You can read Part 1 here.
by Bob Chessey
Part Two: DODGING PROHIBITION
In mid-January of 1900 23-year-old Harry Shipley pedaled up on a bicycle to 209 San Antonio Street, glided to a stop, slid off the seat, applied the kickstand, and entered the Silver King Saloon, “the Best Short Order House In the City”. Outside the bar, John Fellon’s plotting eyes locked upon the unattended bike in front of the Silver King, and he simply slipped away with the two-wheeler. Unable to pawn the bike several doors away at the Palace Saloon (205 San Antonio), he solicited a small boy to take the loot to his room at the Myer Opera House and slide it under his bed. After Shipley reported the theft to the police, officers were able to track down Fellon and the stolen bicycle to the culprit’s room, and place the thief under arrest.
However, Fellon’s capture exposed a conundrum, how did Fellon, a man missing both feet and part of his legs, execute the theft? At his preliminary hearing before Justice Spencer, the accused waived examination and confessed that he had stolen Shipley’s bicycle. The prisoner informed the court that he was a morphine addict and so muddled from the narcotic that he was unable to recall how he managed to carry out the heist. Fellon’s addiction was diagnosed as severe and led the county physician to leave standing orders at the jail for Fellon to receive a dose of morphine three times a day. The defendant bluntly informed the court that he had no issue with being sentenced to the penitentiary because as an inmate he would be taken care of and could hopefully learn a useful trade.i
During the fall of 1901,Shipley was 25 years old, and had possibly just resigned from his mail wagon position. Having achieved traction with his electrical company, he ambitiously invested in three new commercial ventures. At 207 North Stanton Street, Harry opened a record store offering a full line of “Edison Records and Phonographs.ii From this date on, music became an integral part of the Big Kid’s life.
Being an extrovert and “people person,” it was natural for the aspiring businessman eventually to be drawn toward the hospitality industry. And for his second venture the Big Kid entered the profession that would define him as a high-profile borderland businessman and celebrity. Harry Shipley opened his first bar in downtown El Paso, the BIG KID HOLE IN THE WALL Saloon, 109 Mesa Street, where the Abdou Building currently stands (Shipley’s bar has no association with the infamous Prohibition era “Hole in the Wall” Saloon that was located on Cordova Island). A third business, the “Big Kid Policy Association,iii may have been an insurance agency. Most notably, the bar and policy association inaugurated Shipley using the “Big Kid” brand for both businesses.
Twenty years later, Shipley would combine two of these interests, music, and the saloon businesses, and open his most famous and lucrative enterprise-Big Kid’s Palace Cabaret.
But the Big Kid’s first attempt to own and run a saloon did not set off on solid footing as he soon faced serious legal and financial challenges. One of Shipley’s customers attending the opening of “Big Kid’s Hole in the Wall” saloon, an El Paso policeman named Thomas Holgate, failed to notice an open trap door on the barroom floor, and tumbled through the opening. Hitting the basement floor, Holgate suffered from two broken ribs as well as other injuries. Though it was argued that Holgate should have been looking at where he was walking, the injured patron filed suit against Shipley’s employees for $900 ($31,000 in 2023). The lawsuit appears to have been followed by financial skullduggery; while insolvent, Shipley transferred property that he owned to others, leaving his debts unprotected. The property in question had been transferred to his mother Isadore, who contended the property belonged to her, had been transferred both properly and legally, and should not be included in her son’s bankruptcy hearing.iv
By 1903 the Big Kid Policy Association had closed. However, the Hole in the Wall saloon had expanded to occupy not only 109 Mesa St. but the business also had absorbed the adjoining 111 Mesa address, the Hotel Delaware, which, for that one year, was operated in Isadore Shipley’s name.v The Delaware Hotel was likely the transferred property at issue in the Holgate hearing.
Perhaps it was the pressure and frustration of the legal woes piling up from the Thomas Holgate lawsuit, for on February 23, 1903, Harry was arrested and charged with street fighting. That evening a man named Mike Seigel had made a provocative comment to Shipley that set off the fisticuffs, a fight that stretched for two blocks along downtown’s San Antonio Street. The first brawl broke out at 111 San Antonio Street, in front of Hixon’s Jewelers, and flared again behind the Golden Eagle restaurant at 211 San Antonio. One witness reported that a gun had been flashed by one of the pugilists, however; when the two combatants were arrested and searched no firearm was found on either man.vi
In late May, Harry Shipley sold “Big Kid’s Hole in the Wall” to Phil Smith, who had previously owned the Smith Ranch Saloon at 211 South El Paso Street. Nonetheless, the legal woes from the Hole in Wall perseverated. By late May of 1903 the Shipley v. Holgate case had been tried twice before a jury with the foreman in each case declaring that the jurors could not agree on a verdict. In the deliberations during second of those trials, May 22, the jurors at one time voted 4 to 2 for the plaintiff, but later reversed themselves 4 to 2 for the defendant. The lawsuit was finally settled in late January 1904 with Thomas Holgate awarded $300 ($10,333.63 in 2023).vii
Shipley would have been unaware at the time, but by late1904 he made the business decision that would provide him with the advantage of experience over future American saloon competitors, the Big Kid opened his first bar in Juarez, Lemp’s Café.viii Though the motivation for owning a bar in Juarez cannot be stated with certainty, the decision was likely influenced, if not instigated, by the Holgate lawsuit and Shipley’s assumption of lax regulations and litigation across the border.
Lemp’s Café
Lemp’s Café, named after a popular national beer, and possibly partially subsidized by the brewery or local distributor, became the stepping stone for Shipley to emerge as an established fixture in the Juarez saloon trade for almost thirty years. The decision to cross the border to open Lemp’s allowed Big Kid to learn the fundamentals of operating as an American doing business in Juarez more than a decade before Prohibition spurred his El Paso competitors to transfer their saloons across the international line to Juarez.
Shipley began advertising Lemp’s Café subtly. The ads in El Paso newspapers simply read, in a small but bold font, “BIG KID’S LEMP CAFÉ, JUAREZ.” However, at the start of September, 1906, the ads evolved to read, “THE BIG KID’S IN JUAREZ,” ix with both examples, Shipley continued to build and nurture the “Big Kid” brand.
Fires, especially in the close confines of downtown El Paso and Juarez, were a constantly looming threat to life and property. Shipley had left the El Paso Fire Department, but his training and experience as a professional firefighter would prove to be invaluable and serve him well for years after he opened shop across the international border.
At four o’clock on the afternoon of Friday, January 4, 1907, a fire alarm in Juarez rang out for Ynocente Ochoa’s grocery store, Calle Porvenir, located near the plaza and the city’s historic church. The fire had already wreaked havoc on the store and threatened to inflame the surrounding structures when the Juarez Fire Department arrived. Complicating the situation was the realization by the fire crew that they were unfamiliar with the hose connections. Harry Shipley was in the area and was able to assist the firemen with successfully making the connections. Once the hoses were joined, the fire fighters succeeded in containing the flames to the grocery store, sparing the surrounding buildings.x
Five days later, at 8 o’clock on the morning of January 9, a blaze struck closer to Shipley. An overheated stove in Lemp’s Café had ignited, the combustion spreading flames across the ceiling, down a wall, and creeping towards wooden barrels of flammable whiskey stored in the rear of the bar. The fire also prevented the trolleys passing in front of Shipley’s business from following their route, limiting the street cars for half an hour to only run to and from the front of Lemp’s. When the Juarez Fire Department arrived, the fireman had trouble operating their equipment. Shipley, once again, was able to assist. As a result, the firemen were able to contain the blaze to Lemp’s Cafe, and the whiskey casks never ignited. Nonetheless, the bar sustained $500 in lossesxi ($16,608 in 2023).
In 1907 Shipley sold Lemp’s Café to Vincent Salvini, the owner of a saloon in El Paso. After the sale’s completion, Harry Shipley traveled to California wondering if he should try his luck somewhere beyond El Paso. However, after the two-month visit to the west coast he returned to El Paso and Juarez with renewed energy and an updated business plan, Shipley opened a new saloon in Juarez branded with his moniker, the BIG KID SALOON.xii
Shipley’s new incarnation of the BIG KID SALOON stood at #10 Calle del Comercio on the ground floor of the Sauer Building. A photograph of the front of the building clearly showing his previous bar, Lemp’s Café, places Big Kid’s new bar two storefronts east of Lemp’s. The BIG KID SALOON soon earned a reputation as the “SPORTING HEADQUARTERS IN JUAREZ, MEXICO, and received praise for the quality of the beer it served as well as providing the “Finest Line of Wines, Liquors and Cigars to be had in Mexico,””xiii as a result, on Sundays the bar became a popular gathering place for El Pasoans and other Americans after bullfights.
On February 13, 1908, Big Kid’s family tree branched out. At 11 pm that night Harry Shipley dispatched a bartender, Manuel Ruvio, to wake up El Paso County Clerk Park Pitman, drive Pitman to the County Courthouse, and secure a marriage license. At the stroke of midnight, the arrival of Valentine’s Day, 32-years-old Harry Shipley stood before Judge Mitchell at his honor’s residence, and married 18-year-old Ruth “Ruby” Louise Williams of El Paso; though a sweeping romantic gesture, the official date for the marriage is February 13th.
George Ogden, who owned the Bank Saloon in El Paso, stood as the groom’s best man; matron of honor was Mrs. Moore, a friend of the bride. The wedding came as a complete surprise to all friends of the couple. The newlyweds chose to set up their household in an apartment directly above the Big Kid Saloon in Juarez.xiv
On November 23, 1908, Shipley’s immediate family expanded again with the birth of his first child, a daughter the couple named Annette, after Harry’s mother’s middle name. A local newspaper reported, “Mother and child are doing well. But the ‘Big Kid,’ the father, is in a bad way.”xv
Days before the end on 1908 Shipley found himself facing the specter of fire. While passing Shipley’s Juarez bar around 7 pm that day, the undercarriage of a street car caught fire. The trolley crew tried but failed to extinguish the flames with mud and sand. The Big Kid, with the assistance of a Japanese waiter who worked at the bar, ran out to the street, and quickly extinguished the fire with two bottles of seltzer water.xvi
In early June of 1909 Shipley filed and dissolved his partnership with Spivey (probably Thomas T. Spivey) for the American Steam Laundry, 407 N. Stanton. Spivey had retired and sold his interest in the business to M. L. Means of San Antonio. One of Shipley and Means’ first decisions was to invest in the company and install new machinery. The managers of the laundry were Harry’s mother, Isadore, and Mrs. M. L. Means. The business acquired a second location, Big Kid’s American Steam Laundry in Juarez, during the same year.xvii Big Kid’s American Steam Laundry holds the distinction of being one of the rare businesses operated by Harry Shipley that carried the “Big Kid” brand and was not a saloon.
Fires continued to haunt Shipley. On the morning of Saturday, September 17, 1910, a fire erupted at the Big Kid’s bar in Juarez that exceeded the ability of Shipley and his staff to subdue. Shipley picked up his telephone and dialed the number for the El Paso Fire Department who rushed an engine across the international bridge and doused the blaze. Days later Harry composed a letter effusively extending his gratitude; included with his sincere thanks was a $25 check ($830.69 in 1923).xviii
Yet Harry was not always level-headed and patient. A disagreement regarding one of Shipley’s many real estate investments escalated to a physical altercation when one of his tenants, Loui Loy, began pressuring Shipley to have the electric lights in his building turned on; but Shipley stood firm in opposition to allowing the lights.xix It is unclear if the apartment building in question stood in Juarez or El Paso. On November 9, 1910, the opposing views on the subject became heated and Shipley struck and knocked his tenant down; Loy was “put to sleep.” Assault charges were filed and the Big Kid was arrested by the Juarez police later that night. Standing before a judge in the Juarez Police Court the following day, Shipley pled guilty to the charge of striking Loy, and was fined $300 ($10,337.00 in 1923). Incredulously, the El Paso Morning Times voiced surprise that Shipley, a large man with beefy hands, seriously injured Mr. Loy, “although the American used his fists only, the Chinaman, it is said, was pretty severely handled.”xx Harry believed that the court assessed fine was hefty, but was happy that he had not received jail time. It is unclear from the minimal information on this assault the extent that racism played in the altercation.
Harry Shipley’s laundry business appears to have become another short-lived venture as the 1910 El Paso City Directory lists the owners of the American Steam Laundry at 407 N. Stanton as being owned by M. L. Means and Thomas T. Spivery; and there was no mention of the Juarez steam laundry.xxi
The laundry detour had not stifled Shipley’s desire to expand his business portfolio as later that year Harry tapped into his hotel experience and opened the Porfirio Diaz Hotel in Juarez.xxii Located in the San Louis building at the prime intersection of Avenida Juarez and Comercio (16th de Septiembre), advertisements promoting the hotel announce both elegant rooms and apartments as being available, and assures guests that they would be served by staff able to communicate in Spanish, English, French, and German. The hotel was ideally situated for visitors arriving in Juarez for US President William Taft and Mexican President Porfirio Diaz historic meeting in El Paso and Juarez. When Taft crossed the international line at El Paso to become the first US President to enter a foreign country, the meeting of the two Presidents was held diagonal from the hotel inside the Juarez Custom House. It is worth noting that the hotel was only listed in the 1911 El Paso City Directory, implying that Shipley opened the business late in 1909 and that the venture may never have been intended to be a long-term business, but simply to capitalize on the Taft/Diaz meeting.
The historic presidential meeting occurred one year before the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution. The escalation of the Mexican Revolution after the first battle for Juarez in 1911, as well as President Diaz fleeing for his life to France, meant being named the “Hotel Porfirio Diaz” would not have continued to be a viable marketing strategy.
In the spring of 1911 when the revolution did descend upon Juarez the furious firefights between rebels and Mexican federal troops left the city scarred and war torn. Businesses and government buildings were ransacked and pillaged; Big Kid’s bar was not spared. In July Shipley, through official channels of the US State Department, filed a claim to the Mexican government for damages on the grounds that his saloon was looted and plundered by the insurrectos. The amount of compensation being sought was $1008.50 ($33,509.90 in 2023).xxiii It would be 24 years before Shipley learned if he would receive any compensation for his losses.
However, business dealings in Juarez did not absorb all of Shipley’s time, he still owned and managed the El Paso Electrical Supply Company at the corner of Overland and Santa Fe Streets.xxiv The income from his El Paso investments helped cushion losses resulting from the damage inflicted on his Juarez saloon.
Evidence that the wreckage of his bar after the battle in Juarez did not hobble his financial stride, or bank account, is evidenced by another of Shipley’s investments, race horses. Between 1911-1913, Harry Shipley felt enough financial security to purchase several race horses that he ran in competition at the Juarez race track.xxv
Pillaging rebels were not the only safety concerns in Juarez. Harry Shipley recognized the importance of protecting his clientele from the American bunco predators seeking plunder in Juarez. The conmen were notorious for targeting out-of-towners riding the streetcars from El Paso to Juarez, sizing up the tourists, and then posing as guides, detectives, or visitors. After ingratiating themselves to their marks, the grifter initiated various methods of separating the target from their money. When the Big Kid found a clip artist in his saloon, he would locate a police officer and have him direct the conman to either leave or be arrested. In the spring of 1912, the businessmen of Juarez recognized the threat of the bunco artists and wrote a petition insisting that the authorities rid the streets and businesses of Juarez of the grifters.xxvi Nonetheless, conmen continued to proliferate the bars and streetcars in Juarez.
Big Kid maintained a hectic work schedule in early 1918, shuttling back and forth across the border to keep the Big Kid Saloon in Juarez running, as well as his various businesses in El Paso, including his newly opened XXX Bar, 122 W. San Antonio Avenue.xxvii
PROHIBITION
When the U.S. entered the First World War, Harry Shipley was 40 years old and exempt from military service. During the “War To End All Wars,” Shipley began a partnership with Severo G. Gonzalez, who had owned the Central Bar and Café in El Paso, and the two men opened the Big Barn Bar in Vinton, Texas.
From the beginning two obstacles doomed the Big Barn. The first impediment was geographic, the bar was located 17 miles outside of El Paso; the second deterrent was political, the looming threat of national alcohol Prohibition. The business decision to locate the bar in Vinton was based on the town being beyond the ten-mile alcohol exclusion zone around Fort Bliss, an alcohol-free zone that had been insisted upon by the US military.xxviii Shipley’s XXX Bar had been a casualty of El Paso’s exclusion zone, though he still owned and operated his Big Kid Bar in the Sauer Building in Juarez.
The Texas legislature ushered in statewide alcohol prohibition on April 15, 1918, preceding National Prohibition by almost two years. The introduction of US Prohibition, January 17, 1920, created a financial boom for Juarez and El Paso.
In May of 1919, between the time the State of Texas mandated alcohol prohibition and the beginning of national prohibition, there were only three Americans, Frank de Vicchio, Tom Esposito, and Harry N. Shipley (as well as an unnamed man only identified as “Japanese”), who owned bars in Juarez. xxix The competition among foreign saloon owners catering to American tourists in Juarez would soon grow fierce.
Once again in the history of El Paso the railroad delivered a windfall for the City of the Pass. The introduction of Prohibition upgraded El Paso to a favored layover along the southern transcontinental railroad, a line that already had connected two adult amusement destinations, New Orleans, Louisiana, and Los Angeles, California. El Paso instantly became a favored setting for national conventions.
The major draw for hosting a convention in El Paso, or scheduling a layover in the “Sun City,” were advertisements and word of mouth spreading the news nationwide that only one short street car ride separated hotel guests from the liquor stocked oasis of Juarez.
Sadly, months before entering the most profitable business period of Big Kid’s career, the Shipley family suffered a devastating loss. On June 14, 1919, Harry’s mother Isadore died. Isadore’s obituary in the El Paso Times reminded readers that the mother of Big Kid had been, “living here since 1885. She is well known among the older residents of the city.”xxx
PALACE CAFE
The short-life of the Big Barn bar must have convinced both partners that to remain in the saloon business during Prohibition they each needed to stake their claim in Juarez. Severo Gonzalez reopened his Central Café in Juarez, hiring Harry Mitchell as an early manager.xxxi In 1920 Shipley invested in a second saloon in Juarez. In partnership with his friend Charles Heidrick, Shipley opened the location of his best-known bar, originally named the Palace Café, on 16th de Septiembre, several blocks east of his Big Kid Bar in the Sauer Building.
When Charles Heidrick joined Shipley to open the Palace Cafe, Heidrick already had accrued years of experience in the saloon business, as both a bartender, as far back as 1904 when he tended bar at El Paso’s Bank Saloon, and, as a saloon owner, in 1911 when he purchased the La Patria Bar at 316 ½ San Antonio Street. Heidrick and Robert J. Galentin purchased the Palace Saloon, 205 E. San Antonio Avenue, in 1912 and operated the bar until Prohibition gripped El Paso in April 1918.
The success of the Palace Bar in Juarez allowed Shipley to continue broadening his investments. From 1916 to 1920, the Harry Shipley family had been residing at apartment #4 of the four-unit Spencer Apartments, 701 St. Vrain Street. In 1921 the family’s address remained the same, except that the complex had been christened with a new name, the Shipley Apartments.xxxii
Shipley’s business partnership with Charles Heidrick was short-lived and ended amicably. Fifteen years after they opened the Palace Café, while reflecting on his 30-year friendship with Harry Shipley, Heidrick explained his reason for dissolving the partnership, “I sold out to (Shipley) when he decided to expand the business.”xxxiii And expand the Palace Café the Big Kid did.
Shipley and Heidrick’s original Palace Café was a modest bar, but clearly Shipley recognized the flush opportunity catering to alcohol deprived Americans, from both El Paso and afar, that Prohibition had dealt to border town saloon owners.
According to a trail marked by advertising in newspapers, the metamorphosis from the “Palace Saloon” to “Big Kid’s Palace,” appears to have evolved incrementally and, initially, without a clear vision.
To expand his fledgling business, Shipley acquired the property abutting the Palace Bar, a building that had once housed Pacho Villa’s brother Hipolito’s gambling hall.xxxiv In the new addition Shipley built, at considerable expense, an impressive music hall noted for its arched and gilt covered curved roof. The cabaret included a large restaurant seating 1000 customers, that Shipley frequently referred to as a “café”. In the rear of the pavilion, for the burgeoning auto owning crowd, the empresario added a private parking lot.
Announcing “Grand Openings” appears to have been Shipley’s go-to advertising strategy. The first of several Grand Opening of “The Big Kid’s Palace Café” was held Friday, September 12, 1924, and advertised “Music, Delicious Food, Dancing” in “The Show Place of Juarez,” beginning on opening day with The Big Kid’s Royal Mexican Band, performing daily from 2-4 pm, Ray Mullin’s Orchestra, from 4 to 8:30 pm, and featured the “moonlight lighting effects of our new pavilion-produced by the use of over 500 lights”.xxxv
Over the ensuing dozen years, the walls of the Cabaret’s became richly steeped in music due to the Big Kid filling the supper club’s cavernous hall with performances by orchestras, bands, or an electric player piano, for hundreds of diners and dancing customers each afternoon and evening. Throughout “the Jazz Age” the Cabaret would showcase such diverse musical acts as “Aggravatin’ Jazz!,” Art Landry’s Syncopators, Bauer’s Incomparable Orchestra, Corthay’s California Naval Band, Accordionist and Songstress Miss Ira Button, Big Kid’s Mexican Jazz Band, Mr. Silver with a voice to beat Caruso, El Paso’s Own Star-Dolly Sterling, Blues Singer Dixie Dare, and the Marimba Band direct from Mexico City, among many others.xxxvi Years after its heyday, the El Paso Times would proclaim that Big Kids’, “floor shows were the most elaborate between Chicago and the (West) coast. (Shipley) brought the best orchestras to Juarez.”xxxvii The Palace Cabaret became the pinnacle of the “Big Kid” brand.
Big Kid’s Palace Café and saloon reigned in Juarez during the era of flappers, The Great Gatsby, phonographs, women drinking inside bars, dance crazes called the Charleston and the Lindy Hop, elaborate floor shows in nightclubs, and hot jazz. Big Kid’s Cabaret and Bar was a showplace of its time, roaring loudly throughout the entire Roaring 20’s.
Harry Shipley held great pride in the fact that Big Kid’s Palace Bar possessed the “longest bar in Juarez,” boasting of the feature on promotional photo postcards and in print advertising. However, one musician found the room daunting. Renowned jazz clarinetist Pee Wee Russell (Charles Ellsworth Russell) recalled in an early 1960’s interview that as a teenager during the early 1920’s that he had been booked for a gig in the saloon with a trio. Russel described the challenge of filling the cavernous barroom with music while playing the saxophone and not the clarinet of later fame, “in the Big Kid’s Palace, which had a bar about a block long. There weren’t any microphones and you had to blow. I must have used a board for a reed.”xxxviii
During Prohibition, no longer were El Pasoans the only Americans bellying up to the bars in Juarez. As the reality of the Great Experiment and the limited possibilities for consuming illicit beverages gripped Americans, Juarez began teeming with tourists and conventioneers craving exotic keepsakes from the curio shops and submitting to the seductive siren call of the cantinas along 16th de Septiembre Street, where the visitors gladly exchanged their cash for forbidden libations. With legalized gambling and prostitution also available, Juarez prospered as a realm of diversions and a source for wild stories to tote back home.
Shipley’s businesses in Juarez continued flourishing. Each day the bulk of his hours were consumed keeping his cabaret and bars functioning smoothly. But Lady Fortune is a moody, and in late December 1922 the momentum of Big Kid’s business ledger rising “in the black,” disappeared into a thick plume of darkened smoke.
After Shipley and Heidrick had opened the Palace Bar, Big Kid’s original bar on 16th de Septiembre, across from the Juarez historic Customs House, continued operating until Christmas Eve, 1922. At 10 AM that holiday morning, in the rear of the Chinese Oriental restaurant, on the same block where the Big Kid venue stood, a fire burst out. The blaze rapidly spread through the restaurant and engulfed storefronts along that section of the block, including the destruction of the American Consulate. After the conflagration was finally subdued by the bi-national efforts of the Juarez and El Paso Fire Departments, the estimated damage totaled more than $150,000 ($2,649,863.23 in 2022). Only twenty gallons of whisky from Shipley’s bar’s liquor stock was able to be rescued from the firestorm; the value of the destroyed fixtures and inventory was estimated to exceed $15,000 ($264,986.32 in 2022).xxxix
i “They Were Seven,” El Paso Daily Herald, January 16, 1900, p. 8; “Stole A Bicycle,” El Paso International Daily Times, January 16, 1900, p. 7; “Grand Jury In Session,” El Paso International Daily Times, January 28, 1900, p. 6.
ii Advertisement, El Paso International Daily Times,” October 29, 1901, p. 3.
iii “Around Town,” El Paso Daily Times, October 27, 1901, p 3; 1902 El Paso City Directory.
iv“Could Not Agree,” El Paso Morning Times, May 23, 1903, p. 5; “Shipley’s Case Is Up,” El Paso Herald, March 20, 1903, p. 2; “Suit For Personal Injury Is On Trial, El Paso Herald, May 22, 1903, p. 5 “Bankruptcy Suit Against H. N. Shipley,” El Paso Herald, May 6, 1903, p. 3’ “Taking Evidence,” El Paso Morning Times, August 20, 1903, p. 3.
v 1903 El Paso City Directory.
vi “’Big Kid’ And Mike Seigel Arrested For Fighting,” El Paso Herald, February 24, 1903, p. 2.
vii El Paso Morning Times, May 23, 1903; “Jury Failed To Agree In Damage Suit,” El Paso Herald, May 23, 1903, p. 5; “Phil Smith has his own again” advertisement, El Paso Daily Times, May 25, 1903, p. 8; “Gets $300 For Falling Into A Cellar Door,” El Paso Herald, January 26, 1904, p. 8; Buck’s Directory of El Paso 1902, p. 353.
viii Advertisement, “Lemp’s Café,” El Paso Daily Times, December 18, 1904, p. 12; “BORDER MOURNS DEATH OF COLORFUL’BIG KID,’” El Paso World News, May 25, 1935 (refers to name as “Lamb’s Café); “$500 Damage, Resulted From Fire in Lemp’s Café in Juarez Yesterday,” El Paso Daily Times, January 10, 1907, p. 2; “WENT TO JUAREZ: Drew Crowds In Old Days Says “Big Kid,” El Paso Herald, August 18, 1927, p. 11.
ix El Paso Morning Times, August 29, 1906, p. 5; El Paso Morning Times, September 2, 1906, p. 2.
x “Juarez Firemen Fight Flames,” El Paso Herald, January 5, 1907, p. 10; “Fire Threatens Juarez,” El Paso Morning Times, January 5, 1907, p. 2.
xi “$500 DAMAGE,” El Paso Daily Times, January 10, 1907, p. 2; “Fire Damages Big Kid’s Place In Juarez,” El Paso Herald, January 9, 1907, p. 6.
xii El Paso World News, May 25, 1935; 1908 El Paso City Directory.
xiii “Death Ends Colorful Career Of ‘Big Kid,’ Saloon Keeper,” El Paso Times, May 25, 1935; 1911 El Paso City Directory; Photo Advertisement, El Paso Morning Times, August 29, 1915, Auto Section, p. 18; “’Big Kid,’ Famous In The Heyday Of Juarez, Behind Bar Again—At Mitchell’s Brewery,” El Paso Times, November 23, 1934, p. 6.
xiv “’BIG KID” SHIPLEY, JUAREZ SALOON MAN, IS MARRIED,” El Paso Herald, February 14, 1908, p. 3; “HARRY SHIPLEY MARRIED,” El Paso Times, February 14, 1908, p. 3.
xv “’Big Kid’ Is A Daddy,” El Paso Morning Times, November 23, 1908, p. 8.
xvi “Big Kid Has A Fire Department,” El Paso Morning Times, December 28, 1908, p. 5.
xvii “Dissolution Notice,” El Paso Morning Times, June 7, 1909, p. 2; “New Machinery Installed” Advertisement, El Paso Morning Times, August 19, 1909, p. 3; 1909 El Paso City Directory.
xviii “Thanks Fire Department,” El Paso Morning Times, September 23, 1910, p. 5.
xix “’Big Kid’ Knocks Chink Down,” El Paso Morning Times, November 10, 1909, p. 7.
xx “’Big Kid’ Compelled to Hand Out 300 Bucks for Liberty,” El Paso Morning Times, November 11, 1909, p. 1.
xxi 1910 El Paso City Directory.
xxii El Paso Evening Post, May 30, 1928; El Paso World News, May 25, 1935; 1909 El Paso City Directory.
xxiii“Special Mexican Claims Commission,” Report to the Secretary of State with Decisions Showing the Reasons for Allowance or Disallowance of the Claims, United States Government Printing Office, Washington, 1940, p. 463; “Claims Filed for Damages in El Paso,” El Paso Herald, July 1, 1911, p. 3; “Damages Claims Will Reach $500,000,” El Paso Morning Times, July 2, 1911, p. 20.
xxiv ELECTRICAL SUPPLIES: EL PASO ELECTRICAL SUPPLY CO.,” El Paso Daily Times, November 16 1911, p. 8.
xxv “Activity Begins For Races,” El Paso Morning Times, October 5, 1911, p. 3; “32 Second Race,” El Paso Morning Times, December 7 ,1911, p. 7; “Baseball and Racing At The Park Today,” El Paso Morning Times, September 25, 1912, p. 4; “3667”, El Paso Morning Times, November 28, 1913, p. 4; “Border Mourns Death Of Colorful ‘Big Kid,’” El Paso World News, May 25, 1935.
xxvi “A Plague Of ‘Bunco Steerers’ Infest Juarez,” El Paso Morning Times, April 28, 1912, p 1.
xxvii 1918 El Paso City Directory, p. 708.
xxviii “Hole-in Wall Saloon Used to Occupy Bank Site,” El Paso Evening Post, May 30, 1928, Section 3, p. 7.
xxix “Three American Saloons,” El Paso Morning Times, May 23, 1919, p.13.
xxx El Paso Morning Times, June 15, 1919.
xxxi Advertisement, El Paso Herald, November 22, 1920.
xxxii Worley’s Directory of El Paso, USA, 1916, p. 557; El Paso City Directory, 1917, p. 653; El Paso City Directory, 1918, p. 708; El Paso City Directory, 1919, p. 630; El Paso City Directory, 1920, p. 813; El Paso City Directory, 1921, p. 285; 1922 El Paso, Texas City Directory, p. 794.
xxxiii El Paso World News, May 25, 1935.
xxxiv “Once Famous Cabaret Owner Mopes in Depression Shadow,” El Paso Herald-Post, January 25, 1933, p. 2; “Shipley Burial Rites Pending,” El Paso Herald-Post, May 25, 1935, p. 12.
xxxv Advertisement, El Paso Times, September 11, 1924 p. 10.
xxxvi El Paso Times, May 3, 1923, p. 14; El Paso Times, November 24, 1923, p. 6; El Paso Times, January 23, 1924, p. 2; El Paso Times, October 31, 1924, p. 9; El Paso Times, April 1, 1928, p. 12; El Paso Times, June 15, 1929, p. 9.
xxxvii El Paso Times, November 23, 1934.
xxxviii Whitney Balliett, American Musicians II: Seventy-two Portraits in Jazz, Oxford University Press, New York,1996, 136-137.
xxxix Advertisement, El Paso Times, June 11, 1922, p. 19; “$150,000 FIRE DESTROYS U.S. CONSULATE IN JUAREZ,” El Paso Times, December 25, 1922, p. 1.