City of Smoke

Several recent obituaries of June Carter Cash referred to her early years as part of the Carter Family, singing over XER, a border blaster, one of the extraordinarily powerful radio stations broadcasting to U.S. audiences from south of the Rio Grande. XER was founded in 1931 by Dr. John R. Brinkley, whose scalpel made, as one admirer said, "the dead bough quicken and turn green again." Brinkley took roughly $12 million between 1917 and 1942 from aging men who wanted to be "sweetly dangerous among the ladies once more." His secret: goat glands transplanted into the scrota of some 16,000 men. As early as the 1840s, according to David M. Friedman's… Read More