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Note: ld by himself when he was still living) goes, on one occasion, he was working on his fathers ranch near Purves* and there was a dance he wished to go to in Hamlin, a town some miles away. Riding on horseback cross country to get to the dance (horses still being the primary means of transport in those days in rural TX) and figuring that making his own path would get him to the dance much faster than following the country roads of those days, he simply used his wire cutters to cut all the barbed wire fences between where he was and where the dance was being held. The next day though it didn't take long for the irate ranchers to figure out who the fence cutting culprit was, since the line of cut fences started at the Goodwin property and ended near the dance hall. On another occasion, having had several run ins with the county sheriff for similar types of behavior, he decided to get back at the sheriff for some wrong he felt had been done to him, so he walked the sheriffs horse up three flights of stairs in the Erath county courthouse in Stephenville TX, and tied the horse to the door knob of the sheriffs office. It isn't a difficult task to get a horse to walk up three flights of stairs, it is a difficult to impossible task to get a horse to walk down three flights of stairs unless its been trained to do so. The sheriff was not amused. This last act of hooliganism earned him a trip up north to a military academy where his father enrolled him (to keep him out of jail). But Si didn't care for that kind of life so he ran away from the academy, eventually ending up in Littlefield TX where his oldest sister (Edna Lee), recently widowed, had just opened up a store. There he met and married his first wife, Cleda Blair.
*Purves (also spelled Purvis in some documents), TX. Incorporated in 1880, the town had a population of around 300 people by the 1920's, but by the end of the 1940's most of its population had moved on and its school system being incorporated into that of Dublins. It now consist of one church, a dozen or fewer homes, and some abandoned buildings.
Note: "Si" Goodwin was a rather rambunctious fellow in his youth. As the story(as to
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