He says murder, he says, every time we kiss
He says murder, he says, at a time like this
He says murder, he says, is that the language of love?
Let us consider the case of one Donnell Clyde Cooley. Born in 19 and 10 in a tornado cellar in Pack Saddle Creek, Oklahoma. Parents a mix of Native American and Anglo, so the young Cooley was legally considered a Native American. Taught how to play the fiddle by his Daddy. By age 25, he was married and living in the Golden Land of California — arriving, as Cooley liked to tell the story, with a fiddle under his arm and but a nickel in his pocket.
It was in Modesto, California that Donnell Clyde Cooley picked up his nickname, drawing a flush three times during an all-night poker game — each time with the same suit. Over the years Spade embellished the story until those hands became three straight spade flushes in a row. The possibility of making even one straight flush is about 13,000 to 1, and it’d be more likely that a bolt of lightning would have blasted from a clear night sky and fried Spade right then and there in his chair before he’d pull three straight flushes in a row.
But maybe… maybe it did happen once on a hot night in Modesto, California, the kerosene lamp hissing and its light flickering on the sweaty, tired faces of the men gathered around a table. Men who were…
