Tom Pendergast, the Farm and Uncle Joe Murphy

Tom Pendergast was the most famous crime boss in the history of the state of Missouri. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Pendergast]

He controlled every yard of concrete that was poured in the state between 1910 and 1940. His concrete business was a front during prohibition and Pendergast also controlled most of the state's illegal liquor. He was also the man who brought Harry Truman to power.

My uncle Joe Murphy and his road grading construction company in the first 30 years of the 20th century was massive. They won and completed most of the large contracts in the state at a time when roads couldn’t be paved fast enough. I know they paved Kings Highway all the way to Potosi, large parts of Grand Avenue in St. Louis and many other major and minor thoroughfares not only in Missouri, but throughout the nation. They were very wealthy. 

Uncle Joe Murphy was quite the gambler. Our family farm south of Festus where we grew up was inherited from Joe and my Aunt Annie. Aunt Annie was the sister of my paternal grandfather, Robert Almany who died in 1933 at a very young age, when my dad was two years old.

Family lore always said that Joe Murphy won the farm in a poker game. I don’t know if that’s true, but I heard from many old timers growing up that the most high stakes poker games in the state were played in this little Log house, pictured here , on the Murphy farm. Interesting, after its gambling days the log house became the house where I lived the first four years of my life. When I lived there, it had no electricity and no running water. It has fallen into obvious disarray.

Uncle Joe and Tom Pendergast became fast friends. They not only shared the demand for the concrete they both needed in the road construction business, but they both had an affinity for high stakes poker.  Dad insisted that Pendergast was a regular at the log house poker games. The games would sometimes run three straight days. Family bragging also likes to note that several times a young Harry Truman tagged along with Pendergast. Truman was well known as president for his love of a good poker game. I don’t know if Harry Truman playing poker on the farm is true or not, but it makes a good story, so what the heck. But I do know Pendergast was a regular.

Uncle Joe employed a large number of black laborers. They did all of the road grading back then by mule. They had huge road graders that took a large team of mules to pull. I’ve seen pictures or the entire hillside of the barn on the Murphy Farm south of Festus covered with mules. Uncle Joe would winter his black employees at the farm and then in the spring send them and his mule teams out by rail around the country.

Dad loved to tell this story and I’ve heard it from others as well so I think it is true. There was a member of local law enforcement who did not take kindly to so many blacks spending the winter on the farm. Dad always called him out by name but I won’t do that. It’s a well-known local name.  The local cop let Uncle Joe know that he would tolerate the blacks staying on the farm, but they needed to stay out of town, and the cop would need two dollars a head per month for security for each black wintering on the Murphy farm.

Uncle Joe called his friend Pendergast who then sent down a couple of his Goons. Dad said they were both about 6 foot five inches tall and dressed like they had just stepped off an Untouchables movie set. They asked Uncle Joe if he could take them to town and point out this constable as they would like to try to reason with him.

Uncle Joe took them to town and they found the local policeman on Main Street at a gas station with a bunch of his friends. It’s exactly what Pendergast’s boys wanted.

They both got out of the car, each grabbed the local policeman by an arm and lifted him up 3 feet off of the ground. One reached into the local cop’s pocket and pulled out a little Derringer pistol that he was known to carry. The other said, "if you ever try to shake down Joe Murphy again, we will be back and we will stick this toy pop gun straight up your ass.”

Dad said the two goons set the cop down, put his pistol back in his pocket, straighten his jacket for him and patted him on the head. Half the town saw it. Uncle Joe never got harassed again about his black workers staying on the farm.