ustxtxb_obs_2007_09_21_50_00029-00000_000.pdf

Illustration by Mike Krone our banquet, and I can’t take my eyes off Farentholdwho at 80 seems more marvelous than anything on the street. Her face, her fingers, her Irish eyes, and white-water voice are quick in a way that has nothing to do with speed, and make all the more fantastic the fact that she is telling stories about having been invisible: “The day after my first election to the Legislature [in 1968],” she says after we’ve both settled on heaping salmon sandwiches, “they had a party for me in Corpus, and a man came up to me and said, ‘Mrs. Farenthold, I had the pleasure of voting for your husband yesterday.’ And I said, ‘Well, thank you very much, but I think you’ll discover that you voted for me yesterday: And then he became very disturbed and said, ‘Well hell, if I’d known that I never would have voted for you: And then he walked away. “A few months later, I read in the newspaper that the governor [Preston Smith, SEPTEMBER 21, 2007 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 29