Recently in Crazy Richard Category

In 1983, my friend Jerry Boulware started up Street Level News, a small newspaper in Denton, Texas. I wrote some articles and editorials and helped, sometimes, with laying it out, but it was Jerry's baby. Printed on news stock, it was a pony tab with 16 to 24 pages and featured articles on local bands, politics, and community events.

The Street Level News cover shown here is my favorite. The vantage point is the porch of the big white house on Fry Street where I lived in the late '80s; shown are Jim's Diner and Secondhand Rose. And shuffling on the sidewalk is Richard Earnhart. Joseph Kent, the artist, captured him perfectly -- the slouch, the shuffle, the beard and glasses. Anyone familiar with Richard instantly recognized him in the illustration.

Jim's Diner is gone, the Secondhand Rose is gone -- both went out of business years ago. But now the very buildings are gone, razed by a developer wanting to get some franchises in. Richard, of course, died in 2001.

After learning from Joe Messerl (see previous entry) that Richard won the National Spelling Bee in 1942, I did a little online research. It's difficult researching a name like "Richard Earnhart" because it's not that uncommon. However, with the information from Joe, I found numerous mentions of Earnhart's performance at the spelling bee. Here's a brief article from the June 6, 1942, edition of Time.

For winning the national grade-school spelling bee in Washington last week, eleven-year-old Richard Earnhart of El Paso, Tex. got $500 and a two-day trip to New York City. There he had his first brush with the metropolitan press, came off winner, hands down, over a flabbergasted World-Telegram reporter.

Richard had won his championship, over 25 other young spell-wells from as many cities, by romping through sacrilegious after his closest rival had stumbled on acquiesced. The reporter thought Richard might be interested to know that one paper, publishing this fact, had misspelled sacrilegious in its own headline. But Richard just smiled, "like a man who had been there before."

"Yes," he said. "They spelled it with an i, I take it." Other quotes from Champ Richard:

On his trip to Washington: "The space we took up in the hotel might better have been released to people who needed it more for national defense."

On learning Spanish in El Paso schools: "They don't teach us very much. We're really a bunch of parrots. ... I have a hunch the way they're doing it is not very good. . . . Speaking of school, it may surprise you to know that it comes from a Greek word meaning, of all things, leisure."

Ah, said the reporter, a little weakly, then Richard was interested in the derivation of words? "Yes," said Richard, "Etymology, it's called." Certainly, he enjoyed reading the dictionary: "It changes the subject often."

Was he enjoying Manhattan? "Yes, this is swell. But I would kinda like to get back to normal life sometimes."

The 11-year-old Richard was correct about "school." Here's the etymology:

"place of instruction," O.E. scol, from L. schola, from Gk. skhole "school, lecture, discussion," also "leisure, spare time," originally "a holding back, a keeping clear," from skhein "to get" + -ole by analogy with bole "a throw," stole "outfit," etc. The original notion is "leisure," which passed to "otiose discussion," then "place for such." The PIE base is *segh- "to hold, hold in one's power, to have" (see scheme). The L. word was widely borrowed, cf. O.Fr. escole, Fr. école, Sp. escuela, It. scuola, O.H.G. scuola, Ger. Schule, Swed. skola, Gael. sgiol, Welsh ysgol, Rus. shkola. Replaced O.E. larhus "lore house." Meaning "students attending a school" is attested from c.1300; sense of "school building" is first recorded c.1590. Sense of "people united by a general similarity of principles and methods" is from 1612; hence school of thought (1864). The verb is attested from 1573. School of hard knocks "rough experience in life" is recorded from 1912 (in George Ade); to tell tales out of school "betray damaging secrets" is from 1546. Schoolmarm is attested from 1831, U.S. colloquial; used figuratively for "patronizingly and priggishly instructing" from 1887.

I've created a Crazy Richard category and added to it all Nifty entries mentioning Richard Earnhart.

Joe Messerli emailed me today with this information about Richard Earnhart, whom I and friends knew in Denton, TX, as Crazy Richard. Here's what he has to say:

Richard Earnhart ([Henrietta M.] King High School Class of 48 [,Kingsville, TX]) was a genius. He won the National Spelling Bee in 1942 at the age of 11. Authority on Esperanto. Memorized large chunks of the encyclopedia and dictionary. Remembered thousands of jokes. Died in the Fall of 2001 in Denton, Texas .

I was paired with Richard in a boxing match (with gloves) in a high school phys-ed class. The teacher probably thought he'd put a couple of activity-challenged geeks together. Richard, however, having read a book on boxing (probably the night before), beat the hell out of me.

During that encounter I recall having been very aware of his big, bobbing head and my strange reluctance to throw a punch at it. Richard, on the other hand, showed no mercy, and repeatedly pummeled my poor head.

Did I mention he was about 9 inches taller than me?

Recently I sent this story to a classmate at that school, and her reply was: "Joe . . . I felt extreme sadness for him during our time in HS, and even more so now. We don’t understand those persons with rare gifts." I agreed with her that he was a person with "rare gifts." And that I guess I didn't understand him and should have been more sensitive to his needs, especially when he was clobbering me.

Richard has left a strange legacy on the internet (aside from the listings involving the Spelling Bee and Esperanto). Your chronicles of his last years and desperate days in Denton, Texas are fascinating.

Like your writing. Dare I suggest a Crazy Richard book?

After reading this, written by someone who knew him in grade school, I didn't have the heart to title this post Crazy Richard III, so Richard III will have to do. For more information on Richard Earnhart on Nifty, check out the Denton, TX, category. By the way, here's a list of National Spelling Bee winners from Wikipedia.

Friends have heard me tell many stories of Fry Street in Denton, Texas. Soon only stories will remain. A Houston developer plans to raze many of the nearly 100-year-old buildings on the street to make room for a strip mall. The big white house, where I lived for a time with friends, across from what used to be Jim's Diner, is safe, apparently, but the view is gonna suck.

The Denton Record-Chronicle recently reported this:

Plans released by the city of Denton plan­ning department Tuesday show the same proposed Fry Street development as preliminary site plans revealed Nov. 28: a corner drugstore at Hickory and Fry streets where The Tomato now stands; a three-story parking garage; two restaurants with drive-through windows; and a strip of buildings along a proposed boulevard through the 3.8-acre block bordered by Hickory, Welch, Oak and Fry streets.

Here's a short documentary about Fry Street.

The Denton, TX category on Nifty contains some musings about my experiences on Fry.

Here's another clip.

Here's a clip of the demolition of Mr. Chopsticks on Hickory, not far from the corner of Hickory and Fry. I ate many a meal there; my musical friend "Troy" worked there for a while in the '80s. We met Steve and Doodle behind the building. I called Steve "Mark" in that story; what the hell, it was Steve. (Hey buddy!)

Listen to "On Fry Street," a haunting song "originally performed in 1990 as part of Forever Green, a musical revue created by Donna Trammel for the University of North Texas' centennial. "

I've known about this for awhile. It makes me sick.

Here's the Save Fry Street website and the CentralDentonPreservation.Org website. Here's some photos of Fry Street past, including a great shot of Ten Hands performing at the 1988 Fry Street Fair. Be sure to click on the photo archive of Sal Sessa, my old colleague from The North Texas Daily; he's got a famous photo there of Crazy Richard going for a butt pinch.

Carl Finch of Brave Combo has this to say:

When I moved to Denton in the early 1970s to study art at NTSU, the scene was all about music and self-expression. The One O’Clock Lab Band was a big deal around the world, hippies roamed free and easy, and political demonstrations were a regular event. The epicenter of this mindset was, of course, Fry Street, or more appropriately, the corner of Fry and Hickory. The first head shop in Texas was on Fry Street (the Birmingham Balloon) and, in fact, the street itself was developing a national reputation as a gathering place for movers, shakers and thinkers. It’s always been a symbol of what Denton, as an organic being, offered to encourage “unbridled” creativity. Artistically, Denton was once known as an “anything goes” town and an oasis of intelligence.

The rest of Carl's comments are here. As he says, the first head shop in Texas was on Fry. The building still houses a head shop. It, like the big white house it stands next to, is on the safe side of the street.

Here's something from the Pegasus News.

This Denton Record-Chronicle story appears to be the latest news. In the mid-'80s, I wrote a story on the Fry Street night life for the front page of the paper's Living section. If I can find a scanner big enough, I'll digitize it.

So many friends I had there. When I visit now, I meet some of them on Fry and on the Square. Roy and Brendan and Bill and Steve and Luann and Jerry and Julia and Erin and Marshal and Ken and Kaki and Gilbert and Adam and so many others. So much great music --Schwantz LaFantz (remember seeing them at The Star, Luann?), and Ten Hands, and The New Bohemians, and Brave Combo, and The Rev. Horton Heat, and Good Foot, and Pops Carter and the Funkmonsters, and lots and lots of bands with no names or names I forget.

My dad tells Fry Street stories. My late granddad did too. The street tied together the generations. I was practically born on Fry Street, at Flow Memorial Hospital. It's gone, razed a few years ago to make room for some ass-ugly condos. I got laid for the first time (and not coincidently met my first Great Love) not far from Fry. I had my first and last "Electric Zephyrus" experiences on and near Fry. I taught my first class less than a hundred yards from Fry. I got two degrees from UNT, a stone's throw from Fry. When I left Denton in 1991, my friends sent me off with a big party in a house on Fry.

Damn it.

My musical friend, a longtime resident of Denton, sends the following information about Richard (see Crazy Richard):

Richard Earnhart
Yeah, he did live with his mom. She was alive and well in '87, and attended some of the poetry readings. She had osteoporosis pretty bad, and had no car, so she had to use the city-supplied transport (Span) to get around.

I rented a room from them briefly, to use for composition, but had no time so I gave it up. Their house stank.

After his mom died, the bums moved into the house and occupied the back yard. Charlie McCormick lived next door in an apartment and was all aware of what they were up to. Some of these guys were Vietnam vets and some lied about having been there. Remember Runner and his chess games? He was good until he'd had a few. If you got him early enough in the day he was quite competitive. Anyway, later I heard that some people were doing heroin in the back yard (unconfirmed).

[Paragraph deleted because the principals are still active.]

Richard spoke seven languages: Esperanto, English, French, Swedish, and maybe Latin, among others. His accent in French wasn't good, and it was a little halting, but accurate. He had pen pals from all over the world, and I'm sure they got a big surprise when they came to Denton, to see this shambling hulk of a guy, with an unbelievable stench.

I worked in three restaurants where Richard visited: Jim's Diner, Pearl Cafe, and Mr. Chopsticks. Allan at Pearl wouldn't let him in at all! They'd make him stand outside and get his food to go. Chai at Chopsticks would let him come in and order, but Richard had this room-clearing scent that guaranteed him a section to himself. People at Jim's would tolerate him. He made up some songs and sang them to the regulars there - they were very clever, and sounded like a 30's pep rally song. One was in praise of Alice - remember her?

Once I saw Richard hitchhiking. His feet got worse and worse over time, but this was in the late 80's, when he could still walk around town. He would stick out his thumb, and every time a car would pass, he would lapse into incoherent, rage-filled muttering.

Richard got diabetes in the late 80's but would not tolerate injections, so he got put on insulin pills, which were not what he needed. Anyway, his feet got worse and worse, and eventually he stopped going out. The local bums kind of filled in the slack, helping out with the house. They cleaned out the attic and moved in there, and took over the kitchen, which upgraded Richard's diet a bit.

He died about three years ago, during Thanksgiving week I believe.

The house has been sold, fixed up, and the bums thrown out. Now with panhandling illegal, there's no place for them. One of them I know died of cirrhosis of the liver.

A few minutes later, he sent an additional email:

One more thing (well, two)
Richard never bathed, but on his birthday his family would rent a motel room, and they would put him in the bathroom and not let him out 'till he had bathed. You can imagine the condition of the bathroom once he was done! Anyway, he would then put on the same smelly clothes that he never washed, so he would still stink.

And it's true, he went away to some Scandinavian country to study Nordic languages, and he was brilliant, but within two years had some sort of catastrophic breakdown and had to come home to live with his mother.

Fate.

In 1985, while an undergraduate in the journalism department of North Texas State University (now The University of North Texas ) in Denton, TX, I worked on the copy desk of The Denton Record-Chronicle. I had applied for and been offered the job after serving as editor of The North Texas Daily, the NTSU campus newspaper. It was a great part-time job for a student -- all I had to do was edit copy and lay out pages. I occasionally picked up the cop beat when the regular beat reporter was out, and I could write any features I wanted.

Of course, the first feature I wrote was about Fry Street. Every Friday night, Fry Street was hopping. At one end of the street were the bohemian poets, artists, and musicians hanging around the used bookstore and the coffee house; at the other were the young frats and sorority girls hanging out at The Underground, a slimy dive of a night club if you ever saw one. The story, complete with photos of street denizens, took the front page of the Chronicle's features section, and made me a very minor celebrity on the street.

However, one of the true celebrities of Fry Street, and perhaps its most notorious denizen, was Crazy Richard (unbelievably, I just found a story about Crazy Richard, though the writer calls him Weird Richard, published by The Red Cedar Review). Crazy Richard was an old, big, shambling guy who never bathed or washed his clothes and who had a penchant for pinching girl's butts. My photographer friend Sal Sessa took a sequence of photos showing Richard setting up a pinch, performing the act, and then shambling off, while the startled girl with the pinched butt looks the opposite direction. No doubt, while shambling away, Richard was muttering his trademark heh, heh, heh. I'd give anything for copies of those photos.

He also composed verse about his love obsessions on band flyers ripped off telephone and light poles. They were surprisingly funny and accomplished, a fact that adds credence to the legend that years before he was a brilliant foreign language student until something made him go nuts. I wish I had some of these compositions, but they are lost, and all I remember are a few lines:

"What I lack
is Monica in the sack."

and

"Monica Antonelli,
come lie on my belly."

My friend David Taylor tells the story of Crazy Richard attending Victorian literature lectures conducted for the community by one of NTSU's English professors. Little old ladies, all prim and proper, would attend to revel in the wit and wisdom that was the professor's, who was a gnomish, funny, lecherous man always wearing a vest and a bow tie. When Crazy Richard showed up, they'd hold their index fingers under their noses and wave litte fans, trying in vain to block the stench that surrounded Richard like a cloud of flies.

Crazy Richard lived in a house on the north end of Fry Street, not far from Flow Hospital, where I was born. Legend has it that it was his mother's house. After she died, he continued living there, but neglected to pay utility bills or perform basic maintenance. In the summer, when Denton got very hot, he'd sleep on an old mattress lying on his porch. Street bums also called the delapidated structure home.

Crazy Richard was a fixture of Fry Street for decades. My late grandfather, who attended NTSU and later delivered mail in the area, used to tell Crazy Richard stories. I moved away from Denton in 1990, but I understand he remained in the area for several years afterward. I don't know what became of him, but I think I heard he died. Perhaps my musical friend in Denton can add some details -- if so, I'll post them.

I don't have any photos of Crazy Richard, but I do have a copy of an underground newspaper with an incredibly accurate depiction of Richard shambling past Jim's Diner. Someday I'll scan the cover and post it.

None of us begrudged Crazy Richard, though he stank, pinched butts, mumbled incoherently, and ripped band flyers off poles for stationary. He was there long before we.

Update: I've contacted and exchanged emails with the writer of the "Weird Richard" story I mentioned above. He'd like to hear any comments anyone has about his story, which I consider a well-written, evocative, and soul-searching piece that captures a time on Fry and the surrounding area slightly before mine. I don't want to post his email address here without his say-so, but I can forward any comments you have.

Now that I think about it, I believe I have heard Crazy Richard referred to as Weird Richard -- any confirmation?