ustxtxb_obs_1965_07_09_50_00011-00000_000.pdf

Since 1866 The Place in Austin GOOD FOOD GOOD BEER 1607 San Jacinto GR 7-4171 Post: What’s good for me is good for Dallas, too. All: This is true. Cullum: If I make money so do you. All: Course we do. As long as we’ve got the dollar bills You can be sure of, cure of all Dallas’ ills. That is true. Ling: What’s all this talk of poverty? All: Such a war. Ling: Why, things are great at LTV. All: Yes they are. We simply can’t understand the fuss As long as everything is going right for us. Ling: Wonderbar. Cullum: The Tom Thumb stores are doing well. All: We can tell. Jonsson: We have a runway parallel. All: It is swell. A Communication To the Editor : I remember some time back lounging on the backwash of a conversation you and another one of my young friends were having. You remarked to him that likely there was no more pitiable sight imaginable than that of an iconoclast finding himself sitting among the fragments of icons with not one symbol to be reduced to rubbish. You did not become articulate on the subject, but I am quite sure that on your heart, you knew at the time that any iconoclast worth his salt would in this situation simply turn upon the legions of the devil and take just as much pleasure in destroying their symbols. For nigh onto forty years I have been jousting with windmills, and now with many a doughty Sancho Panza who once acted as arms bearer in a safe and secure state of consensus, so help me, one or two windmills have toppled. Unlike the iconoclast, I do not have to cease my jousting, for many, many windmills yet remain, but alas, as poor Don Quixote would have discovered had one of his windmills toppled, after all, the damned things are only windmills. Last January, an election for on-premises sale of alcoholic beverages within the city of Marshall lost by some 200-odd votes. Some of us considered that our well-meaning prohibitionists who lived without the city limits but were receipted poll tax payers within the wards lying within the city had wandered into the polls and voted. I believe it was the British who inscribed beneath an extravagant boundary marker of the Chinese along the Indian border the legend, “Welcome, strangers, so far from home.” This must have been the reception given the out-of-city voters by the election judges and their prohibition assistants who Aston & Stewart: In Dallas lots of cash is spent And we are glad to lend the dough at 12 per cent. All: Oh, how cheap! PoSt: Braniff stock is flying high. All: What a guy. Jonsson: Transistors soaring at T.I. All: Breathe a sigh. Carpenter & Stemmons: Industrials rents are in climb And we assail the tale that tells of rising crime. All: It’s a lie. Some say we’ve been lax, ’bout West Dallas shacks. But here are the facts: Stemmons: We have planted some petunias. All: Yes, Dallasites can rest at night. Aston: Not a fuss. All: And know as leaders we will always do what’s right. Right for us! had qualified and aided in the election in January. In May, we decided to shatter all precedent by holding an election with a genuine secret ballot and assistant election judges of the persuasion that legal control of offpremises sale offered a better solution than prohibition. The enclosed photocopy of one of the milder forms of exhortation of the prohibitionists will set the tone of the election for you.* On the early morning newscast of our local radio station, I was treated to a dissertation, obviously aimed at me, warning the good burghers against a vote for liquor and all that it brings in its train, saying that the legal control movement was but an outgrowth of the liberal kind of thinking that was trying to get Red *A letter from the “Harrison County Progressive Association” that reads as follows: “DearChristian, “In Judges 7:21, we find the following words: ‘And they stood every man in his place round about the camp: and all the host ran, and cried, and fled.’ As your pastor, I urge you to stand in your place this Saturday by going to the polls to vote in the upcoming election on the liquor issue. “The ‘wet’ forces in recent days have used very clever and deceptive arguments which are distorting the simple facts. Their claims of economic advantages and better control are illogical and contrary to fact. We as Christian people know this and we must back up our convictions at the polls this Saturday. “Every Christian has an obligation to vote against the economic and moral blight of legalized alcohol. We can prevent this influence from entering our city if we all vote dry Saturday. We can vote ‘wet’ simply by staying at home. “I would remind you of Proverbs 16:8 which says, ‘BETTER IS A LITTLE WITH RIGHTEOUSNESS THAN GREAT REVENUE WITHOUT RIGHT’ Sincerely, Your Pastor “P.S. I urge you to be sure and attend the all night prayer service Friday night at our church. Remember this is one source the ‘wets’ do not have.” China brought into the United Nations. That if Marshall voted for legal control, the next thing that we would know, Red China would be a member of the U.N. When the smoke had cleared and the counting was over, we had for the first time in 50 years brought legal sale of alcoholic beverages to Marshall. One thing is to be said for some of our opposition, they are good sports. Many of them indignantly refused to openly declare for legal sales, but just as soon as the election was over, they were among the first to apply for beer and liquor licenses. They were good losers, and ready to accept the profits of defeat. On the other hand, there was one Baptist dervish who took the pulpit right after the election and solemnly pronounced that some 2,400 people in Marshall had voted for murder, rape, robbery, theft, adultery, and prostitutionall the dead certain result of the legal sale of alcoholic beverages. Then, there was the Baptist preacher who sent a letter to all of his flock in the nature of a ban proclaiming that if a member had any connection, financial or otherwise \(such as leasing a building to a liquor be automaticallly excommunicated from the church. This actually happened to one man who leased a building to a liquor retailer and to another who opened a liquor dealership. The first moved on into the Methodist Church, and I hope that the second took the advice of his son in the twenties who consoled his father after three days of moping about having been excommunicated after twenty years in the church with these words, “Well, Dad, after all, you didn’t have no deposit up down there.” So long as the religio-prohibitionists confined their cannibalism to each other, most of us were accepting the inevitable with Christian forebearance. However, their activities have now taken the form of going around to property owners or store operators who they think may have a beer license under consideration and threatening to take their trade away if any sale of alcoholic beverages is allowed on the premises. I don’t know how long it will take the merchants to learn that this kind of trade would better be sent elsewhere, but these activities portend the fact that we shall have another election as soon as it is legally possible to do so. Franklin Jones, attorney at law, Marshall, Tex. July 9, 1965 ’11 `Dries’ in Marshall: The Profits of Defeat