No one can say longtime Double Oak resident Bernie Carrico isn’t flexible.
From 1980 to 1983, Carrico, a former investment banker who’d moved his family from Michigan to Texas in 1974, was Double Oak’s sixth Mayor. For nearly three months during that stint, he was also the Chief of Police and the Town Judge.
“Talk about a kangaroo court,” Bernie, now 80, said. His stint as mayor came after several years of service to Double Oak that began in the mid-1970s as an alderman and later Mayor Pro-Tem. “We were all volunteers in those days. My Chief of Police was a guy named Nelson Erdman, a pilot who looked just like Chuck Connors from “The Rifleman.” Well, Nelson got transferred to Denver for work. Under the General Law Charter, the Mayor automatically becomes the Chief if there’s no one else. So, in addition to being the Mayor, I’d go out on Saturday nights and bust kids for drinking beer on country roads…