ustxtxb_obs_1955_04_04_50_00006-00000_000.pdf

El Salvador A Village Girl’s Story Tona Poppa said that sister lost her honor. I went to sister and asked where it got lost. She cried, and said along the river where the guiscoyol is green and sweet. I looked all morning. I found a little mirror further down where the women wash. It had a slender silver frame and made the guiscoyol like dew-fern. Poppa, I said, Is it like this? And poppa cried too. Bruce Cutler LA GRANGE My car broke down just past La Grange. At the junky grease-colored garage at the edge of town the German told me it would be half a day, and Frank Kana, who played baseball at the University when I was there, invited me down to the Lions Club for lunch. He’s the tail-twister. His insurance office is in the window of the Lester Hotel where they meet. I once spent some time in this hotel with my uncle. He had come here because the sandstone courthouse is a thing of beauty. he is an architect, and he needed to be near it to’ sustain an illness and the destruction of some New Deal projects he gave some of his years to. It’s the damndest hotel. You could just go upstairs and go to sleep if you wanted. Nobody seems to care. Kana introduced me to a lot of the Lions in the lobby. \(Riding downtown, he had said to me, “I’m or ties on white shirts or sports shirts open at the neck. They laughed a lot and were friendly. I sat down at a long table with the editor of the La Grange weekly. He said he thought there should be room for a paper like we’re running. The food was country food. The cooks, a couple, served their handiworkfried chicken with a barbecue flavor, corn, sauerkraut and beef chips, noodles, peaches that just fell off the tree, and coffee and ice cream. There was no limit to the chicken, they just kept bringing out the platters of it, hot, till everybody stopped reaching. “Lemme try some a them noodles,” said the agricultural agent from Lafayette. They passed them Sown the long table. “An chicken aseif you don’t holler you ‘4. eat.” is hustled around the tables in’ at everybody who came .e. They’d all drop a dime or nickels in the enamelware pot le carried around, clinking it. Once hey broke into “Jingle Bells” to he rhythm of his clinking. The meeting got started. Man in. 1 yeller shirt up front said “Song 45.” We all sang loudOld Mc `onald had a farm, eeeyii …. And e first verse of America. Then all put our hands over our t-ts and took the pledge of allegiance \(with the “under God” in it blessing and we started eating. The talk ran. on like a stream roaring through a quiet forest. They introduced the guests and I stood up. I had meant to tell ’em “1 bring greetings from Rotary” and get fined but I sat down with-Alt doing it. There was a county fat stock ;how going on, and a lot of animal husbandry professors were there. An Aggie exa young fellow who used the word “terminology” and drew “000h” from them for doing itwas introducing them, and he mentioned Aggieland once and got his tail twisted a quarter. He did it again and appealed to the chair for a vote. Their sympathies ran. with him but Frank hollered at the President: “The tail twister’s word is law, now, ain’t it, Mr. President?” “Yes, T’m afraid that’s right,” said the president, a quiet man all the noise seemed to intimidate. A roar of protest and admiration went up and the Aggie forked up mother quarter. The paper editor shouted at Kana as he passed, “Why A&M’s just a branch a the University ain’t it Frank?” All of them at the table laughed a little, they’d heard that before. The Aggie introduced the first speaker, a professor from A&M who was judging the hogs. Now this professor said the hogs this year were better than last year. The prize ought to bring a dollar a pound this time. “We’ve -en overemphasizin’ overfatness our hogs,” he said. “I’m a great tier for type. Perfection was ed in a book we used by a man named Bonn as the ideal standard we set by which an animal best fulfills the uses he’s intended for. We want to raise that kind of a hog, and cow, and chickens, and the same applies for our own associates, the ideal we set for the lady or the gentleman. We’ve got to work for the ideal hog, the meat-type, and the ideal person, too, and that’s why I like to come here, I’ve got my standards for people, and I can rate you folks pretty high on my list. And you live up to that ideal by such associations as these. I know you’ll go on raisin’ good pigsI’m proud to be here again,” and with that he sat down and got thunderous applause. The Aggie ex, who had taken a course under the professor, quipped that he hadn’t given the professor any notice, but that was turnabout for that pop quiz he’d given him one time and he’d tell you, the professor came off better than he had. The judge of the chickens said they were in fourteen blue grades up to superior. And it was good to raise such fine chickens but more important to raise good children. And these fine stock shows gives them somethin’ to think about and hope for and work toward and uses up their energies and are a fine thing. That’s all he had to say he said and sat down. He got pretty good applause. The judge of the dairy animals gave ’em hell for not making this a more important part of the show. He said after he announced his decision tonight he’d probably be like the bride who left the bridegroom at the altarmaybe he meant the bridegroom but that didn’t matter, they got it all right and laughed pretty hard. He sat down to great applause and foot-stompin’, though he didn’t say much. He must be well-liked anyway. Then the goat judge stood up to have his say. He had on a cream jacket and a red string tie and looked like a Senator except his hair wasn’t curled at the back. I don’t recall what he said except he guessed he was the goat in this here goat-judgin’ and they gave him a pretty fair hand. The president announced he’d need a meeting of the Board of Directors after the adjournment. Come back if you can, he said to all of us. An older man read a letter from the school superintendent inviting them to lunch at the school cafeteria two weeks from then. They decided to go out in a bus from the hotel. The man in the yeller shirt said “Let’s sing the last song!” and they didme standing silent because I didn’t know the words and he didn’t give the song number. On the “Let’s Go!” they all started breaking up . and Frank Kana came smilin’ through the crowd and said he’d have to stay for the Board meetin’ but it sure was good havin’ me an I said how I enjoyed it and shook some more hands. Then I went out into the sunshine. It was warm. I kicked around town for a while, bought a tie, and then the car was fixed so I walked out to the garage and went on to Houston. RD The Texas Mind Page 6 April 4, 1955 THE TEXAS OBSERVER A Talmadge Is Received In San Antonio k; SAN ANTONIO It was no crowd of rednecks or cotton pickers that gathered quietly in Municipal Auditorium here last week. They were mostly white collar people, and there were about 450 of them. There were no cries of “Pour it on, Humman!” ,Herman Talmadge, former Georgia governor, poured it on anyway under the auspices of the American Heritage Protective Committee of San Antonio. He lashed out at the U. S. Supreme Court, called it a “glorified board of education” and claimed it ruled against five separate previous high court decisions when it -called for desegregation in public schools last year. He said the desegregation decision is the “greatest single blow that has ever been struck against constitutional and local self-government.” Talmadge said the ruling has “set the court up as a glorified board of education for every school in Bexar County.” He said there is a threat to local control, and that threat reached its peak with the desegregation decision. “This decision,” he said, “was handed down despite the fact that the word ‘education’ is not mentioned in the Constitution … It was handed down in full knowledge that the school systems were created by the individual states and are financed almost exclusively by them.” There were about ten Negroes in the audience to hear the address. Talmadge at one point said: “The Negro has advanced more during the past 80 years than any similar race in all history. This was largely accomplished by the people of the South acting under and through local governments and schools.” At the close of Talmadge’s speech a group of well-wishers filed onto the stage to meet the young Georgia ex-governor. Among them was Thomas H. Reagan, suspended city policeman who was a City Council candidate and is state leader of a group called the National Association for the Advancement and Protection of the Majority of White People. Talmadge posed for a picture with Reagan at the request of the ex-patrolman. The speech was arranged by Austin F. Hancock, head of the local sponsoring group. Hancock is a retired South Carolina insurance executive now residing in San Antonio. The speech was financed in part by about $130 collected from members of the audience. Talmadge accepted the invitation to speak here after Senator Joseph McCarthy had been invited, had accepted, and then turned it down with his regrets last month after being told that the sponsoring group is not well disposed toward Jews. A Short Story The first person I saw after returning to town from a month’s hunting trip into the hill country was my dearest friend, who, to my surprise, was wearing a uniform and carrying a rifle. I flipped a mock salute, asked “Are we at war?” and laughed at my joke, but he replied, “We are. While you were off hunting, our country went to war with England.” I scoffed, but he said further, “It’s true. That is why I am in uniform.” He appeared very proud. “How do you like it? They have named it the Two-in-One because it is reversible. On this side it is a khaki, uniform, but by simply turning it inside out, I have a serge blue civilian suit.” He shrugged. “One does not know how long these quarrels will last.” “It is very handsome,” I said, politely feeling the material, “but I was not aware we were angry with the British.” My friend became impatient. “I am no student of history, and I cannot in a minute catch you up on a month’s news. I can only say that it was some long-standing dispute that suddenly flared up.” And he marched away. I found my wife in a frantic mood. “Your Two-in-One has been ready three weeks,” she said. “Why didn’t you return as soon as you heard?” I threw my hunting gear on the floor. “Anyway, I am too old for a uniform,” I argued, but she silenced me with the news that “Ruth’s husband is in, and Mr. Hubbard is already overseas.” Mr. Hubbard is my wife’s uncle. “What is this all about?” I asked, but she only waved her hands and walked from the room. An hour later she told me that we had been On November 6, 1885, a Northeast Texas schoolmaster whaled the tar out of a seventeen year old lad Rho had persisted in wearing a sixshooter into the school room. The youth’s parents apparently did not approve of the teacher’s act, and a complaint was filed in the county court. The County Judge a jury w a s waivedevidently thought pistol toting was good, and should even be permitted by school boys in school rooms. He found the professor guilty and assessed a fine of $25 and costs. Witnesses had testified that the lad, seventeen years old and larger in size and weight than the teacher, had made threats that he intend& bringing his pistol to school, shooting it off, and raising a row and lots of trouble. ordered to report that night for an informational rally on the courthouse lawn. We went. The front of the courthouse was obscured by flags of many nations and, by the time we arrived, the crowd had swelled into the street. From a nearby lamppost hung a strawman, bearing the sign JOHN BULL, and some of the people were throwing stones at the dummy. A rock broke the lamp, and falling glass cut a bald man’s scalp, but he wiped the blood away with a handkerchief and laughed, and the crowd cheered him vigorously. After a time, the mayor came onto the platform, the crowd quieted, and he shouted, “We will lick them again, and we don’t need George Washington to do it!” The mayor pulled a Union Jack from under his coat, threw the flag onto the platform and tramped on it. At this, the people became frenzied, the women cried and the men hoisted the mayor onto their shoulders, chanting in a great crescendo, “We WILL lick THE LimEYS!” A man came up to me and demanded to know why I was not wearing a Two-in-One, but before I could reply, he slapped me in the face and walked away, and my wife said, “I’ve had it waiting for you three weeks now.” On the way home I again asked, “Did the British attack us, or what?” “You might put it that way,” she said. “Anyway, they have been asking for it a long time, and Mr. Hubbard writes that he has never seen such brutality. He is a corporal and a cook.” At home I tried on my Two-inOne. The sleeves were too long. My wife said, “I’ll take a tuck in them tomorrow. The main thing is that the shoulders fit.” BOB SHERRILL A demand was made to the lad upon his appearance in the school room to give up the pistol. The youth not only refused the teacher’s demand but also tlireatened to shoot the master if he continued his demands or made an attempt to take it. The master proceeded to use a club and soon had the youth subdued and the pistol in his possession. The Appellate court reversed the lower court’s decision with the statement: “That the pupil should have been punished for carrying deadly weapons into the school in violation of the rules is, we think, beyond question.” J. HENRY MARTINDALE Townes Backs Booklet Two hundred fifty thousand copies of a booklet, “The Founding of Our Country,” are being distributed in Texas. It contains the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and articles about the American flag and the Great American Seal and the Liberty Bell. Financial backing was provided by Judge E. E. Townes and others. It is being distributed in the Houston area first. Very Dark Suspicion The editor’s 1948 jalopy is now pouting alongside a Dallas roadway with its right fender torn and hood bent in. 1′ was no match for the four-`