Life's road may lead to rags or riches, but it's a better trip when you take music along

Back when the interstate from Dallas ended in Mt. Pleasant, east bound traffic exited the super slab and was funneled up to U.S. 67 past Carr Denman's four-pump Fina, bait and pawn shop.

"It was a money maker for a while," said Mr. Denman, who even as he was running the station hedged his business plan by buying a drilling rig.

He learned about the drilling business when he worked for McKinney Drilling Company which contracted with a Canadian firm seeking riches in Central America.

Cookville resident Levi Riley is pleased with a pickup truck selection at CMD imports, owned by Mt. Pleasant native son Carr McLean Denman, the only man known to have a street in his ancestral town called after each of his three names. Mr. Denman is or has been a steel worker, a prospector, merchant, a financier, a driller and the owner of Mt. Pleasant's only live theater.

There, he lived in a tent in the jungles, or in barracks.

"Great days," he said. "All the work a man could want and excitement on top of that. We'd drill for gold or cobalt or something until the country had a revolution."

He says that was back in the days when an American was safe anywhere on the globe.

"The trouble was, every time there was a revolution - and I went through two of them - the winning side always came through and nationalized our operation so they could take our equipment," he said.

Bothered by work interruptions created by revolutions, he came back to the states and went to Maryland, still with McKinney Drilling. Mostly, he said, they drilled for foundations.

It was 1964 that he came home and leased the location of his first business, the station and pawn shop on U.S. 67.

"Back then you didn't have to have enough money to launch a space mission to get a pawn broker's license," he said.

He moved on when the interstate opened.

A timely drought put him in the water well business.

"That was before TXU showed up with the checkbook that caused us to build Lake Bob Sandlin," he said. "Every summer when the city lake got low, the city rationed water and all those pretty lawns over in the park started drying up. Those people needed water."

Construction of the lake dried up the well drilling business; he shifted to foundation drilling until double digit interest in the early 80's slowed building.

But California kept booming, so he went out west until things in Texas picked up. With offices east of town on U.S. 67, in January, Denman Drilling marks 40 years of business.

There's a definite merchandising theme at Mr. Denman's CMD imports. He sells anything he can buy worth the money.

Mr. Denman's son, Chuck, handles day to day operation, leaving Mr. Denman free to manage his other enterprises - retail store fronts in Longview and Mt. Pleasant and the Pleasant Jamboree, located in the old Martin Theater next to CMD Imports.

CMD - that's Carr McLean Denman, maybe the only man in town to have streets called after each of his ancestral names.

"I like the idea of that, but I can't see that it's made any difference yet," he says.

Charlie Carr founded the First National Bank here.

"What he didn't own, he held a mortgage on," Mr. Denman said. He also owned the land where the discovery well hit in the Talco oil field. Carr Number 1came in in February, 1936.

The other grandfather, Lamar Denman, once ran for Congress and owned several lumber yards, including one in Mt. Pleasant.

His father developed the Denman edition on the town's east side. McLean Street was named for a great great grandfather, Judge William Pickney McLean, a member of the first Texas railroad commission and one of the authors of the 1879 Texas constitution.

"I'm proud for everybody," says the proprietor of CMD imports, a man currently in the process of shutting the business down.

Nestled among a number of those pay-by-the-week loan companies, CMD Imports, he says, hasn't been a high performance operation here.

"It'll make a little money, then it won't," he said. "I do better with the same stuff in Longview."

As high commander of enterprises currently involving retail locations in two cities, contract foundation work in the metroplex and responsible for booking talent for his family theater, Mr. Denman has time for creative thinking thanks to wife Shirley Ann, the partner in the office.

Tools, toys, Asian ceramics. Velvet Elvis, wind chimes, bird houses, Spanish copper. Swords, switchblades, rebel flags. Bumper stickers expressing uh, conservative opinions in strong terms, power tools, socket sets, sunglasses. Indian dream catchers and handles for hammers, shovels, mauls and axes. Die cast cars, porcelin dolls - that's the inventory, all of it marked down 30 percent.

"Tell these people they need to get in here and get their stuff before it's gone," he says. "They're hauling it outa here every day."

As genuine as he is rough cut, he says it hasn't been that many years since he wondered if he'd die rich or broke.

"And it ain't over yet," he grins.

And, says wife Shirley Ann, he's not without flaw as a businessman. He was, she says, a lousy pawn broker.

"Too soft a heart," she smiles.

When he's on a roll, he's not above jumping feet first into ventures on a whim.

It was his love of country and gospel music that got him into an enterprise that keeps romance pumping through the town's old Martin Theater.

The Martin Theater opened in 1913. Following John Ernie Martin, owners and operators over the years included Dallas-based Cosmo Theater Enterprises, Universal Studios and Charles Dalton. The doors closed in the early 1980's. The roof began to leak.

Kentucky Colonel Buster Doss, a one-time patent medicine salesman, promoter, character of B-grade westerns and dreamer bought the theater in the mid 1980's and established the Frontier Jamboree.

He patched the roof, tore out the movie screen, built a Hee-Haw styled stage and began booking acts.

Burton Harris, who'd cut his performing teeth during the days of live radio, became a member of the house band.

When Colonel Doss's visions began fading, Burton bought the theater.

By then, Mr. Denman was a Saturday night regular.

He bought the theater and has been steadily improving facilities since 1999. He brings in pre-show meals for performers, treats them like royalty.

While his family opened banks, built housing developments and shaped the laws of the land, Mr. Denman's content to preserve the old theater as a landmark, as a place for musicians.

The drilling company is thriving and with his son's help, that business doesn't demand much of his time beyond bidding jobs.

Saturday night attendance - the only night the theater opens - has picked up, but that seems like a secondary issue.

"It's a good thing," he says, "that I can't pick and play and sing like the people we've got coming in here these days. I'd sit around and listen to myself all time and never get anything else done."

Between now and the end of the year, Mr. Denman's keeping busy closing out his import store next to the theater.

"I've got some good stuff in here," he says.

On the other hand, he's honest about products in which he has less confidence.

"Those lighters, ma'm," he advised a potential customer recently, "you're buying that like you took your husband. It might work, it might not."