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; \\–7-wll -41=-T 001 …- U ‘ .: 141 1 11″111 r o ift THE TEXAS. 1 11 server A JOURNAL OF FREE VOICES We will serve no group or party but will hew hard to the truth as we find it and the right as we see it. We are dedicated to the whole truth, to human values above all interests, to the rights of humankind as the foundation of democracy; we will take orders from none but our own conscience, and never will we overlook or misrepresent the truth to serve the interests of the powerful or cater to the ignoble in the human spirit. Writers are responsible for their own work, but not for anything they have not themselves written, and in publishing them we do not necessarily imply that we agree with them because this is a journal of free voices. SINCE 1954 Publisher: Ronnie Dugger Editor: Louis Dubose Associate Editor: Allan Freedman Copy Editor: Roxanne Bogucka Editorial Assistant: Brett Campbell Editorial Interns: Eva Lloreiis, Stephen Merelman Washington Correspondent: Mary Anne Reilly Contributing Writers: Bill Adler, Betty Brink, Warren Burnett, Jo Clifton, John Henry Faulk, Terry FitzPatrick, Gregg Franzwa, Bill Helmer, James Harrington, Amy Johnson, Michael King, Mary Lenz, Dana Loy, Tom McClellan, Bryce Milligan, Greg Moses, Debbie Nathan, Gary Pomerantz, John Schwartz, Michael Ventura, Lawrence Walsh Editorial Advisory Board: Frances Barton, Austin; Elroy Bode, Kerrville; Chandler Davidson, Houston; Dave Denison, Cambridge, Mass; Bob Eckhardt, Washington, D.C.; Sissy Farenthold, Houston; Ruperto Garcia, Austin; John Kenneth Galbraith, Cambridge, Mass.; Lawrence Goodwyn, Durham, N.C.; George Hendrick, Urbana, Ill.; Molly Ivins, Austin; Larry L. King, Washington, D.C.; Maury Maverick, Jr., San Antonio; Willie Morris, Oxford, Miss.; Kaye Northcott, Austin; James Presley, Texarkana; Susan Reid, Austin; Geoffrey Rips, Schmidt, Fredericksburg; Robert Sherrill, Tallahassee, Fla. Layout and Design: Lana Kaupp Contributing Photographers: Bill Albrecht, Vic Hinterlang, Alan Pogue. Contributing Artists: Eric Avery, Tom Ballenger, Richard Bartholomew, Jeff Danziger, Beth Epstein, Dan Hubig, Pat Johnson, Kevin Kreneck, Michael Krone, Carlos Lowry, Ben Sargent, Dan Thibodeau, Gail Woods. Managing Publisher: Cliff Olofson Subscription Manager: Stefan Wanstrom Special Projects Director: Bill Simmons Development Consultant: Frances Barton SUBSCRIPTIONS: One year $27, two years S48, three years $69. Fulltime students SIS per year. Back issues S3 prepaid. Airmail, foreign, group, and bulk rates on request. Microfilm editions available from University Microfilms Intl., 300 N. Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106. Any current subscriber who funds the price a burden should say so at renewal time; no one need forgo reading the Observer simply because of the cost. 1990, is published biweekly except for a three-week interval Texas Observer Publishing Co., 307 West 7th Street, Austin, paid at Austin, Texas. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to THE TEXAS OBSERVER, P.O. Box 49019, Austin, Texas 78765 True Stories From Germany and Europe and Southern U.S.A. We made this little town here that we live in to this day. Children of the white man saw Indians on TV They heard about the legend, how their city was a dream. David Byrne, “City of Dreams” WATER CARNIVAL in Fort Stockton this summer is not so ambitious as it was in 1937, when the University of Texas swimming and diving teams performed each night “to the delight of the spectators,” or 1947, when former Governor Coke Stevenson was designated Grand Marshal, or 1949, when Attorney General Price Daniel led the parade. “It’s mostly a local affair,” said a spokesperson for the Chamber of Commerce. “Three nights of water ballet and synchronized swimming.” But more than 300 performers will be in the water, so, according to the Chamber, the event these days involves most of the community. It’s an odd image, though, evoking something of David Byrne’s True Stories the children of a West Texas desert town doing water ballet in a chlorinated, municipal swimming pool. It’s not exactly what H.M. Long envisioned when he conceived of the Water Carnival in 1936. Long pitched his idea to the Fort Stockton Lions’ Club in February of 1936 and by 10:30 a.m. on July 12 the first Water Carnival was underway. Events included horse racing, “swimming and diving events, along with Rube comics and a monkey show and rodeo,” and “a mammoth bathing review was held with 40 ladies from Fort Stockton.” The original site of the Water Carnival, Comanche Springs, is now a rock pit, pumped dry by farmers west of town, one of whom is the Republican candidate for governor. If Water Carnival is not as ambitious as it once was, well, then, neither is Fort Stockton. But some suggest that the town could have been more than a pit stop if the springs had not been pumped dry. Allan Freedman traveled to Fort Stockton for a look at the abandoned springs, the Williams farm, and the history of the Williams family’s relation to the town where O.W. Williams settled in 1884. Freedman also persuaded Houston writer Michael King to consider, in an essay, how the Clayton Williams image matches up to the man himself, and Observer editorial intern Stephen Merelman to take a stab at crunching the numbers on Williams’s 25-Point War on Crime and Drugs. Marathon-based documentary photographer James -Evans joined Freedman in Fort Stockton. Perhaps the issue that Freedman put together will provide readers with an opportunity to see how Williams squares with the image projected on their TV screens. L.D. Politics of Compromise THE METRO ALLIANCE is one of 12 organizations that make up the Texas IAF Network, the statewide grassroots organization that includes Valley Interfaith in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, and Communities Organized for Public Services in San Antonio. The non-partisan IAF Network has worked for local and statewide reform, winning major victories in indigent health care and water and sewage services for the colonias scattered along the Texas-Mexico border. In San Antonio, the Metro Alliance came into being in March 1989, when the smaller East Side Alliance and the Metropolitan Congregations merged to form one organization. The Metro Alliance is made up of congregations in east, central, and northwest San Antonio. The Metro Alliance recently worked with the city government of San Antonio, San Antonio state Senator Frank Tejeda, and San Antonio state Representative Karyne Conley to ensure that adequate safety equipment and evacuation routes were provided at a Koch Refinery tank battery built in a residential community and near two public schools in East San Antonio. Their account of the negotiations and subsequent agreement with Koch differs, in part, from the story that appeared in the June 29 issue of the Observer \(“Volatile Neigh1 N SEPTEMBER, 1989, residents of the II East Side of San Antonio noticed large tanks being built with 1,500 feet of Sam Houston High School and Jeff Davis Middle School. No one in the area knew these tanks were being built. Leaders of the Metro Alliance, a city-wide community organization, began investigating and discovered that the Koch Company of Kansas City was planning to store 16 million gallons of jet fuel, diesel fuel, and gasoline fuel in the above ground tanks. Although the first response was a determi EDITORIAL 2 JULY 27, 1990