Beauford Halbert Jester was the only Texas Governor to have the temerity to die in office.  Born in Corsicana and educated at the University of Texas, Beauford cut a mean figure on his way up the ladder of Texas politics.  A relatively young man when elected governor in 1947, he made for a handsome politician and there were whispers that he may have a future outside the boundaries of the Lone Star state once he’d served his term in office.

Those rumors would never see the light of day, as Governor Jester died of a heart attack on a train while traveling for state business, causing his future and that of Texas politics to both be derailed, literally and figuratively.  Aids traveling with him were unaware of any health problems the 56 year old governor might have had.  His secretary noted, however, that he had been looking out the window of the train as it pulled through a small Texas town and he had been staring at a new 1949 Buick Super Sedanette.  She told fellow staffers that as he looked at the lines of the Cumulus Gray coupe he mentioned something about the svelt curves of the Buick and then grabbed his chest and fell over in his seat.

Having made prison reform his major thrust while serving his two years in office, the town council of Fort Stockton felt it only fitting to honor his significant, if brief, contribution by erecting a statue of the young governor on the grounds of the Pecos County Courthouse in Fort Stockton.  This is where things took and interesting turn.

Warren Buchanan, the Amarillo sculptor commissioned for the bronze statue seemed to take liberties during the process that made the already handsome Beauford Jester almost Adonis-like. Much like Michelangelo sculpting ‘David’, proportions were enhanced to make the likeness of the 36th Governor almost super human. At the unveiling held nearly two years after his passing, when the sheet was pulled from the seven foot tall edifice, audible female gasps could be heard throughout the crowd. Many of the men in attendance looked down at their shoes and kicked at the weeds of the courthouse lawn, as though they were unworthy to gaze directly at it.

Secretaries and clerks from the courthouse would bring their lunches out and sit on the bench and gaze up at the statue while they ate their egg salad sandwiches.  Some claimed that the eyes of the statue would follow you all the way across the courthouse square, just like the Mona Lisa in Paris.  (The only time anyone could compare Fort Stockton to Paris.)

Several of the men in town were intimidated by the statue, reasoning it had created a standard that no real male could ever reasonably live up to.  As some do, they even mocked it and nicknamed it ‘The Court Jester’.  Imma-Jean, the clerk who recorded land deeds at the courthouse, overheard two ranch hands making snide remarks at lunch one day.  “They could fill a library with all the information you don’t know.  In fact, they already do.  They’re called libraries,” she told them.

We’d heard that someone was building a tribute car to Governor Jester that combined the beauty of the car that sent him on to the next stop in his eternal journey.  One that made all the right ‘enhancements’ to make the thing even more attractive, more powerful, and more legendary than when new. One that would make women swoon and men jealous, just like the statue on the courthouse square.

Until right now, I’d thought those were only rumors.