Part Owner of Texas

When Tex Midkiff of Yantis was attending Stephen F. Austin University in Huntsville he worked as a prison guard. Occasionally he would take some prisoners serving time for drug offenses to high schools and let the inmates tell about their experiences.

They urged the students not to get involved with drugs so they wouldn’t end up in prison. Some of the inmates weren’t much older than the high schoolers.

Tex graduated with honors in criminal justice studies, then spent some time as a professional poker player. His time as a prison guard led him into security work all over the United States and some foreign countries. He was in that field for thirty years.

“At one time I had about 4,000 security guards working for me. Some worked as personal body guards but mostly I provided guards for Fortune 500 companies.”

Tex grew up in Palestine, where he loved to see the seasons change.

“Around Palestine during the spring, the dogwoods come out and it looks like popcorn on trees in the dark forest. Fishermen always say when the dogwoods come out it’s time to start catching crappie.”

Tex has had a house on Lake Fork since 1996. He loves to fish.

“Lake Fork is the best bass fishing lake in the United States. My cousin caught the state record crappie at Navarro Mills in 1968 and it’s still a record today. It weighed four pounds and ten ounces.”

Tex writes a monthly column for a newspaper in Yantis. He wrote about his cousin’s record catch. He gave the column a catchy phrase: I ATE THE LARGEST WHITE PERCH EVER CAUGHT IN TEXAS.

Tex got interested in writing when he was in high school and wrote poetry and short stories. He has written four books and is working on one about Texas country musicians.

He is writing it with popular Texas DJ and show producer Enola Gay of KSST Radio in Sulphur Springs. Tex sometimes writes about women, but admits he doesn’t understand them. He told me a story about his wife.

“She needed to go to Dallas to see her nephew in the hospital and she wasn’t sure how to get there. She and her sister were going in her sister’s car and it didn’t have a GPS. I put the hospital’s address in a portable GPS I had and gave it to her. A couple of hours later they called and said they made it to the hospital just fine. Then an hour or so after they left the hospital my wife called and said they were heading in the wrong direction, going north instead of east. She said she punched home on the GPS. I told her we used that GPS when we lived in Kansas City.”