This is another original true story song, or as true as I could get it. With old stories like this, it's hard to tell where the truth blurs into legend. If you are inclined to learn more about this story, and see some photos of the people involved, just do a search for Joe Ball, the Butcher of Elmendorf. I tried to get it as accurate as possible, based on what I have read about it. Apparently, no one else has written a song about this before!
Elmendorf is a very small town
Down around San Antone
And Frank X. Ball was a rich man
He had the first house to be made from stone
It was named after Henry Elmendorf
But Frank built it from the ground
His cotton gin handled all the crops
That grew on the farms all around
Frank and his wife Elizabeth
Had children upstanding and fine
But they also had one son named Joe
There was something twisted in his mind
They said he was just as good as most
Before he fought in the Great War
But they say he saw things in the trenches
That left him strange and scarred
When he came back home from the war
He started running bootleg whiskey
He'd dip it right out of a 50-gallon barrel
For anyone who had the money
Now, Joe, he liked his whiskey
And he was good with a gun
He would shoot birds off a telephone line
With his pistol, just for fun
And when Prohibition ended
He opened a bar in town
And there he fell in love with a waitress
Pretty, dark-haired Hazel Brown
But Big Minnie was already in love with him
And she was jealous of Miss Brown
So one day Joe took Minnie to the coast
And there he shot her down
Well, Joe knew how to bring 'em in
No, greed he didn't lack
He caught him some alligators
And put 'em in a concrete pond out back
On Friday nights the folks would come
And the party would last all night
And Joe would have a cat or a possum
And the alligators would bite
He'd throw a squirrel or a dog or a cat
Or any live meat he'd found
Into the gator pond while the people cheered
And them big gators would swallow it down
Then Joe fell in love with another girl
Buddy Goodwin was her name
Then Hazel found herself in Minnie's place
And her fate was just the same
He stashed poor Hazel in a whiskey barrel
And hid it behind a barn
But then he fed her to his gators
When authorities were warned
There were two county deputies named John
Gray and Klevenhagen were their last names
They drove out to Joe Ball's bar
Tryin' to figure out Joe Ball's game
Well, Joe went for his pistol
When they walked in the room
But Joe turned the pistol on himself
And Joe Ball sealed his own doom
Nobody knows how many he killed
But several women had disappeared
They found Minnie buried at Ingleside
But there were many more, they feared
They found rotted meat and clumps of hair
Back there in the gator's deep
So they put them gators in the San Antone Zoo
And for many more years
People would come
And watch 'em just a-layin in the sun, asleep.