ustxtxb_obs_1982_05_07_50_00003-00000_000.pdf

Lowell “Duke” Embs in the GOP primary. The governor received 136,247 or 91.6% of the votes. More than 12,000 voters, 8.4%, favored Embs, a former mental patient who spent part of his campaign in jail. I’d be concerned if one out of ten people weren’t voting for the incumbent governor,” White said. “It’s a telling statement about the thinness of support.” In the other Republican race of any significance, Cong. Jim Collins of Dallas earned the right to face Sen. Lloyd Bentsen by defeating Sen. Walter “Mad Dog” Mengden by a vote of 122,105 to 71,733 59% to 34%. The only race with no clearcut leader was the Democratic contest for land commissioner. With 5,755 of the 5,985 . precincts reporting, state Sen. Pete Snelson of Midland held a slight edge over Garry Mauro of Austin, who was 2,500 votes ahead of Rockdale legislator Dan Kubiak. As we move to the June 5 primary, it is the Hightower victory we find most significant not so much because of what he will do in the agriculture commissioner’s office, though he’ll no doubt be effective, but because of how he got elected. He did, in fact, revive the old “rainbow coalition” blacks, browns, anglos, farmers, and city people and he won by speaking in his inimitable style, to the issues. His was the kind of grassroots organizational effort that can work in other races, he was saying Saturday night. “Voters are still asking,” he said, ” ‘What does government do for the people?’ And that’s what Democrats have to answer. If we deliver the goods then people will see that government Works for them and they’ll get involved in politics again.” Meanwhile Hightower must get past a Republican candidate in November who could turn out to be Democratic House Speaker Bill Clayton. State GOP officials say they might try to persuade the party’s current nominee, Donald Hebert, to withdraw if they can find a better-known candidate. Hebert, a 50year-old rice and soybean farmer from Waller, has never before sought office. There has been no word from Clayton. \(The next edition of the Observer will carry complete results of the Congressional and Legislative races; the slow count statewide pushed us past our printA Communication: `Angered and Dismayed’ Paris, Texas I am a fourth-generation Austinite on both sides of my family, the Norths and the Millicans. I read your article “Bad News from Barton Springs,” TO 3/12/82 with dismay and real anger at the Austin city fathers who permitted this thing to happen to Barton Springs. As you said, it is probably the most beautiful natural public swimming pool in the United States and, I think, is God-given. I feel that politics and the yen for money and more money is the thing that made the city planners change zoning laws, etc., to . allow too much building and “improvements” too near Barton Springs. When I was about six years old, in 1911, my father and mother took me and my older and younger brothers to Barton Springs every summer evening to “cool off.” There was nothing there at that time but the beautiful water itself, and brush and trees growing out of the rolling countryside. We parked the car, a beautiful large red Reo, as I remember, at the top of where the steps are now, and slipped and slid down the bank to the water. We children dressed in our bathing suits in the bushes, and there was no one else around. Going up and down the path in wet bathing suits made it muddy and slippery, but it was fun to get muddy, then have to dip into the water again to get clean. I learned to swim in that icy water. We were all equipped with water-wings, canvas contraptions that you wet, then filled with air by mouth, placed them around your chest and under your arms and jumped into the water. The people in our neighborhood \(West caught on to the delights of Barton Springs and started going out with us. The idea grew, and soon the town had a swimming pool. After the city bought the property, they began to make improvements there: widening the stream, building bathhouse and concession stands, concrete walks, etc. Later the dam was built below the springs, making the pool wider and deeper. All these were good improvements, and they did not ruin the beauty of the place. As I grew up my dog-paddling eventually turned into the crawl, which I still do, and I became a pretty good swimmer, never having taken a lesson in my life I learned it all at Barton’s. Four years in the University improved my swimming and “sunning” no end. A dark brown suntan was a must then, and there was no more perfect place to get it than on the rocks at Barton’s. And that was rocks, not the concrete there now. I turned a mahogany color, to my delight and my father’s dismay. It cost a dollar a day to spend the summer at Barton’s. This is literally what we did: A cake of cocoa butter a day to keep the skin oiled .50 Bath house \(if you went in your suit it .25 Hamburger for lunch .10 Potato chips .05 .10 $1.00 Very few of us went on vacations in the summer: it was too much fun to stay home and spend the days at Barton’s. Many of the students went to summer school at the University so they could spend out-of-class-time at Barton’s. . . . I married and left Austin in 1931 and have had very few opportunities to return to Barton’s during these later years. On visits to Austin, there was always some reason to keep me from going swimming. The last time I saw the place was a few years ago when it was closed because of extensive flooding from rains. Water covered the rocks on the other side. I had never seen that much water in the pool before, in all my years of swimming there. With these memories of that great place, is it any wonder that I am angered and dismayed at what has been allowed to happen to a one-in-a-million place? I think some of the things done in the name of progress, growth, and keeping up with modern times are tantamount to criminal acts. If it could in any way return Barton’s to its former glory, I think the perpetrators of these past deeds should be punished as criminals. Mrs. Hardy Moore, 2213 Hubbard St., Paris, Tx. 75460 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 3