About that Chicken Ranch thing...

It's no secret that I haven't contributed a whole heck of a lot to No Fear of the Future lately. The reason, some of you may or may not know, is that I've been completely consumed by a non-fiction book on the infamous La Grange Chicken Ranch I've been writing. That's a one-time brothel in Texas that inspired the Tony Award winning Broadway musical, "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas," (which is very good) and subsequent Burt Reynolds/Dolly Parton movie (which isn't very good).

Some months back, I was contacted by Bob Mauldin of Expedition Texas about participating in a segment on the Chicken Ranch for that television show. How could I refuse? I met up with Mauldin and the current owner of the Chicken Ranch property to take a tour of the infamous brothel's ruins back in February, and the episode aired this past weekend. Not many people realize it yet, but 2013 marks the 40th anniversary of the Chicken Ranch's closure by Houston television personality Marvin Zindler. Miss Edna Milton departed La Grange not long after, and the intervening years were not kind to the old farmhouse. A series of subsequent owners worried more about profiting from the property's notoriety than historical preservation, and the result is... well, you can see in the videos below.