ustxtxb_obs_1979_08_24_50_00028-00000_000.pdf

1117 W. 5th Street Austin, Texas 78703 “Largest dispensatory of Botanicals in Texas” HALF PRICE RECORDS .M.A.GAzINES 1$E BIGGEST COLLECTION’ or NW” UsED 330049,1CRDS, AND P1AGAZIKES IN MIAS. Dallas Big Main Store 4528 McKinney Ave. * 213 S. Akard Richardson 508 Lockwood Farmers Branch Shopping Center Valley View & Josey Lane Fort Worth 3306 Fairfield Austin 1514 Lavaca at 6103 Burnet Rd. Waco 301 N. 25th AND 2 ggwsTORES gAti AtingIO-13f tug zoo 3207 BROADWAY` TEAPLEToWNE l i Cowl*/ AALT; sistoi S. WOOL ‘SAKI 1*. ATTORNEYS Overcome the high cost of down-time on your legal secretary. Let us type your motions, appeals, contracts, and other legal documents. We can type from your rough drafts or tapes. Our work is flawless, professional, fast, and economical. Foreign language typing available. 477-6671 504 W. 24th St. Austin, Texas Copy-Rite, 28 AUGUST 24, 1979 January 24, 1963 Austin Something native, the especially Texan cross of the Southern and the Western, seemed gone from our politics during inauguration week in Austin. The old days, when the politician recruited a hillbilly band and hastened to the courthouse square, or slaughtered some cows for a barbecue, and talked of country things, are gone. As Lt. Gov. Preston Smith told Texas labor’s legislative conference at the beginning of the official week, industrialization is “the only way that we can go,” and this is a fact that has many consequences. .. . In 1958 I covered the California election for New Republic. I shall always remember how strange I felt during a “rally” for Pat Brown at a posh hotel in Los Angeles. Most of the guests were arriving in long, finny cars, and everyone was decked out with extreme formality, as for a first night. Brown’s speech was a minor event: the stars were Hollywood’s, singers, actors, comedians. I had not seen anything like this. I guessed it was just the way they did it in California. Four years later, however, . . . Connally turned his $25 a plate “victory dinner” into just this kind of thing. Not only was it . . . the largest seated banquet ever served in Texas \(raising, it was rethe first time such big-name Hollywood talent had been recruited for a Texas inauguration. Joey Bishop, the TV comedian, said he and others there had done “the Democratic show” in California a week before. It made me wonder about the premise of such affairs, suppressed somewhere backstage: not elect us again because we’re the best public servants, but elect us again so you can get another good stage show. Bishop opined, in fact, that if the Republicans had won the crowd would have been entertained by Ronald Reagan and Robert Montgomery. There was one conspicuous difference between the Brown extravaganza in 1958 and Connally’s. There were no Negroes seated at Connally’s three tiers of head table; nor were there any within the very large “reserved” section at the front of the auditorium, except for those who served the food. A Negro lady from Fort Worth sang the “Star Spangled Banner” . . . and Negroes were seated in the crowd beyond the reserved section without discrimination; so some things, in this respect, were the same as before, and some things had changed. Well-dressed Negroes were seen downtown for the celebrations, but they were turned away from the main hotel coffee shops, so they must have had complicated feelings. The emcee for the gala, gala banquet was House Speaker Byron Tunnell, who approached his opportunity, legal-size papers in hand, as a grave problem in social logistics . . . nothing quite so well epitomized the show-business approach to politics as the presentation of the legislators. As Tunnell called the name of each, and his lady’s, if he was so accompanied, he or they strolled out onto the stage, a fluorescent-white searchlight playing on them until they turned toward the crowd at the middle of the stage and descended red-carpeted steps out of the limelight. As one senator grumbled, all they needed was a soft-shoe routine across stage. Perhaps in 1964 we can hope for one of those long platforms that extend out into the middle of the crowd, with a turnaround at the end of it. The legislators having made their entrances in their different shapes and sizes, the hour arrived, an hour and a half after the banquet started, for the Connallys and the Smiths to do so. They appeared, to “The Yellow Rose of Texas,” at the back of the central aisle, half a mile from the stage. The next event was Freddy Powers and his Powerhouse Four, three banjos and a tuba, performing “Baby Won’t You Please Come Home?” and “If You Knew Suzie Like I Know Suzie.” It must have been nine o’clock when, with no explanation why he had kept them waiting so long, Tunnell introduced Vice President and Mrs. Lyndon Johnson, who made their entrance from the right wing \(or the left, depending on how you were looking at . Noon the next day, having missed the prayer breakfast, I arrived at the Capitol Observations The feel of inauguration week