Small-town Texas
Quaintly fading
Regarding “What can keep a small town alive? In Texas, it’s community and capital” (Page A3, Saturday), Joe Holley wrote kindly of the charming small towns in Texas. He refrained from pointing out that small towns and country life would be like a theme park or retirement village without real ranchers, farmers, hardware stores, groceries, cafés and, importantly, children in public schools.
Rural public education affects people of many races and economic groups across Texas, and it is currently being gutted by forces in the state Legislature, namely Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Senate Education Chair Larry Taylor. They insist that schools do get enough money, and they had no plan to rework a fair and equitable school finance bill in the 2017 session.
School boards across the state are scrambling. Fort Davis ISD was recently cited in the Austin-American Statesman by Lonn Taylor: “The Fort Davis ISD has 226 students,” Hicks wrote. “It has no cafeteria, has no bus routes, has dropped our band program, has eliminated (or not filled) 15 staff positions, has cut stipends for extracurricular activities, has frozen (or reduced) staff pay for one year, has cut extracurricular programs, has no debt, and has increased our local tax rate to the maximum allowed by the law.
“We have nothing left to cut.”
State fairs and livestock shows could soon become quaint historical events if the purge of public education continues at this pace. Before it’s too late, Texas can bolster its rural public schools and small towns by educating the next generation of shop owners, agriculture workers, doctors and auto mechanics. Let’s get behind the representatives who want strong schools and insist that the July special session of the Legislature address the needs of our public schools for every Texan.
Marie Michnovicz, Houston
Reminiscing
Columnist Joe Holley and “Texas Fred,” HoustonChronicle.com commenter, brought back fond memories of the old Houston Heights. The main drag back in the 1940s and ’50s was 19th Street, just a few blocks away from Helms Elementary School, Hamilton Junior High and Reagan High School. There were dozens of small businesses doing quite well, thank you, a saddlery full of good-smelling leather goods, and a block away, the Heights Theatre with confectionary adjacent. The trolley line along brick-paved Heights Boulevard was history, although the tracks still led toward downtown Houston. Harold’s of the Heights opened a small clothing store. When Harold came back from the Korean conflict, he and brother Milton developed the store into an upscale haberdashery where the city’s elite politicians and athletes stood in line to pay big bucks for fancy duds. Next door was Sammy’s Diner, open 24 hours a day. A stretch of Heights Boulevard was served the old Houston Press by a skinny kid, me, on a rickety bicycle.
In later years, the Heights was subject to the vagaries described by Holley, “a small Texas town hanging on like a withered peach,” but happy to say, in the past 15 or so years, the region has become a mecca for young professionals and top-notch restaurants.
Sam Caldwell via HoustonChronicle.com