ustxtxb_obs_1957_07_12_50_00006-00000_000.pdf

WHISKY DON’S ON CADDO LAKE drink out of that jug without payin’ two bits fer it. “This stopped me fer a-while, I but my throat kept gittin’ dryer and dryer. I licked my lips and tried to remember my last drink, but it didn’t do no good. Then it come to me all at once that a quarter wasn’t worth a hoot to nobody twenty miles from a store, so I opened up on Lum. I says, ‘You are right, partner, nobody’s gonna git a drink of that whisky without payin’ fer it, but you fergtt I am a man with two bits, and here it is.” Now you jes pass me that jug please.’ “Well, Lum couldn’t answer that, so he passed over the jug, and I give him the quarter. That drink begun to smooth that road out and lay the dust like nobody’s business. Lum begun to watch me expand from the corner of his eyes, and I could jes about see his tongue a-dryin’ plumb up. Finally he broke, and says, ‘Jim, I believe I’ll just sorta taste that likker, to see if its gonna satisfy out trade. We don’t wanna make ne bust with our first customers and sell ’em somepin’ that bites and scratches as it goes down.’ “I knowed Lum was a tightwad, so I says to him, ‘Don’t you worry, partner, that stuff is as smooth CADDO LAKE Somewhere d u r in g his more active d a y s, James Johnson had picked up the nickname, “Hadacol.” I never knew whether his sexual vitality of those times suggested it or whether his jibes at his fellow millwrights that they needed Hadacol to keep up with him won it for him. It could have been either. for Hadacol had been a mighty man in both work and play. It had taken not one but two accidents to cripple him to the extent that, when our tale begins, he had to content himself with running a small fish market. Not that he would not, on occasion, take another look around town, or, as he put it, “blow my stacks out.” These were the times when Hadacol would come by a pint or a fifth that would momentarily recall his days of action. I remember o n e such occasion when he was seated in a restaurant booth, his legs of no great use to him. For justifiable reasons, no doubt, the occupant of the opposite booth protested Hada cors behavior, but unhappily came a little too close to his table. Somehow Hadacol pulled him down to his level and gave cause for the charge of simple assault that followed. Hadacol did not regret these occurrences. Usually they were brushed aside with the remark, “Well, he jes paid too much attention to that sweet thing,” or, as more likely would be the case, “He jes thouglat I insulted his wife.” In my own dealings with him I gradually learned that he had spent his youth in the environs of Lake Caddo and truly belonged to the species of fauna and flora for which it is famous. Sawmill work had fitted him for machine work when the war effort came, and what he saw in the industrial centers must not have been near so startling as what their inhabi tants experienced on seeing him. Tall, muscular, with no fear of the devil himself, he doubtless, even in his middleage of that period, gave many a tavern owner a ‘fright. Jury Trial To the Editor: Opponents of the civil rights bill …. have made the charge that the bill would destroy the right to a trial by jury. Your editorial of June 21st, when it speaks of doing “away with jury trials,” helps to reinforce this misunderstanding of the terms of the bill. The board of directors of the Southern Conference Educational Fund, Inc., adopted a statement \(which bears on this in “… .a provision for jury trial … can only be intended to cripple the enforcement of the \(civil the proceeding the very local prejudice against which protection is sought. “The Administration’s civil rights bill in providing injunctive relief properly orients the procedure within the historical area of equity jurisdiction of the courts. Jury trial never has been an in We bumped and chugged through sand so that we got to his house after about two hours, and about at sun-up. We had figured close an the half gallon price, and expected a discount fer good will, and the fact we was goin’ in business, and gonna give a new outlet fer Mr. Bud’s products. He wouldn’t see it this way, ’cause he said he had about as much outlet as he could let out without the Fed’s movin’ in on. him. We had to end up takin’ only three pints, and with a quarter left between us. “Before gittin’ to the old man’s place, Lum and me had fixed our per-drink price at the picnic to be two bits. As prices went in them times, this would start us in business, and then if we wanted to go into the fruit jar trade, we would have some capital. A Dry, Dry Lane “I had the quarter, and Lum had the whisky as we started back over that long, dry, sandy, and bumpy lane. About when we left the clearing of Bud’s place my throat begun to parch, and I knowed I had to have a drink. When I told Lum to pass that jug over, he froze over and told me we had sellin’ whisky, not drinkin’ whisky. That nobody livin’ or dead was gonna have a AUSTIN If you’ve been planning to beat the heat and the fall-out by taking refuge in an aircooled, lead roofed motion picture theater, you couldn’t have picked a better time. Chances are that the fare currently offered there is as varied and unlikely as you could possibly wish. What could be more off-beat than the Warner release “The Prince and the Showgirl” in which Marilyn Monroe finds herself playing the sparring partner of Sir Laurence Olivier? She, incidentally, is the show girl, and he the crowned head, and the show, itself, an adaptation by Terrence Rattigan of his London hit and Broadway flop, “The Sleeping Prince.” Mr. Rattigan, Frankly, you jut-jawed Galahads afflict a lot of your readers with mal-de-mer. JAMES REMINGTON Fort Worth On the News To the Editor: That the Dallas News has hit “rock bottom” with its editorial, “D.O.T. Liberalitariat,” might be a good thing because this means more people will recognize that the D.O.T. couldn’t be all that bad. There is a limit to the Dal lasites’ gullibility. No doubt the people of Russia have for a long time stopped believing every thing they read in Pravda, but then that paper can afford to print unbelievable propaganda. Can the Dallas News afford this? C. E. FALBO 1208-F Brack. Apts., Austin Self-Expression To the Editor: I feel a deep inner need to express myself concerning the situ as any old Bud ever cooked on his kitchen stove while the sheriff was outside lookin’ at the smoke and a-wonderin’ why in tarnation old Mrs. Bicker was a-cookin’ up such a big meal. You don’t need to taste her, I already have!’ “Purtty soon Lum had took about all he could of my tellin’ him how good the drink was, and when I flat out refused him one, he pulled out the quarter I had bought my drink with and says, `All right, Jim. Here’s the price of a drink, now you give me that jug.’ “I took the quarter, and he took the jug. Well, we was still a long ways from the landing, and the road was gittin’ dusty fer me again, so in a little while I had the jug for another pull, and Lum had the quarter. A little further down, the road, Lum couldn’t stand it, and bought a drink from me, to where he had the jug, and I had the quarter. “Yessir, that’s the only time I was ever in the boot-legging business.” We drove along, Hadacol fallen silent. Finally I asked, “But Hadacol, what happened at the fish fry? How’d you and Lum come out?” My rugged friend looked me full in the eye and replied: “Shucks, Mr. Leonard, we never even got to no fish fry. Me and Lum ended up early in the mornin’ of July 5th with an empty jug and that same blamed quarter.” whose talent more and more seems to be a knack for warming up old chestnuts, has here heated that one about Graustarkian royalty having a fling with a fetching commoner. There’s not much flavor left in this goodie, and by the time the evening is over, it has cooled off considerably. Still, Sir Laurence, who functions as both producer and director here, One day as I drove Hadacol toward a little timber cruising job on Caddo, he spoke of the depression days on the lake. “Yessir,” he began, “that was the time me and Lum Perkins went in the bootleggin’ business. We had done tried every way we knowed to scare up somethin’ to do, but it jes didn’t show up. There wasn’t any mills going, and the roads and railroads was full of bums lookin’ for work, and jes moving from one place to another for no particular reason. Through Sand “We couldn’t finance no manufacturin’ operation. Besides, it was about all took up at the time, with cookin’ pots a-goin’most everywhere there was enough thicket to hide a mash barrel and a sack of sugar. We had to hit the retail trade and a boomin’ one fer a starter if we expected our little pocket change to get us anywhere. Well, Lum raked and scraped, and I gat a little P.W.A. help to where we got the price of Leonard Burress a half gallon together, jes before the July 4th picnic and fish fry set for Black’s Landing. “Lum was fer going up to old Bud Bickers’ still and buying the half gallon and then sellin’ her in pints. But I told him we could shore beat that by goin’ in fer real profit, and puttin’ our goods out by the drink. He oughter knowed that a feller at a picnic and fish fry might buy one drink where he wouldn’t have wanted to spend fer a pint. Then when that drink warmed up and spread, that customer would come back till his money was gone, even if it put the whole pint in him. This way we could git starte$ where we might not on a pint, or even half pint, fruit jar market. “Finally Lum come around to my way of seem’ things, and we lit out fer old man Bud’s in his jalopy. He lived near Bear Bottom, and this was before anybody ever heard of farm-to-market roads. In fact, it was purty near before anybody heard of roads. mental sanctity and authority of the court to enforce its own decree, and not on any concept of crime against the state, in which cases the right to jury trial_ is inviolate …” JAMES E. nOMBRONSKI 822 Perdido St., New Orleans 12 \(Mr. Dombronski is executive Jut-Jawed Galahads To the Editor: Will Wilson’s “jaw jutted forbabee, Ron-nee! Get Time-styleized, Scripts-Howard-hued, and clean American boy-ed. Brag on your knowledge of Dick’s joint in San Antonio, hold Lynn’s hand, run them crap shooters outa Galveston \(one of the few liberal Gulf Sharks from the girlie girlies, sing hypocritical hosannahs versus the baddie buddies of the Balinese room, let the boys steal the dome and enhance the diaphragm business in the Capital Harris Green has served it all up with a little spice of his own, and savored it with excellent performances by Dame Sybil Thorndike and Richard Wattis as well. Our girl Marilyn is not, histrionically, in as good form here as she was in “Bus Stop.” Physically, though, she remains one of the wonders of the world. Things are quite heated and more serious in the Hecht-HillLancaster production, “The Sweet Smell of Success.” An adaptation of the novelette by Ernest Lehman, it grubs about in the personal life of a gossip columnist who allies himself with a hopelessly amoral press agent in order to’ break up a budding romance between his sister and a musician who is just about to flower. Since both press agents and columnists have long been considered sacrosanct in the movie colony, I suppose this film, in which both are royally trounced, could be considered a product of the brave, new, unfettered Hollywood we have been hearing so much about. In just about every respect it is perfect. The only flaw is in Mr. Lehman’s script, which is really lurid, two-dimensional stuff. In preparing it f or the screen, though, Hecht H i 1 1Lancaster have chosen Clifford Odets, an expert at making such shallows gush pure bile, to aid in the adaptation; so there is plenty of bite and sting. Alexander Mackendrick, who was originally brought over I believe to direct something else, got the job of stirring up this grisly stew, and James Wong Howe was commissioned to set it all on film. Both have gone about their tasks utilizing a harsh, rest Diverting Cinema Available manship. Burt Lancaster as the columnist and Tony Curtis \(of all are really first-rate, and the rest of the cast \(Marty Milner, Susan Harrison, aren’t far behind. The result is a show high of polish and considerable force that may well leave you in a cold sweat. You’ll really be comfortable, though, if you were left as cold as I was by the film version of Rogers & Hammerstein’s “Oklahoma.” It appeared last year in Todd-AO and didn’t especially get anywhere; so here it is again, this time trimmed down to Cinemascope proportions. Still there, though, is that same debilitating lack of that indespensible quality, style. Director Fred Zinnemann shouldn’t feel too badly, however,. since as far as I know only one man in business has this knack for musicals. He’s Stanley Donen rho can, by exaggerating the acting, setting a proper pace, and using plenty of imagination, establish the mood, even when actual settings of Paris \(“Funny “On the none of these miracles have been wrought upon “Oklahoma.” Let’s hope that the next time our neighbors north of the Red serve as the subjects for a movie, they get George Stevens to direct it. He made “Giant,” y’know. Now there was a show. Incidentally others to avoid are “Paris Does Strange Things” and “Autumn Leaves.” In the former, Ingrid Bergman has a fine time being chased through the City of Light and surrounding countryside by a revolutionary cabal, but I’m afraid that writer-director Jean Renoir hasn’t given the audience much excuse to join in the jollity. In the latter Joan Crawford is married to a lad twenty-five years her junior and, understandably, has hell. The show differs from her other vehicles only in that at no time does she feel called upon to resolve her dilemma by slipping a .38 into a fur coat. For this reason, I supose, it is being shown at the “art houses.” Plainly, this heat has been terrific. tegral part of equity proceedings City, whilst you and Rover Boy ation developing in world affairs. The contempt powers of equity Rotsch sanitize Treasure Isle and Garble. MARK ADAMS courts are founded on the fundasee if I care.