Official court reporters often times are friends and confidants to their judges, not unlike Rick's relationship with Judge Garner Moody.
As Rick reminisced ... "Started in September 1 of '73 ... Garner had found a house for me to rent off of the Conservation Agent Dave Pitts. And then Shirley moved down in December. And then about the 2nd or 3rd of March ['74] I went -- Garner kept asking me to go with him to a cockfight over in Oklahoma.
Judge Garner Moody, he raised chickens. He was known to have good chickens, roosters. And he fed them stuff like apples and nuts to make them a little stronger and everything.
So, anyway, I went with him to the fight. There were two car loads of us. We were in his station wagon. All the little cages for the roosters in the back of the station wagon. That's why he had a station wagon ... the old green station wagon. And there was a guy from Ava, Starlin Cox; and Jim Owen from Seymour; Garner Moody and I, from Mansfield; and Lonnie Taber from down in Bradleyville area.
So we'd all on a Saturday go to Kellyville, Oklahoma, got a motel room, and then went out to the farm where they had the arena.
The arena looked typical of something you would see in a Mexican movie. The lights over the little square and seats going up on the side. And when they would get ready to fight they would hold their roosters and go around and pit them against the other rooster that they were going to fight.
And everybody would be hollering odds; 3:1, 5:1 ... they kept track, who they met with. If you would take somebody's bet, then which one are you taking, and which rooster you got the odds. So they did that all day Saturday.
And we stayed in the motel room. I roomed with Garner Moody. And the other three roomed in their room. Sunday morning we got up and went to breakfast. He called his mother back in Missouri. There weren't cell phones at that time, so he had to use the pay phone in the restaurant.
Then we went back over, because they were going to fight that afternoon again.
But in the morning they had what they call grudge matches. So he had a grudge match with a guy, and his [Moody's] chicken got beat.
So he goes back in the back to get another chicken. And it was kind of a small hallway with raw oak little chambers where you could put your chickens in the cages. And you could, anyway, keep your chickens in each one of those little rooms in their cages. And he went back to get him another chicken and fell over with a heart attack.
And somebody came back and said Garner had a heart attack. So I went back there. And he was laying in the runway or they had him near the door. His tongue was all swollen out. We were waiting on an ambulance to come.
And the guy that he had lost to was ranting and raving about how that SOB laying on the floor owed him 20 bucks. And the guy from Seymour, Jim Owen, big guy, like Garner.
Garner was a physical specimen. He had been an AAU boxer in the Navy. And this guy from Seymour pulled out 20 bucks and made it crystal clear to the guy who was complaining that if he said anymore he would be dead before the guy on the floor got there.
And the guy took his 20 and left.
That was quite an education for me. I was 22, a kid."
Judge Moody was subsequently moved to Salipawpaw, Oklahoma where he had a second heart attack in the hospital and passed away.
Honorable Garner Lee Moody
Jul. 13, 1923 - Mar. 1, 1974
Not sure I would suggest going to cockfights with your judge, even though it's still legal. But, hey, if you do ... everything ends up on Facebook!
Submitted by Melissa Hannah
