Madden Mischief

Every Juneteenth makes me think fondly of my late dad when he was looking and acting as Texan as he could, when he and my mom and me lived in Galveston in the 1940’s at the Buccaneer Hotel way before Glen Campbell sang that immortal song.

Today we’re remembering how Galveston became the birthplace of Juneteenth, while back then my dad was wowing ‘em nightly playing his violin at Sam Maceo’s ritzy private club, where there was gambling, lots of booze and my dad’s beautiful gypsy violin music was filling The Balinese Room.

On June 19, 1865, Union Major General Gordon Granger arrived on that same island of Galveston to read General Order 3.  It announced that all enslaved people in Texas were free, which was a monumental event happening two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation, but it couldn’t become law all inclusively until federal troops took control of Texas at the end of the Civil War.  Only on Juneteenth, Jan. 1, 1863, could Lincoln’s proclamation be fully enacted and today it has become a federal holiday.

In Texas in the 1940’s my uncle Tony Imperiale was a dealer in Galveston keeping an eye on not just blackjacks, but on his sister Lena’s husband, my talented dad, who tended to be a tad too friendly at times with women who loved how he combed his wavy black hair, trimmed his moustache and stroked his sultry violin.

One night the King of Romania came in, heard my father play and told him he was the best gypsy violinist on the planet.  True story!  

I told that story to my friend Zane Carson Carruth who lives in nearby Houston. She’s the well-known children’s book author, creator of the world’s first tooth fairy collection of books and soon an animated TV series starring her inspiring main character Abella. 

I wish she could have heard my dad play.  He would have made the whimsical Abella want to jump up and dance and twirl to Bill Madden’s serenade to the world’s first tooth fairy to make it big in the hearts of children, even war-weary children in the Ukraine whose spirits Abella helped to take flight from misery.

Here’s a telling quote about then gritty Galveston from Homer Garrison, then the frustrated chief of the Texas Department of Public Safety back in that wide open, let hell break loose era:THERE’S NOTHING YOU CAN DO ABOUT GAMBLING IN THE BALINESE OR IN GALVESTON BECAUSE THE JURIES SIMPLY WON’T CONVICT A MAN FOR GAMBLING DOWN THERE.

Tom Madden is an author of countless published articles and six books, including his WORDSHINE MAN, available on Amazon. He also creates TV series like his latest Xtra Terresla whose main character is modeled after Tesla founder Leon Musk. Madden is the founder and CEO of TransMedia Group, an award-winning public relations firm serving clients worldwide since 1981 and today Madden’s versatile and talented daughter Adrienne Mazzone is the PR firm’s president and today it’s headquartered in Boca Raton, Fl.