Battle of LaPaz Junction

My grandpa was full of stories.

Some of those stories have proven to be made-up, like the one involving Cherokee ancestry, as much as I wanted it to be true.  But there were others, including one about a speed trap in LaPaz that caught the attention of prosecutors.  I racked that up to one of those he said was involved had a long-running feud with the family and rival in the truck stop business on the opposite corner of US 6 & US 31.  Now, delving into those headlines of papers long ago, I see that he wasn't making this story up.  But he failed to mention the role that the founders of our own establishment played in 1939.

The original Maddox Inn, built c. 1933 at 6 and old 31

As facts would have it, both Bert Albert, Constable of LaPaz, and Everett Maddox, Justice of the Peace of the same, were engaged in speed traps that resulted in exorbitant fines that the two accepted as payments for their services.  The "Battle of LaPaz Junction" as it became known as in local papers in 1939, finally came to a head when a defendant was not allowed a hearing with the county's prosecuting attorney.  Ultimately, the two seemed to cave under an ultimatum made by Judge Kitch that they resign rather than be brought to trial where they were faced with paying back to plaintiffs five-times the amount collected in the speed trap.

Everett Maddox established Maddox Inn on the southeast corner of US 6 and old US 31 when US 6 was completed through Marshall County as a coast-to-coast highway in 1932-33.  My grandparents bought the restaurant/filling station in the late 1940s, actually traded Maddox their farm for it, and renamed it Garner Inn.  It was razed when US 31 became a four-lane in 1956.  They opened the new truck stop in 1958 a mile east on US 6.  Harvey "Bert" Albert was part of the family that opened a filling station on the northwest corner of the intersection, along with the Alibi Restaurant and bowling alley, all of which opened after the road-widening in the late 1950s.

Next:  "Gramps, did your grandpa really kill someone with a pitchfork over a watering hole?"