ustxtxb_obs_1972_07_07_50_00021-00000_000.pdf

Mayo Thompson The Will to Live By Michael Anderson Eagle . Pass Friends, here I am. In my Oldsmobile. This here’s your proto-typical dusty Texas town about which so much has been written. Over there on the left is the courthouse with a slatted wooden dome and beacon arrangement on top. Down to the right is the Palace Theater now showing Rio Bang Bang with Dean Martin and Ursula. Parenthetically, I understand that in her most recent filmed gesture Ursula, opens her blouse wide enough for the audience to see both of her breasts in their entirety. Well, the stoplight don’t work so good over there and the sheriff he spends most of his time standing in the center of the street waving at his friends and they spend their time driving back out to the house. I it here in the square on this eighty thousand year old iron bench and watch the residents go about the business o’ shaping this great land of ours. Two of the less savory citizens are behind me there, on the wrong side of the square discussing what appears to be from this distance the techniques of knife fighting. They swoop and dodge and indicate to each other where the best place to carry your blade is \(backside right, just behind and over the Now and then I feel the urge to stand up and cry “Oh Jesus oh Jesus,” just about as loud as I can, just to stand there with the dust blowing and yell it right out loud because we all know what kind of hairy shit is going on behind them screen doors and beneath them porches; we know all about the basketball coach; we know about Mary Jean Williams; we know about Mr. Prescott and that “colored” we just know! But I don’t do any yelling. A film director, a book writer, let them yell. Like the Chamber of Commerce here, they might think it important. ICLEARLY don’t; it seems only mentionable. I am here laying back. And for that Eagle Pass is terrific. A lot of big city decisions don’t even come up for the count. You buy the food that Ike sells at Ike’s or you buy what you can get from the U-Tote’M, and you eat it. No bitchin’ about its unnaturalness. You get Time or Newsweek at Ike’s, too if you’re quick. And if you’re interested. And for the moment I am not. I have heard the “we only kill because we have to” act often enough for awhile; let me rest. So Eagle Pass offers certain pleasures, not the least of which is a considerable physical and spiritual distance from the hard and fast nationally advertised, uptown life we sometimes convince ourselves is real life. What I’m doing is using the distance to let me think about some things that have been bothering me, but which I haven’t as yet put a thumb on. The first thing comes to mind is literal mindedness. Seems like everybody is pretty damn literal minded so far as I can see. From freaks right on up or down to media kings all of ’em. They don’t want to allow any vagueness, no uncertainty. That whole game can be run on the principles of addition and subtraction feeling, meaning, intuition, everything fits a pattern. For the young it’s eat right, sleep right and pray to God. For the old it’s buy right, sell right pray to God. It’s a question of Deaf Smith Peanut July 7, 19 72 21