Briar Patch
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Later, he sipped soda pop with King and gleefully recounted the recent ordeal his father had survived on the McMurtry ranch. Attempting to rope and rescue an outraged mother cow from a ditch, the well-aged McMurtry had very nearly got himself killed. "He was butted in the head, nearly tore off his ear, and he got hooked in the leg," Larry described. "Took him half an hour but he finally got that old cow out of there. Then he made it back to the house, poured blood out of his boot—and passed out looking happier than I've seen him in 30 years."
In New York Magazine last month, on assignment to cover a rodeo in Madison Square Garden, McMurtry took this occasion to reflect on the real heroes of the West, the "thousands of embittered farmers and stockmen...who have lived in one place, loved the West and its ideals and increased only in despair—as the oil industry ruined their grass, as the air and water grew foul, as the land taxes rose...as their life-styles were scorned and then parodied, their children drawn away to the cities and there subverted. In these men one finds a love of the Old and a hatred of the New so passionate and intense that it makes the beery rebelliouness of rodeo cowboys seem like a half-hearted posturing..."
He notes the moral and physical astringency of the lifestyle and allows that it is probably just as well that prosperity has largely eluded them, "For if one thing is evident about cowboys it is that they are men who show their best qualities only under the worst of natural conditions. It is poverty and drought, isolation and toil that bring out their richest humor and strongest loyalty, their deepest feeling for nature and their keenest joy in life. Give them money and creature comforts, and everything that is lean, well-crafted, enduring and humanly beautiful in them disappears and they quickly degenerate into mindless and tasteless suburbanized slobs."
RIVER MADNESS
RECENTLY WE SPENT A COLD, drizzly winter day canoeing down the Elm Fork of the Trinity River, in northwest Dallas County. The occasion was an environmentally-oriented canoe trip sponsored by the United States Army Corps of Engineers, which had asked environmental groups to view the ecology of one of the only semi-polluted stretches of the Trinity, before it is glutted with the refuse and effluent of Dallas and Fort Worth to the south.
Such an opportunity was too good to pass up, since the Corps rarely asks environmentalists to do an ecological trip; and besides, we'd never done that stretch of the Trinity.
There were 28 canoes that made the trip. It was a bit surprising, really, to see that many people interested in taking a trip down the Trinity on such a miserable day. It was overcast, and drizzly and we had forgotten our gloves, a serious omission in cold-weather canoeing.
The put-in point, as canoeists term the place where they launch, was where Sandy Lake Road meets the Trinity. We were bound for Valley Mills Drive, some 4.5 miles downstream. (If you're interested in making the trip yourself, both roads are easy to find; they are marked exits off Interstate Highway 35E in the Farmer's Branch-Carrollton area.)
There are plans to turn that section of the Trinity into a flood control channel, so that when the Trinity floods, the water will flow out faster than it does now. What that really means is that some people interested in growth want to make sure that the river doesn't overflow; if it doesn't, then they can use the banks that are currently flood plain for, in the words of the Corps, "industrial development and some houses, country clubs and so on."
Along on the trip were John Whittington, who represents northwest Dallas County on the County Commissioners' Court, and the mayors of Dallas suburbs of Coppell, Farmer's Branch and Irving. The Corps says that nothing will be done to the river unless local officials want it done.
Like all canoe trips, this one was a little late pushing off, as people shuffled around on the concrete floodway below the Sandy Lake bridge over the Elm Fork. It was extremely muddy in the parking lot, the chill was biting, and we stamped our feet to keep them warm while canoes were loaded and Corps officials explained the trip.
Finally it was water time. The canoes gathered first in the pool below the bridge and then went one by one into the small rapids coming out of the pool into the river.
As rivers go, much of the area along the Elm Fork is not unique. But there are stretches that are truly beautiful, that environmentalists say would take 200 years to replace if destroyed. In addition to willows, there are tall cottonwoods, birch trees, and various other bushes, shrubs, trees, vines and flora that together make a picturesque area. The Corps man said there are beavers along the stretch, and we saw some of the chewed residue of their presence.
There is something about being in a canoe on moving water, something which unless you feel, and feel the need for, is difficult to explain. When there is talk about turning a stretch of moving river into an area of motionless lake, then that is well and good, if you happen to like lakes. We like lakes, and have nothing against them. But the comparison between boating on a lake and canoeing on a moving river is something like that between flying a power plane and flying a glider. Flying a power plane, you may feel like part of the plane, and in a power boat, like part of the boat; flying a glider, you feel like part of the wind, and paddling a canoe on a river, you feel like part of the river. You help nourish the trees that you pass. And they help nourish you.
The Elm fork section is a nicely winding stretch; you appreciate the wooded banks shaped by nature rather than treeless ones scraped by a bulldozer as along channelized streams. An environmental study commissioned by the Corps says that the channelization would lower water quality (in the least-polluted stretch of river in Dallas County) and destroy unique forests and animal life. The study recommends that the channelization project be abandoned.
There is an alternate proposal that would allow levees to be built out some distance from the winding river channel, providing flood control but leaving less land for industrial development. The land would instead be used for parks and an environmental corridor.
The question Dallas County and Texas residents face is whether the apparent desire of suburban towns to attract new industry, at the potential cost of some of the few remaining trees along a river in the county, will overwhelm the desire of other county residents to support their local river. There is to be a public hearing on all this sometime early this year, to let the public have a chance to say how they feel about the proposed channel project.
One suspects that the Corps, which is not necessarily bound by its environmental impact study, is somehow caught in the middle of all this, trying to escape some of the bad image it gathered in recent years for allegedly wanting to dam, ditch or divert every natural stream in the nation. Perhaps from such a direction will come new thoughts about ecology; the Corps is, after all, like a hired gun that shoots where it is told.
For what it's worth, we did finish the trip, in a little over two hours. It was still cold, and we were still wishing we had brought our gloves. But given a chance to go again, we would. There are worse ways to spend a Saturday afternoon in Dallas.
EVERYTHING'S UP TO DATE IN BEAUMONT
The Beaumont Chamber of Commerce distributes a small sign which reads, "For information on what's happening in Beaumont, Texas, please call 838-3634." Late last year we had occasion to place such a call. A pleasant recorded voice read us a detailed list of semi-interesting events which were to occur on November 29 and 30 and December l and 2. We were calling on December 6.
SCHOOL DAYS
COALITIONS THAT HAVE MARKED THE political landscape for the last 40 years seem to be coming apart these days. Perhaps the most vulnerable has been the alliance of labor unions, minorities and professionals which was put together during the Depression by Franklin Roosevelt and which formed the cornerstone of the Democratic Party until affluence, racial consciousness and social issues began to split it up.
A somewhat similar coalition in Houston celebrated its fifth anniversary recently in a rather robust state of good health. The Citizens for Good Schools (CGS) began in the wake of the removal under fairly questionable circumstances of a young research chemist named George Oser from the runoff ballot in the 1967 School Board Election.
Oser, his wife and some friends had no money, but began a long and time-consuming research effort into the affairs of the state's largest school district. As the predominantly white, middle class group began to focus on the administration of the school district and its handling of desegregation and federal funds, it began to get the attention of the press and to pick up allies, particularly among minorities.
By the 1969 school election, the CGS had grown to a stunningly effective political organization. A slate of three whites and one black was put forward. The candidates were furnished with a massive, detailed source book which dissected every aspect of the school district's operation; augmented by a whole platoon of backup speakers; and carried forward by a precision-like political network that extended down to the precinct level.
The campaign was a textbook example of citizen organization. CGS won all four seats and captured control of the school board. On election night the victorious candidates drove around the massive new school administration building, looking at it with a mixture of determination and awe. They had really pulled it off, and they didn't quite believe it.
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