I sure am looking forward to that!!! I am so tired of dead-ending every which way I turn. Or finding out really interesting stuff about peripheral characters that don't (yet) connect up to our main characters in viably meaningful ways.
If anyone is curious about such things, though, you can take these side roads through some power-and-money territory involving the president of Producers Oil Company (the company August H Balko, Jr was working for in the 1910 census), Walter Benona Sharp, who was a partner of Howard Hughes, Sr in a couple ventures:
http://www.rice.edu/fondren/woodson/mss/ms271.html
Sharp's son, Walter Bedford Sharp, married Patti Lummis and the Lummis family was related to the Rice family, and it was Ella Botts Rice that was Howard Hughes, Jr's first wife. His other son, Dudley Crawford Sharp had an early school friend by the name of James A Baker III whose long-time law partner was William Rice Lummis, administrator of Howard Hughes, Jr's estate over which people were still fighting as late as 1997. And one source said that the Sharp-Hughes Tool Company, which became the Hughes Tool Company after Sharp died in 1912, is now known as Enron.
http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~rhs/corner/fall95.html
http://www.willgriffin.com/apparent.htm http://www.willgriffin.com/hughes.htm
http://www.businessweek.com/1997/43/b3550076.htm
http://www.alternet.org/story/20012/
http://txdepot.railfan.net/Lagrange.html
Also, Judge James A Baker (the first) represented the infamous railroad robber baron, Jay Gould, in court, and Jay Gould had control of the railroad that August Balko, Jr likely worked for in 1920, La Grange, Texas (but that was some time after Gould had been ousted from the MK & T. So, as I said, I know the connections don't really mean anything for us here but it has been an interesting history lesson for me.
Looking forward to what comes next!
--Merry
p.s.-- does anyone know anything about Joe Isaac (poss.alt.sp. Isaacs, Isaack, Isaacks, Isaacke)? Covington said he was a great friend of the Judge and lived in Houston, Texas.