ustxtxb_obs_1968_04_12_50_00012-00000_000.pdf

lieved from the study of the human mind and its invention of myths that mythic memory is necessary for “individuation.” Although the Latinate abstractions go on being piled higher and deeper, they offer Southwestern literature something much needed, an explanatory idea: if we could not tell old stories and sing old songs, we would end up neurotic from loneliness and emptiness. Indeed, Jung says, we have. \(Of course, Freud would explain our condition as a result of the sanctiBut who knows? Perhaps our central predicament is not our neglect of tradition or love, but in a crowded and complex world the lack of time and opportunity to be ourselves. D OBIE’S Some Part of Myself is a crowning expression of his long search for self in both immediate environment and in all the published antecedents of his time and place. After examining the factual and mythical stuff related to the Southwest, after writing two million words on the frontier cattle country, the gleam of storied treasure, the adaptive toughness of the Longhorn, the free will of the mustangs, the ways of coyotes, roadrunners, rattlesnakes and menseeing always with the eyes of Man in his particular time and placeDobie began to relate things more personal. “I used to try to keep myself out of it,” he told me, “but they wanted me to write autobiography.” He died before holding an autobiographical monograph in his hands except that in a broad sense all that he wrote was ground out of his compelling search for identity. Some Part of Myself is the posthumous collection of personal essays to which he turned his hand in the last part of his life. The editorial selection and ‘arrangement was done by Bertha McKee Dobie, his wife. Dobie repeatedly acknowledged her wise assistance in his prefaces. Here she has given to some of her husband’s most delightful reminiscences an effective compactness, coher 7 ence, order. Mrs. Dobie states emphatically however, that she has never deleted any of his pungent remarks and language. The long range that Dobie rode in his 75 years unfolds with the enchantment of travel at an easy tempo”when a mile was a mile.” His mother and father are unforgettable, as whatever is put down by a good writing hand becomes when the memory lies unforgettably in the mind. Dobie liked all that he knew except wrong values such as selfishness, falseness, and pretense, and he was sometimes generous in the face of much of this ugly side of the beloved country. The plot of earth where he grew up, the poetry and the teachers hs discovered at Georgetown, his coy mistress the English langu age, the storytellers who were his lost mines and treasuresall this is recounted with the natural campfire manner and dogged humility of country talk in those places where deceit is offensive though authentic lying is allowed. “Storytellers. Storytellers. They string out in my memory like a long, long recua of pack mules, each of a different brand, different color, and diff e r e n t disposition, twisting through mountains, going down canyons, climbing up over cumbres, trailing across plains of fine grass to an unreachable beyond.” When Dobie wrote that, his mind was back in the North Mexican wild country the sierra and monte where he had ridden full of joy 30 years before. After writing the stories of a thousand nights, he puts the agony of all honest writers into the last sentence of Some Part of Myself: “It’s the despair of a writing man who has known the best storytellers that he cannot translate their oral savor into print.” Those who knew Dobie will agree that it is a loss to others that no words neither his nor ours can ever capture the man in his natural presence, wild and yet civilized, noble, curious, unafraid and uncurried as a mustang surveying his domain from a mesa. Despite that hard truth, the best part of Dobie is in the book that he would have handled with a happy measure of humility and pride. 0 Back Home in Alabama Commerce “A land of contrasts,” one always writes nowadays when touring backward countries. Each reporter makes notes on the “old” and “new” ways. Such was Christmas, 1967, in Alabama, USA and CSA. EN ROUTEYou can go home again, but you must “go Delta” if you fly to Montgomery for visiting the lower regions of Alabama. The Atlanta airport is obviously Delta’s home nest. In the jet from Dallas to Atlanta, the first class passengers sit up front, looking 100% WASP.’ In the DC6 from Atlanta to Montgomery they sit in the rear, away from the noise of the props. Ironically, this puts the Negroes up front. The “tourist” section appears 50% Negro, a reminder that in the Deep South there is a new prosperity for some Southerners. On Christmas day, the little Negro boy and girl across the aisle tell me what they “got.” The girl is proud of a blond-haired, blue eyed doll. She pulls a string and it says “My eyes are pretty because I eat carrots.” The boy showed me his rifle. The “old” and the “new”? MONTGOMERYGeorge and Gov. Lurnews in the papers and on TV. Both looked tired and haggard, especially Lur 1 White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant 12 The Texas Observer leen. In a flat voice, she reads a prepared Christmas greeting to the people. Day and night, without a smile, she reads a prepared commercial for the Blue and Gray Game. “Ah’ll be theah, and I hope yew will, tew.” Of the eight All Americans pictured as stars of the upcoming game, one is a Negro. National TV coverage was denied until the game was integrated. George returned from California on Dec. 23, where he successfully campaigned Jim Byrd for months to get enough signatures to put his American Independent Party on the presidential ballot. On his return, questions from the big city press were hostile: he had used many high-salaried state personnel for his campaign. He became hostile in return. Tell your readers what you want to, he suggested. “They knew what we were going to do when they elected my wife governor.” He quotes an official of California who said, “Gov. Wallace will win this battle.” The next day he is more cool. His “whole purpose,” he explains, “is to show both parties that they can either give us a choice or we’re going to run and hurt them both.” It would be legal, reportedly, for George to run for president and the US Senate simultaneously. \(Distinguished There is speculation that he might. Ironically, thus he would be following the example of LBJ. TROY -The excellent restaurant and adjoining gas station which a relative manages have hundreds of customers per day. Most of them believe Wallace will run and win, he said. “And I’ll vote for him before I’Il vote for any SOB from Texas,” he added. If Kennedy had lived, he would have voted for him, he went on. Those listening to our conversation agreed that Gporge could save the nation from a continuing loss of its past greatness. Troy, a university town, is, by Alabama standards, an enlightened place. The Troy Messenger, editorializing about George, not Lurleen, says “Gov. Wallace and the people of Alabama are fed up with the present situation.” George, not Eugene, is the answer. Sen. McCarthy, the editor says, is “twice as long-winded as Sen. Fulbright” and “twice as boring as Ralph Yarborough.” The Trojans are not bothered by the fact that the local college president has been out in California campaigning for The writer is a graduate of Troy State editor of the Tropolitan. He now teaches in Commerce.