A Cow in the Hoosegow

Back before the days of the paper mill, Port St. Joe was a sleepy little town without much trouble.

The City Hall was a small wooden building with a wooden calaboose behind it located on the corner of Clifford C. Simms Blvd. and First Street, where the Advance Auto Parts store is today.

One night a prisoner in the calaboose set his bed on fire and burned the calaboose down.

He’d set his bed on fire before and they came and got him out of the jail, but this time they didn’t get him out in time and he suffocated.

After that, if someone had to be locked up they were transported to the county jail in Wewa.

After the paper mill was built and our town began to grow, the city commissioners decided a jail was needed.

A square concrete block building was constructed where the calaboose had been, with four cells and an open room between the cells. The cells had windows with bars over them.

At times, some friends or relatives of the prisoners would stand at the windows and talk, give the prisoners cigarettes and maybe a drink to sober them up.

Then the city commissioners decided to build a wooden fence around the jail to stop the visiting and prisoners calling at people passing by.

During this era, there were many U.S. flag coastwise ships calling at our port.

Naturally, some of the seamen from the ships would come to town and get too much to drink and get locked up.

One night, some milk cows from Oak Grove came into town. Since there wasn’t a pound to put them in, the police decided to lock them behind the fence around the jail.

That night, some seamen from one of the ships in port were locked up in the jail. During the night it rained, and the cows walked into the open area between the cells to get out of the rain.

The next morning, when the seamen began to wake up, there stood the cows looking at them. I can imagine what the seamen began to wonder when they woke up.

Not long after that, word had spread to all the ports from Brownsville, Texas to Portland, Maine - "Don’t get locked up in Port St. Joe. They lock the cows, hogs and seamen all in the same jail."

It took a while, but our town finally outlived that rumor.