ustxtxb_obs_1967_04_14_50_00016-00000_000.pdf

helped by Medicare. And there was that TV report the other evening which showed that even some doctors are now losing some of the apprehension they had of Medicare. Six million young Americans are in college today, one million of these with federal assistance. Five million more Americans are at work today than a year ago. Wages are the highest in our history; unemployment is at its lowest point in 13 years. A million of our countrymen are receiving job training now, compared to none just six years ago. And the much-maligned poverty war has provided work or training for 500,000 youngsters through the Neighborhood Youth Corps and has helped 1.2 million pre-schoolers prepare for the first grade. The proportion of Americans living below the poverty level has dropped from almost 21% when the poverty fight began to less than 16% now. Now if we could just elect a liberal ,ernor and legislature for Texas. . . . Wh, Us? Our New York City bureau chief, Harris Green, recently sent us a page ripped from the New York Times, which bore an ad placed by some Dallas citizens. It was a reprint of a Dallas Times Herald editorial, advising that Dallasites don’t all tote shootin’ arns and are, in fact, “very” normal. The Times Herald’s TV station recently cancelled a CBS Reports program on homosexuality. This caused Dallas citizen Harold Melnick to write the station to say that he is “eagerly awaiting your next full-page editorial in the New York Times lamenting the unwarranted image of Dallas as a narrow-minded, provincial city.” G. 0. 16 The Texas Observer Country Come to Town I trust the Observer’s notorious sense of fair play will let me reply to R. D.’s woeful account of his visit to my adopted city, New York [Obs., March 17]. First, let’s settle this question about New Yorkers’ being withdrawn. \( They gine that almost all the population of Texas is crammed into, say, Houston. Now, you live in Houston. How eager would you be to “communicate” with just anyone at hand now that you’re deprived of all the wide-open spaces that once separated you from and what a pitifully small selection follows Dallas lovers? Homer P. Rainey-haters? NRA arms-bearing mammals? Alcoholic Aggies? Loyal listeners to XERF, in Del Rio? Etc.? I notice that R. D. was encumbered with help once he asked for it. He also got stuck with a compulsive talker. Ah! The city is, of course, awash with sad, lonely creatures. Yet isolation has its charms. Today I returned to my desk from lunch to learn that my landlady ed me to phone her immediately and assure her I was alive. Seems the ghostly spectacle of my rubbers sitting outside my door, left behind this snowy morning, had convinced her I was dead. Someone cares. Thank God R. D. at least saw Edmund Wilson! But if that was a highlight of his New York visit, I’m afraid he didn’t get around much. He should have phoned me. I mean the boy was here five weeks! Or did that bus ride alienate him?? Next time, he better go to Washington, instead. I hear it’s just like home these days. Harris Green, Texan-at-Large, New York. Based on Competition As a New Yorker at large in Austin I can attest to the unsuperficial truths of your thoughtful vignette, “An Editor-atlarge In New York” [Obs., March 17]. You saw that the same anonymity, brutality and loneliness that repels visiting Texans also repels us equally and distorts us appropriately. But is the million-plus of Texas’ cities humanly any less preposterous than the eight million-plus of New York? And doesn’t the crazed and irrational growth of cities-on-the-make such as Houston have the same dehumanizing effect? Clearly, city streets are still freedom. But they are also a new kind of earthly hell. The modern urban mass is the diametrical opposite of what Camus in his healthily anarchistic strain refers to at the end of The Rebel as the “natural group.” Paul Goodman believes one day New York will simply come to a stop, self-garroted, and people will stream away from it in search of more rational ways of living together. But there are even deeper questions to ask. The plain fact is that were it not for our personal industry we could be as alienated in Austin as in New York. Thus: isn’t this conglomeration of atomically separate persons the modern city merely the highest expression of a whole society based on competition rather than cooperation, and thus, its just desert? Robert V. Stone, 1801 West Lake Dr., Austin, Texas. Fort Worth Politics There are some questions about the authenticity and authority of some sources of information in the Observer’s article [March 31] on Fort Worth’s city elections. The local liberals have paraphrased the immortalized words of John Kennedy to read thus: “Ask not what your city can do for you, ask what your city is doing to you!” Hard-core liberals did not endorse Good Government League candidates. On the contrary, once again they endorsed the “real” conservatives rather than compromise. P.A.S.O., of which I am chaplain, in exercising its independence of either party, adopted the position: “Well, what the hell! What did the Democrats or Republicans ever do for us, except to shamefully exploit us and rob us of our human heritage?” . . . Mexican, Negro, and liberal Anglos, in hammering out their coalition, are eloquently informing seekers of political office that they no longer intend to be ignored, but must be consulted with. The Rev. J. C. “Star” Williams, 4212 Ramey, Fort Worth, Texas. Johnson Was Right Before the 1964 presidential election, President Lyndon B. Johnson told the American people that, if they voted for Barry Goldwater, the war in Vietnam would escalate. Johnson was right. Millions of Americans voted for Goldwater. William Goldberg, 752 West End Ave., New York City, N.Y. 10025. Responsibility Shirked It appears likely that the legislature will again shirk its responsibility to its citizens in the area of minimum wage. This will no doubt in the future encourage federal action. In order that we are not forced to stand idly by waiting for this action, I would suggest that the Observer perform a service to its subscribers and the citizens of Austin by maintaining a running list of business estabdo not pay minimum wage . . . M. E. Oakes, 3306-A Enfield Road, Austin, Texas 78703.