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zagging from Tonopah south to Bishop, ending in Long Beach up against the Pacific this best route almost makes all quibbles pale before the spaciousness and variety of our country. It defies and thus defends the mappers’ gridwork. It is a poem in a prosy mind. Jeremiah had known Jane six or seven months, long enough for domestic squabbling to set in. His need for love is great. “I feel like marrying my motorcycle,” he said. What could anyone reply? Jane had already twisted his little finger after having been slapped excessively. She said nothing. Gloom might have smothered the whole gathering had’ there been more clouds, less beer, and less distracting noises from next backyard, where “What a Friend I have in Jee-sus” followed “Blowing in the Wind.” Instead concealments prevailed. People had fun. Some stars shone. What excesses are worth committing? It seemed as if someone must have asked this, but no one had. What I had heard was not “What successes are worth permitting?” or “What abscesses from birth are fitting?” or any saying of the sort, but merely a voice in my own head. What I heard was “Do you want to fight, dear?” from Jeremiah. “No,” said Jane, in a tone of voice not far removed from her last previous one, which had been near tears. “I’ll get you later.” Her contralto, somewhat tremolo, was unconvinced. She planned to go to Greece in the summer before if ever she married Jeremiah. “I defeated you,” Jeremiah said. “I beat you resoundingly.” “Hurrah,” Arthur said. “You slapped your girl in the face. You won a great victory. You are a great person.” The whole scene rang with happiness and inadequacy. “You are right,” I said. “You are right, Jane. I was wrong. It is east of Nevada!” And north of Arizona.” “Didn’t I say so!” Jane cried. “It has to be! It’s one of those four states that come together! With Wyoming, Colorado, and . . .” “Not Wyoming,” I said. “Arizona, and . . .” “Colorado, and New Mexico?” “Colorado, WyI mean Arizona, and New Mexico.” “And New Mexico, and Arizona. There! So I was right!” “Yes,” I said. “Where is Wyoming, then?” she said. “I have hiccoughs,” Arthur said, and hiccoughed. “Try drinking out of the other side of your glass,” Patience said. “I’ll get my beard in the beer,” Arthur said. “Many women give their hair beer rinses. You’ll be beer-bearded,” I said. “You’ll have the curliest beard around,” Jane said. “May I ride your machine?” Arthur asked Jeremiah. “Yes,” Jeremiah said. “Keep it under 4,000.” When Arthur returned, his hiccoughing was cured. Not so my occasional burping of superb augmented hamburgers. Not so the occasion, which needed time. To turn deer to venison. To turn love stable. Or overturn. Where is Wyoming?” Jane asked again. “I don’t know,” I said. “Why homing?” In the stars I could barely see the full weight of Saskatchewan, which would fall on central Texas in December or late November, and would send us indoors, though it might never snow. AFFAIRS OF STATE An Emergency in the Court of St. John Austin Lieutenant Governor Preston Smith, who seems to be a reasonable man, is not being good, like a courtier should. He has been a member of the Court of St. John long enough to have learned what’s expected, yet he still insists on expressing his own opinions. This would really be perfectly all right, except that these opinions do not always agree with Governor Connally’s. His Excellency took dire notice of just such unseemly behavior a year ago when he offered, to Texas labor, to support, for lieutenant governor against this very Preston Smith, a liberal senator of the governor’s own choice, provided labor would not oppose the governor’s own re-election. Smelling a fish, or maybe several, nor all of them entirely fresh, labor said no. Now, in recent weeks, this churlish lieutenant governor who has the plebeian taste to be named merely Smith has made sport of Governor Connally’s fourth-term crusade for a new constitutional convention, even though it is well known to insiders that the new constitution is to contain a provision making Connally governor for life. Can it be that yet another Lubbockian* is getting to big for his pantaloons? At first, deep blush, it seems even bolder that the lieutenant governor has disputed the governor’s declaration that a new Governor’s Mansion is required for the general welfare, as part of our war on pover 10 The Texas Observer ty. However, we must not let our prejudice against this, this Smith who is so wrong on our need for a new fundamental law blind us to the common sense Of what he is saying about the home of all Texas hearts. The lieutenant governor doesn’t see anything wrong with the Old Governor’s Mansion. It is well built, of southern plantation type, in American Empire style, by slave labor, and it’s done us all right since 1855. What’s good enough for Sam Houston is good enough for Preston Smith. That’s quite right. In fact, let’s get organized let’s form an Emergency Committee to Preserve the Governor’s Mansion! It’s not an emergency, but if you don’t say something’s an emergency these days nobody pays any attention. \(As a matter of fact, Smith’s opposition has given the governor severe pause and he probably won’t have his lieutenants in the legislature try to get the appropriation Smith will be busy with the legislature; he can be honorary chairman of the Emergency Committee. We should probably have two co-chairmen, Don Yarborough and Franklin Spears; they can draw beans to see who speaks first. The Vice-Chairman, of course, will be Allan Shivers; Price Daniel should be the Secretary, with the special additional responsibility to see that beatniks do not take advantage of the disorders during the remodeling to grow marijuana in the gardens or store peyote beans in the outbuildings; and now that Clifton Carter is not working so hard in Washington, he can be treasurer. If Jim Wright later decides that the emergency requires his services, you can always use a chairman of the executive committee, even if you don’t have an executive committee. Logically Senator Ralph Yarborough should preside over the Federal Aid to Ionic Pillars Committee, but he may decide to be chairman of the whole emergency, and being so high in the protocol he must be deferred to. As for the other committees, we can have the Women’s Committee, presided over by Mrs. Stanley Woods, the wife of the oilman; the Committee on Termites, the obvious province of Waggoner Carr, formerly of Lubbock; the Rebuilding Committee, Hank Brown of the building trades, chairman; and the Committees, and their chairmen, on Special Wiring for interested parties, General Preston Weatherred of Dallas; the Gardens, Mrs. R. D. Randolph of Houston \( Subcommittee on the Compost Pile, MauMarvin Collins, the executive director of the Texas Republicans; Anti-Pollution, the chemicals lobbyist, Harry Whitworth; Telephone Surveillance, Marvin Watson of Daingerfield \( Subcommittee on the Kanber Music, State Treasurer Jesse James; Silence, Agriculture Cmsr. John White; Redecoration of the Guest Room, Speaker Ben Barnes; Redecoration of the Sam Houston Room, Sam Houston Johnson; Special Attention to the Staircase, State Democratic Chairman Will Davis; Special