Port Aransas South Jetty (Port Aransas, Tex.), Vol. 11, No. 18, Ed. 1 Thursday, May 7, 1981 Page: 4 of 20
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Page 4, Thursday, May 7, 1981, South Jetty
EdiTORiAl ANd QpilMioiM
_Sunny-side up
By )im Edmonson
The long wait is over. The
Island Food Store and Cafe has
reopened its doors for business.
The actual time involved for the
reconstruction of the building
was a surprising three months.
But when you have that memory
implanted in the back of your
mind of how great the fish and
chips were and how reasonable
the tab, the wait seems forever.
The irony behind the entire
episode that now has a pleasant
ending, is that when Jerry and I
found we would be moving to
the island, one of the looked
forward to treats was we could
eat at the Island Food Store
anytime we wanted and
wouldn’t have to drive 43 miles
to do so. Needless to say, the
building burned three days
before we moved to Port
Aransas. All of this now seems
long ago. What it really says ^
that a lot of people had the
determination to rebuild and not
give up. Not only has the
rebuilding been carried off in
record speed, but Bobby Turn-
c
Tidemarks
By C.M. Henkel Jr.
If there are any words in the
English language which are least
understood and misused they
must certinly be “sophistica-
tion” and “liberal.” Here 1
shall deal only with the latter.
To reassure myself I look the
word up in my dictionary a
dozen and more times a year. A
liberal, as most of us see one, is
by way of being a leftist, a social
do gooder and uplifter, one with
an overabundance of sympathy
for the real or imagined under-
dog. He is forever waving a
banner and in a gross manner
either advocating or protesting
one cause or another, often silly
in the eyes of those of us who
fancy ourselves as people of
moderation and conservatism.
Per example, the nuts (I call
them) who create a flap over the
naming of a new submarine the
Corpus Christi or go bananas
over an inch long fish once
supposed to exist in some tiny
river in the state of Virginia.
You get the idea, I hope. My
dictionary shakes its head.
Federal Judge William Wayne
Justice is a liberal in the
accepted although non dictionary
sense of the word. He has the
h«*st of rrpdpntiaU
He is an old-time friend of the
notorious (to conservatives)
“Smilin’ Raf Yarborough. That
circumstance alone is enough to
give him a high place in the
Blue Book or Social Register of
his kind. He is closer than a
kissing cousin to Ted Kennedy,
Ralph Nader and a host of
others among whom must be
included one State Sen. Carlos
Truan.
In my Sunday newspaper I
read a piece on Justice by J.
Michael Kennedy of the Los
Angeles Times. Those of you
who share my views probably
got no further than the first
paragraph. “...Justice is a
gentleman, polite to a fault,
unpretentious and possibly the
most hated man in Texas.”
Well, I read the piece in its
entirety. I am a tolerant sort of
fellow, tolerant at least to the
extent that T m ready to hear the
other fellow out, even though he
might not convince me in the
end
Truthfully, I was seeking,
hoping, that Kennedy might in
some way enlighten me as to the
judge's reasoning with regard to
prison reform and bilingual
language instruction. I didn’t
learn much other than that
Justice is a product of East
Texas populism and, in my view,
a misguided believer in the
rights of the underdog. In his
ruling on bilingual education he
said: “These children deserve,
at the very least, an opportunity
to achieve a productive and
fulfilling place in American
society. Unless they receive
instruction in a language they
can understand pending a time
they are able to make the
transition to all English class-
rooms, hundreds of thousands of
Mexican-American children will
remain educationally crippled for
life, denied the equal opportuni-
ty most Americans take for
granted.” Fault that? Not I.
The trouble is in Justice’s
typical liberal approach or solu-
tion. Unsound, impractical, un-
reasoned, a solution that defeats
its own ends; the teaching of
Spanish through all secondary
grades. The end result will be
that the state and eventually the
nation will remain or rather
become divided as a country
with two national languages, a
circumstance that has always
been historically disastrous.
In a word, if Spanish is to be
tonrrkf 10*1.
** o * “ *" v'**f)'* AMUI fty A auc
those who have spoken the
language from birth will never
make English their first lan-
guage and so suffer the very
thing Justice presumes to seek
to avoid, people “trducalionaliy
crippled for life.”
The American people have
always been a generous people,
often notoriously so to the end
that they suffer from their
generosity. Only in the instance
of utter bigots have I encounter-
ed people who have not support-
ed programs to instruct foreign-
ers in our native language
(English I hope) but Justice goes
far too far, although I confess
that I am not surprised.
Accepting him as a liberal I
can only expect liberal reason-
ing.
liberal reasoning? Here I
must make a confession. I have
had in my time many friends
who presume to be liberals.
More often than not they have
been well educated people, their
arguments often difficult to
refute.
I think especially of one. He
wore a Phi Beta Kappa key and
held a Ph.D. We debated
endlessly and I confess that he
was the more articulate. Yet
always an inner voice forever
told me he was wrong, wrong.
I became silent, at least
lowered my voice. Often he led
himself to believe that he had
convinced me, until at the end I
BUkQC CItoi uiat i sun neio to my
original stand.
Remembering, I laugh. I
haven’t seen Bob in 20 years. I
can see him, hear him, turning
to Kitty, in despair. “I prove
everything to him and still he
won’t believe!”
See “TIDEMARKS” page 12
bull’s commitment to come back
and be as good as ever has been
fulfilled.
The many inquiries this news
paper has had concerning the
Island Food Store can now be
answered with a pleasant smile
and a nod in the direction of
Alister Street. Good things
aren’t always in the past.
Sometimes they are good
enough to stay with us.
Moving from one end of town
to the other I feel moved to say
something about my first reac-
tion to large billfish. “Wow”.
What a turn on. I’ve always
known about buck fever and the
associated feelings involved in
hunting game animals, but I had
little idea that the same holds
true for the large game fish.
Believe me it does, and I didn’t
even catch one. I was only there
to take pictures of the catch.
When the crew backs a large
craft up to the pier and hoists a
Blue Marlin onto the scales
that weighs 471 pounds, every-
one around is stunned. The
magnificence and sheer mystery
of something so big and forceful
looking being brought up from
the depths is awesome. I’m
certain that this is where the
word adventure gets part of its
meaning. _
South Jetty
Publishing Co.
749-6377
P.O. Box 1116
Port Aransas, Tx. 78373
201 E. Cotter
Subscriptions: $12 per year
Publisher/managing editor
Jim Edmonson
Editor
lerry Edmonson
Composing/classified
Barbara Yates
Office supplies
Raymond Cushing
Contributing writers
ludy Fuhrman
Bertie Goodwin
C M Henkel |r
lack L Moore
) Shone Pecoraro
Thomas Ward
The South Jetty is published
every Thursday by the South
Jetty Publishing Co. at 201 E.
Cotter Avenue in Port Aransas.
Anv erroneous statement
regarding corporations, firms or
individuals will be gladly
corrected when called to the
attention of the editors.
Second Class Postage is paid at
Port Aransas, Texas, 78173.
Publication Number: 94b-020.
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Edmonson, Jim. Port Aransas South Jetty (Port Aransas, Tex.), Vol. 11, No. 18, Ed. 1 Thursday, May 7, 1981, newspaper, May 7, 1981; Port Aransas, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth601562/m1/4/: accessed April 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Ellis Memorial Library.