The Texas Observer OCT. 16, 1964 A Journal of Free Voices A Window to The South 25c THE YARBOROUGH STORY Elton Miller Austin the countryside through Doc's deft fingers. cattle boat out of New Orleans and applied The Neches River, named for a docile Yarboroughs are old timers along that for admission to the Sorbonne. He didn't Indian tribe, meanders peacefully from its Henderson-Smith County line. Just across have enough credits, so, broke but de- headwaters in Van Zandt through the rich the Neches, Grandfather Harvey Yarbor- termined, he moved on to Berlin. He wrote timberlands of the iron-ore laden East ough owned a parcel of land. In 1858 he a want ad for an English language news- Texas countryside into Lake Sabine, mid- donated the site for the Hopewell Baptist paper, whose editor liked it and hired him way between Port Arthur and Orange. Church. He and a neighbor surveyed the before it went into print. The Texan studied Never subject to the wild overflows of its church site by the light of the moon, using German and attended an academy in Sten- sister stream to the west, the Trinity, or the north pole for bearings. Harvey Yar- dal, Germany, for a year, and then he was the Sabine on the east, it was a good place borough—Captain Yarborough it was—led ready to come home. for a country boy like Ralph Webster Yar- the first company of infantry out of Smith Working his way across the channel, he borough to cast his bait, catch a mess of County to join the Confederate armies. found the docks in Britain crowded with channel cat, and daydream. The Yarborough homestead stood not young men anxious to get home on the first At Chandler, the Neches River village far from the old battlefield where Gen- boat they could. One day a ship's agent where Yarborough was born June 8, 1903, eral Bowles was defeated and the last called out, "Anybody here know anything one of eleven children in the Charles Rich- Indian - resistance in East Texas to the about horses?" He said, "I'm from Texas," ard and- Nannie Jane Yarborough house- white man's invasion took place. In the so he got the job and took care of a ship- hold, the Neches is little more than a days of Ralph Yarborough's youth lads load of horses en route to the states. good creek, but at "Big Eddy" and "Little around Chandler used to visit the battle- Jobs were hard to find in 1923, and Yar- Eddy," the good fishing holes in the upper field to pick up arrowheads and trinkets borough joined a threshing crew making reaches of the Neches, there were plenty from Bowles' last stand. its way across the hot plains of Oklahoma of catfish and perch for many a county- The first dollar Ralph Yarborough ever and Kansas. He worked at a boarding house wide Henderson County fish fry. Just to earned outside his home was in turning the that fall in Austin for "all I could eat for be sure, the older boys would go over there old hand press that printed the Chandler all I could do." That, and the money he'd about two days beforehand and seine the Times when that paper was operated by saved as a harvest hand, put him through stream. Rupert Craig. In 1929, after he had moved the first year at the University of Texas This was the land of clay and sand, the over to the Athens Daily Review, Craig school of law. He worked as librarian and rich loam and the pineywoods, that told me, "You'll find Ralph Yarborough's quiz master and in the summer helped build spawned the fabulous Sid Richardson, name on the mailing list back there. Keep oil tanks in the wild days of '26 in the old multimillionaire Clint Murchison, cotton an eye on him. He's going places." Yar- Borger oil field. He graduated from the man Arch Underwood, and Rupert Craig, borough posSessed the vigor of a President University with highest honors. most famous editor of his time in East Kennedy in his prime, the youth that ap- Years later, as he sat among the hun- Texas. Only a few miles away grew up peals to youth. He had- the courage of his dreds of books that line the walls of his Billy White, who became president of convictions. He stood pat for the things he study on Jarratt Street in Austin—he is an Baylor University, and a firebrand preach- believed. He denounced those things he expert on the civil war and can tell you er by the name of "Cowboy" Crim. knew were false. how each battle was won and lost—he The strip of land between the Trinity Finishing what school his home town would recall his boyhood days on the and the Neches also gave Texas politics a had to offer in April, 1918, young Yar- banks of the Kickapoo, nights when he hangout at Stirman's Drug Store on the borough went on to Tyler High School, slept out under the stars in Oklahoma as a north side of the square in Athens. For a there to graduate in 1919. A year later he harvest hand, the 1926 oil boom at Borger half century candidates for governor and became a cadet in the U.S. Military Acade- before Gov. Dan Moody declared marshal U.S. senator gathered there to test the my, but Congress, weary of war expendi- law. weathervane. They could feel the pulse of tures and war debts, decided to cut down . Elton Miller, a Texas newspaperman, has appropriations for the academy, and Yar- EARLY IN HIS LIFE, too, Yar- been acquainted with Senator Ralph Yar- borough, after a year, abandoned the borough developed an admiration for Gov- borough many years and writes here of Army as a career, enlisted in the 36th di- ernor James Hogg, who was raised on a the senator's youth, education, and legal, vision of the National Guard, and at the hill at Mountain Home, east of Rusk, and military, and political career that culminat- age of. 17 began teaching school in the rural was the great Texas warrior against the ed in his election to a six-year term in the communities of Delta and Martin Springs. railroads. When Ralph first heard his dad U.S. Senate in 1958. In the Oct. 30th issue, Between terms he attended classes at Sam talk about Hogg, he was still young enough our last before the general election, the Houston State Teachers' College in Hunts- to be playing under a huge sycamore tree Observer editor will seek to summarize ville. that stood between the Yarborough home Yarborough's philosophy and performance Wanderlust took him then, and he work- and the home of the Warrens. Mr. Warren as senator. ed his way across the Atlantic on a French (Continued on Page 3) estimate of what would happen if the elec- tion were to be held today. There is much apathy and it will take work and money to 5he Jlonor Jexa o overcome it." erately inflaming. Texas has never had a Will we turn the country over to the The Houston Chronicle's poll showing radical right simply because of careless- finer, more honest, more fearless United George Bush within a few percentage ness, indifference, and laziness? That is the States senator than Ralph Webster Yar- points of overtaking Senator Yarborough real question before the American majority borough, and if he went down now on the should disabuse all Democrats of the com- Nov. 3. forting notion that the senator is a shoo-in. basis of this smear, the honor of this state The next few weeks will determine would go down with him and many would whether Texas will continue to have in have much to answer for far into the fu- Washington a fighting Democrat, in tune ture of Texas. no cub with the times, helpful to the President All we can do is all we can do, but any- from Texas in advancing his programs, thing less between now and Nov. 3 is un- Can nothing be done to stop this state's and good for Texas as well as the nation— thinkable. adoption of a reactionary tax structure? In or by two Republican senators. 1961 the 25-year resistance to the sales tax John Tower of Texas is already the most collapsed and only the exemptions of gro- reactionary senator in the United States, e 5urnout ceries and drugs were salvaged for the pub- barring, possibly, Strom Thurmond. If Jti lic interest. Now Lt. Gov. Preston Smith George Bush joined him, Texas would have says the food exemption will probably have foisted on the country another anti-test To push aside the oratory—the Novem- to be repealed in 1965, and Gov. John Con- ban treaty, anti-medicare, anti-war on ber elections, presidential and, in Texas, nally, supinely silent on this question so poverty, anti-federal government Gold- senatorial, will be determined by how many Democrats vote. If they vote in gocid vitally important to the poor, mounts a water Republican. "fight" to relieve big business of state prop -. Even so, the issue is deeper. numbers, President Johnson and Senator Yarborough will win handily. If they do erty taxes. The Texas Municipal League Ralph Yarborough is an honest man who not, Goldwater and Bush could squeak in. jockeys cagily, getting ready to ask the has done a very good job.