Correspondents' Correspondence
Correspondents' correspondence BRIEF TAKEOUTS OF MORE THAN PERSONAL INTEREST FROM LETTERS AND OTHER COMMUNICATIONS RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS. Antic Haze Houston????madness is relative these days....
...The city's image is progressive...
...Not with so many oil barons in its establishment...
...People here are cheering because their town is becoming crowded and unmanageable...
...It's just that they have been living in Houston a very long time and being visionary is tough in all that haze...
...Air conditioning did indeed make the town possible, while ambitious real-estate developers made it prosper...
...roger Kingsbury...
...Houston still has time to bypass the mistakes of older, dying cities elsewhere...
...Well, it's the Houston syndrome...
...Shell Oil will build a $1.5-billion development of high-rise offices and housing complexes near the Astrodome...
...And the men all have that straight-from-the-country-club-shower look...
...Currently the industry is thrashing against an Administration delay in approving a trans-Alaskan pipeline to the North Slope, where as much as 100 million barrels of crude oil may be waiting for refinement...
...Everything is air-conditioned here, so what the hell...
...And while the blacks, who comprise 20 per cent of the population, have not yet rioted, it is obviously not for lack of provocation...
...The streets, however, are not factory-aired and summer is beyond belief, the cloying humidity from the Gulf combining most effectively with the blazing sun to create Hades on the Bayou...
...Nixon is believed to be stalling until the congressional elections are past before giving a green light...
...Unemployment is only about 2 per cent...
...Humble, Gulf, Texaco, it doesn't matter...
...Houston is on the move: nasa, the Texas Medical Center (starring DeBakey and Cooley), electronics, petrochemicals, and the headquarters for big oil...
...But environment is the cropper...
...So the oilmen have been lobbying ferociously against any Phantoms for Israel, hoping to placate their Arab clients...
...The oilmen are dour grey eminences...
...To become big is still a virtue in Texas, so it would be useless to stifle the drummers by reminding them of what happens when a place gets too big, crowded and unworkable????like say, Baltimore, number six in the 1960 census...
...No one goes tieless in Gaza...
...Everyone tells you that...
...Then, too, the Middle East has everyone here worried...
...No one who matters has looked beyond the next highrise to assess how many new sewage disposal plants will be needed, or new highways, or new schools and hospitals...
...But two Houston cops were recently suspended after a black man was beaten to death at the station house...
...The oilmen should be lobbying for a strong pro-Israel stand to encourage the Russians to back down and thus reassert U.S...
...The women still pile their hair in intricate curls nearly a foot high...
...power in the area????the industry's best long-range hope of keeping the Arabs in line...
...It's not that the oilmen are anti-Israel on other than sheer economic grounds...
...Barrel profits and rate regulations are their narrow focus...
...Houston, it seems, has waited generations to become big-time stuff...
...There is no reason to believe it will, though...
...Mayor Louie Welch is certain to become head of the U.S...
...Conference of Mayors within a year...
...The damned Russians have raised Arab hopes, and even the moderate oil shiek-doms are becoming increasingly shrill and militant, threatening to lower production quotas while raising rates to make up the difference if the Americans send more jets to Israel...
...the national recession has barely affected the local boom...
...It makes no sense, you say...
...Here in Houston, where newly released census figures reveal that the population has spiraled above the 2-million mark, the chamber of commerce is drumbeat-ing the town's escalation to America's sixth-largest city...
...More likely, they realize some of the police racists are awaiting an excuse for deadly supression...
...But the natives simply will not submit to reality...
...So whoopee...
Vol. 53 • July 1970 • No. 15
