1980 Bum Steer Awards
Perhaps the Shadow knows: There just had to be a better way to get from the sixties to the eighties. In 1969, Darrell Royal had just won the national championship and NASA had just put a man on the moon; in 1979, neither had been heard from for years. At the start of the decade, we had more gas than we needed; at the end, we had more Arabs, which is not a fair trade. The seventies took from us H.L. Hunt, LBJ, and the Chicken Ranch, and gave us in return Oscar Wyatt, Bill Clements, and cowboy disco. Thanks, but no thanks. We got another major league baseball team but with it came Brad Corbett. Texans broke into jails in Mexico and Iran but let Cullen Davis go free and home. The seventies may have been called the Me Decade, but they did nothing for us. Except earn our 1980 Bum Steer Award.
THE KIDS WERE PAYING HIM $150
The Dallas Independent School District paid $100 a day for a dog to sniff out marijuana, but after nine days on the job the dog still could not detect the drug even when it was placed under his nose.
AND AN ENCYCLOPEDIA IS SOME KIND OF BUG WITH LOTS OF LEGS
An elementary-school teacher in Seminole told students that a thesaurus was “some kind of dinosaur.”
FIRST WE FUMBLE ON THE GOAL LINE, THEN WE THROW AN INTERCEPTION
Several Texas Aggie football opponents were given information about the team’s game plan for upcoming contests.
MAKE IT ACAPULCO AND WE’VE GOT A DEAL
HEW Secretary Joseph Califano offered sixteen-year-old Shawn Galloway of Houston a trip to Washington if she’d give up smoking. She chose smoking.
NEXT PROBLEM
During debate over funding for abortions in cases of rape or incest, State Representative Clay Smothers of Dallas asked if victims couldn’t have hysterectomies instead.
QUICK! THE KRYPTONITE
Senator John Tower appeared at a Dallas society gala dressed as Superman.
HOW ABOUT APRIL 1?
The town of Cleveland wanted to have a New Year’s Eve party, but the city council couldn’t agree on a date.
OH, SO I’M NOT MURDERED!
Waco announced plans to reduce its crime rate by neglecting to report some of its violent crimes to the FBI.
NO, MRS. SMITH, SHE’S NOT HERE. SHE’S AT A CHURCH SUPPER, THEN SHE’S GOING TO THE LIBRARY TO STUDY, STUDY, STUDY
UT student Pam Douglas ran an alibi service for girls who wanted to live with their boyfriends without telling their parents. For $25 a month she would pretend to be their roommate and take their phone calls from home.
JUDGE, EVER SINCE I WENT TO THAT QUACK I’VE BEEN FLAT ON MY BACK
The State Board of Insurance announced it would consider approving malpractice insurance for sex therapists.
HE THOUGHT IT WAS RABID TRANSIT
The City of DeKalb paid $1500 in damages because its dogcatcher shot a mobile home.
DON’T GO AWAY MAD, JUST GO AWAY
People we don’t want to hear from in the eighties.
Billie Sol Estes
Phyllis George
Marvin Zindler
Oscar Wyatt
Cullen Davis
Madalyn Murray O’Hair
Lester Roloff
Anyone named Yarborough
... with or without the “o”
YOU SHOULD SEE THE POOR GUY WHO’S GOTTA BE THE FIRE HOSE
Vandals stole the siren from a fire truck in the San Antonio suburb of Grey Forest. When the truck answered an alarm, a volunteer stood on the fender shouting, “Fire! Fire!”
YOU MEAN SCUBA DOESN’T STAND FOR SWIFT, COMFORTABLE UNDERWATER BABY ABORTIONS?
After a Texas A&M researcher warned that skin diving during pregnancy can endanger the fetus, Governor Clements proposed that the sport might be an effective method of birth control.
SOMEONE ALWAYS HAS TO BE THE LAST TO KNOW
Three weeks after Bill Clements was inaugurated, Dallas school officials requested a picture of the new governor. Clements’ office sent them a portrait of Dolph Briscoe.
BEATING THE DARKIES WAS ESPECIALLY INVIGORATING
The University of Texas hosted an academic convention on sports history featuring such topics as “School Physical Activities for Antebellum Southern Belles.”
IT SAYS RIGHT HERE IN THE DEED RESTRICTION, SHADY OPERATORS ONLY
Frank Sharp, the Houston financier who turned state’s evidence in the Sharpstown scandal, interrupted a neighbor’s noisy backyard gathering in River Oaks clad in pajamas and a raincoat to accuse the host of being “a disgrace to the neighborhood.”
THEY ALL LOOK ALIKE, RIGHT?
Fort Worth police spent two days searching for an illegal alien sought as a witness before finding him in their own city jail.
BUT NOT BY MUCH
Weaver Lafferty ran unopposed for mayor of Murphy and lost.
BUT WHAT HAS HE DONE FOR US LATELY?
During March a rooster in Floresville laid four eggs.
I MEAN LEAVE US A LOAN
Fort Worth oilman Eddie Chiles, whose radio and TV commercials demanded that the government “leave us alone,” has received $115 million in federally guaranteed loans for six offshore drilling rigs.
IN TEXAS, WE FIND IT IN NEWSLETTERS
The executive director of the Texas Tourist Council reported in his agency newsletter that “Mexico has enormous reserves of natural gas. It’s found in four locations: tamales, enchiladas, burritos, and refried beans.”
FORTUNATELY, OFFICER, THEY MISSED MY COCAINE.
A Texas A&M student told the police that burglars broke into his residence and stole a marijuana plant.
WHAT’S MORE, THEY WERE RIGHT
A University of Houston maintenance crew hauled to the city dump this nine-hundred-pound sculpture they thought was trash.
CRIMESTOPPER’S TEXTBOOK #289: DON’T LEAVE KEYS IN FIRE TRUCK AFTER BANKING HOURS.
THEY TURNED ON THE SIREN, BUT IT WOULDN’T PULL OVER
After failing to break into the Carmine State Bank with a sledgehammer, three bank robbers stole a fire truck and tried to ram through the bank’s back wall.
BUT THE AGENCY CONGRATULATED THEM ON A HELL OF A PRESENTATION
Two San Antonio robbers who walked into an advertising agency and announced a holdup fled after employees convinced them that they really meant to hold up a loan company in the same building.
FLY ME TO THE LOO AND LET ME PLAY AMONG THE STALLS
Two cops in a Houston police helicopter made a forced landing in a field for a potty stop, but when they tried to take off, the copter hit a mound of dirt and crashed.
BEFORE SHE COULD DIG HERSELF OUT, HE HUNG UP
A Florida woman buried herself in a heated coffin stocked with food outside Deb’s Dance Land in Grand Prairie in hopes that Bee Gees star Barry Gibb would call her on the phone.
THEY LIKE HIM. HE’S A LITTLE STIFF, BUT HE’S QUIET, DOESN’T EAT MUCH, AND MINDS HIS OWN BUSINESS
Reporters for the Bryan Eagle discovered that the body of a man who died in Calvert in 1923 was still in a local funeral home and had never been buried.
CHARLIE LOST
Two Dallas women sued each other for the right to live with a five-year-old black toy poodle named Charlie.
FOR FONDLING YOU GET $100
A Dallas bailiff who admitted putting his arm around a female juror was transferred by Sheriff Carl Thomas to another position at a pay increase of $75 a month.
THE HOT AIR CARRIED HIM ALL THE WAY HOME
After Houston State Representative Al Edwards testified before Congress against proposed cutbacks in rail passenger service to his city, he announced that he didn’t have time to take the train home and flew back instead.
BUT THEY WERE SINGLES
Two Denver men sued the Neiman-Marcus travel division asking damages for humiliation and emotional suffering after what they said was presented as a Caribbean dream cruise for singles turned out to be filled with passengers whose average age was sixty.
THAT’S RIGHT. WE CAN’T COUNT ON DE GAULLE
State Representative Bill Heatly of Paducah defended a $53,000 appropriation to install an elevator in the two-story National Guard headquarters by arguing, “Those generals are the only thing between us and Khrushchev.”
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