since the end of Prohibition, grocery and drug stores, if they obtained the necessary permits, could sell liquor right alongside loaves of bread and cans of Campbell's soup. These were small mom and pop operations that didn't pose much of a threat to Pinkie.

But by the mid-60s, large corporate chain stores with discount pricing were setting up shop in the state. This Pinkie couldn't abide.

He set out to write a law banning any retailer from selling liquor except for package stores. This seems totally normal today in Texas, but it was an absolutely audacious, anti-competitive, and seemingly impossible idea in the 60s.

Pinkie thought he could pull it off though.

He did it, not by making a business case, but by making a moral one. It was morally wrong that children might be in a store where liquor was displayed and sold.

So he enlisted his old frenemy, Texas church congregations, to help him push this new law. For the good of the children. It passed and was signed by the Governor Preston Smith in 1969.

The irony was hopefully not lost on Pinkie, that the mom and pop grocery store in Asherton that he had helped take their liquor sales petition all the way to the Supreme Court just a decade earlier, would now be barred from selling liquor, thanks to his new law.

Chapter 6: The Golden Rooster

Back in Odessa, Pinkie was the toast of the town. This rough and tumble cowboy and then oilfield tow n now had governors, lt governors, and some of the most powerful folks in the state visiting regularly to make sure they stayed in Pinkie's good graces and to keep the checks coming.

But entertaining big city legislators and dignitaries in roughness honky tonks just wouldn't do. So in 1967, Pinkie purchased the run down Lincoln hotel in downtown Odessa for half a million dollars and, after another million dollars in renovations, reopened it as The Inn of the Golden West. It featured lavish accommodations, a coffee shop, restaurant, and a penthouse club spanning the entire 7th floor called The Golden Rooster. Bands played nightly, and Vegas acts were brought in on the weekends. It never made money, not legally at least, but one observer described it as the premier club in the state. There was no reason to go to Vegas. It was all right here.

That wasn't an exaggeration either, the Golden Rooster featured wide open casino style gambling, and a secret room with a full-fledged bookmaking operation. Pinkie even personally handicapped high school football. I bet he would RAKE when Permian played Midland Lee.

The poker games there were absolutely legendary, and the top professional poker players in the world at that time worked a circuit around West Texas. Many early World Series of Poker champions like Amarillo Slim, Johnny Moss, and Doyle Brunson were fixtures at the Rooster. More than happy to help a wealthy oilman part with his hydrogen sulfide scented hundred dollar bills. But that's probably a subject for a whole nother podcast.

As with his other operations in Odessa, the local authorities looked the other way. Hell, they probably owed their jobs to him. What happened in the Golden Rooster, stayed at the Golden Rooster and as long as no one raised a fuss, the authorities had no reason to go snooping around.

Well, obviously someone, somewhere did raise a fuss at some point because Texas Rangers eventually got wind and raided the hotel multiple times to try and locate and close the illegal casino. But Pinkie was always one step ahead, and his informants were better than their informants. Every time the Rangers arrived, they found nothing there. On one raid, they insisted on seeing every room in the place, and they didn't find so much so a deck of cards. One Ranger would ask the hotel manager why they needed a room with 32 telephones…

Sheriff Slim Gabriel (if that's not a WTX law man's name, I don't know what is), did get called to testify before a grand jury impaneled to find out what was going on with this alleged casino. Slim testified that he had never been up there and couldn't help them.

Later, in retirement, he would tell Mike Cochran, “I wasn't a very good sheriff, but I was a wise one. If I had arrested Pinkie Roden the oil show people and Chamber of Commerce would have run me out of town.”

Another of Pinkie's audacious exploits was the Odessa Pro-Am golf tournament. This thing was a big deal by any standard but even more so for Odessa. Bringing in Masters champions, top ranked amateurs, and world famous celebrities like Dean Martin, an annual fixture at the tourney.

Pinkie, always with a proverbial middle finger extended to any laws he hadn't been able to change yet, even offered open, horse race style pari-mutuel betting on the tournament, bringing in hordes of non-golfers who just wanted a piece of the action.

In the 60s he briefly married and divorced a woman named Jackie, but the love of his life was a woman named Jane. She was a waitress at the Melody Club in Odessa when she met a big, freckled guy who chatted with her all night before leaving a big tip. It was love at first sight and tip aside, she said he was a real sweetheart and gentleman. Pinkie was 58 and she was 31, and I'm sure people talked, but that didn't stop them from marrying in 1970.

Pinkie had purchased a cattle ranch called Madera Springs in the Davis Mountains near Balmorhea and that's where they were married.

He used the ranch to entertain his political cronies. With Jane, a hunting pro, guiding many of the hunts.

Vegas or the great outdoors. Whatever they wanted, Pinkie had it going in West Texas.

Chapter 7: Bringing Home the Bacon

Pinkie had been active, mostly behind the scenes but certainly financially, in the Permian Basin Oil Show, the Chamber of Commerce, 4-H club, FFA, Boy Scouts, Boys Club, and countless stock shows and rodeos locally for many years. And as he began to build a political machine to serve his liquor empire, he simultaneously used that same apparatus to advocate for his hometown.

By the 1950s, Permian residents were growing increasingly bitter that much of the money from the oil underneath their feet was being siphoned off in windfall payments to the University of Texas and Texas A&M. Under a Constitutional provision from almost 100 years earlier granting income from over 2 million acres in West Texas to those universities. Written at a time when that land was almost worthless. Maybe good for grazing land, if it was good for anything in a desert, and still inhabited by remnants of the Comanche Nation who had not yet been moved to Reservations. A topic very likely to be explored in depth in a future episode.

So without getting too sidetracked, just understand that it was massive wealth redistribution, from West Texas into the coffers of schools that most Permian Basin residents could never hope to attend.

Permian residents wanted to change that. They wanted a branch of UT, right there at home. Where their children could get a quality education. Pinkie agreed wholeheartedly, and took up the mantle.

Pinkie tried, and failed, in the 1959 and 1961 legislative sessions. In 1963, he hired a promising young Austin lobbyist by the name of Bob Bullock, and they worked tirelessly, but it seemed like this may be one time Pinkie wasnt going to get his way. Dejected after a day of hearing nos as he walked the halls of the capitol, Pinkie's longtime accountant, R.E. Merritt recalls Pinkie considering giving up. “I don't think we can make it work” he was quoted as saying. Before the proverbial light bulb went off. He asked the accountant to borrow a quarter, jogged to a nearby phone booth, and placed a call. Merritt never knew who he called or what he told them, but the next morning - as if by magic - the mood had changed in the capitol, and things started moving.

Pinkie and Bullock got the university bill through the house that year, but it stalled in the Senate.

In 1967, they got the bill, naming Odessa as the location for the school, through both houses of the legislature. But it was vetoed by John Connelly after his Midland supporters raised a fuss. Connelly had carried Midland in his election, but had lost Odessa. Definitely not holding a grudge there.

Trying one last time, in 1969, Pinkie greased the correct wheels once again in the House and Senate and just had to get over the final hurdle of a new governor, Preston Smith. It didn't help that he had also lost his lobbyists Bob Bullock who took another job offer.

Smith would prove much more amenable, and it didn't hurt that he had carried Odessa while losing Midland. It also didnt hurt that Smith had a newly hired chief of staff in his ear…that's right…Bob Bullock.

UTPB would open its doors in 1972 and by the time it welcomed its first students, Pinkie was already working on his next endeavor.

Through his Lubbock connections, Pinkie had learned that Texas Tech was considering a new regional teaching hospital somewhere in the Permian Basin. It would have to partner with an existing hospital.

Odessa’s Medical Center Hospital was not up to modern standards by any means and there was little chance of Tech choosing Odessa with the hospital in this condition. There wasn’t much hope of upgrading either, as voters had rejected a $5.8MM bond 2 years earlier in 1970.

Pinkie put together a team of business leaders, hired a consultant, and was told it would take over $20MM to bring the hospital up to modern standards anad have any chance of wooing Texas Tech.

After some prodding by Pinkie, the group decided to push a new bond proposal to upgrade the hospital, with Pinkie putting his local political infrastructure, as well as his pocketbook, behind the bond campaign. The bond passed by over 2,300 votes and the new state of the art hospital soon attracted patients from all over the 17-county Permian Basin.

When Texas Tech chose their site in 1979, of course they chose Odessa. Selecting the site over Midland, Big Spring, and Andrews.

His final showdown involved liquids for drinking, but it wasn’t liquor this time. It was water.

As far back as 1938, the Army Corps of Engineers had recommended the creation of a dam and reservoir at the confluence of the Concho and Colorado Rivers in Coleman County. This would have been a great boon for the people of West Texas, who desperately needed that water for growth. But downstream developers weren’t having it. Wanting the water to flow into the complex of lakes around Austin unrestricted. So for decades the project was exiled to drawings and designs.

Pinkie joined this fight with enthusiasm in the late 60s when the Upper Colorado River Authority formally recommended the creation of the lake. Still, the Lower Colorado River Authority wasn’t having it. Their benefactors needed that water to fill the views for lakefront real estate, who cared about the basic human needs of places in West Texas they’d only driven through, or heard about in a Country Song? Eventually though, Pinkie was able to pull enough strings to get his buddy, former state senator Dorsey Hardeman from San Angelo appointed to the Texas Water Commission.

Dorsey quickly came to dominate the Commission and rammed through the necessary permits to begin the project. The Lower Colorado River Authority took it to court and was able to successfully stall the project for years but they eventually lost. At last, in 1990, the reservoir began to fill, securing municipal water for San Angelo, Abilene, Midland, and Odessa for decades to come.

Chapter 8: Riding Off Into the Sunset

Now I would be remiss if I didn’t talk a little bit about Pinkie’s siblings.

Pinkie, who didn’t graduate from high school himself, would pay for the educations of all of his siblings. His younger brother Jake received an MD from UT-Galveston and practiced in Midland for a few years where he would deliver - get this - Jeb Bush.

Ann, also known as “Tiny” would earn a business degree from the University of Texas and moved to Odessa in where she would help Pinkie with the business side of the liquor operation for many years.

Bill Roden also attended UT, earning the university’s first ever golf scholarship. There’s a great story recanted over the years about one of Pinkie’s buddies in Lubbock getting conned by a golf hustler. Pinkie brought in Bill as a ringer to mop the floor with the hustler and win Pinkie’s buddy all his lost money back…and then some.

Ted Roden could probably fill out an episode himself. He earned a chemical engineering degree from UT and was hired out of college for the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, helping to develop the world’s first nuclear bomb. After the war, Ted joined Pinkie’s operation in Odessa. In 1952, he founded Standard Sales which he grew into one of the largest Anheuser Busch distributors in the country. With operations in West Texas, Colorado, and Mississippi.

By the late 1970s Pinkie was in his late 60s and the game he had played was changing. With more and more places going wet, the bootlegging business was all but over. Impact, his cash cow, was no more. And despite what he told that reporter, that had to be a major hit to his bottom line. The feds had broken up the price fixing operation at The Strip in Lubbock, and they would now have to compete with all the other stores to make a razor thin margin. On top of that, the Inn of the Golden West had never turned a profit, and he couldn’t even play a decent poker game, with the professionals that had frequented the Golden Rooster all having moved to Las Vegas with the founding of the World Series of Poker there. There were no more fights in Austin that interested him, and with the political shakeup of the 1960s, he had lost most of his connections there anyway.

In the mid-1970s, even after doing so much for Odessa and the region, it’s likely that an ordinary citizen of Odessa still didn’t even know Pinkie’s last name. If they did, it was probably because they had heard the bootlegging rumors, or maybe partied with him at the Golden Rooster. But he was never given ANY public credit for his civic endeavors that had reshaped the area.

That changed in 1976 when Pinkie was given the Odessa Chamber of Commerce’s “Outstanding Citizen Award.” Surely, such a private man was a little uncomfortable and embarrassed as a crowd of 500 listened to speaker after speaker rattle off stories of his political and civic wins for the area. It was no small thing in conservative West Texas for community leaders to stand up and thank someone who had made his living selling liquor - not to mention the illegal bootlegging and gambling.

He finally sold the hotel in 1980, and he started spending more and more time at his Madera Springs ranch, where he looked after his cattle herds, and raised quarter horses he would race in Ruidoso and Del Rio.

In the mid-80s, Pinkie was diagnosed with cancer, and he told only a small circle of friends and family. He wouldn’t have anyone feeling sorry for him, so he went about his business as best he was able. He said his goodbyes to family gathered at his Odessa home for Christmas 1988. He would pass on February 27, 1989.

He would be buried in his boots and khakis atop a mountain on his ranch, with just 50 family and close friends attending. Notably, no politicians were on the list of invitees prepared ahead of time by Pinkie. They were just pawns in the game he played, and nothing more.

But that doesn’t mean they didn’t pay their respects. The biography published by his family contains letters of remembrance from Bob Bullock, soon to become the most powerful lieutenant governor in state history, who never started a campaign for any office, except in Ector County with Pinkie at his side.

Letters of remembrance were also published by Dick Slack, chairman of the Texas Ethics Commission, calling him a “genuinly good-hearted man who helped a lot of people who just needed a helping hand.”

Gib Lewis, Speaker of the Texas House, called him “the best lobbyist in Austin” and former Governor Preston Smith said “I would class Tom Roden as one of the top 10 people I know. The state and the community have lost a great man.”

Texas Attorney General John Ben Sheppard said “we’ll never know the extent of his contributions or philanthropy. He let others take the bows, and he did the work.” 

An unnamed former liquor regulator called him, “An outstanding citizen, a great character, and a dear friend.”

Coke Stevenson Jr. who chaired the Liquor Control Board said, “He was the best. Pinkie had the smartest drivers and the fastest cars and his people were loyal to a fault. He drove us crazy, but I couldn’t help but like him.”

The forward to his biography was written by John Montford, Lubbock State Senator and later the first chancellor of the Texas Tech University System, stating “His personal commitment was to make sure that the children of West Texas, black, brown, or white, had every opportunity that kids in other parts of the state had.”

Epilogue

Roy Maxey is going to be in trouble. He already took too long to load his illegal whiskey and beer in Ector County, and then decided to take a detour to Sands to pick up his cousin Samuel and wife. Pinkie himself took Roy out when he first started to show him the route he'd mapped out two decades earlier to get into Lubbock without going through any populated areas. He speeds up dirt Farm to Market roads zigzagging north, then west, then north again. It's just before 8 pm when he approaches highway 380 running from Brownfield to Tahoka. He knows these roads like the back of his hand, and runs with no headlights to avoid any accidentally run-ins with police. He can see the West Point gin approaching on the right and knows exactly where he is. He quickly glances both directions, doesn't see any cross traffic, and guns the engine past the stop sign and across the paved highway.

Too late, he sees headlights in his passenger window. And another car, slams into the passenger door at high speed. Roy's Lincoln goes airborne flipping end over end. His passengers both scream, then go silent. In one instant, his cousin Sam is sitting in the passenger seat, the next he is gone. Roy is pelted with beer and whiskey bottles as the car continues to roll. The other car skids and hits a telephone poll head on. Roy's Lincoln finally comes to a stop. Roy can't move. He can't see. He is slowly fading in and out of consciousness. The smell of liquor, burning rubber, and gasoline fills the air. The scene is totally quiet now. A few seconds go by. The silence is finally shattered when Roy hears the squeal of a little girl, wincing in pain, “Mama, Mama, mama…” everything goes black.

Now if Pinkie never sought any credit for the good he did, he certainly got it before his death and after. He even has a plaque on the “Odessa Walk of the Entrepreneurs” outside the Ector County Coliseum.

But if Pinkie built a multi-million dollar organized crime empire without any blood being spilled, that would be a first in history - regardless which century or decade.

The family biography paints him as a harmless Robin Hood type figure. The Mike Cochran articles hint at a darker side, but never fully explore them, propping Pinkie up as a fun loving outlaw. The stories that are out there are hearsay. There’s a tale of a young grocery clerk, helping to load groceries in the back of one of Pinkie’s bootlegger’s cars, having to move aside the stacks of rifles. There’s the allusion during the Amarillo hearings of Pinkie being involved in a murder in Lubbock, denied by Pinkie, but the surviving tapes cut off any follow-up questioning, and resume later to unrelated discussions. There is a repeated story of a Pinkie goon firing a warning shot into the window of a troublesome liquor agent’s home, narrowly missing the agent’s wife, holding their infant child. None of these stories ever charged, none proven. Just stories. Like much of Pinkie’s life.

Then there’s Roy Maxey, the liquor runner from the opening of episodes 1 and 2. Who, in May 1951, loaded with liquor and speeding down a dirt road near Tahoka with no headlights on, ran a stop sign and collided with another car, killing 5 people and orphaning 12 children.

His cousin Sam was thrown from the car as it rolled, his head crushed as the car landed on top of it. Sam's wife was killed as well. They had 10 children. Some were old enough to take care of themselves, the others would be raised in an orphanage.

In the other vehicle was a Tahoka farmer, Calvin Edwards, his wife, Pearl Edwards, Pearl's mother, Elva Rogers, and Calvin and Pearl's daughters, 4 year old Calva An, and 18 month old Elva Jo. They were headed to Brownfield to visit an ailing family member. Elva and Pearl would be pronounced dead at the scene Pearl was 5 months pregnant. Calvin would die later at the hospital. The two girls in the car, miraculously, survived. Also orphaned, they would be raised by their grandparents.

Roy Maxey was the lone survivor in the Lincoln. He would suffer from health problems for years, eventually having a leg and arm amputated.

Roy would be convicted of negligent homicide and bootlegging and sentenced to 2 years in prison. Due to his health problems, however, he wouldn't serve a day in jail. The Lynn County Judge would determine that the county didn't want to take on the expense and liability of paying for his care.

Later, the little girls’ grandparents would sue Roy Maxey, SF Wells Jr., a Pinkie associate who the car was registered to, and Pinkie himself. The original suit claimed $160,000 in damages. Pinkie and the other defendents would settle for $12,000. After attorneys fees, the settlement didn't even cover the family's medical and funeral expenses.

Elva Jo Edwards, the 18-month-old baby who survived the crash, would read one of Mike Cochran's lighthearted AP articles about Pinkie when in her 40s, featuring many of the same glowing quotes from powerful state leaders you've heard here today. Shocked at the positive rhetoric of a man she and everyone in her family knew to be pure evil, she would spend the 1990s investigating the accident, by then totally forgotten, that shattered 2 families and orphaned 12 children.

That culminated in her self-published book, “A Texas Tragedy: Orphaned by Bootleggers.”

In the book she interviews one of Roy Maxey's family members, who state's that after the accident, Pinkie washed his hands of Roy, and wouldn't even give him bus fare to go to Galveston to have one of his many surgeries.

So with so little written about Pinkie, and that which is written obviously tinged with emotional bias, either good or bad. Where does this leave us with Pinkie's legacy? Like our previous subject, Roy Bean, it's hard to really say. He was entertaining, gave us some good stories, and obviously did some hugely impactful works for his city and region, we'll probably never know the full extent of the pain he caused and the lives upended as he climbed the steps of power to the place where he could build universities to improve lives, build hospitals to save lives, or bring something as fundamental as water to the thirsty desert, by sheer force of his will.

I don't know how to make that determination. So I'll leave you with the thoughts of someone close to him, his wife Jane, interviewed by Mike Cochran after Pinkie's death.

She told Cochran, nebulously, that she didn't believe he died of cancer. No, he died of a broken heart. Without going into detail, she said that people he trusted betrayed him. She fou nd their ranch house bugged after his death, then finally admitted that he might have bugged it himself claiming “he was a world master at bugging phones.”

Now whatever she did or didn't know about Pinkie's business - remember they didn't marry until 1970 when he was fully established and running with the most powerful folks in the state - after his death she found in his files a 1957 Houston Post article about him, outlining many of the same accusations brought forth in that Amarillo hearing.

She told Cochran that she didn't doubt he had someone shoot at that liquor agent. Saying once she had even confronted him asking, have you ever killed anyone? She said a look passed over his face that she had never seen before. His response? “That's an unfair question.” The conversation was over.

“I was married to a gangster. I know that now” She told Cochran. “He was a kind, gentle, caring person. But there was another really dark side of that man, and I'm ashamed of it. He was ruthless.”

Outro

You’ve been listening to Part Two of Pinkie Roden: West Texas’ Bootlegger King on the West Texas Podcast. I’m Jody Slaughter. 

We’ll be back in a couple weeks with a new episode, so make sure you hit that subscribe button so you know when we do.

You can find this and all episodes on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Visit our website at wtxpodcast.com for companion articles, show notes, and photos for each episode. To get ahold of me with questions, comments, or show ideas you can email me at lubbockist@gmail.com or on Twitter @Lubbockist. L-U-B-B-O-C-K-I-S-T.  

This episode was written, produced, engineered, and edited by me, Jody Slaughter. 

The details of the Roy Maxey narrative are from a fictionalized account of that true story written by Elva Jo Edwards, one of the survivors of the crash, in her book.

Special thanks to the Texas Tech Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library where the Texas Crime Investigating Committee Records are housed.

This episode was scored by Gentry Ford and the Homeless Lobos. You can find our theme song “It’s all West Texas” by Gentry Ford and the Homeless Lobos on their new album West Texas Werewolves, wherever you stream music. 

Thanks for listening, and until next time...so long...From West Texas.