"That Stew Called 'Gent from Odessa'" (Dallas Morning News, 1960)

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A nice article from the DMN database.
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13 January 1960, Dallas <i>Morning News</i>, "Tolbert's Texas,"  section 4,
pg. 1:
<i>That Stew Called</i>
<i>"Gent From Odessa"</i>
By FRANK X. TOLBERT

"YOUR LITTLE DISSERTATION on son-of-a-blankety-blank stew last Sunday  warmed
the cockles of my tired heart and started the juices working in my  ancient
innards," writes R. Henderson Shuffler of College Station. "When I lived  out
at Odessa in the 1920's the best roundup cooks on the southern Staked Plain
made son-of-a-blankety-blank stew in big black washpots."

The true name of this wonderful concoction is an unfriendly term in which  it
is implied that the man receiving the insult has canine ancestry on the
distaff side. Mr. Shuffler takes the stand that a better name than
son-of-a-blankety-blank stew "for parlor conversations and family newspapers"  might be,
simply, "S.O.B. stew."

He also writes that "old timers of the southern Staked Plain often referred
to S.O.B. stew as 'Gentleman-from-Odessa.'" And he says: "I have seen it
listed  on menus from Carlsbad, N.M. to Sweetwater as 'Gent-from-Odessa.'"

MR. SHUFFLER EXPLAINED why the stew was called Gentleman-from-Odessa: "In
the 1890's when Odessa was a huddle of frame buildings beside the newly laid
T&P Railway tracks it had only one general store (Mudgett's) and four  saloons.
The town had something of a reputation for hell-raising. People from
Sweetwater to El Paso generally agreed that what passed for a gentleman in  Odessa
would be the equivalent of what was called a son-of-a-blankety-blank in  more
civilized prairie towns. Thus the name grew up. Trying to live up to this
reputation has gotten a lot of Odessa boys shot since then."

FOR ABOUT a decade, Henderson Shuffler wrote a very popular, daily column  in
his newspaper, The Odessa American, under what he calls "the
nom-de-typewriter" of The Gentleman from Odessa. he said that "many newcomers  thought I was
a former Congresssman or simply presumptuous, but the old-timers  understood
and loved the title."
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(FYI, Newspaperarchive has the Odessa American from 1956 only--ed.)

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