Briar Patch

IF FORTUNE MAKES STRANGE BEDFELLOWS, the fortunes of death make the strangest of all. In the state cemetery in Austin, J. Frank Dobie, Ma and Pa Ferguson, and Big Foot Wallace lie within a 30-yard radius of one another. Their graves are near the top of a small hill which is lined with the markers of other governors, as well as a varied sprinkling of Texas rangers, park superintendents, insurance commissioners, judges, legislators, and one other writer, Dobie's friend Walter Prescott Webb. Below these graves stretching across a broad field are innumerable weathered stones hardly two feet high which mark the graves of Texans who were casualties or veterans of the Civil War.

On an overcast day last month we drove out to the cemetery. It is a little east of I.H. 35 just off Seventh Street, in an area of old framed houses which time has not treated well; but there are trees along the streets, a few gabled mansions recalling the neighborhood's better days, and, once off Seventh, a heavy stillness which the cemetery, as large as two city blocks, undoubtedly contributes to and may cause.

We parked near the caretaker's building. It adjoins two greenhouses where plants for state offices and grounds are protected during the winter and where new seedlings are sprouted. Two gardeners were on duty that afternoon. One, named Billy, a cantankerous gent, lean and bony, with gnarled hands and an unfortunate limp, told me that he had been a prisoner of the Japanese during World War II, that his Ford had cost $5000, that he made most of his living playing pool at $5 a game, that every now and then when he was mowing the grass around the graves one of the corpses would sit up and ask him for the time.

The other gardener, who had simply shrugged with embarrassment when we asked his name, punctuated each of Billy's remarks with "That's a quarter; now there's fifty cents; six bits he owes me now." After the story about the corpse, he said, "Do believe that one's worth a whole dollar. I'm gonna be rich 'fore sundown."

Telling them that we would be back after seeing the rest of the cemetery grounds, we walked toward the graves on the hill. By far the most interesting monument—calling it a grave would be an injustice—is enclosed within a white wooden structure, probably 15 feet tall, which looks like a cross between a gazebo and a mosque. This odd building shields the elements from the crypt of Albert Sidney Johnston, a general in the army of the Republic of Texas, who died while commanding the Confederate forces during the battle of Shiloh. A large marble block supports a statue of Johnston lying in state, hand across his heart. The statue's face stares peaceably ahead, handsome but not imposing and looking not at all like the stern warrior we had always imagined Johnston to be.

Pa and Ma Ferguson's stone is half way up the hill and, if it is not so imposing as Johnston's, it is fitting enough. The Fergusons are buried side by side before a rather phallic-shaped stone probably ten feet tall, with outcroppings on either side which bear their epitaphs. Ma's declares her faith in God, but Pa's reads "He loved his fellow man and was generous to a fault." Since Ferguson in his stormy stewardship of Texas was certainly something to a fault, perhaps his epitaph is no more inappropriate than most.

The remainder of the graves are rather ordinary by comparison. There are simple markers with name and dates on one side and a list of accomplishments or positions held on the other. Some of the names are well-known but most are obscure, their accomplishments ("Associate Justice Texas Supreme Court 1934-1938") though admirable, becoming of less interest day by day.

Noticing a tall obelisk at the very top of the hill, we cut short our ramblings through the stones to see which historical personage had merited a monument that was easily twice as tall as any other. It turned out to be that of Edmund J. Davis, the last Carpetbagger governor of Texas whose term was from 1870 to 1874. The spire was erected in Davis's memory by his brother, possibly, we speculated, for revenge, as Davis had become a hated man by the end of his administration. Today his monument, tall as it is and standing on the highest point in the cemetery, dominates all around it—even the tomb of Stephen F. Austin.

Before leaving we kept our promise and stopped back at the caretaker's building to smoke a cigarette with Billy. The other gardener had disappeared, which Billy considered all for the best. He had something important to tell us. "I learned long ago," he said clenching a Camel between his thumb and forefinger, "that if you're sitting down and your boss comes in the room, don't pop right up. If you do that, he knows he's got you."

DALLAS SCHOOL BOARD ELECTIONS: THE LONG WAY TO GET WHERE WE STARTED

THE ARGUMENT FOR ELECTING SCHOOL board members, or other public officials, from single member districts is that the various elements of the population are more likely to get the representation they desire. The Dallas School Board, for example, which for 25 years has elected its nine members at large, has had only one black member in its entire history. It was quite a surprise, then, when last November the board voted seven to two to petition the state legislature for permission to elect members from nine individual districts. Dr. Emmett Conrad, history's one black council member, found himself in the unusual position of voting with a majority of the conservative board members on a major issue.

That alliance, unfortunately, could not last. Conrad himself had predicted the alliance would fall apart when it came time to decide the boundaries of the individual districts since those boundaries could be drawn to predetermine the political philosophy of the board. Gerrymandering, it's called.

Meanwhile, freshman Dallas Representative Paul Ragsdale introduced a bill in Austin enabling the board to have single-member district elections. The board reversed their field and protested. The bill required all nine board members to run for re-election the first time around under single-member districts, no matter how much longer their presently staggered terms were supposed to run. Under the bill, a similiar situation would obtain every ten years when a new census would require a new redistricting. Republican board member Nancy Judy, who was elected just a year ago, claimed, "The lack of continuity on the board from everyone running at once is a Superintendent's nightmare."

That may be, but that problem has not been avoided under the present system either. Three posts are up for election each year. Of the nine current members, six have less than two years experience.

And why shouldn't the incumbents be willing to stand for election? That all nine members would be swept out of office simultaneously, though possible, is hardly likely. Conrad simply stated, "I'm perfectly willing to stand for election anytime. Anybody who isn't must not be too proud of their record."

Proud or not, the board started moving quickly. John Plath Green, president of the board, flew to Austin and asked the Dallas County legislators not to push the bill for the 1973 elections so the board could submit its own bill in time for the 1974 election. The legislators, themselves elected from single-member districts, readily, but not understandably, agreed.

With the passage of the bill neither imminent nor likely, things settled down a bit. Five of the board members even agreed informally during February that they might accept simultaneous elections, while not liking them, since it seemed the only constitutional way to put the new election system into effect.

But two days later, the truce had ended. Green, Mrs. Judy and Tom Williams, who had supported single-member districts earlier, suddenly changed their minds. The board voted to send single-member district elections "back to committee for further study." While this vote didn't formally rescind the board's earlier vote, it accomplished the same purpose.

Many Dallas citizens, particularly in the black community, now think that last November's vote to ask for single member districts from the legislature was a ruse. They claim that the board began talking about abandoning at-large elections only when a lawsuit challenging their constitutionality seemed imminent. The suit was filed, but it provoked no action since the board seemed to be making the proper changes on its own,

Why delay? Possibly, the speculation goes, so that the ruling political group, the conservative Committee for Good Schools, will have at least one more at-large election to solidify its already overwhelming control of the school board. Solid control could be especially important during the coming year when a court ruling is expected that could require massive crosstown busing to desegregate Dallas schools. At which point the plot becomes very thick.

At press time the prospects of single-member district Dallas school board elections seem dead—unless, of course, a federal judge orders the change on behalf of racial minorities who filed the suit.

If that happens, we may have to listen to the same record again. It is too bad the Dallas School Board has missed an opportunity to show initiative and leadership on its own. Perhaps it is too much to expect that an elected body will change the way it is elected on its own.

How about it, Houston? Want to give single member districts a try?

WOMAN, THY NAME IS CAUCUS

WE HAD PLANNED TO LEAVE AUSTIN at dawn to attend the second National Women's Political Caucus in Houston. But someone up there didn't like us. The chauvinist weatherman flung a rare snow storm our way. It was almost noon by the time we five women piled into our car and pulled away regretfully, for the snow was sheer childhood fantasy. We, who would have preferred making snowpersons and hurling snowballs, left dutifully to participate in making history.

Two of the women in the car were laden with pamphlets. "What's your workshop on?" we asked. "Rape." So we drove along I.H. 10 reading the transcript of a prosecutor's brutal cross-examination of a rape victim. The pamphlets were compelling. We read on and on, fuming.

Meanwhile the radio was mindlessly on. We ignored it for awhile, but like a Rolling Stones' song, its persistence was annihilating. A male DJ on a daytime telephone talk show was asking questions and triggering little female telephone answers.

Question: "What is the sexiest book you've ever read?"

Answer: Wuthering Heights, Love Story, The Fountainhead."

Question: "What vegetable would you like your man or husband to be?"

Answer: "A pear, an artichoke, acorn squash." (Many women chose rounded, pendulous breast shapes.)

Question: "What song do you like when you're in a sexy mood?"

Answer: "Concubine of a Common Cherub."

We arrived at the Rice Hotel at three o'clock, having missed, we were told, the impressive drumrolls of great speeches by the chieftains—Bella, Shirley, Gloria and Betty. They had stressed issues rather than feminism.

The marquee atop the Hotel read: "HISTORY IS BEING MADE. WE PAGE WOMEN." The rationale behind that headline was that prior to this convention a woman could not be paged at the Rice Hotel for fear that it would contribute to prostitution.

We checked into our suite. Wilting bell hops in little green outfits looked like shrubs left standing after a deluge of birds had landed. About two thousand women were there, or so it seemed. The elevators were a surreal mix of voices and bodies.

Conversations overheard: One pants-suited woman to another, "If they're going to make women wear matching tops and bottoms, then dammit, men are going to have to too." "Age is a matter of the mind; if you don't mind, then it doesn't matter." "Did you get Gloria's autograph?"

One girl, who had risked hitching from Austin, arrived with guitar and sleeping bag, looked at the milling in the second floor lobby and cried, "My God, these people look just like my mother!"

But they also looked just like our sisters, aunts, debutantes and grandmas. Every type of woman was there. Some cut from the cloth of Vogue and Bazaar, a few Powder-Puffs, other missionaries of the PTA, lawyers, social workers and teachers. No harem these.

There were caucuses from every state as well as a closed-door Republican Women's Caucus, Radical Women's Caucus, Gay Women's Caucus, and a Solvak-American Women's Caucus.

Workshops were meeting and drawing up resolutions to be presented to the delegates. We felt like we had come in in the middle of a movie. There were workshops covering daycare centers, women in prison, women and addiction, women and alcoholism, women and votes, Rape, Divorce, Jobs, Unions and Women and Sexual Privacy.

We caught the last twenty minutes of the Daycare Workshop, held on the top floor of the hotel. Women were talking about mandatory daycare as part of the school program. Siccing the public bureaucracy on mere three-year olds. That was one proposal, which as three year olds, we would have vetoed. But, older than that now, we kept quiet and listened to the spirited mingling of accents and viewpoints. They were on the right track, talking about routing churches to open their unused weekday doors to children.

That night there was a concert with Tracy Nelson, the country-rock singer, at Liberty Hall. It was supposed to start at six. Tracy and her group didn't come on till nine o'clock and then she strolled out with great disdain. The crowd was eager, wanting to be uplifted and joyous, but instead they got a cold woman with a great voice who apparently didn't think these were her sisters. Business as usual. One woman remarked, "Oh God, I wish Janis were back."

The Radical Women's Caucus met the same night. The room was jammed; excitement crowded the place. Radical women were dissatisfied with the lopsided emphasis given to electoral politics by the NWPC. They didn't think you could separate politics and every day life. Just getting votes for one day of the year wasn't enough—a woman's work is never done. We as women, they said, should be working to change the life-warping routines of our society by initiating and participating in grass roots reform—such as health care, day-care, control over our own bodies (abortion), new safer solutions to birth control (women are being pillverized), improved education, nutrition, etc. They didn't want to replace male oafs in politics by their female counterparts.

Later in a lobby outside the grand ballroom a group of straggling women who didn't fit into any of the Dewey Decimal systems, sang and danced well past midnight and really got it on. The Soeur Queens, and other women with voices like pearls and coyotes, sang great home-made songs.

This was more like it. We had imagined a women's conference as having more soul and emotion than your average Holiday Inn gathering. A kind of mixture of politics and love. It was a great opportunity for people doing things in different parts of the country to exchange information—a kind of clearing house of projects and chutzpah.

The following day, Saturday, there were yet more workshops. And here a caucus, there a caucus, everywhere a caucus. At three o'clock Sissy Farenthold spoke to the delegates and participants. Her open voice was the clarion call we were all waiting for. The next day she was elected chairperson of the National Women's Political Caucus. History remains to be made.

We left early, glutted with uppity women buttons, posters advertising male hygiene products with 'meat and potato scents', and cramps of confusion. It had been a three ring circus where you had to be more than a female; you had to be a political person. Ironically sharing the facilities at the hotel had been a convention of Home Economics Teachers. We wondered if they got it on.

Arriving home at dinner time, we realized that we had jumped from the fire into the frying pan. One man said to his woman, "Hi baby. I really missed you. What's cooking for dinner? Did they teach you any new recipes? Any helpful household hints?"

We were ready to return and enlist.

LET HE AMONG YOU WHO IS WITHOUT SIN CAST THE FIRST STONE DEPARTMENT

UNDER TEXAS LAW PROSTITUTION means not only sexual participation for hire but also "shall be construed to include the giving or receiving of the body for indiscriminate sexual intercourse without hire."

MAKING WINE? THINK YOU'RE LEGAL? BEWARE.

MAKING WINE AT HOME FOR PERSONAL use has been legal in Texas for almost 20 months. During that time, wine making has become an increasingly popular hobby. Not that it wasn't before, but with the passage of the law, home vintners came out of the cellar. Stores dealing exclusively in winemaking supplies have surfaced in Houston, Austin, and Dallas; and winemaking kits, which contain everything an aspirant needs to establish his own vintage, are sold in many department and variety stores as well. Their sale is not regulated and anyone of any age can buy one. That situation has raised the ire of a State Representative from Corpus Christi, Joe Salem.

Mr. Salem, who is a teetotaling jeweler, is concerned that teenagers are buying the kits without their parent's knowledge and, as he told us, "going off into their own Shangri-las." Nevertheless, most Texas teenagers seem to hope for something more from Shangri-la than homemade wine. Mr. Don Fishel, head of the enforcement of the Alcoholic Beverage Commission, told us that the spread of home winemaking had created no particular enforcement problems. He also said he had received no complaints of teenagers making their own wine. Nor could Representative Salem cite any specific instances which had brought the matter to his attention, except that "friends have told me that this was being done."

Still, even assuming that winemaking is as rampant in the high school as drugs are reported to be, Salem's bill seems a curious approach to the problem. It does restrict the sale of wine making kits and supplies to adults, a provision which neither Wine Art nor DeFalco's Wine Cellars, the two largest sellers in Texas, would oppose. But Salem's bill would also restrict the sale of winemaking supplies, whether in kits or not, to package stores only. Salem reasons that since these supplies need to be carefully controlled and since package stores are the most carefully controlled retail outlets, winemaking supplies should be sold in package stores.

But what are winemaking supplies? Wine can be made with very little trouble from any fruit. Are apples, therefore, wine making supplies? Are elderberries? Furthermore, wine can be made with no trouble from concentrated grape juice, sugar, and yeast, all of which are on sale to anyone with the money at any grocery store. Under Salem's bill, as it is worded at press time, Texans might have to buy their Welch's, as well as their elderberries, from a package store.

And their purchases will be recorded like purchases of prescription drugs. The present Texas law concerning home winemaking requires a ten dollar license fee and also assesses a 17 cent tax on each gallon produced; but this law is seldom followed. Last year only 130 permits were sold. Salem's present bill would require that anyone buying winemaking supplies will have to show his permit. The seller will have to record the materials bought by permit number so that an accounting can be made at the end of the year to be sure that the 17 cent tax is being paid. It is doubtful that many package stores, or many winemakers for that matter, will want to hassle with that much red tape. Home winemaking as a public art may disappear. One winemaker, an acquaintance of Salem's for many years, after hearing about the bill, stomped into the store where he buys his supplies and shouted, "I haven't whupped that s.o.b. for thirty years, but I may have to now."