The Salt Grass Trail

During my time at the Houston Post as a roving columnist I became involved with something known as the Salt Grass Trail. I joined this ride because it was a publicity stunt which brought me new readers, and because it publicized the Houston Fat Stock Show. In the beginning there were ony 7 of us, led by Reese Lockett, the mayor of Brenham and a former professional rodeo participant. E.H. Marks, who had a ranch west of Houston, arrived with a covered wagon. From this small beginning the trail ride grew bigger every year. People were married on the ride, at least one woman was raped, politicans joined while running for office, many people joined who liked trail rides, and young people joined because it was exciting. When 12 covered wagons and about 3,000 riders showed up it forced us to get organized. You had to belong to a group to join up. I joined the Port City Stockyards group. We slept on bedrolls during our three day trip and had delicious food cooked at the stops. I was involved with this ride for seven years. Each time we arrived in Memorial Park in Houston we regrouped and formed a segment of the annual parade which opened the Houston show. All this publicity moved the Houston show and rodeo into second place in the state, second only to the annual show at Fort Worth. I had a strong gelding horse at that time and I rode him from Friendswood to Houston to Brenham and back. It was a great adventure.

Horses

As soon as we moved to our new country place in Friendswood I bought four horses: one for me and one for Marie and one each for our two daughters. It was the younger daughter who enjoyed her horse the most. Not only did she love her horse but the horse loved her. She rode every day, usually bareback. She would be gone for two or three hours and we were not concerned This was the time when Friendswood was still rural. She named her horse Reggie and she could go out in the pasture and cry "Reggie" and he would come running. Soon she was joined by a new friend, Madeline, who had a horse of her own, and another friend, Sally, who borrowed my horse. Sally had a beautiful dog and it was a delight to see her and Trinka ride off with the dog running behind. This lasted until the girls went off to college.

The Great Flood of the Early 1970s

The only thing which kept Friendswood from becoming a major city was the great flood of the early 1970s. By that time our daughters were in college and Marie and I were publishing a chain of weeklies in the area between Houston and Galveston. Some said it rained 30 inches in four hours and others said it rained 40 inches in eight hours. Hundreds of homes were destroyed. I was at the printing plant and when I got back I took my wife and mother out of our house in a boat. Christ Kraft was taken off the roof of his house by helicopter. By that time NASA had becomecome an established government agency. When we regained our sanity we built a new two-story house. Adjustlments were made to the bayous which drained the area and finally life went on in the Space City area.

The Space Age Arrives

One of the first NASA people to arrive was Chris Kraft, head of the program to send a mission to the Moon. He came to our Episcopal church in Friendswood, accompanied by his wife, Betty. He said he would attend our church and he bought a home in the new subdivision. Word spread and soon our church was overflowing and we had to expand the sanctuary. The subdivision also sold out. The NASA people came from all over the nation and from other places and had a multitude of interests, hobbies and skills. Overnight they changed Friendswood from an obscure village to a fast growing city. One of the astronauts moved into Friendswood. It was an exciting time. The Post, where I was employed, asked me to cover NASA but I refused. I was too close to some of the key people and did not want them to think I was spying on them. The Quakers soon were outnumbered, but their leader, Cecil Brown, made a lot of money out of the subdivision. One thing remained the same: you still could not buy alcohol in the city.

Friendswood

Friendswood was a Quaker community located about 20 miles south of Houston. At the time that I moved there I was working on the Houston Post and wanted to move to a quiet neighborhood. Cecil Brown, who was the leading citizen of the community, agreed to sell me 15 acres along Coward's Creek. This creek was named for early settlers named Coward who had since moved on. And so I moved there and enrolled my daughters in the local school. It took me about an hour to get to the office but it was worth it. Friendswood was dry, alcoholically speaking, and was a law abiding community. After I lived there a while I noticed that most of the families had about three children which led me to believe that sex was not banned. No one, including me, had any suspicion that the future of Friendswood was tied to the outside world. Marie and I formed an Episcopal Church in competititon with the Friends Church but we visited back and forth and their was no animosity. One day the world changed with the establishment of NASA, the space agency dedicated to landing a man on the moon. The space headquarters was to be located at nearby Clear Lake City. All of a sudden NASA employees began showing up in Friendswood, anxious to move that far away from the Space City headquarters. Mr. Brown realized that he needed to accomodate them and he established a 200 acre subdivision on Clear Creek on the west side of the city. One Sunday at our struggling Episcopal Church I had to stand up at the rear of the sanctuary because so many new members arrived. It turned out that many of the NASA personnel, who came from up East, were Episcopalians. Friendswood changed a great deal after that but one thing remained a constant factor. No alcohol was sold in the city.

Willie Burns

William J. Burns, better known as Willie, was chief of police in Galveston during the days when the city was wide open. I was once visiting in a local night club, which also was a gambling joint with Willie when a red faced man from Dallas approached us and said, "Boy this is something. They tell me you are the chief of police." Willie grabbed the man and pulled him up close and said, "We are running this city for the benefit of the people If you don't like it, get lost." The man got lost. Another time a man from Dallas whose wife had died and who understood the city visited a local whorehouse and had sex with a prostitute. The woman was new in town and she stole the man's wallet. The next morning the man went to the police station and told Willie about the crime and gave him the name the woman had used. Willie went to the whorehouse, bounded up the stairs and told the woman to give him the wallet. When she denied the crime he slapped her. She produced the wallet and Willie told her to get out of town and never come back. Then he took the wallet, which was intact, and gave it back to the man. "We run an orderly city," Willie told him. When Willie was chief you could park your car on a downtown street, leave the keys in the ignition, leave your billfold on the front seat and leave the windows down, and be gone for several hours and when you came back everything would be just like you left it. One law that Willie enforced was the traffic laws. When he was chief if you ran a stop sign or drove too fast you could count on paying a ticket. The rules were laid down by the mayor and city council and were agreed to by the Big Banker and the head of the Mafia, who had reached an agreement.

Falcon Dam

Dwight Eisenhower was president and Ruiz Cortines was president of Mexico. They were both coming to McAllen, Texas, to dedicate Falcon Dam on the Rio Grande River. Ike stayed with Allan Shivers, who was governor of Texas and who had a ranch nearby. There is a custom in Mexico that when you meet someone that you embrace them, known as the Abrazzo. Allan Shivers briefed Ike on this custom and Ike said it was "silly." We all gathered at the new dam and Ruiz Cortines and Ike were in the middle of the dam. Down below was about 50 Mexican reporters and photographers and on our side was about 100 reporters and photographers. The Mexican journalists wanted to get a picture of Ike embracing Cortines. Ike stiffly shook hands with Cortines. The Mexican journalists began to chant "abrazzo abrazzo." Ike ignored them. Then they began to hiss loudly "abrazzo." Ike turned pink with anger but he finally relented and gave Ruiz a big hug. To say that Ike was stubborn was understatement.