ustxtxb_obs_1962_12_13_50_00015-00000_000.pdf

4,…4640.4* Dialogue fending another Sam Houston State faculty member who used the classroom to oppose Kennedy’s election in 1960. “It’s for freedom in the long run,” he said again. “You break the continuity of free debate, and it puts you, as far as I’m concerned, in the same category with the communists,” I told him. “But there’s so much corruption, everywhere. What’s Kennedy doing? In the steel case . . . He’s buying people with money . . .” “But uprightness can also be a corruption.” “Congressmen surrounded by frills . . “But you can defeat them for reelection.” “Not here. We almost lost our conservative congressman here last time.” “If you do, are you going to turn against the people in your own district?” He looked away, distracted, and did not reply. Willie’s gone. He left the other night. He wanted to have a few beers at the tavern and then leave directly from there in the station wagon he was driving to an auction in Los Angeles. Would I please come over to his house before he abandoned it and take the stuff he could not take with him to California? He was palpitating to get out of that wrecked house: It was as though he had a deadline. He paced from room to room, folding sweaters, rolling up sweat suits in paper, lugging boxes onto the porch for the Salvation Army, closing suitcases, discarding papers on neat piles arranged in an orderly way all over the floors, giving me things so fast I couldn’t speak. I was depressed into silence, and while helping, spent most of my time nipping from a pint of whiskey he had set out on the table for me; he would not drink. He was in a panic to be gone. “There just comes a time,” he said. He paused in the middle of the living room to think for things he had forgotten. He stood well and bore himself lightly. He would not take, and left, he thought, for us, the vacuum cleaner, fan, lamp, Mexican bowl, letter basket, chafing dish, brass scale of justice, cornucopia, child’s lifesaver, butcher knife, camp skillet, assorted cooking and glassware, and the pint of whiskey. I forced the vacuum cleaner into the wagon and slipped in the skillet, the butcher knife, the metal kitchen ware; and the whiskey, unbeknownst to him, I tossed into the back on some clothes; but the rest, I kept. At the tavern, two others and he and I talked for longer than we though we would, two hours? It was the kind of talk without which he, and before him I, could have gone mad in the isolation of the Observer, the loneliness and exhaustion. He asked me to say goodbye personally for him to two people, and he would write a third, but the talk was mostly about the future in Texas, good private talk that happens around a campfire or a table littered with steins of beer and broken open pistachio shells. Listening and watching us, he did not say much. He had excused himself a moment ; the waitress came to the table and extended amid the three of us talking hotly there, a blank check folded in two. “Who wants it?” she said. “He’s gone,” I said. On the back he had written: Goo deb 94. ot g-FAAJL.,0 au I look out my window to the cactus in the flowered Mexican bowl. The bowl is broken by the hammerings of children’s hard-hit croquet balls; it lies away from the molded earth in large toppled fragments. The cactus is tough and lives. The Observer is like this. The bowl is broken, but not the earth it held; we can find the new form to enclose it. My duty is also this. We are a cactus. While considering how to describe the Observer on the masthead\(an independent biweekly? a fortnightly journal? a journal for people who are descriptions Texas weeklies carry under their nameplates. The Kerrville Mountain Sun’s “Harvester of Happenings in the Heart o’ the Hills” did not become a really serious contender for our imitation. We were taken with the La Grange Journal’s “Official Newspaper of Fayette County and the City of La Grange,” but not knowing how to go about becoming the official newspaper of the state, nor having all a monstrous mistake and that once the board of regents understood it, the whole thing would dissipate. His faith in this was astonishing, and his reliance upon President Lowman as the agent of clarification was pathetic. When Dr. Koeninger returned from the farce called a hearing, his was not the disappointment of a man who had lost a position on a faculty \(one the heartbreak of a man who had seen his whole faith ground under the heel of a group of men arrogant time to inquire how the Journal pulled its coup in La Grange, we skipped it. The White Rocker proclaims that it is “The Only Newspaper Published in White Rock,” but we did not feel it would be quite as impressive if we called the Observer “The Only Newspaper Published Thursdays at Futura Press.” A seemly reserve restrained us from adopting the slogan of the Eldorado Success, “Schleicher County’s Only NewspaperOffering the Best Advertising Medium,” and a desire not to embarrass the authorities constrained. us from something like the worthy motto of the Three Rivers News, “Dedicated to the Service of the People and the Institutions of Three Rivers, Live Oak, and McMullen Counties.” We were most tempted by the Victoria Mirror’s crusading banner, “Boost VictoriaThe City With a Future,” but not being paid up in the Chamber of Commerce, nor even the Headliners’ Club, we decided against the in-group bit, so here we are out on the windy plain, an independent fortnightly a journal of free voices. in their stupidity and secure in their power. He became painfully aware, too, that evening, that some men, in the face of fear, place loyalty and ideals second to security. After 15 years of dedication to Sam Houston on the highest level, he saw his efforts crumble without defense from the president, and the faculty was conspicuous only in its silence. . . . William S. Painter, State University of .South Dakota, Vermillion, S. Dak. \(Dr. Painter was president of the Sam Houston chapter of the American Assn. of University Professors when Koeninger was fired. Painter Ridden by Fear It is regrettable that the delegations from the University of Houston and Southwest Texas State could not vote in the Koeninger case. What is even more regrettable is that the delegates from East Texas State were so ridden by fear that they were unable to identify themselves with their profession. Commendation is certainly due the 34 delegates who voted to censure the board of regents of the Texas State Teachers’ Colleges and the president of Sam Houston. If the faculty will not stand up for academic freedom and due process, no one will. George W. Linden, 204 E. Summit Dr., Collinsville, Ill. CLASSIFIED ROOMMATE WANTED One female roommate needed to share apartment beginning spring semester. For information notify Jean Hubbard, 4039 Cole Ave., Apt. 102, Dallas 4, Texas. 15 R.D. December 13, 1962 Phow Rack Al Pt int at fast Two of the most sought after books in the entire repertory of conservative literature dealing with the importance of the money question and its impact on world events. THE TRUTH ABOUT THE SLUMPBy A. N. Field..$2.50 ALL THESE THINGSBy A. N. Field $3.00 Order From: OMNI PUBLICATIONS P. 0. Box 216 Hawthorne, California Write for free brochure listing other important titles on the money question and other related subjects. To Ronnie Dug ger and staff we extend pachydermatous wishes for every success in conducting the affairs of the new, fortnightly Observer and total access to our considerable treasure of profundities of the intellect. ONWARD and UPWARD! ELEPHANT HILL SCHOOL OF ECONOMIC THEORY P. 0. Box 66103, Houston 6, Texas “Wellspring of Conservative Thought”