re: Need a reminder re: bar fights and who is the most feared player and why

Posted on 8/5/22 at 2:10 am to Keltic Tiger

Posted by OSchoenauer

Somewhere south of Bunkie

Member since May 2008

456 posts

Posted on 8/5/22 at 2:10 am to Keltic Tiger

quote:
Will keep repeating this story : one afternoon, the EBRPSO by The Keg got a call that Cantrell was raising hell there. My friend, a John Candy clone, was a rookie deputy & when the other 4 deputies turned & left the building, he volunteered to see what the problem was. Art was playing the pinball machine...they paid off back then...and when my friend announced himself, Cantrell turned, holding the machine up in the air. As he started approaching my friend, he started swinging the machine like a weapon. My friend eased himself back out of the room. Art put the machine on the floor & continued playing. All the guys mentioned here were tough as hell & quite possibly could knock Art on his arse. But he would get back up, again & again.

Entire post (warning: long)

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Cantrell once allegedly took care of business in a hail of fisticuffs at an establishment known as The Keg.
A former patron of the Keg said that Art lifted a pinball machine and hurled it at four deputies who were approaching him with batons and wearing head gear.

Sorry, but the pinball machine story is apocryphal. Those old “biffer” machines of the time (eventually outlawed as “gambling devices”) weighed about 900 pounds.
quote:
Jesus. This man was a savage.

Cantrelle was big, strong, fast, and psychotic.

In the Keg incident, he was accosted at the bar, around 3:00 in the afternoon, by two LEOs. He was having none of it.

It took him about twenty seconds to disable them both, and leave them semiconscious on the floor. He then walked to the bar, drained the last quarter of his mug of draft, and walked -- briskly -- out the door.

Now, this was not his “first rodeo” -- the police already knew who he was.

I expect that there was some discreet back-and-forth with elements of the Athletic Department, and accommodations made.

But although there was a room full of witnesses, AFAIK the incident never actually made the news.

Today ?? Cantrelle would "go away" for a very long time.