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Old 06-07-2018, 10:29 PM
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Default King Ranch holsters

I recall -- I'm hoping correctly -- that a forum member here once posted an image of a King Ranch holster; and I've a question about the holster itself.

The style, also found with their Kingsville Lumber Co. and Santa Gertrudes marks, looks like this:

kingsville lumber (3).jpg


If I've got it right for a change, would appreciate hearing from that collector about a query. Thanks so much :-).
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Old 06-08-2018, 07:29 AM
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Sorry I'm not that collector, but your mention of the King Ranch and
Kingsville brought back an old remembrance. I was in Kingsville on a job
in 1956, shortly after my discharge from the Air Force. On a warm
afternoon, I walked into a local watering hole for a cool drink.

Seated next to me was an old King Ranch cowboy. We engaged in a
BS session. I noticed his little finger was missing and asked him about it.

He said he was mending fences out on the ranch. Had a can of Lone Star
setting in the shade of a barrel cactus to keep it cool. Reached down to
get his beer, and a rattler grabbed the tip of his finger.

He was quite a distance from help so he just whipped out his wire
cutters and snapped the finger off. Wrapped it up in his bandana to
stop the bleeding , and went back to work. One tough old cowboy.

If I had known about the King Ranch holsters then I could have bought
one. The King Ranch Saddle shop is still in business in Kingsville, but
I didn't find any holsters on their web page. They do have knife sheaths.

If I remember correctly the ranch was operated by the Murchison brothers
at that time. The King Ranch is bigger than the state of Rhode Island.
The movie GIANT came out in 1956. It's a fair representation of life on
the big Texas ranches back then. Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and
James Dean. A pretty good old movie.
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Old 06-08-2018, 10:54 AM
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Red, the post you may be looking for was by lawandorder back on
April 23, 2016. The title was King Ranch Running W Brand.
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Old 06-08-2018, 12:41 PM
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Phil - are you sure you walked into a bar in Kingsville, 1956?
Kleberg County was dry back then.
I recall going up from Harlingen to visit a Lady attending Tex A&I.
You had to drive into the next county to buy booze.
Just across the line There was a junky looking building with dozens of cars going-coming.
Holster?
This rig sold for over $1K!
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Old 06-08-2018, 04:13 PM
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Originally Posted by THE PILGRIM View Post
Phil - are you sure you walked into a bar in Kingsville, 1956?
Kleberg County was dry back then.
I recall going up from Harlingen to visit a Lady attending Tex A&I.
You had to drive into the next county to buy booze.
Just across the line There was a junky looking building with dozens of cars going-coming.
Holster?
This rig sold for over $1K!
Yeh, I'm pretty sure. It could have been 1957 but it was 56 or
57. I was working for a security outfit and only worked for them
about last half of 56 and first half of 57. Maybe dry allowed beer,
that's all I remember having.
Elvis Presley and his band had been in Kingsville not too long
before I was there, and I remember a roadhouse on the outskirts
of town where they took a wall out and put a bandstand outside
because some of the group was not of age. Maybe Elvis wasn't
even 21 when they were there. Thinking about that, I'm more
sure it was 1956 because Elvis would have been 21 in January
of 1956, and it seems the event was fairly recent at the time.
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Old 06-08-2018, 06:10 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by crazyphil View Post
Red, the post you may be looking for was by lawandorder back on
April 23, 2016. The title was King Ranch Running W Brand.
Thank you Lucky B, but the holsters, in my post and in that one, aren't similar.
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Old 06-08-2018, 06:13 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rednichols View Post
Thank you Lucky B, but the holsters, in my post and in that one, aren't similar.
I tried the search function and that's the only one that
came up besides this one.
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Old 06-08-2018, 06:23 PM
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Red I just Googled King Ranch Holster and ended up at icollector.com
There is one very much like you photo that sold at auction for a mere
$1,600. You have good taste in holsters.
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Old 06-08-2018, 08:09 PM
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I grew up in Kingsville but never bought anything from the ranch store. The family that owned it was the Klebergs (several brothers). One of the daughters sat behind me in junior high when they seated us in alphabetical order.

It was a dry county, but we got beer locally IIRC (this was 60 years ago). When graduated from HS, the daughter had a graduation party for 30 of us & our dates at the new house they had built on the ranch (she had a big house in town, too). Her dad had bought 32 cases of beer and iced it down for us. There was plenty of food and spiked punch. We ran out of beer in about three hours. He told us the ranch was ours for the night. Go where we wanted but stay on the ranch.

The family was visited and interviewed by the lady who wrote Giant. When the movie came out, one of my friend’s aunts was really pissed at the author for changing some of the things she had been told.

Good times and memories.

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Old 06-09-2018, 02:16 PM
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[email protected]
I grew up in Kingsville but never bought anything from the ranch store. The family that owned it was the Klebergs (several brothers). One of the daughters sat behind me in junior high when they seated us in alphabetical order.

It was a dry county, but we got beer locally IIRC (this was 60 years ago). When graduated from HS, the daughter had a graduation party for 30 of us & our dates at the new house they had built on the ranch (she had a big house in town, too). Her dad had bought 32 cases of beer and iced it down for us. There was plenty of food and spiked punch. We ran out of beer in about three hours. He told us the ranch was ours for the night. Go where we wanted but stay on the ranch.

The family was visited and interviewed by the lady who wrote Giant. When the movie came out, one of my friend’s aunts was really pissed at the author for changing some of the things she had been told.


Good times and memories.
The lady who wrote GIANT was Edna Ferber, a Pulitzer prize
winning author
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Old 06-09-2018, 03:25 PM
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The Klebergs have run the ranch pretty much since Capt King died, I believe. It is now run by a Board of Directors. The King Saddle Shop used to be a great stop for gear made by employees of the ranch. Now has very little authentic gear, mostly junk with the Running Double W brand. Last I was there, in the last couple of years, they still had some saddles. I have hunted quail and Nilgai on the Chicago and the Laureles Pastures. Amazing Place.
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Old 06-25-2018, 07:58 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by THE PILGRIM View Post
Phil - are you sure you walked into a bar in Kingsville, 1956?
Kleberg County was dry back then.
I recall going up from Harlingen to visit a Lady attending Tex A&I.
You had to drive into the next county to buy booze.
Just across the line There was a junky looking building with dozens of cars going-coming.
Holster?
This rig sold for over $1K!
Sweet memory. I remember I got a 12 hour pass after 4 weeks
basic training at Lackland. That was mid-April 1952. I had just
turned 17 in February 1952. Went in to a pretty decent restaurant
in San Antonio. Had a big steak and a bottle of Lone
Star. I remember clearly the long neck had a rearing horse on
the label. They said it was the only beer with a picture of the
brewery on the label. I hope you don't tell me that county was
dry too. My point is maybe Texas was not too strict with their enforcement.
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Old 06-25-2018, 09:30 AM
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Well no, San Anton is in Bear with an X County.
In the old days, the Texas Counties had shall we say a ‘Mixed Bag’ of liquor laws.
Such as taking your bottle to a club.
Then the club would sell you mix-ice for you booze.
The Urban Legend was that the Original Mrs. King - Kleberg insisted that her county would be dry.
The surrounding counties were wet, that’s why we could drive to the county line and buy booze.
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