House on the Range

It wasn't much to look at: linoleum on the floors, a small waiting room with metal folding chairs, a jukebox, the bedrooms out back. But to the townspeople of La Grange (pop. 3,000), as well as to farmhands and college students in the surrounding East Texas counties, Edna's Fashionable Ranch and Boarding House, known as "the Chicken Ranch," was as cherished as any monument, and far more functional.

Started in 1844, the Chicken Ranch had seen a string of madams. The latest was a comely brunette in her 40s, Edna Milton. Nobody knew where Edna came from, but that did not matter. She ran a clean house that fulfilled its function: no drugs, no liquor, no teen-age whores. The girls, says one old customer, were "not too pretty, but not ugly. They were a sure thing." Edna provided services without any fancy Polly Adler-type "extras."

Even before Edna's time, the place was as much a part of the community as the general store. During the Depression, farm boys with no money paid with chickens -- hence the bordello's name. In more prosperous times, the house was good for the town's econ omy. Says Lester Zapalac, publisher of the La Grange Journal, the town's only newspaper: "The girls bought all their clothes here, their eats. It brought busi ness for the community." When the town would hold a big barbecue, the girls at Edna's, of course, were not in vited. However, the townsfolk would often send some leftovers back to the girls. The fund for the new La Grange hospital was enriched $10,000 grace aux filles at Edna's.

Probably the strongest supporters of Edna's were the college students, par ticularly from the Bryan campus of Texas A. & M. The school was all male until recently, and a Houston girls' school, a strict Roman Catholic institution, offered small solace to the lusty.

So the Chicken Ranch became an accepted extracurricular activity -- and the scene of some rites of passage. "If we found out somebody was a virgin," says one A. & M. graduate, "we'd kidnap him, tie him up on the floorboard, and take him to the ranch." So routine were evenings at Edna's that the school began to provide penicillin free.

Now the prescription is more likely to be a cold shower or a trip to nearby Austin. For this month the Chicken Ranch was closed by official fiat from the state capital. The 16 girls are gone, and no one knows where Edna is.

Earlier this summer, a Houston TV station did a story about the Chicken Ranch that brought excessive attention to an open secret. Governor Dolph Briscoe ordered La Grange Sheriff T.J. Flournoy to enforce the state's antiprostitution law. The town fought back, gathering signatures on a save-the-Chicken petition. Many wives signed, responding to the old argument that morality aside, the house had provided a necessary outlet that protected respectable girls from rape. Flournoy supported the petition drive and even considered a personal appeal to Bris coe. But in the end he did his duty with a telephone call to Edna that ended 130 years of tradition in La Grange.

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