ustxtxb_obs_1965_05_14_50_00016-00000_000.pdf

NNIN Dialogue had one medical school, the one at Galveston, and the population of the state was around one million people. Well in 1965, the state still has only one state medical school and our population has grown to ten million. That is why Texas is woefully short on doctors, that is why all doctors will tell you they are worked to death, that is why house calls have been largely abandoned, why if you get real sick you have got to go to a hospital for treatment. What Texas needs is not just one medical school, but six. We ought to have one at Texas Tech, one at Lamar Tech, one at Houston University, one at San Antonio, and one at Fort Worth, and anybody in his right mind knows that. If we needed a medical college in 1880 we need ten now. But John Connally’s super education board, composed not of educators but of Big Money and the Big Rich who contributed to his campaign, is not going to take care of the educational and medical needs of the population. . . . I don’t know who is going to run against John Connally this next time, but there is a state representative from Grand Saline, name of Hollowell or something like that, who has been telling Connally off to his face and he has been citing chapter and verse of Connally’s promises of four years ago about how he was not in favor of fouryear terms for anyone, let alone governor. Maybe this man Hollowell will run. Maybe Dori Yarborough will run. But we desperately need a man to beat John Connally’s plans for the people of Texas. This time, we would have the teachers with us. Every one of them, for what he wants to do to the teachers shouldn’t happen to a dog, and a yaller dog at that. Speaking of Don Yarborough. Why don’t he get on the ball over in Houston and tell us what we want to hear. We need a leader now as never before. We have got to send John Connally back to Sid Richardson in 1966. El 16 The Texas Observer- V.63g32288St3838n3 gaga SUNDAY NIGHT Night wrapped in an old army blanket In the backseat of a ’55 Ford In the parking lot of a dance. A boy staggers by and says HOW ARE YOU? A girl giggles somewhere. The sharp pop of a beer bottle being busted under somebody’s tire. SUMMER AFTERNOON A deserted rock schoolhouse On a country road The windows all broken out. A single once-white seesaw bumps against the ground Driven by the wind Again And again. WEST TEXAS AFTERNOON I walked alone In lone grey hills Sprinkled with bluegreen bushes But no grass. I came upon old adobe foundations And rusty ration cans marked U.S. ARMY. I heard the quietness And then the far away scream of a train at some crossing And I saw a rising wall of dust far to the south Where a pickup raced hell for leather Over a dirt road. ROXY GORDON Austin THE POET AT TWELVE AND TWENTY-FIVE Though what is needed now I haven’t got, There was a time when I could improvise. In place of store-bought games I’d drag out my midnight eyes, see the moon was up, and take off cross the cotton patch. That Sooner dog would get right in after a jack, while all I’d catch was the dirt down inside my tennis shoes. But then somehow, through a polecat or two, we’d come to where the plow had stopped, the grave began. It came so natural in those days I just paid it no mind at all. Without a thought for where its blaze might blow, I’d build the fire from deadwood piled by a barbed wire fence, its coyote skins tied fast. Now that’s gone, what’s the use in sense? DAVE OLIPHANT Austin GOD Pitch trapped prehistoria did react with no finer poise. My barrel fingered paws, Picasso foreshortened in a show window’s rebellion, did Modiglianify on contact. Her circumscribement, the form’s catatonic block; chocolate, a cinnamon skin sprung to my touch. What dumb God made hands of persimmons? Her skin’s cringings a confusion, I asked, and she answered, “Have you ever asked your mother why you’ve one brother near white and another named Midnight?” Have you ever thought, I ask, that contrary to common teachings, we’re named, too? Wake-up, Whitey! t. rivers Austin The Ranch: An Ending You oughta be horsewhipped for running such a tremendous piece of writing as Elroy Bode’s ‘The Ranch: An Ending” I had safely stored a raft of such recollections ‘way back in my subconsciousof similar days and similar grandparents back in Hill Countryand then Elroy’s literature opens the floodgates and all the poignant memories are unleashed again. I don’t know Elroy from AdamI ain’t concerned with his politics or his philosophiesbut on such subjects as “The Ranch” I believe he was There. I wasbrieflyand painful as it was, I admired his You-Can’t-Go-Home piece. Thomas E. Turner, 1216 Austin Ave., Waco, Tex. This Is An Asian Civil War In the face of almost world-wide opposition to our illegal bombings against North Viet Nam, the minority leader of the Senate maintains that for the United States to withdraw from Southeast Asian battlezones would be an insufferable blow to our prestige. We cannot allow a small nation to dictate to us. In other words, he is saying, our precious prestige, the image of conquering hero we should present to the world, is vastly more important than the lives of servicemen, the mirror of whose youth is being shattered daily into countless fragments. In a world of modern armaments almost any peace treaty is better than a retaliatory action of ruthless devastation. This is an Asian civil war. Our territory is not being threatened. We should keep out of Viet Nam. Lucia Trent, Austin, Tex. .14