ustxtxb_obs_1964_03_20_50_00012-00000_000.pdf

In Texas … after bowling, beer is a natural After you’ve bowled a game or two, or when you’re winding up the evening at the neighborhood bowling center, it’s good to relax with friends and compare scores. What better way to add -to the sport and the sociableness than with a refreshing glass of beer? However you take your funskiing, skating, or at your ease in the game roombeer always makes a welcome addition to the party. Your familiar glass of beer is also a pleasurable reminder that we live in a land of personal freedomand that our right to enjoy beer and ale, if we so desire, is just one, but an important one, of those personal freedoms. In Texas … beer goes with fun, with relaxation UNITED STATES BREWERS ASSOCIATION, INC. 905 International Life Bldg., Austin 1, Texas liberal candidate than Kennard, who has COPE’s endorsement. Willis is probably aiming at Congress when Jim Wright makes his statewide move in 1966. A conservative, Don Woodard, is sponsoring church songs on radio. V Stu Long’s Austin Report figured out that since the Belden Poll showed that 77% of the voters plan to vote in the Democratic primary, 13% in the GOP, there would be 203,115 votes cast in this year’s Republican primary on the basis of the 1962 total vote. This is almost double the number who voted in the 1962 primary. V The Industrial Union Council Report \(the newsletter of old CIO unions in endorsement of Don Yarborough at Arlington: “Isn’t it ironic that the very who have always previously charged that labor was run by bosses turned out to be the only winners at the Arlington exhibition.” The TV Controversy V The cable TV dispute in Austin \(“The Johnsons’ Radio-TV Interests,” Obs. 12 The Texas Observer Feb. 21, ‘641 continues. Capital Cable has not provided the FCC with the option agreement that gives the Johnson company the right to buy half of Capital Cable. TV Cable, bidding for waiver of an FCC rule that limits its programming, contends the terms of this agreement are crucial to the dispute. Meanwhile, Capital Cable provided the FCC with copies of the Observer’s entire report of Feb. 21 on the situation, including, therefore, all the political undertones delineated in that report. In a pleading attached to the reproduced Observer article, Capital Cable accused John Campbell, president of TV Cable of Austin, of “being quoted by the Texas Observer as impugning the integrity of the Commission if the commission refuses to grant TV Cable the boon it seeks,” that is, the waiver. National news media are now taking an interest in the specific contents of the option agreement between Mrs. Johnson’s company and Capital Cable. V The discussion in the Observer last issue on Johnson’s nomination was reported in the U.S. press in a wire service story. Sam Kinch featured, in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Observer’s account of the President’s role in labor’s nonendorsement of Don Yarborough. Dat Paronomasia Has Me In Its Spell Austin My wife is from New England. “Look at the pond,” quoth she during a recent Sunday drive. I am from Texas. “It’s a tank,” I said. “Regional semantics,” she said. “What’s the difference, really, whether I call it a tank or a pond?” Keith Elliott I had her where I wanted her. “Plenty,” I whooped gleefully. “The pond is the lowest form of wet!” My wife rolled her eyes upward in pitiable apostrophe. She moaned. Poor thing, she is married to a compulsive pun maker and verily, it bugs her. Technically, I am a paranomasiac. I do not especially like the word, but I enjoy the malady. Bennett Cerf, a punster’s punster, in 1958 singled out a mot of mine as “the worst pun of the year, and possibly any year.” I. felt deeply honored. The paranomasiac cannot help himself. Virtually every word reminds him of a similar word, and helplessly, driven, he puns. His life is a desperate search for peace and homonymy. Nor is there a punacea for his plight. My friend Leo Yetman is a hopeless case, terminal. One night we were watching wrestling on TV. I innocently observed that both combatants were local boys. “My,” said Leo, “the wrestlers are native tonight.” I would rather own that line than be President. The pun maker, like the alcoholic, is more to be pitied than censured. The inveterate among us even make puns to ourselves. Alone recently, I heard a radio announcement that a new Navy missile would be fired by rockets in clusters of four. “Gee,” I geed, “I hope the poor sailors don’t get cluster-of fourbia.” Clearly, I need help. Still and all, we who make puns are in good company. Divines, philosophers, statesmen, and literati have doted on the pun. Elders have punned in their dotage, too. Even Oliver Wendell Holmes, first among men to term the pun “the lowest form of wit,” was himself an enthusiastic pun broker. And may I adduce a contention of Charles Lamb to strengthen my punegyric? May I vouchsafe that this is a legacy of Lamb? I thank you. Said Lamb : “I never knew an enemy to puns who was not an ill-natured man.” That’s telling ’em, old chop. There are of course those who will carp that the pun demeans our language. I give them Edgar Allen Poe: “Of puns it has been said that those most dislike who are least able to utter them.” In other words, the pun is mightier than the sore-head. Q.E.D. The writer, now living in Austin, is a newspaperman whose free lance work has appeared in various magazines.