CLAYTON WILLIAMS ISSUE

A JOURNAL OF FREE VOICES JULY 27, 1990 • $1.50

RICHARD BARTHOLOMEW ; \--7-wll -41=-T- 001 • - ...-- EDITORIAL

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' :. 141 1 11"111 roift THE TEXAS . True Stories 1 1 1 server From Germany and Europe and Southern on Williams's 25-Point War on Crime and A JOURNAL OF FREE VOICES U.S.A. Drugs. Marathon-based documentary pho- We will serve no group or party but will hew hard to We made this little town here that we live tographer James -Evans joined Freedman in the truth as we find it and the right as we see it. We in to this day. Fort Stockton. Perhaps the issue that Freed- are dedicated to the whole truth, to human values Children of the white man saw Indians on man put together will provide readers with an above all interests, to the rights of humankind as the foundation of democracy; we will take orders from TV opportunity to see how Williams squares none but our own conscience, and never will we over- They heard about the legend, how their city with the image projected on their TV look or misrepresent the truth to serve the interests of was a dream. screens. — L.D. the powerful or cater to the ignoble in the human spirit. —David Byrne, "City of Dreams" Writers are responsible for their own work, but not for anything they have not themselves written, and in Politics of publishing them we do not necessarily imply that we ATER CARNIVAL in Fort Stock- agree with them because this is a journal of free voices. W ton this summer is not so ambitious Compromise SINCE 1954 as it was in 1937, when the University of Publisher: Ronnie Dugger Texas swimming and diving teams performed HE METRO ALLIANCE is one of 12 Editor: Louis Dubose each night "to the delight of the spectators," T organizations that make up the Texas Associate Editor: Allan Freedman or 1947, when former Governor Coke Ste- IAF Network, the statewide grassroots or- Copy Editor: Roxanne Bogucka venson was designated Grand Marshal, or ganization that includes Valley Interfaith in Editorial Assistant: Brett Campbell Editorial Interns: Eva Lloreiis, Stephen Merelman 1949, when Attorney General Price Daniel the Lower Rio Grande Valley, and Commu- Washington Correspondent: Mary Anne Reilly led the parade. nities Organized for Public Services in San Contributing Writers: Bill Adler, Betty Brink, "It's mostly a local affair," said a spokes- Antonio. The non-partisan IAF Network has Warren Burnett, Jo Clifton, John Henry Faulk, person for the Chamber of Commerce. "Three worked for local and statewide reform, win- Terry FitzPatrick, Gregg Franzwa, Bill Helmer, James Harrington, Amy Johnson, Michael King, nights of water ballet and synchronized swim- ning major victories in indigent health care Mary Lenz, Dana Loy, Tom McClellan, Bryce ming." But more than 300 performers will be and water and sewage services for the colo- Milligan, Greg Moses, Debbie Nathan, Gary in the water, so, according to the Chamber, nias scattered along the Texas-Mexico bor- Pomerantz, John Schwartz, Michael Ventura, the event these days involves most of the der. Lawrence Walsh Editorial Advisory Board: Frances Barton, community. In San Antonio, the Metro Alliance came Austin; Elroy Bode, Kerrville; Chandler It's an odd image, though, evoking some- into being in March 1989, when the smaller Davidson, Houston; Dave Denison, Cambridge, thing of David Byrne's True Stories — the East Side Alliance and the Metropolitan Mass; Bob Eckhardt, Washington, D.C.; Sissy children of a West Texas desert town doing Congregations merged to form one organiza- Farenthold, Houston; Ruperto Garcia, Austin; John Kenneth Galbraith, Cambridge, Mass.; water ballet in a chlorinated, municipal swim- tion. The Metro Alliance is made up of con- Lawrence Goodwyn, Durham, N.C.; George ming pool. It's not exactly what H.M. Long gregations in east, central, and northwest San Hendrick, Urbana, Ill.; Molly Ivins, Austin; Larry envisioned when he conceived of the Water Antonio. L. King, Washington, D.C.; Maury Maverick, Carnival in 1936. Long pitched his idea to the The Metro Alliance recently worked with Jr., San Antonio; Willie Morris, Oxford, Miss.; Kaye Northcott, Austin; James Presley, Fort Stockton Lions' Club in February of the city government of San Antonio, San Texarkana; Susan Reid, Austin; Geoffrey Rips, 1936 and by 10:30 a.m. on July 12 the first Antonio state Senator Frank Tejeda, and San Austin; A.R. (Babe) Schwartz, Galveston; Fred Water Carnival was underway. Events in- Antonio state Representative Karyne Conley Schmidt, Fredericksburg; Robert Sherrill, cluded horse racing, "swimming and diving to ensure that adequate safety equipment and Tallahassee, Fla. events, along with Rube comics and a mon- evacuation routes were provided at a Koch Layout and Design: Lana Kaupp Contributing Photographers: Bill Albrecht, Vic key show and rodeo," and "a mammoth bath- Refinery tank battery built in a residential Hinterlang, Alan Pogue. ing review was held with 40 ladies from Fort community and near two public schools in Contributing Artists: Eric Avery, Tom Ballenger, Stockton." East San Antonio. Richard Bartholomew, Jeff Danziger, Beth The original site of the Water Carnival, Their account of the negotiations and Epstein, Dan Hubig, Pat Johnson, Kevin Kreneck, Michael Krone, Carlos Lowry, Ben Sargent, Comanche Springs, is now a rock pit, pumped subsequent agreement with Koch differs, in Dan Thibodeau, Gail Woods. dry by farmers west of town, one of whom is part, from the story that appeared in the June Managing Publisher: Cliff Olofson the Republican candidate for governor. If 29 issue of the Observer ("Volatile Neigh- Subscription Manager: Stefan Wanstrom Water Carnival is not as ambitious as it once borhood"): Special Projects Director: Bill Simmons was, well, then, neither is Fort Stockton. But Development Consultant: Frances Barton some suggest that the town could have been 1 N SEPTEMBER, 1989, residents of the SUBSCRIPTIONS: One year $27, two years S48, three years $69. Full- more than a pit stop — if the springs had not II East Side of San Antonio noticed large time students SIS per year. Back issues S3 prepaid. Airmail, foreign, group, and bulk rates on request. Microfilm editions available from University been pumped dry. tanks being built with 1,500 feet of Sam 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 Allan Freedman traveled to Fort Stockton Houston High School and Jeff Davis Middle one need forgo reading the Observer simply because of the cost. for a look at the abandoned springs, the Wil- School. No one in the area knew these tanks THE TEXAS OBSERVER (ISSN 0040-4519/UPS 541300), liams farm, and the history of the Williams were being built. Leaders of the Metro Alli- ©1990, is published biweekly except for a three-week interval family's relation to the town where O.W. ance, a city-wide community organization, between issues in January and July (25 issues per year) by the Texas Observer Publishing Co., 307 West 7th Street, Austin, Williams settled in 1884. Freedman also per- began investigating and discovered that the Texas 78701. Telephone: (512) 477-0746. Second class postage suaded Houston writer Michael King to Koch Company of Kansas City was planning paid at Austin, Texas. consider, in an essay, how the Clayton Wil- to store 16 million gallons of jet fuel, diesel POSTMASTER: Send address changes to THE TEXAS OBSERVER, P.O. Box 49019, Austin, Texas 78765 liams image matches up to the man himself, fuel, and gasoline fuel in the above ground and Observer editorial intern Stephen Merel- tanks. man to take a stab at crunching the numbers Although the first response was a determi- 2 • JULY 27, 1990 bT!N TEXAS server JULY 27, 1990 VOLUME 82, No. 15

FEATURES Clayton Williams and Texas Water

By Allan Freedman 4 And the Horse He Rode In On

By Michael King 12 Bustin' Budgets

By Stephen Merelman 14 Halfway to Equity

By Brett Campbell 17

DEPARTMENTS Books and the Culture Beyond a Shadow of Truth By Steven Kellman 18 No Exit By Michael King 19 Afterword Patriotic Chore By James McCarty Yeager 23

buy 5,000 gallons of foams to be used in fighting fires. The organization recognized that politics is about compromise. Given the legal and political realities of this situation, the com- promise negotiated was the best that could be achieved. The situation showed gross ne- MICKEY TORRES glect on the part of city and state officials Valley Interfaith Convention who let this happen. They followed the letter of the law, but ignored the community. Should nation to get rid of the tanks, extensive re- at the site 24 hours a day for security and gasoline storage tanks be in neighborhoods search and meetings revealed that the tanks safety purposes. and near schools? No. Could they have been could not be removed. Given that reality, the • An independent consultant has been hired totally removed? No. Are the safety precau- strategy of the organization was three-fold: to monitor the safety measures of the facility. tions, evacuation plans and city ordinance a 1) ensure the safety of the students and nearby • A zoning amendment has been adopted viable compromise? Yes. residents; 2) establish a viable evacuation that will require city council approval in the Currently, the Metro Alliance is working plan; and 3) institute city ordinances and future for fuel-storage sites. with state Senator Frank Tejeda and state state laws that would prevent this situation • An evacuation plan has been developed Representative Karyne Conley to introduce from occurring again. Metro Alliance called for the area surrounding the fuel dump, and and pass state legislation that will prohibit for a public hearing for early December. At the city has agreed to widen East Houston tanks from being built without proper public that meeting the organization stated its Street and extend other streets in the area to notice and public hearings. The legislation to demands. After several negotiating sessions provide more adequate evacuation routes. be introduced will also prohibit tanks from with city officials and the Koch Company, •Koch Refining has contracted with Lloyds being built within a five-mile radius of schools the demands made at the December public of London for liability coverage of more that and residences. — Marcia Welch hearing were agreed to and announced in late $50 million. January. These included: • An outdoor warning system will be in- SUMMER BREAK • Three backup fire protection systems that stalled to warn residents of emergencies. After this issue is mailed, the Observer have been installed at the storage facility. • Koch Refining and other storage-termi- staff is taking a one-week summer break. • Koch security personnel will be on duty nal operators in San Antonio have agreed to Our next issue will be dated August 17.

THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 3 Silos on Clayton Williams's Fort Stockton farm Clayton Williams and West Texas Water BY ALLAN FREEDMAN

Fort Stockton, Austin hometown. Given this record, Burka wanted more than a budding folk hero who once HE MARCH 1 Republican guberna- to know what role Williams believed the boasted, "I am Bubba." Clayton Williams is torial debate was on the whole un- state should play in regulating groundwater indeed a Texan of the past, a man who stands T eventful. The candidates expounded in similar situations. for the most basic values of the old frontier. on such issues as drugs and education, and Williams's response was congenial But these values have their costs. the back-of-the-pack threesome appeared enough. He smiled twice and outlined his Williams, in the tradition of the frontier resigned that Clayton Williams Jr. would answer with the grace of a businessman Texan, supports the most antiquated ground- win the nomination. For his part, Williams accustomed to boardroom presentations. He water law in the Southwest and has opposed looked more like a conservative business- denied pumping dry the springs and he af- stepped-up government regulations. The man than the cowboy he often portrays in firmed his support for current groundwater current law and limited regulations protect political advertisements. Wearing a dark suit law. As is the custom in such political fo- Williams's investment in a 12,000-acre farm and maroon tie, Williams's grey Resistol hat rums, Burka wasn't permitted time to press just west of Fort Stockton; and it is widely was noticeably absent from his balding pate. the point. If he had been, the result of further believed that Williams's Fort Stockton farm For a few minutes, at least, the debate questioning might have been interesting. plays a significant role in preventing Coman- almost turned interesting, when Texas For if there is any issue that reveals a che Springs from bubbling back to life. What's Monthly's Paul Burka asked Williams how a different side to Clayton Williams — a side more, Williams carries on a family tradition. Texan of the old school could adapt to more the public has yet to see — it is the issue of Until the 1950s, more than 100 farmers east modern problems. Burka pointed out that groundwater and Comanche Springs. To and north of town had relied on the springs to Williams had personally pumped dry Co- understand the importance of these issues is irrigate their land. Then, in the mid-1950s, manche Springs in Fort Stockton, Williams's to understand that Clayton Williams is much Clayton Williams's father, Clayton Williams, 4 • JULY 27, 1990 JAMES EVANS Pumping on the Williams farm: 30 million gallons of water per day

Sr., won a court case that, in effect, allowed water would support his weight. form shady tunnels that cooled the land and farmers west of town to pump dry Comanche The springs were once so inextricably blocked the West Texas sun. Springs. What had been productive farmland linked to Fort Stockton that the town could Local historian Olan George provided a east of Fort Stockton turned to desert when not have existed without them. Their loca- tour of the old farming area. George was the springs ran dry. Because of the legal tion, as a water source in the desert, made the three years old when his family moved to principles upheld in the case, Clayton Wil- site valuable to early Native Americans and Fort Stockton in 1911. He's 82 now. At the liams Jr. now exercises enormous, perhaps settlers alike. In the 1850s, Fort Stockton was wheel of his pickup, he drives past his old 40- even monopolistic, control of the richest water built to protect commerce and travelers acre family farm and a modest spread where source in an arid region. As Austin environ- against Indian attack. By the early 20th cen- grapes were cultivated on 200 acres. "On one mental lawyer Stuart Henry put it, "Clayton tury farmers eagt and north of town formed a side you had desert, on the other side, you had Williams is simply a pillager." district called the Pecos County Water Con- the Garden of Eden, fertile soil, and every- trol and Improvement District Number One, thing you can imagine was growing," George OR MOST OF Comanche ,Springs's to control and distribute water cooperatively. says. He is staring at the old fields. He is lifetime, man had neither the willing- The springs flowed so plentifully that water staring at the desert where a few oil wells dot F ness nor the technology to alter them. could be diverted into a concrete irrigation the land. "There was water, water, water The springs produced clear, cool water for canal, which was built on a downward slope, everywhere you looked. And where there thousands of years, so much that water "ran and transported — by force of gravity — was water there was green." some six or seven miles in an open plain and from the springs to the farms. Rules were sank into the earth," according to one early established in the district for equitable distri- Y THE EARLY 1950s, a farmer no account. Spanish explorers were cooled by bution of water, and every 28 days or so a longer had to rely on springs or the waters. Native Americans used the springs farmer could open a metal gate and flood his B windmills. He could drill for water. as a camp site and watering hole. The springs land. And instead of running his pump with the — there were at least seven in all — were The nine-square-mile Fort Stockton area power of the wind, he could suck water from valued, if only because they provided a place was so fertile it was once advertised as the the land with an engine. FarmerS west of Fort to cool off on a scorching summer day in fruit-growing capital of the world. Farmers Stockton, farmers higher on the water table, West Texas. As a boy, Williams Sr. played in cultivated grapes, apples, and pears. When like Clayton Williams Sr. and his brother the springs. His son Claytie, like many other those crops proved difficult to transport to J.C., understood the potential of the pump. Fort Stockton boys, learned to swim there. market, local farmers planted alfalfa that They drilled wells, tapped into the ground- The most prodigious spring in the system — turned the fields a deep green. The water water, and the springs grew weak. the Comanche Chief — bubbled with such table remained high, vegetation abundant, The members of the water control district force that a boy could lie on top of it and the and trees grew tall and stretched over roads to understood what was happening. Farmers THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 5

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COURTESY FORT STOCKTON HISTORICAL SOCIETY Comanche Springs, circa 1938 west of town tapped into the same aquifer Williams, the elder Williams's 85-year-old vided. But in the Williams family, hard times that provided water for Comanche Springs widow, is careful to point out that the family were more the exception than the rule. With and the pumping lowered the water table and experienced hardships as well. Clayton Wil- the help of his brother, J.C., who had money reduced the springs' flow to practically noth- liams Jr. was born in 1931 during the Depres- to invest, Williams bounced back from his ing. Unless the pumping could be stopped, losses. He acquired land near Fort Stockton Comanche Springs would go dry. Prepared and a ranch in Oregon. On the whole, his for a fight, the more than 100 water-district ventures proved profitable. In the later years fanners enlisted the help of well-known Fort In 1904, The of his life, he was free to pursue his passion Stockton attorney Hart Johnson and in 1952 for West Texas history and wrote a number filed suit against Clayton Williams Sr. (the Texas Supreme of books on the subject. named defendant) and other farmers west of Clayton Williams Sr. was known for his town. The financial stakes in the Comanche Court had ruled attention to detail. His books are the product Springs case were high: Whoever lost the of exhaustive research, and when asked even case would likely lose control of the water. that no law could a simple question, he would often provide an The water-district farmers had taken on a answer supported by volumes of background man of stature and wealth. Williams Sr. was regulate ground- material. He confronted the Comanche the son of O.W. Williams, a Harvard-edu- Springs lawsuit as he had confronted other cated lawyer and former Pecos County judge water.... Williams problems. To prepare for the case, Williams who first settled in Fort Stockton (the county traveled to Austin to do his own research. He seat) in 1884. In his younger days, Williams owned and con- studied the law and discovered for himself Sr. made his money in the oil business and the legal precedent that entitled him to pump built a house that reflected his new wealth. trolled the water from his land all the water he would ever Most houses in Fort Stockton were adobe, need. but Williams constructed his home with stones under his land. In 1904, The Texas Supreme Court had from the old fort. Only the best materials ruled that no law could regulate groundwa- were used. With its basement, vaulted living- ter. The precedent was as clear then as it is room ceiling, oak bookcases and window sion, when times were hard and fortunes today: Williams owned and controlled the sills, the Williams home is still one of the were lost. The family economized and Clay- water under his land. Few legal restrictions largest and most impressive in Fort Stockton. ton Williams Sr. ran for a seat on the County applied to this basic principle. But Johnson, By all appearances, the family lived com- Commission, because, at the time, he needed the lawyer representing the district farmers, fortably, perhaps even luxuriously. Chic the steady salary that the county post pro- believed that technology had advanced and 6 • JULY 27, 1990 COURTESY OF CHIC WILLIAMS Clayton Williams Sr., left, embarking for Paris in 1928 the law should advance with it. The Texas contemplated his defeat. During a confer- ton economy as quickly as the boom trans- high court ruling was based on an ancient ence on water law at the University of Texas formed it. Because of its location and status principle, that "the existence, origin, move- at Austin, he explained that the "boundaries as the 14th most passed—through (by car)city ment, and course of such waters, and the of any groundwater basin can now accurately in Texas, city leaders searched for ways to causes which govern and direct their move- be defined." In what might have seemed a drum up tourist business. Fort Stockton City ments, are so secret, occult, and concealed veiled reference to the defendants in the Councilman Oscar Gonzalez and others that an attempt to administer any set of rules Comanche Springs case, Johnson added: argued the town should invest its money in in respect to, them would be involved in "There are also people who know these facts revitalizing Comanche Springs. Perhaps Fort hopeless uncertainty, and would therefore, to be true, but who refuse to recognize them Stockton could become something more than be practically impossible." from selfish reasons. ... " a truck stop or a convenient rest station for ,Johnson argued that groundwater was no travelers headed south to the Big Bend. Fort longer submerged in such mystery. Instru- F IN 1954 FORT STOCKTON owed' its Stockton might be again thought of as it once ments existed to accurately define the bounda- past to water, it would owe its future to was: the Garden Spot of West Texas, an ries of an underground water source, and I oil. The destruction of the springs left Oasis in the Desert. because these boundaries could be estab- economic scars. Tourism dollars, for instance, "Oil got us out of a slump in the 1950s," lished, groundwater could be regulated. The were lost and farming was concentrated in said Gonzalez, who recently ended his term defendants countered this argument, con- the water-rich area west of town. But the on the council. "Water could have gotten us tending that the water under their land did not scars healed as the oil boom of the 1960s and out of a slump in the, '80s." flow but percolated. The aquifer could not be 1970s fueled the local economy. The com- It was evident that Williams and other defined in certain terms. Their water could munity changed. District farmers and other farmers west of town held the key to revital- not be regulated and therefore belonged to residents moved away and were replaced by izing the springs. Williams had started buy- them exclusively. newcomers who had never seen the springs, ing more land west of town in the mid-1970s. On June 21, 1954, a Texas court of civil much less understood their importance. Within several years, he had built an opera- appeals rejected the Johnson argument and Children learned to swim in a chlorinated tion where 8,000 acres are now under culti- upheld the old doctrine of ownership. In just municipal swimming pool, and fewer and vation on a 12,000-acre spread. (Some 2,700 a few years, a prediction included in the fewer residents knew or remembered that acres included in the Williams farm were Johnson petition had come true. By the early Comanche Springs once defined the charac- once owned by his father and uncle, J.C.) 1960s, the springs stopped flowing and the ter of the community. Times were good. The What made the land so valuable had not thousands of acres of farmland turned to oil business boomed. The men and women of changed in three decades: abundant ground- desert. Fort Stockton had little reason to look back. water controlled by a small group of farmers. Two years after the case, Hart Johnson still But the oil bust devastated the Fort Stock- Across the Southwest, states have reformed THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 7 •

JAMES EVANS Irrigation system on Williams farm groundwater laws to allow more government and the springs would bubble back to life. has bought a lot of the old farmers out and regulation. Groundwater is no longer consid- According to Frank Velasco, Williams's farm does pump a lot of water. It's not totally ered the exclusive property of the landowner. manager, the Fort Stockton farm pumps at proved that's why the springs stopped flow- In Arizona, for example, a fee is charged for least 30 million gallons per day, roughly ing, but it's almost a sure thing." withdrawing groundwater, and the interests Interest in the revitalization of Comanche of individual farmers are more equitably bal- Springs did gain some momentum. A town anced against the rights of municipalities. meeting on the subject was held in October Other states have come to recognize that "If they quit 1986 and even the springs cooperated: In the groundwater is so important a resource that fall of 1986, they started flowing again,. after government must play a role in its conserva- pumping out unusually heavy rains and an apparent de- tion and allocation. In Texas, however, no crease in pumping west of town. The Fo.rt comprehensive groundwater law exists. Very there altogether, Stockton City Council agreed to study the little has changed since Clayton Williams Sr. subject and commissioned the United States won his court case 36 years ago. With no and they had an Geological Survey to conduct an investiga- broad-based regulations in place, the younger tion of Comanche Springs and the Fort Stock- Williams is free to pump as much water as he adequate rainfall, ton-area water situation in general. Gonzalez could ever need. He is free to control — with said he attempted to further — perhaps even virtually no restriction — what is in arid the springs would conclusively — establish the springs-farm- West Texas, the region's most precious public ing link by placing dye markers in Williams's commodity. come back. wells. If after being placed in wells the mark- Few question that Williams pumps water ers would have surfaced at the springs site, from the same underground reservoir that I'm sure." the result would have been too obvious for once fed the springs, and as such plays a the most skeptical to ignore. Little else was pivotal role in preventing their revitalization. done, however. The springs quickly went Numerous experts and town folk have come dry. Gonzalez said Velasco refused to allow to this conclusion, and a state agency report equivalent to the amount of water once pro- the markers to be placed in the wells, al- provides convincing evidence of the springs- duced by the springs. Even the current head though Velasco denied ever being asked to farming link (see sidebar). In simple terms, it of the Fort Stockton Chamber of Commerce participate in the experiment. (Velasco said is true that the springs stopped flowing in the Frank Baker, a strong Williams supporter, he would now have no objection to placing 1960s. But were pumping to be curtailed, it is said: "The springs are dry because of the ag- the markers in Williams's wells.) The USGS widely believed, the water table would rise ricultural pumping west of town. Williams report has yet to be released, although its

8 • JULY 27, 1990

'VAT. ce:A oe, senior author said recently the report will further establish the springs-farming link. The author, USGS hydrologist Ted Small, said, "If they quit pumping out there alto- gether, and they had an adequate rainfall, the springs would come back. I'm sure." Asked which farmers are diverting water that would otherwise flow to the springs, Small named Clayton Williams Jr. "If just his pumps pumped alone, you could still be able to shut the springs down," Small speculated. The failed effort to revive the springs illus- trated the extent of Williams's control of over the water under his land. In order to revive the springs, Gonzalez and others said, Williams's control of the water would have to end and his farm shut down, or at the very least, he would have to accept restrictions on his pumping operation. The interests of a community would have to be balanced against the power of Williams and a handful of farmers. For Baker, the Chamber of Com- merce official, and other community leaders, that redistribution of power is a troubling proposition. "The economic benefits are hard to meas- ure," Baker said. "It would be shifting wealth from the hands of one to the hands of the others, from the farmers who are benefiting from the pumping, Clayton Williams among others, and it would be putting some dollars into the hands of the business of the tourism industry." The issue was in itself painful for the community to confront. Few wanted to relive a fight that once caused such deep division in a small town. If the scars caused by the springs' decline had healed, few residents JAMES EVANS wanted them reopened. As Fort Stockton Chic Williams Spring Back to Life EXAS BOARD OF Water Engi- The U.S. Geological Survey investiga- water that he could shut the springs down neers Bulletin 6106 is as dull a read tion of Comanche Springs and the Fort on his own. T as its title might suggest. The Octo- Stockton-area water situation is expected Consider this exchange. ber 1961 report is chock full of graphs and to provide further and more timely evi- Observer: What did you find was the re- charts and written in the government-speak dence of the springs-farming link. The lationship between pump-farming west of for which such reports are known. But the report requested by the city of Fort Stock- .town and the flow of the springs? findings of this study of "geology and ton was due out last fall and its delayed Small: That's pretty well known from ground-water recourses" in Pecos County release has sparked speculation of politi- earlier reports. When they pumped in a is easy enough to comprehend. cal shenanigans. Could Williams be plac- certain area out there west of Fort Stock- As pumping west of Fort Stockton in- ing pressure on the agency to delay its ton, the water level to Comanche Springs creased in the 1950s, the flow of water release? USGS's Ted Small, the report's was lowered, finally they ceased to flow. from local springs decreased. This correla- senior author, denies that politics is the Observer: So there is no question in tion, as stated in the report, is indisputable. cause of the delay. He said the report is your mind that there is a direct relationship Joe Henggeler, an agricultural engineer bogged down in the federal bureaucracy. between the springs flowing and the pump- with Texas A&M's Agricultural Exten- Writing and compiling figures took longer ing west of town? sion Service in Fort Stockton, is familiar than expected, and Small said the report Small: Right. with the report. He said of the springs- could be released as late as the fall. Observer: What would happen if the farming relationship, "It looks to me that The results of the USGS report are ex- pumping ceased altogether? they are connected. It's hard to deny." By pected to be as clear as Bulletin 6106. Small: If they quit pumping out there al- most accounts, Clayton Williams Jr. draws Small confirmed that Williams was one together, and they had an adequate rain- water from the same underground reser- of the farmers who diverted water that fall, the springs would come back. I'm voir studied in the report — the aquifer would otherwise flow to the springs. He sure. that feeds Comanche Springs. speculated that Williams pumps so much A.F.

THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 9

• • ‘i ••• .• attorney Stephen Spurgin put it, "It divided community pays the economic price while as use of the Edwards Aquifer. The ground- families. It divided business partners. It di- Williams controls the water. Williams, an water question seems even more pressing vided old friends. The people who lived Anglo, denies economic opportunity to a during a summer when drought has caused through that time don't want to recreate that town where a majority of the residents are crop devastation across Texas and lowered animosity and hatred." Hispanic. "We felt that by the springs flow- the level of the Edwards Aquifer. San Anto- Besides, Williams (who has repeatedly ing again, that could affect more people than nio relies on the aquifer for municipal water denied a link between his farming operation him employing 80 people," Gonzalez said. and because of a drop in the underground and the springs) has now attained the status "There's no doubt in my mind that he affects reservoir, Texas's largest spring, Comal of local hero and is not likely to be chal- a lot of lives in this community. Being a Springs in New Braunfels, have been slowed lenged. He frequently returns to Fort Stock- native son, and the financial situation he's in, to a trickle and San Marcos Springs are also ton and still maintains a downtown office. He he's done very little for this community. threatened. Would Williams support a greater is both popular and powerful, a local boy who "Williams comes in to town. And yes, we role for the state in regulating the Edwards made good. Every community leader inter- drink, we sing songs, we eat Mexican food. Aquifer? Could Williams support legislation viewed for this story spoke highly of Wil- That doesn't impress me. Not because you placing greater state controls on natural re- liams. And while Gonzalez (who is no longer sing my songs, and not because you speak my sources such as water and oil? on the city council) offered some criticism, language, does it mean you are Hispanic or Fort Stockton Mayor Joe Shuster, who is he said he is considering voting for Williams. you love the Hispanic." skeptical of the springs-farming link, doubts On the one hand, Williams's candidacy is that Clayton Williams would ever attempt to in economic terms incalculable. As gover- UT THE QUESTION that remains harm his hometown for a profit. "If it comes nor, it is widely believed by local residents unanswered in both Fort Stockton down to the bottom line, I don't believe that Williams would provide Fort Stockton a B and across the state is to what degree Clayton Williams is going to kill Fort Stock- bigger slice of the government pet-project Clayton Williams will allow his personal ton for the almighty dollars," Shuster said. pie. Fort Stockton would have some real interests to dominate his public-policy deci- But he added, "If you were a landowner, clout in Austin and the publicity of electing sions. Despite repeated requests, Williams would you want to change the laws to take a native son couldn't help boost the town's declined through a spokesman to be inter- away your rights?" image. viewed for this story. So it could not be In the past, Williams has fought hard for On the other hand, Williams plays an determined, for instance, whom he might the rights of landowners. He spent thousands important role in preventing the return of the appoint to the Texas Water Commission or of dollars in 1987 to defeat a county-wide springs; from Gonzalez's perspective, the how he might proceed on policy issues such underground conservation district. Without

Comanche Springs Backlash

N AUGUST 28, 1954, Clayton steps. O.W. Williams, a Harvard-educated The 1954 race was much different, how- Williams Sr.'s political career lawyer and trained surveyor, had himself ever. The Counts camp, for instance, made 0 came to an end. For nearly two served as county judge. Williams settled an issue of Williams's participation in the decades, Williams served on the Pecos in Fort Stockton in 1884 and surveyed bracero program by which Mexican labor- County Commission. A respected rancher, Block 0, where Lubbock is located. More ers were used to harvest crops. Williams oilman, and farmer, he was by any ac- than 40 years after his death, many in Fort countered that he was unable to locate any count a formidable candidate for higher Stockton refer to him as the "Judge." local "Latin Americans" who "were con- office. But when in 1954 he ran for county Williams might have fulfilled his ambi- tent to live out on the farm and work stead- judge, Williams's involvement in the Co- tion if, in the view of some long-time Fort ily." He denied, as he alleged Counts's manche Springs case was one liability he Stockton residents, the Comanche Springs people charged, racial discrimination in could not overcome. case had not been an issue in the election. connection with his employment practices. Why Clayton Williams sought the George Baker, who at 81 is old enough to When the false school-fund allegation was county post is still a matter of speculation. remember three generations of the Wil- injected into an already-contentious cam- Chic Williams contends her late husband liams clan, published The Fort Stockton paign, Baker said, it contributed to a entered the race for altruistic reasons. "I Pioneer for 37 years. He said there were "backlash" against Williams. felt like I could do so much good for the two issues that contributed to Clayton Another source of a backlash against county," Chic Williams recalls her hus- Williams's defeat: apparently false alle- Williams resulted from the Comanche band saying. The Williams platform was gations Williams leveled at his opponent Springs case. "That was far and away the based on "encouraging tourist traffic, and the Comanche Springs case. more decisive issue," Baker said. The case commercial travel, and industrial expan- Williams placed an advertisement in had been decided some two months before sion in the communities of Pecos County." the Pioneer and used it to remind voters the August 1954 election and it galvanized In political advertisements, Williams that incumbent Paul Counts was still under the opposition of more than 100 farmers boldly declared he was for "good govern- indictment for misappropriating school on the losing side, as well as other Fort ment, good churches, good schools, good funds. The charges actually had been dis- Stockton residents. roads, good business" because "these are missed but, according to Baker, a Wil- "These farmers out here, every one of what makes a good community." liams campaign worker misread court them, resented the fact that Williams had There were other factors at play in this documents and the blunder was made. tapped into their water source and killed good guy's candidacy. As he told a friend The race was, as the Pioneer described it, their farms," recalled local historian Olan 36 years ago in a Fort Stockton cafe, "hotly contested." Baker said most cam- George. "I think that's what beat him." Williams wanted the job for the "pres- paigns in the county were, on the whole, Said Chic Williams of her late husband's tige" or, as this same friend speculated, positive. A candidate seldom even men- 1954 campaign: "It was the worst defeat the chance to follow in his father's foot- tioned his opponent. he ever had. - — A.F.

10 • July 27, 1990 statewide controls, local conservation dis- tricts are the only real means for regulating groundwater. The proposed district would have had the authority to tax and to enforce regulations, such as requiring permits for irrigation wells. Williams called the bill "anti- business, anti-oil and gas and anti-Chamber of Commerce ... I believe in private owner- ship and the right to do what we want with our properties, and this will take that away." After the proposal's defeat, Williams backed the creation of a water district more to his own liking, but the district ran into a legisla- tive roadblock when it became clear that its design gave Williams considerable control over its management. In the view of many, the courts would allow more stringent state regulation of groundwater. The roadblock to reform in the recent past has been the Legislature. "There is the constitutional means to regulate ground- water, but the question has mainly been po- litical," said Stuart Henry, the Austin envi- ronmental attorney. "I'm convinced if Clay- ton Williams gets elected, there won't be any groundwater regulations." Billy Clayton, the Texas House Speaker- turned-lobbyist, is a key Williams adviser who could influence Williams on the ques- tion of groundwater. In his days in the House, Clayton was widely credited with preventing passage of groundwater laws. Billy Clayton said in a recent interview that like Williams, he believes that control of groundwater is "a property right given under our Constitution." Clayton said local people should regulate groundwater through water districts and said he would offer this advice to Williams: "If the local people don't control, don't pre- serve, and don't protect, it's time for the state to step in and act." But current law, as inter- preted by government regulators, restricts the state's ability to act. The Texas Water Commission has some say in regulating the quality of groundwater, but has little author- ity to control the amount of water used by individual landowners. How would his private philosophy con- cerning the exploitation of natural resources influence public policy if Clayton Williams Jr. were elected governor? And what sort of JAMES EVANS model for public policy can be found in the Comanche Chief Spring, 1990 use of underground water in Fort Stockton? As author Gunnar Brune put it, "The failure water on one section of farm lies on top of the where farmers still irrigate their land with of Comanche Springs was probably the most land, forming a kind of large puddle. Velasco water from springs. The water moves through spectacular example in Texas of man's abuse boasts of the farm's efficient use of water. He concrete irrigation canals that connect San of nature." points out that the old flood-irrigation method Solomon Springs to local farms. On a recent Today the old springs site is littered with has largely been replaced by more efficient spring day, teenagers cooled off in the springs, garbage. A rusty cage has been placed over circular irrigation systems. But there is enough surrounded by rich vegetation. On a sign the once-prodigious Comanche Chief to runoff to create a three-acre lake used for explaining the history of the springs are three prevent the curious from exploring caves recreation by Williams's employees. The words much bigger than the rest: "A Desert below it. The old irrigation canals are over- lake is stocked with fish and serves as a Oasis." ❑ grown with weeds. On the Williams farm, backdrop for company barbecues. Echoing gas-driven engines pump cool, clear water Velasco, Billy Clayton said that as a farmer and huge circular irrigation systems hum like Williams understands the importance of cicadas. Rich soil yields oats, wheat, and conserving water. "He knows that if you This publication is available dark green alfalfa with purple buds. Herds of don't conserve and protect it, it would be a in 'microform frees University white-tail deer — sometimes 100 strong — depleting resource," Clayton said. Mkrofilos International. CoU tall-fros 600-521-3044. Or mail inquiry to. graze undisturbed and wild turkeys run About an hour's drive from Fort Stockton University Microfilms international. 300 North through a knee-high crop of alfalfa. Excess is the tiny West Texas town of Balmorhea, blob Rand. Ann Arbor. MI 481011.

THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 11 And the Horse He Rode In On BY MICHAEL KING

I may be a poor cowboy, but I'm one helluva hopes to do the same with state government? ($100 million, from which a governor's race cowman. "Claytie," hardly the ingenuous and ingra- is pocket change) coupled with deep Repub- — Clayton Williams Jr. tiating boob that he portrays, is clearly a lican pockets, underwrote a relentless public savvy marketing man who has been at this presence already identifiable from his OBODY OWNS a myth, which is cowboy shtick for some time. He first entered ClayDesta commercials. And the Democratic why Daniel Berrigan and Jerry Fal- the popular consciousness in his horseback primary candidates (particularly the losers, well can both call themselves Chris- ads for ClayDesta Communications, and he but Richards shares in the blame) engaged in tians, and why the Ayatollah put out a con- was not above riding into Austin to protest such a shameless bloodletting that it's no tract on Salman Rushdie: He couldn't stand the deregulation of his chief competitor, wonder that the potential voters still view the the competition. The first job of the tyrant is AT&T. You heard that right, deregulation — party's candidate with presumptive disdain. to seize control of the popular imagination— "free-marketeers" like Claytie are all for But thus far, Williams has gotten off easy, else why all this fuss about flag-burning? regulation, of everybody but themselves. In working his governmental inexperience to For Texans, despite years of relentless like manner, Williams has relentlessly beaten his advantage — perceived as a fresh-faced proselytizing by unctuous Baptist preachers, the drum for tougher laws and more prisons, "outsider," he's by definition untouched by the central cultural mythology remains that but whines that Texas courts are too harsh on the general disgust with all government that of the cowboy on the open range, "where you corporations. From the cheap seats, it ap- is now ingrained in the body politic, at least sleep out every night, and the only law is pears that Williams is the sort of cowboy who since Jimmy Carter. It's the Reagan syn- right." Almost entirely a creation of popular used to be played regularly by Richard drome all over again, and regionally rein- culture — dime novelists, juke-box yodelers, Widmark; he looks comfortable enough in forced by the cowboy persona Williams has and six-gun shoot-em-ups — the myth has the saddle, but the first chance he gets, he'll adopted and the media have wholeheartedly never reflected a historical reality for more shoot you in the back. endorsed and marketed. Even his obvious than a part of Texas or more than a short gaffes — the "relax-and-enjoy-it" rape re- period of time, and might seem an odd anach- HILE IT GOES without saying mark and his dismissal of his own youthful ronism in a state that is now predominantly that the national press wouldn't whoring as so much boyish hijinks — have urban and industrialized. But as Joseph know a cowboy from a cowpie been momentary flutters in a generally pat- Campbell has demonstrated, myths thrive in without a scorecard — after all, they bought tycake press treatment, epitomized by an an interior landscape, be it sacred desert or Ronald Reagan, whose cowpoke credentials early headline in the Dallas Morning News: high plains, and the cowboy sustains the amounted to little more than some pedestrian "WILLIAMS ADDS TEXAS FLAVOR To CAM- common imagination, as a populist descen- ads for 20-mule Team Borax — one would PAIGN." dant of the ancient knight-errant, wandering hope that Texans could still distinguish bulls the countryside in search of honor, adven- from bullcorn. By his own admission, Wil- UT IF WILLIAMS is truly "Texan" ture, and righteousness. liams is more ranching entrepreneur than in flavor, it should leave a bad taste in But a myth is malleable to the needs of the ranchhand, but he has made steady mileage B all our mouths. Thanks to Williams historic moment, and can be adapted to the out of a 10-gallon hat and an ingratiating (and the equally shameless Mark White), the purposes of the just and the pretender alike. manner, so much so that as I write he has been words "Texas" and "death penalty - have Somebody — priest, politician, or p. r. man unofficially anointed as the front-runner in come to be synonymous, as though a once- — is always trying to steal the sacred stories, the race for the governor's mansion. With great republic had nothing better to do than seize the key to the common tale, and bludg- shameless aplomb reminiscent of a barn- seek out new and more efficient ways of eon anybody else who tries to tell his own storming Lyndon Johnson, he flaps his ears killing people. If Williams has his way, state truth. Is the true cowboy the lonely hero of a at us from the cover of the current issue of government will do little more than build thousand westerns, or is he the solemn mer- Texas Monthly (how much is that worth in prisons for poor thieves and lay out the red chant of advertised death who stares defi- free ad space?), and the current newspaper carpet for rich ones. Have you ever heard antly through the lethal smoke of a Marlboro? polls trouble our breakfasts with the news Claytie suggest "bustin' rocks" for the bank- Is he the solitary migrant worker on horse- that he holds a comfortable lead over the ers and speculators who have gleefully looted back, who makes a few hundred a month to beleaguered but unbowed Ann Richards. the state's savings and loan industry, all in mend fences, run cattle, and eat dust, or is he Setting aside whether or not the state's the name of deregulation and the free-mar- Clayton Williams, Jr., the oil-and-long-dis- major dailies, who underwrite these exer- ket? Nope, he's too busy demagoguing the tance tycoon who runs his family on a cises in preconception, have a vested interest public hysteria over teen-age drug use, al- "budget" of $500,000 a year, who turned to in electing a conservative Republican — and though he is not himself above recounting his cattle-raising as a lucrative hobby, and now they do — it's also worth examining own barroom exploits under the influence of Williams's extraordinary and sudden popu- his drug of choice, alcohol. Their wardrobes larity to determine what makes him tick. may not match, but in the cloth of comic How did this cutout caricature of a "bid- hypocrisy, Williams is a more-than-worthy Frequent Observer contributor Michael King ness"-man suddenly become the latest pre- successor to 01' Malevolence, Bill Clements. is a writer living in Houston. This article was tender to the governor's throne? It takes more than a 10-gallon hat and a composed with the assistance and research The first answers are easy: money and quick trigger finger to make a real cowboy, of Allan Freedman. Democrats. Williams's personal fortune and Williams has gone on long enough play- 12 • JULY 27, 1990 i ng with his imaginary six-shooter; it's about "My goal was more." trodden against the land-grabbers, the bank- time somebody called his bluff. Voters in Indeed, "more" is Clayton's bottom line, ers, and the comfortable thieves. Here comes danger of fall ing for Claytie's two-step would to use a phrase favored by his kind of people, yet another snake-oil salesman in cowboy do well to have a look at a piece Gary the big-dollar boys who like to think they not get-up, hoping to convince ordinary Texans Cartwright wrote for Texas Monthly in Feb- only run but own this state. Williams is that he's a regular cowpoke just off the trail, ruary of 1985, entitled "The Last Round-Up" Donald Trump with a West Texas drawl, who here to ride into town and clean up corruption (also collected in a volume called Bidness, wants to add the governor's mansion to his and waste in high office, defending women 1986). There Williams is portrayed as the list of fungible assets, to be managed for his and children in the bargain. Such was the prime example of a kind of fast-money oil- convenience and that of his high-rolling popular refrain when Ronald Reagan rode man "cattle entrepreneur" (his own phrase), friends, the way you or I might hope to pick into town a few years ago, with painfully who dresses his stock in strands of pearls for up a second-hand station wagon useful for predictable results: the banks have been million-dollar pyramid-sale auctions, and hauling groceries. He learned "cowboy" for looted, the streets are filled with the impov- who honors the traditional conservative val- the same reason he learned, by his own erished, and Reagan's buddies and handlers ues of the Old West by soaking down miles admission, to speak Spanish on his ranch: to are happily counting their fresh millions. The of country roads with precious water, so that communicate with the hired help — real rest of us, ordinary women, children, and his rich cronies and customers won't dirty cowboys used to the smell of bullshit, and men, have been told to stay in our places, their stretch limos. Claytie's ranching neigh- who can't afford to either relax in, or enjoy, relax, and enjoy it. Claytie wants to convince bors look askance at his nouveau ways, and bad weather. us that more of the same — business as usual he cheerfully returns their contempt: "They're The Texas myth, like its American counter- — is just the thing for the great state of Texas. playing make-believe. Me, I'm very intense part, is meant to stand for something noble in There are enough Texans out there — if only in my business. I like to make money." Or, as the ideal — rugged independence, freedom the Democrats will go out and find them — he told a crowd of adoring business students from tyranny, opportunity for everyone re- who realize that it maybe Claytie's way, but who asked him about his personal goals: gardless of background, defense of the down- it sure as hell isn't the cowboy way. ❑

11111•111111111111111111101 , POLITICAL INTELLIGENCE

known, get set up to sell bonds to secure state ✓ IF YOU CAN'T get through to the where he was. Also according to Ivins, FBI, call a Republican campaign consultant. Boatwright also called a former colleague at deposits." He can. That's what an article by Dallas the TDA and apologized for all the trouble he "It was an almost daily occurrence that Times Herald columnist Molly Ivins sug- had caused, saying he only wanted to "get bankers would call Treasurer Harding and gests. Ivins wrote about the prolific rumors Hightower." ask for state deposits of money in their banks," of investigation of the Texas Department of The investigation is being directed from Leech said. "... Mr. Harding would approve Agriculture and the rumor that Agriculture the office of U.S. Attorney Ronald F. Ederer of those deposits to be placed in that particu- Commissioner Jim Hightower himself would of San Antonio, a Phil Gramm nominee. lar bank pending the placement of securities be indicted. According to Ivins, one former as collateral." TDA official told the Houston Post that he ✓ WARREN G. HARDING JR., the James Marsh, whom Harding had brought took complaints about Hightower to the Rick Republican nominee for comptroller, has used with him when he was appointed treasurer, Perry campaign and three days later was con- a peculiar bookkeeping device in reporting "would immediately call Glenn Harding and tacted by the FBI. Perry, a former Democrat, his campaign fund disclosures, according to notify him of the transaction," Leech said. is the Republican candidate for ag commis- Austin American-Statesman writer Dave "Glenn Harding would then call and suggest sioner. Karl Rove, a Republican political McNeely. Harding listed more than $100,000 to the banker that they secure the deposit with consultant who in late June told Washington in contributions, but he only had brought in bonds that he would sell them from Rausher reporters that Hightower "faces the possibil- $12,225 in cash donations and a $2,000 loan. Pierce." ity of indictment in late June or July," said it The rest of the money was an estimate of the is possible that someone in the Perry cam- value of volunteer help and borrowed furni- ✓ GENE KELLY, the retired Air Force paign is leaking information to the FBI, but ture. According to Harding, help from his judge who is a Democratic Party candidate if so, it was someone doing it without the father was worth some $4,500, and Harding for the Texas Supreme Court, submitted what direction of campaign officials. Jr.'s wife's work in the office was valued at San Antonio Express reporter Richard Smith Ivins also wrote that a grand jury investi- $16,000. described as one of the "briefest candidate gation into Hightower seems to be "at a McNeely earlier reported that Democratic expense reports" filed with the Secretary of standstill since the chief accuser turned up in candidate for comptroller John Sharp had State. Kelly reported that he raised $2,000 a California psychiatric center last month released sworn statements from a former between March 4 and June 30. His opponent, after leaving four suicide notes and threaten- treasury department official and from a for- Bexar County District Court Judge John ing to drown himself in the Brazos." Kenneth mer state representative, both of which per- Cornyn, raised $310,675 in the same period. Boatwright, who resigned from the TDA last tained to conflict of interest charges that Kelly's report included a $1,000 contribu- year and announced he was going to run involved Harding and his father, former tion from a Fort Worth supporter and a $1,000 against Hightower, was director of the Treasurer Warren G. Harding Sr. The younger loan that Kelly made to himself. In the pri- agency's seed inspection program, the pro- Harding, according to McNeely's story, mary, Kelly did not campaign yet defeated a gram most often associated with rumors of previously was known as Glenn, but had San Antonio appeals court judge, Fred Biery, investigations. According to Ivins, before he been encouraged by his father to use the who spent a year and $325,000 campaigning. disappeared on June 13, Boatwright had been name Warren G. Harding Jr., "so that bankers Biery, who received the support of virtually the source of several allegations against would understand you're my son right a- every group that makes endorsements in Hightower. Law enforcement officials in way." judicial races, said his losing effort had more Waller County spent five days looking for J.T. Leech, a former longtime treasury to do with Kelly's name — the same name as Boatwright before he called from a Califor- department official, said that "the elder Har- the veteran Hollywood dancer/actor — than nia psychiatric hospital to let his wife know ding helped his son Glenn, as he was then the candidates' qualifications. ❑

THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 13 Bustin' Budgets Clayton Williams's Numbers Don't Add Up BY STEPHEN MERELMAN

LAYTON WILLIAMS has proposed a 25-point program which his litera- C ture promises will "win the war against drugs and drug pushers." But the Republican gubernatorial nominee loathes taxes as much as he hates drugs; he has promised to fight the drug war without further taxation. How much will Williams's plan cost the state if he is elected, and what are its chances for success?

THROW AWAY THE KEY PITCH: A central tenet of Williams's plan is to increase minimum sentences for convicted drug users and to double sentences for any- one convicted of a drug-related crime against a child. According to Charles Brown, Texas Department of Corrections spokesman, the TDC population as of May 1 was 43,576 inmates. The TDC estimates that 80-85 per- cent of these inmates are imprisoned either for drugs or drug-related offenses — crimes committed for drugs, or while on drugs. This means that at least 34,861 prisoners would be subject to Williams's vow of stiffer sen- LOUIS DUBOSE tences. Clayton Williams Jr. and Roy Barrera

PROBLEM: Arthur "Cappy" Eads Jr., dis- really dangerous .drug entrepreneurs, and of Citizens United for the Rehabilitation of trict attorney for Bell County, said Williams's giving them much heavier sentences. The Errants (CURE), said that the TDC's figure call for stiffer sentences would not necessar- scattergun approach of adding two years to did not take into account AFDC payments ily mean harsher punishments. Eads said that every drug offender's sentence, even the for the families of inmates, bonds to build rather than stiffer sentences, what is called small-time, street-corner user, "is continuing new prisons, social security and insurance for is a law mandating tougher parole terms, the problem we have now," Martin said: for prison employees and "numerous other to increase actual time spent behind bars. overcrowding our prisons by locking up the details." "I would estimate [costs of] up- Williams's plan does not call for such a law. wrong people, and forcing early release of wards of $60 a day," Ellinger said. "I'm not as concerned about longer sen- the real drug barons. But even using the unrealistically low TDC tences as about the length of time a person So Williams's plan may fail to increase the figure of $34.07 per day, and a total of 70,000 serves on the sentence they receive," Eads TDC population, or it could increase the new prisoner-years, the bill for stiffer drug said. Eads said that a drug user sentenced to number of prisoners without decreasing the sentences could total $870,488,500. Using two years in TDC would probably never see amount of drug crime. But if it did succeed, CURE's figures, the cost balloons to $1.533 a state pen, having already served his time in and every inmate of the 34,861 imprisoned billion. local jails. But Eads said passing stricter today for drug-related crimes were incarcer- parole laws would be difficult. "I think it ated for an additional two years the TDC Debit Total: - $870,488,500 would be difficult to pass considering [prison would be forced to absorb 69,722 more pris- Balance: - $870,488,500 overcrowding]," he said. "We are failing to oner-years. dedicate the resources to keep them con- Those numbers, however, don't include fined," he said. PRICE: Although it is impossible to increase the biggest price tag of all — housing. Where Steve Martin also believes Williams's prison sentences retroactively, and two years will Claytie put all those prisoners? The harsher sentencing will do little to solve the may be a generous estimate, the TDC popu- state's jam-packed prison system is still under drug abuse problem. It does little good to add lation is certain to increase in coming years. a federal court order to keep the prison popu- two years to every offender's sentence, Mar- If Williams gets his harsher sentences, the lation down to humane levels. There are two tin contends; instead, we should concentrate TDC will almost certainly have to absorb alternatives: building more prisons, and our efforts on identifying and arresting the nearly 70,000 additional prisoner- years. Can constructing "boot camps," another plank of it? the Williams plan. The candidate has been According to the TDC's Brown it costs characteristically vague about who will be taxpayers $12,435.55 ,a year to incarcerate a put in these boot camps, so we've estimated Stephen Merelman is an Observer editorial prisoner. That figure breaks down to $34.07 the cost of housing both ways — in prisons, intern. daily. But Wally Ellinger, executive director and in boot camps. 14 • JULY 27, 1990 The TDC has budgeted for 25,000 new old program, but it seems possible that boot six years spent on death row awaiting execu- beds in the 1990-92 biennium, but already camps could offer the prospect of rehabilita- tion, and the $36.95 cost of the lethal injec- state officials predict a shortfall. According tion at bargain prices. tion." In his estimate Grothaus included the to Steve Martin, a corrections consultant and costs of stayed and commuted executions, co-author with Sheldon Ekland-Olson of PRICE TAG: The present boot-camp setup and the costs incurred in unsuccessfully When the Walls Come Tumbling Down, Texas houses 200 prisoners at a cost of $1.6 million, pursuing a death sentence — in short, the cost must spend $128 million to build a 2,250-bed or $8,000 per prisoner. Multiplying that by of maintaining the institution of capital pun- prison unit, including bonded indebtedness. the minimum 3500 new prisoners yields a ishment. Martin said the highest costs are staffing and cost of $28 million. According to Grothaus's article Texas had maintenance of the prison over a 30-year spent about $183.2 million to execute 19 institutional lifespan. This could drive the Debit Total: - $28 million felons since the re-imposition of the death cost per 2,250-bed unit to between $650 Balance: - $2.448 billion penalty in 1982 — nearly $10,000,000 an million and $1 billion, spread over 30 years. execution. If the state caught and convicted Martin estimates that adding two years to This emphasis on stronger sentencing is five child-killing drug pushers each year it the sentences of drug offenders convicted the most expensive of Williams's proposals. could then cost $50 million annually to exe- after 1990 would require construction suffi- But the candidate also intends a number of cute them. cient to house at least 7,000 more prisoners other costly changes. per year. (TDC took in about that many drug Debit Total: - $50 million offenders last year; the added two years would MORE BADGES Balance: - $2.521 billion. effectively double that number, Martin fig- PITCH: Williams's program calls for dou- ures.) "And that's an extremely conservative bling the number of state law-enforcement GROUND 'EM! figure," Martin noted, because it doesn't take officers fighting drugs in Texas. According Williams proposes suspending the driver's into account the added hordes of drug crimi- to Mike Scott, commander of the Depart- licenses of convicted drug users and requir- nals that would be rounded up as a result of ment of Public Safety Narcotics Division, ing counseling and testing before the licenses Williams's augmented enforcement efforts. the DPS currently has 206 commissioned are, restored. This idea is similar to a West Martin contends that over half those 7,000 officers who are responsible only for battling Virginia law which automatically suspends prisoners would not be suitable for boot drugs. the licenses of high-school dropouts. camps or other less-secure housing; thus, Greg Vasilou, director of safety and en- new prison space would have to be built for PRICE TAG: The annual budget of the Nar- forcement for the West Virginia Department an absolute minimum of 3500 prisoners per cotics Division is $11.5 million. Williams's of Motor Vehicles, called the drop-out pro- year. Multiplying that by construction costs plan to double the strength of the state's anti- gram "extremely inexpensive." He said the per prisoner works out to between $1.011 drug forces would then cost $23 million, not West Virginia DMV had hired only "one billion and $1.555 billion. This time, we'll including the costs of recruiting and training clerk who earns 14 or 15 [thousand dollars] use the higher figure, since we're using the new officers. a year" to implement the program. "All the lower estimate for the number of new prison- things were already in place," he said. The ers. Debit Total: - $23 million West Virginia program requires a minimal Balance: - $2.471 billion. amount of paperwork, and has been effective Debt total: - $1.55 billion in bringing students back to school. "I guess Balance: - $2.42 billion. GIVE 'EM THE NEEDLE those young bucks realize the difficulty of PITCH: Another item is Williams's promise getting a date on a skateboard," one adminis- BUSTIN' ROCKS to "impose the death penalty on any drug trator said. What would become of the other 3500, less- pusher who sells drugs to a child if the child Although the license-suspension option dangerous prisoners? Williams's alternative dies as a result of using those drugs." would be cheap to implement, it is difficult to drug convict warehousing plan envisions use gauge its chances for success. Drug addicts of boot camps, which are supposed to teach PROBLEM: According to Jenny Kavinsky, are more stubborn than skateboarding truants, "lessons in discipline, hard work and self- research editor for the Texas Committee on and Texas does not yet have the ability to respect." Captain John Pitzeruse of the Texas Alcohol and Drug Abuse, relatively few offer help to the thousands who would be Department of Criminal Justice's Institu- children die as a result of illegal drug usage. required to receive counseling. tional Division said the state's boot camp at Kavinsky has compiled statistics on the drug- Huntsville does more than set prisoners to related deaths of those under 21 years old. In Debit Total: Effectively - $0. hard labor. "We're not just here breaking 1989, through October, Kavinsky said three Balance: - $2.521 billion rocks," Pitzeruse said. "Our main job is to minors died from abuse of opiates; two died teach these people discipline." Pitzeruse said from the use of cocaine. Although the chances The most expensive of Williams's anti- the boot-camp program had several financial of apprehending the sellers of all five fatal drug provisions — increased jail time, dou- advantages over prison terms. Each boot doses are slim, assuming all five are found bling state law enforcement personnel and camp stay is 90 days, as opposed to expen- guilty and sentenced to death, how much will executing child-killing pushers — could cost sive prison terms which are measured in each execution cost? the taxpayers over two and a half billion years. The trustee-run camp has a capacity of dollars almost immediately. How can Wil- 200 inmates at any given time, 800 in a year. PRICE TAG: TDC spokesman Brown said liams raise that colossal sum without raising The camp cost only $1.6 million to construct, the state makes no estimate of the cost of an taxes? Pitzeruse said. execution. "You can't get no figure for that," And the boot camps show potential for he said. "You don't know when to start or BUDGET SLICING rehabilitation as well. According to a recent stop." But in December, 1986, Houston Post Williams's revenue-generating ideas do article in the Village Voice, New York state's reporter Dan Grothaus published an article not match his revenue-spending ideas. boot camp program alumni showed a five- calculating the cost of executing one crimi- Williams's hypothetical budget does not end percent improvement in recidivism rates over nal in Texas. up in the red; rather his plans to fight drugs the general prison population. "If you place Grothaus's figure included "court costs, without new taxes may be simply be impos- the right type of offenders in those programs court-appointed attorney's fees, average sible in terms of actual politics. The keynote they can be quite effective," Martin said. No appellate costs at the county, state and fed- of Williams's revenue-generating scheme is recidivism figures yet exist for Texas's year- eral levels, housing costs during the average Continued on page 22

THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 15 Halfway to Equity Sketches from Scott McCown's Courtroom

BY BRETT CAMPBELL

Austin minutiae multiplied. the court process is so lethargic that to scuttle HERE IS A large color map of the Fortunately, McCown is an able ringmas- those plans now would cause chaos. (He's Republic of Texas on the wall of state ter and has been able to speed things up to a promised a ruling by September 1.) T District Judge Scott McCown's court- slow canter by occasionally interrupting At this point in the trial, though, despite room in the Travis County courthouse. Dur- O'Hanlon or a witness, summarizing the O'Hanlon's best efforts, it appears that the ing much of his lengthy cross-examination of testimony, asking a penetrating question, and plaintiffs are convincingly proving that what the Edgewood plaintiffs' witnesses, Kevin arriving at a conclusion that might otherwise the Legislature did last spring did not signifi- O'Hanlon had his back to that wall. The have taken hours to educe. Whenever the cantly change the current, inequitable school acerbic assistant attorney general is fond of arcana threatened to overwhelm the hearing, finance system; it's old wine in a new bottle. scrawling diagrams on a large easel during McCown brought the exchange back on track, "I think it's the identical system," Dr. Jose his questioning; typically, he would stand di- keeping the discussion framed around the Cardenas, former Edgewood ISD superin- rectly in front of the map, oversized marker two overriding issues: "Is what the Legisla- tendent, told the court. (Cardenas is now in hand, squared off before the witnesses, so ture did constitutional? If not, what should executive director of an education think tank.) that it has seemed as though that old map rep- this court's order be?" Whenever the heat Based on the admittedly incomplete testi- resented what the state's lawyer was trying rose between the abrasive assistant AG and mony so far, I'd venture that the judge will so doggedly to defend: an antiquated picture, the witnesses he was cross-examining, rule against the state, order it to try again, this a school-finance system more suited to the McCown's exaggerated politeness and occa- time for the 1991-92 school year, and an- 19th century than the 21st. sional interjected jokes helped defuse the other cohort of students will graduate under History is being made in this cramped tension. The judge parried 0 'Hanlon' s occa- an unfair system, albeit one with more money. chamber, and like all custom-made crafts- sional objections with a soft-spoken, "Well, You can't blame the assistant attorney gen- manship, it is a tedious process. I'm re- let's move along, now." It's an old judge's eral for the torpid pace; as irritating as minded of the ancient process of sword- trick, avoiding making a ruling on the objec- O'Hanlon can be, he's a forceful and canny making for the Japanese samurai: The metal tion, thereby avoiding a potential point of ap- advocate, and he's just doing the job the law is fired on the forge, smoothed, folded back peal. McCown knows when to depart from requires of him — vigorously defending the on itself, then folded again and again, back formal procedures, allowing the lawyers to indefensible. But is that the right job? and forth, over and over. This series of law- "testify," when that's the most efficient and It needn't be so. Just as modern techno- suits has been like that, from the original fair way to develop the information. Al- logy affords us better ways to make weapons Rodriguez case filed in 1968 and wending its though O'Hanlon's adversarial style sticks than samurais had, a modern state ought to be way to the U.S. Supreme Court five years out glaringly in this collegial, low-key, "let- able to carry out the most important function later, to the agonizing battles over Edgewood us-reason-together" atmosphere (in contrast of state government somewhere other than in v. Kirby in state courts, through the drawn- to the plaintiffs' counsels' politesse), even he a court of law. Even McCown's common- out fights in the three special sessions, to this appeared satisfied with the judge's fairness sense approach can't hide the fact that, new suit, filed by the Edgewood plaintiffs in at such junctures, though McCown increas- whatever merits the adversary system might the same district court that originally de- ingly evinced impatience with the state's have, evaluating (much less designing) a clared the school system unconstitutional. strategy, and seemed to be leaning, in his school-finance plan isn't one of them. It's a What has been happening with the school- questions, toward the plaintiffs' position. most inefficient method for designing an "ef- finance case since the Legislature finally ficient" system, and in a sane world, educa- adjourned, exhausted, hoping that the special ET EVEN MCCOWN can't make tional schemes wouldn't be crafted in court- sessions had at last produced a workable the train run faster than the tracks rooms. But the blinkered Legislature, unable plan? For a week and a half, the plaintiffs' can handle. No matter how frus- to envision the critical need for adequate attorneys, Al Kauffman and Rick Gray, called tratingly leaden the defendants' pace in cross- education, unwilling to muster the political to the witness stand a succession of school- examination — and the plaintiffs had just courage to pay for it, has left the plaintiffs no finance experts to explain, point by point, rested their case as we went to press — the other choice. They've tried every other con- why the Legislature's compromise package, judge must allow them to make their volumi- ceivable avenue for over two decades now, known as Senate Bill 1, doesn't comply with nous case, to avoid reversal on procedural and the rain still pours through rotting ceil- the Supreme Court's directive to devise a grounds. ings in some schoolhouses, while others fill "substantially equitable" school-finance plan. Which means that this trial seems destined their on-campus swimming pools. Then O'Hanlon, apparently intent on estab- to stretch on for days, then the judge will de- How will history weigh what is happening lishing a detailed record for appeal, painstak- liberate, issue an order, the order will be ap- in this courtroom? All this debate will be ingly took the same witnesses through every pealed, probably twice, which means more seen as just another rearguard action by the aspect of the legislation that does seem to oral argument, perhaps interlocutory orders, forces of ignorance in the long, scorched- comport with the standard, all the while chip- more deliberation, more delay, as the new earth battle to achieve the promises made in ping away at the witnesses' contentions with school year creeps closer. Then, back to the the Texas and U.S. Constitutions — an effi- abstruse, technical questions. Buzzwords Legislature. McCown has already said that cient system of education, and, in the larger flitted about the room like gnats around a no matter how flawed SB 1 is, he almost cer- sense, a state of unlimited potential for all its campfire — "weighted a.d.a.," "proration," tainly will allow it to go into effect for the citizens. I can't help thinking that among this "revenue caps," "priority funding." The upcoming school year, because school budg- aggregation of bright, reasonable people — courtroom audience grew impatient as the ets are being drawn up for it even now, and lawyers, witnesses, and foremost the judge 16 • JULY 27, 1990 himself — is enough accumulated brain- dren is so important that their leaders were spending and educational achievement, be- power to work out every detail of a superb willing to stand up and create a system so cause they betray the future as well as the school system. Instead, a quarter-century of good and so fair that all our children would present. What's worse is that it wouldn't obtuseness by our state leaders has brought have the chance to go as far in their lives as even take much courage for our leaders to all these eminently well-intentioned people their talent and ambition will take them. make it right; polls consistently show voters here, playing their roles in the elaborate ritual Right now, too many of them don't have that are willing to make tax sacrifices for educat- of contentiousness inherent in the legal proc- opportunity. And the only example our lead- ing their children. The obstructionist legisla- ess, immersed in all the information, all the ers have set for the children is one of the tors won't see the results of their cowardice documentation — all of it, in a sense, wasted. consequences of ignorance. The lesson isn't on the House floor. The full effects will be You probably could have run a small school worth the tuition. visible in those classrooms in Edgewood district for a year on the money spent defend- On that map in Judge McCown's court- ISD, in the Valley, in the Fifth Ward — in ing an obsolete, unfair system. Instead, the room, there's an inset, showing Texas's po- leaky ceilings, ragged textbooks, blighted lawyers slog it out, in a forum intended to sition on the North American continent. The futures. adjudicate disputes between parties, not to Republic's relative size is far greater than Meanwhile, the legal proceedings grind design elaborate administrative plans ... while today, both because much territory was ceded on in the Travis County courthouse, as our the kids wait yet another year. to other states and because advances in car- taxpayer-financed lawyers continue their Think what a message the government tography permit more accurate depictions. tortuous defense of a worldview that has would have sent to schoolchildren, and their Yet Texas seems today diminished in other passed into history as surely as the Texas in parents, if instead of being dragged halfway ways as well, diminished in the size of its that map on the wall. Come September, the to equity through a slough of legal delays, it heart, the heart that Clayton Williams is so school bells will ring again, in a system that had forthrightly done the right thing in the fond of talking about. We rank near the is little better for many students than it has first place. That would have told our youth bottom in so many of the categories of com- ever been. Shouldn't we all understand, by that education is a priority, that We care about passion, but perhaps none are more tragic now, for whom those bells will toll? their future, that the schooling of Texas chil- than those shameful figures on education

SOCIAL CAUSE CALENDAR

NAST & HOMER OBSERVANCES FOLKLIFE FESTIVAL IN HOUSTON The 19th Annual Texas Folklife Festival The Pen and the,Sword: Winslow Homer, July 28, 1859 • First oil well drilled. will be held from August 2-5 at the Insti- Thomas Nast, and the American Civil July 28, 1868 • Fourteenth Amendment to tute of Texan Cultures in San Antonio. War, an exhibition of over 50 prints, will the U.S. Constitution ratified, guarantee- The festival presents a panoply of Texas's be on display August 4-February 3 at the ing due process of law to all citizens — many cultures, as experienced through Houston Museum of Fine Arts. For more except Native Americans. dance, art, music, food, crafts and other information call 713/639-7540. August 3, 1981 • President Reagan fires traditions. For more information call 512/ 11,500 striking air traffic controllers. 226-7651. POLISH TEXAS August 5, 1884 • Cornerstone for Statue The Institute of Texan Cultures in San An- of Liberty placed. PANTEX PROTEST tonio will exhibit Panna Maria: An Im- August 6, 1945 • Atomic bomb dropped IN AMARILLO age of PolishTexans ,July 25-October 21. on Hiroshima, Japan. The seventh annual protest by peace and This contemporary photographic essay by August 7, 1964 • Congress passes Gulf of justice activists at the Pantex nuclear weap- Joseph Jaworski documents the people, Tonkin resolution, granting President ons plant outside Amarillo will be held at land, occupations, and church of Panna Johnson power to wage war in Indochina. the Peace Farm adjacent to the plant from Maria, Texas, the oldest Polish settlement August 8, 1974 • Richard Nixon resigns. Friday, August 3-Sunday, August 5. in the United States. For information, call August 9, 1945 • Atomic bomb dropped The theme of this year's Pantex Pilgrim- 512/226-7651. on Nagasaki. age and Peace Camp will be "Celebrating August 14. i 457 • First book printed. a World Without Walls." Bicycle pilgrims CURE CONVENTION August 14, i46 • Thoreati jailed for tax will ride across the state, speaking about IN HUNTSVILLE resistance. Pantex and the arms race in the towns they Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Er- August 14, 1935 • President Roosevelt visit, and will reach the Peace Farm on rants (CURE) will hold their annual con- signs Social S,:curity Act. August 3. Saturday morning features vention in Huntsville, Saturday, August August 15, 1969 • Woodstock festival be- workshops on the techniques of peace 11. CURE is a nationwide organization gins in New York. activism, and will include a speaker from working for reform of the criminal justice Eastern Europe. A Peace Festival and Pro- system. The convention will include gressive Cause Gathering will be held in workshops with prison officials, discus- Amarillo Saturday afternoon, and folk sions of capital punishment, public ac- convention is open to the public and the singer Odetta will wind up the festival countability of real costs of operating media. Registration fee is $5.00. with a concert at 8 p.m. There will be an prisons, and meetings with "successful ecumenical service and action at the Pan- ex-exes.- Some informal meetings and FAULK TRIBUTE tex main gate Sunday morning. The event social events will be held on the Friday The Man Who Beat the Blacklist, Bill is sponsored by the Red River Peace night before the convention. For informa- Moyers's biography/appreciation of John Network, a coalition of Texas, Oklahoma tion, write Convention Chairperson Ray Henry Faulk filmed last year, will air in and New Mexico activists. For informa- Hill, PO Box 3624, Houston Texas 77253. many Texas markets around August 1st. tion, contact the Peace Farm, HCR 2 Box For reservations at the Criminal Justice Check local public television listings for 25, Panhandle, Texas 79068 or call (806) Center Hotel, call (409) 254-1703. The the airdate in your area. 335-1715.

THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 17 BOOKS & THE CULTURE Beyond a Shadow of Truth

BY STEVEN G. KELLMAN

PRESUMED INNOCENT cate as anything in the rules of Neoclassical Charonesque ferry between the apparent Directed by Alan J. Pakula theater. security of his suburban home and the infer- FLATLINERS "I am a prosecutor," announces Sabich, nal anxieties of his urban work. Directed by Joel Schumacher second in command to Kindle County's Enlightenment and denouement occur Raymond Horgan (Brian Dennehy), a savvy differently in the book and the film. Pakula F THEY CANNOT find the truth," asks attorney and politician. When one of his preserves subtle textures of gesture and glance chief deputy prosecutor Rusty Sabich, other lieutenants, the vivacious and ambi- — as when Stern, professionally indifferent I as we stare at an empty jury box prior to tious Carolyn Polhemus (Greta Scacchi), is to the actual innocence of his client, is given the credits, "what is our hope of justice?" By found murdered, Horgan, in the midst of a an expert lecture by Sabich on how he would the end of Presumed Innocent, we have desperate campaign for reelection, insists prosecute himself and then proceeds to con- learned many little truths, but justice seems a that Sabich head up the investigation. Sa- struct a defense that surprises everyone. The hopeless case. It would be churlish to divulge bich, like Horgan and several other men who film is of course obligated to omit many too many of those truths, even if a press re- might have advanced her career, had been secondary details, though these are precisely lease from Warner Brothers, the producers of sexually involved with Polhemus, and what give long life to what is otherwise a the film, did not request cooperation on two Horgan's political opponent — and former brief. And the novel is narrated, by a Sabich important matters: "1) Please don't 'reveal subordinate—uses suspicions about a cover- who has and shares a rich inner identity. the ending (in whatever you write or say 'on up to defeat Horgan and to get Sabich in- Harrison Ford's deputy prosecutor captures the air.) 2) Please don't reveal if Rusty Sai dicted for the murder of Carolyn Polhemus. the character's outward diffidence with no bich (Harrison Ford) is guilty or innocent.' Most of Presumed Innocent is the story of hint that it is the armor he learned to don I am willing to reveal my source, the ab- Sabich's efforts to clear himself. Horgan's against an aggressive and embarrassing sorbing 1987 novel by lawyer-author Scott former heir apparent as district attorney, Yugoslav father. Ford's Sabich seems to suf- Turow from which Alan J. Pakula adapted Sabich now faces imminent conviction for a fer from terminal shell-shock even before ar- his film. But, on my honor, not even wild capital offense, a particularly brutal homi- raignment, and his fatal attraction to Carolyn hearses can pry from me essential informa- cide with sexual overtones. Even Horgan is not entirely convincing. "I wanted with tion about the plot of Presumed Innocent. agrees to testify against his surrogate son wild, wild abandon, with a surging, defiant, Much of the appeal of the book and film lies Sabich, once respected and trusted by all. emboldened desire, I wanted the extreme — in playing jury to the movie jury, in ap- But for crackerjack criminal lawyer Sandy the exultation, the passion and the moment, proaching, without any preconceptions, a Stern (Raul Julia), a cynical but loyal detec- the fire, the light," explains the novel's narra- clash of contentions. It is the ordinary posi- tive named Lipranzer (John Spencer), and tor, but it is hard to imagine the dispassionate tion that we find ourselves in after we aban- patient wife Barbara (Bonnie Bedelia), Sa- fellow on the screen succumbing to such don the fetal one. If lawsuits are more com- bich is alone. fervor or such rhetoric. mon than dinner jackets on the screens of A superior whodunit, Presumed Innocent In a world where passion is illicit, women American theaters, it may be because life, exploits riveting cameo performances to leave are disruptive monsters, a challenge to the inside and outside the Bijou, is a trial. Con- everyone open to suspicion, even Judge logical laws that men devise and enforce. sider, as evidence, The Accused, The Caine Larren Lyttle (Paul Winfield), a wisecrack- Like Fatal Attraction, Presumed Innocent is Mutiny, Judgment at Nuremburg, The Man ing black man in awe of no one. Pakula, who an indictment of woman as Eve. Pakula's in the Glass Booth, The Music Box, 12 Angry also directed Sophie' s Choice, All the film denies full justice to the complexities of Men, The Verdict, and Witness for the Prose- President's Men, and Klute, creates a murky desire or Turow's novel. But, then, it reminds cution, among courtroom dramas that have world of opportunism, extortion, and adul- us that justice is a delusion, that we must been almost as abundant as bedroom cnes. tery in which innocence is presumptuous. settle for the shadow of truth, which is a fair Justice may be.blind, but you will be, tob, if But what is most haunting is the sense of how definition of what, flickering at 24 frames per you try to view every film that features a trial. very fragile are the dikes we build against second, is cinema. If drama is conflict, a trial, in which prosecu- disaster. Law and order, it seems to suggest, tion and defense compete with rival versions are separate realms, and we must at best HAT IS THE ANSWER?" of the truth, is inherently dramatic. The settle for the imperfections of law. Barbara asked Gertrude Stein on her courtroom is a stage on which actors perform Sabich is completing a doctoral dissertation W deathbed. Hearing no response opposing parts according to a code as intri- in mathematics, but it, like the rites of juris- from longtime companion Alice B. Toklas, prudence by which her husband seeks to Stein spoke her final words: "In that case, stave off terror, is powerless against chaos. what is the question?" "Life, it seems, does not follow the invari- "I want to come back with the answers to able rules of mathematics," notes Rusty in death," declares Nelson (Kiefer Sutherland), Steven Kellman is a professor of compara- Turow's novel. The screenplay that Pakula explaining to fellow medical students the tive literature at the University of Texas at wrote with Frank Pierson situates the events experiment he intends to conduct on himself. San Antonio. in a watery domain where Rusty must take a He convinces four reluctant classmates to 18 • JULY 27, 1990 induce brain death and, one minute later, ing baby boomers." All were born around atheist David Labraccio (Kevin Bacon) flat- revive him. "Philosophy failed. Religion 1967, too late to partake of Woodstock, Free- lines — solely, he explains, to provide a failed. Now it's up to the physical sciences," dom Summer, or the March on the Pentagon. skeptical control to the experiment — he claims Nelson, a Hippocratic Faust. Flatlin- But, if this trick works, they will have vindi- finds himself tormented by the vulgar invec- ers does not, and could not, provide answers cated their generation; not even Bob Dylan tive of a 10-year-old black girl. She is the to death. But, as though bored with the ques- was born again in the way that Nelson pro- specter of a neighborhood child whom pre- tions, it diverts our attention from eschatol- poses. And Flatliners itself — directed by pubescent David used to pick on. All that ogy to mere psychology. The film, which Joel Schumacher, whose credits include The David now needs to do to purge himself of derives its title from the leveled pulse on an Lost Boys and St. Elmo' s Fire, and starring a this rather airy burden of shame is seek out electrocardiogram, is ultimately more inter- cast known not for King Lear but Footloose the grown-up woman and apologize. Nelson's ested in the earlier lives of its five young and Young Guns — seems a bid to prove that spook is more violent — the 8-year-old wimp characters than in an exploration of the after- the adolescence of post-post-war babies is he had knocked out of a tree and who now life. past. returns with a hockey stick to wreak revenge. Grotesque pranks are part of the standard The science behind Flatliners is dubious, Rachel Mannes (Julia Roberts) must make folklore of medical school, but what Nelson but, once Nelson gives up the ghost and then peace with the beloved father she believes and his comrades gather to do goes beyond returns, the others vie to go next and to outdo committed suicide because of her. Compul- scattering cadaver parts at the supermarket. each other in time spent on the other side of sive philanderer Joe Hurley (William Bald- In the still of the night, they smuggle surgical death. One minute. One minute, 30 seconds. win) is stalked by the dozens of women he has equipment into a cavernous, Hellenic cham- Two minutes, 20 seconds. Five minutes. On bedded and secretly taped. ber of fictional Taft University and prepare successive nights, everyone but Steckel is Miasmal shots of nocturnal Chicago streets to create Lazarus on an operating table. Fired put to sleep and then revived. Extraordinary and a sacred choral track give Flatliners an by a combination of personal ambition, intel- as the procedure is, resuscitation proves less otherworldly feel. But it is less the ghost of lectual curiosity, and private demons, these problematic than coping with the ghosts that Dante than that of Sigmund Freud who hov- future physicians of America have more haunt each of the young adventurers. During ers over the proceedings. The film provides grandiose concerns than tax shelters. It ain't the moments that each spends flatlining on an inadvertent caricature of his etiology of brain surgery that they pursue but something the operating table, the camera moves through neurosis and his method of de-traumatizing even more momentous than that. They dream a montage of memories that continue to ob- the past by making the subconscious of being canonized on 60 Minutes and are sess even after a successful return to life. conscious. Flatliners cannot be faulted for a documenting their experiences with a video What is disappointing about Flatliners is failure to imagine what lies beyond death, but camera and a tape recorder. "We have finally that the quest for truth about whether, like the its creators bear guilt for their shoddy account found something worthwhile," exults Ran- charwoman, we all come to dust, becomes of what precedes it. Its delinquent characters dall Steckel (Oliver Platt), the most pompous merely the pretext for an expiation of a guilty must still find absolution from the authorities of the five, "something to upstage those fuck- past, a rather banal one at that. When avowed at their medical school. ❑ No Exit

BY MICHAEL KING

LAST EXIT TO BROOKLYN timizers, not only unredeemed but unredeem- is a harrowing one, reminiscent of Celine or Directed by Uli Edel able. The Brooklyn of Exit is a violent and an obscene variation on Dostoevsky's Notes Screenplay by Desmond Nakano hellish human cesspool, and sex only the from the Underground: there is a whiff of ni- Based on the novel by Hubert Selby Jr. most bestial theater of domination and sub- hilism on every page. Portentous and aggran- mission. dizing in style (each section begins with a ERE IT TO BE written today, Despite this unrelenting grimness, or per- solemn epigraph from the Old Testament, Last Exit to Brooklyn would not haps in part because of it, the novel has which the narrative then grotesquely under- W be a likely candidate for a grant retained a fairly sizable reputation, particu- mines), the novel is peopled by small-time from the NEA. First published in 1964, it larly in European circles which have always hoodlums, amateur hookers, drug-popping was considered a breakthrough novel of the preferred a bleakly naturalistic portrait of the queens, malevolently corrupt union officials, period, setting a new standard for sexual States, for whom Native Son is the central and their feckless underlings. Everyone is frankness, not to say social depravity. I can Afro-American novel and Charles Bukow- either a hustler or a mark, a drifter or a john, remember being caught in "serious" discus- ski is the true heir to the American poetic tra- pausing intermittently only to exchange roles. sions over whether it met the then-prevailing dition. This, so the feeling goes, is the dark Extreme violence is an ordinary reflex — the standard for obscenity; that is, if "taken as a underbelly of the American dream, a vision novel is regularly punctuated by casual bru- whole," it was "utterly without socially re- verite which puts the lie to exported tales of tality. deeming value." Readers who had not blinked glistening prosperity and social happiness. Less a coherent whole than a series of at Henry Miller's sexual cornucopia found Those pollyanna-ish tales are perhaps less extended vignettes, Exit recounts dozens of Selby more than little hard to take. Unlike common than they once were; the novel in personal sketches, but focuses upon a few Miller, there was no joy or celebration in fact recalls with a heavily jaundiced eye the gargoyle-like characters: Georgette, the "hip him. On the contrary, his lower depths were heady days of the early '50s, to an infernal queer" (one of a group of rough-trade trans- filled with desperate victims and brutal vic- Brooklyn seemingly untouched by postwar vestites) who lives on bennies, and smack, optimism and confidence. Selby's title is and fantastic dreams of true romance with a bitterly sardonic, of course; those who exit vicious ex-con, Vinnie, who amuses himself here will soon discover they should abandon by making Georgette beg for sex; Tralala, the Michael King is a frequent contributor to the all hope. apprentice chippie who sets up drunken sail- Observer. Even judged as a nightmare, Selby's world ors for Vinnie and his cronies to mug, and THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 19 then fights them for a cut; and Harry Black, at their stink, their scabs and pimples, their main figure. Georgette, reduced to a stupe- corrupt union steward and closet homosex- physical beings. Not a one but picks her nose fied bathos in the novel, is here sacrificially ual who is padding his strike accounts in but Selby is after her, howling in revulsion retired by a speeding car. Harry Black, order to finance his liaisons with transves- and horror, and his disgust at their couplings whose brutal comeuppance is seen by Selby tites. All told, an ingratiating crew. (particularly the heterosexual ones, as he is as rough and inevitable justice for a wife- Those quick sketches reflect succinctly rather more kindly disposed to "queers") •heater and a phony macho man, is hallowed Selby's portrait of ordinary humanity, and says more about the author than his creatures. by the filmmakers into a grotesque and gra- his narrative is as unforgiving. At the mercy The tales of Georgette, Tralala, and Harry tuitously literal crucifixion. And the death of of Vinnie's relentless sexual humiliation, are the grim core of Exit, and it's no surprise Tralala, which in the novel stands as the Georgette drifts into a drug-induced reverie, that a film version took 25 years to appear, ultimate evidence of the self-damnation of a jazz-backed and heroin-laced attempt to and then only from a European company. In the whole hellish community — is almost deny the undeniably foul taste of Vinnie's the interim, Selby's original impact has comically turned by the filmmakers into a cock. Tralala progresses from free-lance dimmed, and his vision has faded enough to macabre and unbelievable rebirth, into the hooking for short-time soldier-boys to the seem almost antiquated, like his white work- arms of a weeping and innocent child. (In the bottom of a bottle, hustling for drinks until, ing-class urban nightmare — the cities have book, the neighborhood kids wait impatiently utterly degraded, she offers herself for a since gone dark, literally and figuratively, in line for a chance to mutilate and defile gang-bang and is fucked, beaten, and muti- and his presumptive dismissal of the under- Tralala's corpse.) lated to death. Harry Black, left destitute by class is now the stuff of op-ed pages. In his The overall effect is of a comforting and the end of the strike that was his source of defense, it should be said that at least he had utterly romanticized homage to the novel, cash for sex, tries to pick up a boy in front of been there. (It is just as well that the that succeeds, after a fashion, only by turning the neighborhood bar, with predictable re- filmmakers make no attempt to include the book on its head. Selby was a consultant sults — Vinnie and crew swarm out to beat Selby's few black characters — they are to the film, and even has a bit part; presuma- him to a bloody and contemptible pulp. embarrassingly racist caricatures, and ds such bly he did not object to this honorific trav- Undeniably powerful in the rendering, they cast doubt backward on the veracity of esty, or was simply taken in by its genuflec- particularly in its use of internal narration for their white counterparts.) Uli Edel and screen- tion before presumed literary greatness. effects never contemplated by Joyce, Exit writer Desmond Nakano have been visually Visually quite convincing, the film is shame- now seems more a highly personal jeremiad painstaking in their recreation of the '50s less in its contradiction of the book's sensi- against the author's old neighborhood than a Brooklyn waterfront, and the screenplay bility at every crucial emotional moment. truth-telling portrait thereof. With the pos- recovers a remarkable amount of the book's Rather than the self-destructive brutes Selby sible exception of the sentimentalized by action. Yet their crucial and possibly un- created, the film's major figures are all the absurd Georgette, its characters are unre- avoidable changes in the narrative have re- uncomprehending victims of tragic social lievedly loathsome, and fully deserve every sulted in a tepid and sentimentalized revision fates, amidst a noble working class oppressed blow they receive from life and their neigh- of the novel's unrelenting cynicism, its at- by its capitalist masters and betrayed by its bors. Selby's caustic moral outrage is that of mospheric reason for being. The film, far union brethren. (To Selby, the factory work- a precocious adolescent who has just discov- from being the wholehearted Inferno envi- ers are no more than ignorant cartoons who ered that the world is a terrible place, full of sioned by Selby, is a romanticized elegy to strike out of lassitude and boredom, for whom hypocrites, liars, and people who smell bad. the underclass. It betrays the novel by em- a strike fund is a slightly more respectable He so despises his own creations for their bracing it. form of welfare. As attentive as he is to the venality and hypocrisy, beating them over The filmmakers have intelligently struc- sores and boils on his people, he is wholly the head with Ecclesiastes and Job, that one tured the film as a coherent narrative, with without interest in the physical details of fac- begins to feel sorry for them, despite their the strike against the local factory forming tory work, or for that matter in the larger life creator's relentless effort to make us hate the background for the tales of the three main of the city.) So the film gets great chiaro- them, too. He has locked them up in an characters, although in the novel the strike is scuro footage of nighttime strike battles and overdetermined cage of his own making, and only important to Harry's story. The change burning trucks, and a triumphant climax as then seems shocked that they behave like requires certain structural adjustments which the victorious strikers return to work — at the beasts. And these self-made moral lepers are are mostly unimportant; the telling revisions same moment that a man in the crowd is for Selby bodily lepers as well; he is revolted are in the new "conclusions" given to each celebrating the birth of a new son. This final moment may be the film's sharpest hypoc- risy — Selby's male Brooklynites, without LATINOS BLACKS exception, brutalize their women and de- & spise their children. IN THE CITIES The film's rose-colored translation was Policies for the 1990s perhaps inevitable — a straightforward ver- sion would never have seen the light of day, The plight of blacks and Hispanics in our nation's and even his sanitized conception is unlikely inner cities and the effect of urban poverty and to find a large audience. It does have two crime on society at large are the focus of this new stunning performances, in Stephen Lang's book from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Harry Black and Jennifer Jason Leigh's Public Affairs and the LBJ Library. Among the Tralala. (Leigh is an actress of remarkable policyrnakers and policy analysts who contributed range, though she is finally too vivacious to ideas and recommendations are former U.S. be utterly convincing as the broken-down Congresswoman Barbara Jordan, New York whore whose only distinguishing character- Mayor David Dinkins, and former San Antonio istics are her enormous tits. Leigh does the Mayor Henry Cisneros. Edited by Harriett D. best she can under the circumstances.) The Romo. $10.00 plus tax and postage/handling. film has been created in fealty to a novel that it does not fully understand: one man's hor- Order from: Office of Publications, LBJ School of Public e'11:;',..:::%ahlta Una Puhlk rifying re-imagination of the interior life of Affairs, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas •••■14 ,64 :semitt‘s44491tttCi elti 78713-7450. (512) 471-4218 his childhood world, where the men and women seemed gargantuan monsters, smell- I ing of blood and decay. ❑ 20 • JULY 27, 1990

•r.^- ,s910!.Aw.m•esi,y.r!t f 64,1_ (Advertisement)

A Public Service Message from the American Income Life Insurance Co. — Waco, Texas — Bernard Rapoport, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer

Socialism, the Word

BY RALPH L. LYNN

Perhaps no word in our time is so misused and so most devout leaders of society would echo a promi- misunderstood as socialism. nent American Catholic layman in his response to the Words in and of themselves have meaning only as encyclical called Mother and Teacher, "Mother yes - each of us assigns, meaning to them. Thus, even in- Teacher no." formed writers and speakers who are people of In Western European nations, pragmatically devel- integrity and who are also adept in the use of lan- oped state socialism combined with private property guage may fail to convey their meaning since each and free enterprise has appeared. It is probably im- reader or hearer — bringing his own experience to possible to have anything else in a free, democratic the task — will interpret words in ways surprising to society. their users. Thus in the Western industrialized European na- The word, "socialism," was coined about 1830 to tions, and the United States, the governments — by refer to individuals and groups who were appalled by mass voting of appropriate regulations— have gradu- the horrors attending industrialization and urbaniza- ally approximated the wishes of the early 19th century tion. socialists. Some of these people could be called state social- Increased productivity has allowed all of this to be ists. They wanted to extend the right to vote to all done while keeping intact the disproportionately large adult men so that the poor could force the govern- share of the pie held by the relatively few at the top of ments to heed their pleas for a shorter workweek and the economic heap. better working and living conditions. The Russians and the peoples of Eastern Europe in Some were Utopian Socialists. These formed small, general have been much less fortunate. There, the co-operative, sharing communities apart from the es- governments in general opposed industrialization and tablished, competitive, laissez-faire societies. They refused to allow the gradual political changes charac- hoped that these ideal communities could be show teristic of the West. In Russia, the consequence was windows of an earthly heaven which the established the most violent revolution of our time and the estab- societies might be inspired to imitate. lishment of the most murderous kind of totalitarian dic- Others of these individuals were Christian social- tatorship. Tragically, this dictatorship was designed to ists. They hoped to persuade the landlord nobility achieve in one long convulsive effort the hopes and and the business tycoons who dominated affairs to dreams of the Russian people to be like the West. use their power in Christian fashion to relieve the It is almost unbelievable that some opinion makers sufferings of the poor. They were really paternal in the United States still use the same label for both socialists. the Communist Russian dictatorship and the civilized All of these developments came about before any- Western European systems. body ever heard of Karl Marx. Perhaps a few who do so are people of integrity who Both Utopian socialism and Christian socialism are also totally uninformed. But most who do so are failed because of human selfishness and egotism informed and adept in the use of language — and and because both depended upon voluntary coop- totally without integrity. eration. Even after the papacy itself was largely The result is widespread confusion which makes converted to Christian socialist doctrines, most of the profitable public discourse difficult.

American Income Life Insurance Company BERNARD RAPOPORT Chairman of the Bard end EJOCUTIVE OFFICES: P.O. SOX 206, WOO. YEW 7•703. 111-773410110 Chief Executive Officer

THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 21

Continued from page 15 billion ... I'm at a loss where he's going to ference between what the state now pays and to "cut state operational spending by 7 per- find it." what Enterprise would charge. But let's cent — except for education, law enforce- San Antonio state Representative Dan assume the state is able to work out some ment and health care." Morales, a member of Ways and Means and kind of volume discount that would neutral- According to figures from page 1-1 of the candidate for attorney general, described ize those waiting fees, and allow Williams Legislative Budget Board's 1990-91 Fiscal chances for a $900 million budget cut as his revenue estimate. Size-Up, the state operational budget, less "zero." "Those sorts of reductions do not education, law enforcement and health care, represent prudent decision making. I do not Revenue Total: + $871,896 comes to $13.09 billion. Seven percent of think he's serious in that proposal," Morales Balance: - $586,472,604 this sum is $916.3 million — not nearly said. enough to fund Claytie's drug war. But let us assume that Williams is able to WAGING WAR ON WAGES What are the chances of trimming this bankrupt the judiciary (the same judiciary Another Williams revenue -raiser is his prom- amount from the state budget? Galveston that's supposed to be putting the drug crimi- ise to repeal the state's prevailing wage law state representative James Hury, chair of the nals behind bars, remember). He still comes .— trying to balance the budget on the aching House Ways and Means Committee, believes up almost $600 million short. backs of the blue-collar workers. But many chances are slim. "If you remove [education, doubt that anti-union measures save the state law enforcement and health care], then you Revenue Total: +$916,144,000 money. "States that do not have a right-to- are basically talking about ... the judiciary. Balance: - $ 1.605 billion work law ... those are the most progressive The judiciary budget could not be cut by states, who seem to flourish economically $900 million." Citizens — especially those PARING PLANES even in the hard times," said Jim Stinson, in the state's urban centers — who already Williams also suggests privatizing the state's executive secretary of the Houston-Gulf Coast face long waits for court dates would doubt- 61 airplanes in a bid to save money. Jerry Building and. Construction Trades Council. less agree. Daniels, fiscal officer of the Texas Aircraft "When local, city, or state governments spend Hury said that in attempting to resolve the Pooling Board, does not think the airplane taxpayers' money, and have semi- and un- Edgewood case the Legislature had scruti- proposal will fly. He said the Board was skilled workers complete these projects, we nized the budget and mapped out cuts to appropriated $472,691 last year, but col- see a lot of re-do and maintenance work ... finance education reform. Those cuts totaled lected $2,648,205 from governmental users. You pay for a cheaper product, you get a only about $120 million. "I think we've Air travel thus costs the state $3,120,896 cheaper product," Stinson said. It is not yet looked at every nook and cranny," Hury said. yearly. proven that paying lower sums for state "If he thinks we're going to cut another Daniels said private carriers could not contracts will save Texas money in the long provide the same service so cheaply. "It run. would be like selling your car and taking a cab," he said. He said that charter flights Revenue Total: + $0

would not provide the spot service the state Final Balance: - $586, 472, 604. . requires. "They couldn't call up on two hours notice. You can't do that with a private char- So there it is. What makes it so difficult to If you've missed the Southwest ter. They'll say, 'You want what? When?' hold the Republican candidate for governor Review in the past few years, Daniels said the pooling board undertook accountable for his promises is their vague- you've also missed: 2,249 flights in 1989, totaling 502,760 miles. ness; Williams has not sat down with the Jerry Lanzer, chief pilot for Houston's Enter- current state budget and shown, line by line, John Barth Paul Christensen Annie prise Aviation, said that his firm charges just what he intends to cut and what he wants Dillard Millicent Dillon Rita Dove $2.80 per statutory mile for a turboprop air- to augment. But even giving Clayton Wil- Horton Foote Laura Furman plane. Jet travel is proportionately more liams every favorable assumption — includ- Reginald Gibbons Don Graham expensive. In mileage alone the state would ing his plan to devastate the court system — Allan Gurganus Elizabeth Harris then be paying $1,407,728 per year. even if he gets everything just the way he

Shelby Hearon Rolando Hinojosa However, Enterprise charges a minimum wants it, we find that Williams still , comes up Edward Hirsch James Hoggard of $1,000 per flight, and $100 per hour for over one and half billion dollars short. Con- Beverly Lowry Walter McDonald waiting, or $250 for an overnight stay. So the sidering the three special sessions and court James Merrill Howard Nemerov cost of the state's ticket then jumps to at least order that it took to produce a revenue in- Naomi Shihab Nye Joyce Carol Oates $2,249,000, plus fees for time spent waiting crease of "only" $628 million, is it realistic to on the ground. These charges could quickly C. W. Smith Frederick Timer think that Texas can pay for Williams's pipe whittle away at the remaining $871,896 dif- dreams? Miles Wilson What's much more likely, of course, is that Don't miss it, or them, any longer. the lawmakers and the people they represent Subscribe now. won't stand for such huge cuts in an already- austere budget, meaning that a Williams (upon ❑ $20/yr ❑ $40/2 yrs ❑ $50/3 yrs whose lips we have read a promise of no new Name ANDERSON & COMPANY taxes to pay for his grandiose schemes) vic- tory will leave Texas at least $2.6 billion in Address (with zip) COFFEE TEA SPICES the red, and probably much more. This is TWO) JEFFERSON /WARE fiscal conservatism? Maybe Ann Richards I enclose $ (Please send AUSTIN, TEXAS 7S131 could find out just how honest Williams is payment with order) 512 45:3-1533 being about those proposals: She could ask Send me your list. him to guarantee, from his considerable Southwest Review, 6410 Airline Road, personal fortune, the state's balanced budget Name under a Williams administration, allowing Southern Methodist University, Dallas, no tax increases. His answer to such a request Texas 75275 (214) 373-7440 Street would probably tell us all we need to know City Zip about Clayton Williams's budget — and his

promises. ❑ 22 • JULY 27, 1990 AFTERWORD Patriotic Chore BY JAMES MCCARTY YEAGER

WO OF THE THREE summer flag tropical maneuvers, the 19th century holiday ation to the Union among the poisonously festivals having sunk into the merci- Memorial Day was at the beginning of this respectable ex-Confederates, seeing as they T less sunset behind us, although century extended — with its 18th century did in the uniform itself a cause to die for, wrapped against additional contamination in Revolutionary shadow the 4th of July, and its "something to set up and worship and bow slick bunting by sleazoid marketeers pushing darkly modern 20th century twin Armistice down before" as Conrad has it, and the power their nostrums, panaceas, elixirs, products, Day — to be one of the three Armed Services of the uniform with its attendant dollars rec- and ideologies, it may be worthwhile — or at Celebrations in which nowadays every onciled the bitter bourgeoisie of the Four any rate possibly amusing or at least not American is supposed cheerfully to partici- Coasts — Houston and Chicago and Los completely depressing — momentarily to pate, at least to the extent of paying solemn Angeles and New York — with the rest of the recall the ironic circumstances which gave soldiers and ponderous political figures to cities of the moral confederacy that had now rise to one of these holidays, Memorial Day, mourn decoratively over the formerly tat- spread throughout the union thanks to comic or the Annual First Secular Feast of the tered flesh and shattered bones of our armies books and movies and radio and TV and Uniformed Dead, an observance which was of the departed; the most recent interments earlier forms of preliteracy symbolized and originally inspired by the folk practice of normally being thought to be the bitterest effected by Southern dominance of Congres- grave visitations by Confederate women, (however distinct the prejudice in favor of sional legislation for close to a century, rec- taking place even in the wastes of Texas, the largest recent number of dead such that onciled them all enough to affect the musty which they called Decoration Day, though the 30 Bush graves from Panama, though rituals of official patriotism, allied with that the day did not enter the canon of approved newer, are outranked by the 300 Reagan inverse class hatred of the rich for the poor leisure until it received political approval graves from Lebanon, and both are over- which is always denied but never eradicated; from Grand Army of the Republic tub- shadowed, overwhelmed, overborne, as well all of which taken together and assembled thumpers from upstate New York in the as caused by the 45,000 Eisenhower-Ken- into our corruptly idealistic homeland be- 1870s, who didn't care whether the defeated nedy-Johnson-Nixon graves from Vietnam); came factors that led, in turn and inevitably, South was allowed to remember its doubtless but the recent earthclods show just how little to an imperial excursion in Asia as pointlessly insufficient dead or not, but who wanted to we remember of our own great-grandpar- disease-ridden as the Spanish-American "wave the bloody shirt" of Union victory, as ents' personal histories, it never being ca- blunder, although featuring much better such self-serving reminiscence was called in pable of being forgotten, even by many of my marksmanship on the part of our soldiers' every election from 1866 to 1898; a sharp fellow Texans, that the state of Mississippi enemies, doubtless the result of the enemy's and pointed holiday which, during the re- and the city of Vicksburg refused even to fly previous practice on the expelled Japanese mainder of the 19th century, a priori post- the American flag on the 4th of July because invaders and the returning French imperial- Reconstruction and a fortiori unreconstructed that was the date the besieged Reb city fell to ists, whose fallen torch we were proud to governors and legislators of the various ex- the Yanks in 1864; Vicksburg notoriously purchase. Confederate states would have refused with and proudly continuing to refuse to fly the choleric repugnance to celebrate, since they national banner until well into the Vietnam This publication is available V- would be (once again) damned if they would War which, furnishing the burghers of Mis- ia Microform from University \ sissippi and Texas and elsewhere with a new Microfilms International. celebrate anything to do with any Yankee Call toll-free 500-521-3044. Or mail inquiry to: Army, if only their own women had not excuse to regard their alleged inferiors as University Microfilms international. 300 North begun the rituals that Yankee legislation then cannon fodder, finally effected a reconcili- ?sob Rood. Ann Arbor. MI 4610n. made them wish to repudiate; a spirit that gradually died down after McKinley's squalid little Spanish-American War, during which exercitations ex-Rebs and ex-Yanks served as both officers and enlisted men, together freely catching, in perfect equality, that Cuban • Data Processing Yellow Fever which did more damage to our troops than Spanish bullets or even than that • Typesetting scandalously unpreserved tinned beef sold by contractors to an eagerly unresisting U.S. • Printing government; in honor of the survival of those FUTUM • Mailing COMMUNICATIONS, INC James McCarty Yeager now lives in the Wash- ington suburb of Bethesda, Maryland, but remembers the crowd blocking Main Street 512-389-1500 in Houston for half a day on the inauspicious occasion of the burial at the First Baptist FAX 512-389-0867 Church in 1962 of the last surviving Confed- 3019 Alvin DeVane, Suite 500 Austin, Texas 78741 erate soldier.

THE TEXAS OBSERVER • 23

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24 • JULY 27, 1990