ustxtxb_obs_1968_06_21_50_00009-00000_000.pdf

Keep It Beautiful If America hired people for the job, it would take the largest sort of army to keep our country free of litter. But there’s no need to hire anyone. It’s a job we can do for ourselves. All of us. Every family that spreads a picnic lunch. Every boatman who cruises the lakes and waterways. Every motorist who uses our roads and highways. It is the pleasure of the U. S. Brewers Association each year to give its fullest support to the Keep America Beautiful Campaign. Remember: Every Litter Bit Hurts. This is our land. Let’s treat it right. UNITED STATES BREWERS ASSOCIATION, INC. 905 International Life Bldg., Austin, Texas 78701 do something about it. She went to her minister, who smiled benignly and told her indulgently that there were things in this world which simply couldn’t be helped. She persisted, nevertheless, and urged her husband, who sold bagged peanuts, popcorn, and potato chips and such to groceries and taverns, to join her. One Sunday morning, as they stepped from their house on the way to church, they found the front lawn littered with bags of peanuts, popcorn, and potato chips from merchants who wanted the couple to mind their own business or lose it. The one-woman reform movement ended. During the thirties the depression hit Miss Sarah’s, but she stayed open. Her girls gave credit to good customers or accepted payment in farm produce, when they had to. There were so many chickens the girls couldn’t eat them all, so they raised them, and the place became known as the Chicken Ranch. It became so well-known that men from miles around could call the La Grange operator and ask her to tell Miss Sarah to expect a party of two or four or more at ten. During legislative sessions the lobbyists brought the politicians down for an evening. And each year, after the traditional Thanksgiving Day game between the University of Texas and Texas A&M, alumni of the winning school would treat the whole team to a night at the Chicken Ranchafter turkey dinner, of course. That’s not done anymore; no need to leave the campus; no need to pay. THE CHICKEN Ranch nearly closed for the first time in about 1962 when then-Atty. Gen. Will Wilson was bucking for governor and crusading against sin in places like Galveston. Miss Sarah became very ill and left her garish, turn-of-the-century bedroom for a hospital in Austin. She wanted to close the place but Hilda, the most veteran employee, volunteered to stay so no customer would be turned away. She and two other girls worked the Chicken Ranch until the heat was off. And when Miss Sarah died peacefully \( the newspaper obituaries said she was “a La it from the old lady’s estate. As in any business, new blood will tell. Miss Hilda, who is now in her early forties, had the place redecorated \(without new girls, installed a uniformed Negro maid to answer the door, and ordered the help to wear fetching sports clothes for the day trade and fashionable cocktail dresses in the evening. did not go up, but girls were now permitted, if they wished, to engage in more exotic and expensive exercises with their customers. The late Miss Sarah had been old-fashioned and would fire a girl she caught catering to the tastes of a “preevert.” One thing has not changed under the proprietorship of Miss Hilda. Bottles of Coca-Cola are still used for accounting. Each customer is encouraged to buy Cokes, at 50 cents each, for himself and his girl. The extra dollars go for miscellaneous things the girls need; the bottles are counted by the management to keep track of how much business each girl does. The girls keep about half of what they make and the rest goes to the house, which pays the room and board. The girls live where they work and leave for those few days each month when Mother Nature provides them with time to visit friends and family. Many of the Chicken Ranch girls have fled to Miss Hilda’s from the streets or from knocking around in hotel rooms taking chances on the police or dates with strange hang-ups. The Chicken Ranch is a sanctuary for them. There they find safety and peace and quiet. If they are wild, Miss Hilda turns them back to the streets and their procurers. But that’s rarely necessary, for the girls of the Chicken Ranch take some pride in its reputation as a house of good, wellmannered women. There was a judge, a couple of years ago, who had to decide a child custody case. The ex-husband was suing to take the child from his former wife on the grounds she was a prostitute. When the judge heard that the woman worked at the Chicken Ranch he denied the husband’s petition. The woman must be decent if she worked at the Chicken Ranch, he decided. And he secretly remembered his days as a young legislator. June 21, 1968 9 r a t z Since 1866 The Place in Austin GOOD FOOD GOOD BEER 1607 San Jadnto GR 7-4171