ustxtxb_obs_1964_05_15_50_00015-00000_000.pdf

In Texas . . . after a swim, beer is a natural On a hot summer day, a dip in a cool stream can be wonderfully refreshing. Equally refreshing when you’re relaxing afterwards with friends is a hearty glass of beer. There’s hardly another beverage around that suits what you do for fun as much as beer. Camping, hiking, or just lounging on a lawn chairbeer brings to each just the right touch of extra good living. 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 A Certain Jack Cargill, Jr. “Never before has the black race of Central Africa from the dawn of history to the present day, attained a condition so civilized and so improved, not only physically, but morally and intellectually. . . . “In the mean time, the white or European race has not degenerated. It has kept pace with its brethren in other sections of the Union. . . . It is odious to make comparison; but I appeal to all sides whether the South is not equal in virtue, intelligence, patriotism, courage, disinterestedness, and all the high qualities which adorn our nature.”John C. Calhoun, Works, II, 630. His name is “Rabbit,” as far as I know, maybe as far as anyone has known for years. He has worked in this general store for 17, 18 years, and he knows which side his bread is buttered on. He is thoroughly likeable and accommodating in his dealings with the customers who drift in, seeking a little coolness on this hot summer midday in East Texas; he even has a little joke to tell my partner and me. The butt of the joke is a Negro; Rabbit does not pronounce it that way. My partner guffaws. The store is a large and somewhat musty old place; its owners are two brothers who also run a cotton gin and own several share-cropper farms. They are hard-working men, one of them spending several hours a day atop a tractor, the other operating the store for long hours each day. They are good farmerstheir crop is by far the county’s largest, year after year and they are kind and generous men. One of them, interested right now in doing a favor for an old colored man who is standing dazedly in the store, motions for us to come over to them. “Boys, I got a old spoiled nigger here that could use a ride home; y’all are goin’ up that way, so why don’t ya take ‘im by?” We, of course, readily assent. Old Ed has walked the five or six miles in to the store this morning to spend maybe two bits or so, perhaps for some snuff; he is a gay old man, halfwitted since his stroke, and he talks loudly. The store operator, gratified at having been able to do a favor, returns to the accumulated work at his , desk. On the counter dividing the office area from the main part of the store are two small signs, put there as aids for his customers; they read : “Mr. Sam,” “Mr. Tom.” Joe’s voice is quivering; he is angry, he is hurt, he ismost of alldefenseless. Only the fortuitous presence of a white ally emboldens him to speak at all. My partner answers his accusations: “Now, nobody was trying to steal that corn and those watermelons ; I paid your wife for ’em. But herehere’s another dollar; that should take care of everything. Let’s go.” I say little; though finding out about our acquisitions only after they have been made, I have not remonstrated. I am not sure whether my partner paid for the Difficulty vegetables or not. I think. “He is unnecessarily callous.” And I am. . . . “I don’t know what these young folks is up to lately,” says the old farmer; “I got plenty o’ white frens; if I needs a loan, I can git it; if I needs credit, they trus’ me. Why do these kids wanna change eve’ thang?” My partner: “Yeah, I’m the same way; I’d sorta like to keep things the way they are.” “Sho’, man; I don’ want t’ mix with white folks. The Bible say God turn Ham black. Why, if you gives me a ride, I sits in the back, an’ I holds my hat here \(lowthese young niggers sayin’ they’s gonna git ’em some white women. Hell! I don’t even like them yella women; I likes ’em black.” I suggest that we had better be going; we bid the old man goodbye and good luck. “You th’ same,” he answers, waving. We are moving now, and my partner crows: “I told ya; they don’t want it either.” The local newspaper receives a letter. “. . . After putting our trust in to our Corn mission, we find they are on the verge of selling us out. We would be just as well off if we had voted in the Negro candidate…. Maybe you think little Bobbie is going to put you on his honor list? You are helping destroy the finest way of life known to man. May God have mercy on your soul.” A letter with an illegible signature is sent to a dissenter. “Indeed your perfidious attack on your ‘native COMMUNITY’ and your ‘South’ was recognizant of your true `INDOCTRINATED’ influence. Your austere comments were revealed and am sure quite disappointing to those that HAD known you.” An engineering graduate, after reading a report on economic conditions in East Texas, disagrees mildly with its author, offering as a suggestion for improving incomes in the region the ideas embodied in an advertisement clipped from Time Magazine, which tells how a man who was “going broke on $9,000 a year” was able to help himself by subscribing to the Wall Street Journal. [Jefferson was led] “to take an utterly false view of the subordinate relationship of the black to the white race in the South; and to hold, in consequence, that the latter, though utterly unqualified to possess liberty, were as fully entitled to both liberty and equality as the former. . . .” \(The emphasis has been proWorks, IV, 512. May .15, 1964 15