Molly Ivins did say that, didn’t she?
Highlights from her Observer years
When Molly went on the road – be it to far-flung reaches of Texas or the globe – you knew she would mine the richest veins and bring back gold. Some examples:
The Observer goes to the Big Bend
May 24, 1974
Mariscal Canyon, Rio Grande River -- Seventy miles by canoe through the gloriously beautiful upper canyons of the Rio Grande. The way I got into this mess is on account of I am a member of the infamous German Texas Sociological, Historical, Cultural and Anthropological Research Team, which, for the past few years, has been conducting extensive field work in the bars of Fayette County. One of my colleagues in this worthy endeavor is Lonn Taylor, director of the Winedale Museum near Round Top, and a reasonable man who would as soon get into a canoe and go 70 miles on the Rio Grande as he would give up drinking beer. But our other intrepid researcher is Anders Saustrup, the Mad Dane, who, when not teaching German or being the field director at U.T.’s Rare Plant Study Center, devotes his life to scientific observation, enhanced by vast quantities of beer, of the byways and waterways of Texas.
In a rash and probably inebriated moment, I confessed to Saustrup that I had once been a canoeing instructor. I may even have allowed that I was about semi-expert with a paddle. The Devil made me do it. Saustrup promptly booked me into the next expedition to the Big Bend — an honest-to-God scientific expedition this time, comprising three botanists, two archaeologists, one biologist, one and a half bird watchers, two poets and a French cook.
What I had neglected to explain to Saustrup was that I was the worst canoeing instructor in the history of a fancy French language camp for genteel young ladies which resides on a particularly sheltered corner of Lake Champlain. During the first canoeing lessons I ever gave, I announced to the assembled brats, “Now, class, I shall demonstrate for you how to get into a canoe properly.” I then stepped into the treacherous bleeper and turned it over.
All their lives
June 21, 1974
BIEGEL -- One arrives at the community of Biegel by taking Hwy. 71 to La Grange, thence 159 to the 237 junction. Bear right at the junction and continue on to Park. At Park, stop in at Ed L. Hruska’s General Store and Bar (also Real Estate and Notary Public) and ask directions to Biegel.
Biegel, according to The Handbook of Texas, was the first distinctly German settlement in Fayette County. This is on account of it was settled by Germans who were supposed to be going to Fredericksburg but who gave up before they got there. At its zenith, before the war (Civil, you understand), Biegel boasted 50 homes, a school, a cotton gin, a grist mill, a saw mill, and a distillery. It was then famed for its frisks and jollifications, most notably, the dances held by its Schützenverein. Today, Biegel isn’t much besides lovely.
As you twist along Fayette County Roads 119 and 120, the peace of it all starts to seep into you. The unpaved roads turn too much to allow you to go over 30 m.p.h., and at 30 m.p.h. you have time to enjoy the gentle hills, the groves of oak, the redbirds and the green, green, greenness all around.
The city of Austin and the Lower Colorado River Authority are about to bury Biegel under tons of coal slag. In addition, 6,400 acres of Fayette County are scheduled to disappear under a lake of L.C.R.A.’s making. Well, not a lake, exactly. An “impoundment area” for water to cool a coal-fired electric plant. Back in April, members of the Austin city council traipsed over to Arizona to survey an actual coal-fired electric plant and they returned in a state of semi-shock. The belching, black ugliness of it all jarred even ecology-minded, student-elected Councilman Jeff Friedman into venturing that Austin, might, after all, be better off with a nuclear-power plant. But Friedman has since reconciled himself to the coal-powered route. After all, there will be a lot of built-in safeguards and Austin does need the power, has got to have the power, gotta have the power, gottahavepower.
Far Away from the Great Debate on how to supply Topsy-growing Travis with electricity — not to mention the other 40 counties served by the L.R.C.A. — live Mr. and Mrs. Charles Polasek, Sr., (sic) of Biegel (that’s pronounced Po-lah-check). They say they don’t know anything about this business of coal or nuclear. But, of course, they do know. They know that Mr. Herring and “Mr. Bootler” (former Sen. Charles Herring, now general manager of L.R.C.A. and May Roy Butler of Austin) don’t tell them nothing. And this is bad. But the Polaseks listen to the television and read the LaGrange paper and they know what’s coming.
“Maybe I will be dead by den(sic),” offered Mrs. Polasek hopefully. She is an optimist.
The Observer goes to the Soviet Union: Or how I survived three weeks in the USSR with the editor of Human Events
November 1, 1974
Follows a report from Observer co-editor Molly Ivins, who has been traipsing through the Soviet Union with 11 other American journalists. She was on a cultural exchange program (and would like to thank all you taxpayers) sponsored by the U.S. State Department and something called the American Council of Young Political Leaders (ACYPL). – Ed.
MOSCOW, U.S.S.R. -- I had intended to make this a funny article. Since my expertise in the field of Soviet-American relations is even more limited than my expertise on the woolly-bucket bumelia, I figured a jolly travelogue in the style of Mark Twain would be about the best I could do for you readers. Unfortunately, although the Soves have their comic moments, the situation on the whole is not droll.
Less than two minutes after I had arrived in my hotel room in Moscow, there was a knock at the door. I opened it and in trooped three men dressed like electricians. They all carried little black boxes full of electrical equipment and had screwdrivers and other tools slung on their work belts. They looked quite as startled to see me as I was to see them. They indicated that they were there to turn on the television set. They then proceeded to beaver about for five minutes as though they were having a Chinese fire drill. After considerable futzing around, they deduced that the best way to get the tube to work was to plug it in. Then, with much bowing and smiling on their part and much bowing and smiling on my part, they departed.
The longer I stay in the Soviet Union, they more significant I find that episode. In the first place, I immediately assumed, upon sight of that Cheshire-smiling trio, that they were there to bug my hotel room. And that is indicative of Great Soviet-American Truth No. 74: Americans in particular and Westerners in general are paranoid about the Soves, particularly while in their country.
Great Truth No. 75 is that we have reason to be paranoid. As I see it, there are two possible explanations for the appearance of the trio. The first is that they were there to bug the hotel room. That is not an entirely illogical thesis. The Soves do in fact maintain an enormous surveillance apparatus and they do in fact keep close tabs on foreigners in general and any foreigner visiting in an official capacity in particular. The trouble is, the apparatus frequently doesn’t work. Or more precisely, it is distinguished by two typically Soviet characteristics — inefficiency and lack of subtlety. There is an extent to which the lack of subtlety is almost endearing. Given these characteristics, it is not unlikely that the electronic trio arrived to bug the room after the buggee was already present. That kind of snafu would be genuinely their speed.
But I think the far more likely explanation for their presence is that they came to turn on the television set. My theory is that they were a committee from Moscow Local #9 of the Soviet of Television Turners On and one guy was from the Party, one guy was from the Komsomol, and the other guy was there to turn on the tube. Even if they did bug the room while they were there, I am sure the tapes were listened to by a committee of one guy from the Party, one guy from the Komsomol, and one guy whose job it is to listen to the likes of M.I. singing “Honky-Tonk Angel” in the shower. Which, I think, explains a lot about the fact that there is no unemployment in the USSR and also about Soviet inefficiency.
The matter of the television set was interesting on yet another count. I was one of the three members of our delegation who got not only a TV but also a small refrigerator in my hotel room. I am the only woman in the delegation, ergo, I assume the Soviets are gallant. The other two lucky recipients were Hodding Carter, editor of the Mississippi Delta Democrat Times, and Mort Allin of the White House. Carter is a honcho is the ACYPL and Allin, the only non-journalist among us, is in charge of preparing the daily news summary for President Ford, the same job he held under Nixon. Our hosts had Carter and Allin pegged as the leaders of the delegations and so indicated by carting them around in a separate car, rather than by the group bus. They further chose Carter and Allin for special exposure to Komsomol leaders and, in one case, to a tame, house “dissident” artist. They sought out Carter or Allin for special negotiations on the group’s program and generally deferred to them.
The whole phenomenon was indicative of a wide cultural gap: the Soviets could not grasp that the delegation actually had no leader. Here in what they actually call their classless society, there exists the most rigid hierarchical structure I have ever come across, not excepting my experiences with an Algerian bank, a French university, and several American corporations.
I have not yet read Joseph Heller’s new novel, which apparently treats of how folks one rung higher and one rung lower than other folks on a corporate ladder treat their superiors and subordinates, but I am ready to bet that it is nothing to the bootlicking, posterior kissing, and contempt for inferiors one sees constantly in the USSR. I don’t think I have ever so relished my inalienable right to stand up and say, “Gerald Ford is a horse’s ass, Dolph Briscoe is a chucklehead, and Ronnie Dugger reads as though he had been translated from the Latin,” as I have in the Soviet Union.
German Texas
December 13, 1974
ROUND TOP -- East of Pflugerville and north of Flatonia (“The Twinkle in the Lone Star”), south of Dime Box and west of Industry, the Hobbits are alive and well. Most folks who read Tolkien’s trilogy, The Lord of the Rings, think that it is a fairy tale, a myth. That’s just on account of they don’t know German Texas.
The Hobbits have all grown to be around six feet tall and they hide their furry feet in cowboy boots, but elsewise they haven’t changed much since Bilbo Baggin’s birthday party. They are still peaceful, pipe-puffing farmers who drink beer all day, are shy with strangers, and lead lives of profound contentment. German Texas reminds some people of Wisconsin dairy country, only with more folkways, others of Pennsylvania Dutch country before it was overrun by chichi and fake folksiness. But German Texas is really the Shire with a twang.
The Observer goes to Northern California
January 16, 1976
SAN FRANCISCO -- Northern California is about 17 different kinds of cultural shock for a Texan.
For one thing, we arrived the day after the San Francisco mayoral election. “Who won?” we inquired.
“Eh,” said our guide, with a bored shrug, “just your average liberal. Guy with union support who goes to all the Farmworker rallies.” Maybe by 2076 we’ll be able to be blasé about it when we elect your average liberal in Texas.
We went to California to attend the big annual do of the American Civil Liberties Union there. You know how it is with A.C.L.U. in Texas: 50 people in jeans show up for a keg in somebody’s backyard. Halfway through the evening, the keg attendant gets so smashed he stops charging 25 cents-a-cup for the beer. If you’re lucky, someone brings along a guitar and sings “Sam Hall” and that’s it for the big A.C.L.U. fund-raiser for the year. The Northern California A.C.L.U. held its fundraiser in a fancy ballroom of a fancy hotel in downtown San Francisco. A very ecumenical hotel: on the preceding night, the John Birch Society held its annual banquet in the same room. About 700 people turned out for the A.C.L.U. do, the ladies dressed in long, fancy gowns and such. Most respectable looking bunch of people we’ve seen since the last time we are at an A.M.A. convention.