“We Latin Americans fought for the four freedoms, but we do not enjoy them. We have returned home, and are getting ready to fight Communism. We served faithfully. When are we going to get our rights? I’ve lived in many parts of the world, but the U.S. is the greatest country of them all. However, I warn you against the encroachment of Communism. The Communist system of government is the greatest menace the world has ever known.”
Major Garcia’s concerns were shared by the three candidates for the state’s vacant seat in the U.S. Senate. George Peddy had come to Beeville in May and proclaimed, “If Russia wants to fight us, we might as well have the fight now. We must issue an ultimatum for our planes in Berlin.” Peddy’s anticommunist view was the strongest, and it got him the endorsement of the Houston Post. Coke Stevenson also came later in May and made a short speech on the courthouse steps. Peddy’s views on communism were respected, and he had been met with strong applause. Coke Stevenson, the former governor, was Mr. Texas, a cattleman among cattlemen, and he was greeted by the people of Beeville as one of their own.
The third candidate came in July, a month to the day after Hector Garcia’s visit. The peace of the early afternoon was interrupted by the whir and clatter of the Johnson City Windmill, Lyndon Johnson’s campaign helicopter, which circled the courthouse and hovered over downtown Beeville before veering off to the Fair Grounds, where a crowd of Democrats awaited. There, the thirty-nine-year-old politician threw his hat out of the helicopter into the crowd below, landed, and gave an energetic eighteen-minute speech. Camp Ezell timed the speech and counted the crowd (180). In his story, Camp made note that this was Lyndon’s seventh speech of the day in South Texas, with seven more to go. From Beeville he was going on to Duval County, sixty miles south, below the Nueces River, the old border with Mexico.
Lyndon Johnson had a special purpose in going to Duval County.
But Hector Garcia had no purpose there. For one thing, Duval schools were fully integrated. There was no language problem. In a county that was 90 percent Latino, everybody spoke Spanish.
For another, he wouldn’t have found 130 civic leaders. Duval had only one civic leader, a patrón, and he was the cultural, political, and spiritual leader as well. In South Texas, everyone knew about George B. Parr, the Duke of Duval.
The Parrs were not the first political bosses in South Texas, but they were the masters. Early in the century, when men still traveled on horses, Archer Parr had gone against the interests of fellow Anglo ranch owners and embraced the Mexican side of a Tex-Mex political argument in the county seat and forever aligned his family with the majority. With the artful use of personal favors, patronage, and stern discipline, Archer parlayed that move into a deep relationship with the political majority. He taught George that the key to the Spanish psyche was fatalism. For Spaniards, life was being. For the gringos, it was doing. The gringo, with his arid soul, felt he controlled his own fate. The Latino did not so presume: The English phrase was “I’ll see you tomorrow,” the Spanish was “Hasta mañana—si Dios quiere.” (See you tomorrow—if God wills.) George learned to speak Spanish before he learned English. He knew most of the men of San Diego, the county seat, by name, and each of them knew he could go to George for help—a medical bill, a county job, a small loan. The Parrs solved personal problems.
By 1948, George had total political control in Duval, effective control in Starr and Brooks counties, and strong influence in the district’s biggest, Jim Wells, a geographical area of 4,835 square miles, four times the size of the King Ranch. The Duke’s corruption was flagrant, prodigious, and colorful. He would go so far for a kickback as to buy the semitropical county a snowplow. (When reminded that it had never snowed in Duval, he said, “Well, if it ever does, we’re ready.”) He levied his own private tax (five cents a bottle) on beer. He lifted $250,000 from district school funds to buy the 57,000-acre Dobie ranch. (This, however, he had to give back.) But within his fiefdom he was regarded with affection and greatly admired. So the mansion, the racetrack, and the swimming pool built in the vicinity of the shacks of San Diego were viewed with pride by the population. George was lo nuestro.
If the two counties were the poles of South Texas culture, the core difference seemed to be the value the gringo placed on the vote. As most gringo attitudes, this was concerned more with ideas than with people. The notion of “a nation of laws, not men” made little sense to the heirs of Spanish sociability to whom the patrón asks this question:
Que es mejor: tener razon, o ser feliz?
(What is better: to be right or to be happy?)
One vote was a small price to pay for the feeling of family, the comfort of raza.
George B. Parr provided both. In return, he personally saw to the county’s ballot boxes.
To Hector Garcia, the Duke of Duval was the other half of the cultural dilemma that blocked the way to justice for his people.
But to Lyndon B. Johnson, he was four thousand votes. The congressman needed every one of them. He had already lost one run for the Senate—against Pappy O’Daniel in 1941—but had managed to keep his seat in Congress. If he lost this time, he wouldn’t be going back to Washington anytime soon, if at all.
8
No gringo placed a greater value on the vote than Johnny Barnhart. His November 29 birthday had caused him to miss the 1946 election by a month. Now twenty-two, almost twenty-three, he was voting for the first time. He was finally part of the process, and he felt he owned it. Being in Austin, in and out of the Capitol, he had access to all the inside dope on the rough Senate campaign. The Austin pros thought that Coke Stevenson would win the primary but not outright. Coke would face a runoff with either George Peddy, the anticommie, or Lyndon Johnson, the Washington insider who was making his last run for political office. Johnson had lost to Pappy O’Daniel and the Texas Doughboys in a run for the Senate in 1941 but managed to hold on to his seat in Congress. This time, if he lost, he would have to give it up.
Everyone knew this Senate race was going to be historic. But so was the sheriff’s race in Bee County. Vail Ennis would be running for the first time since the Pettus shootout and the Time magazine article. The county would decide whether his wounds at Pettus had redeemed him of his violent past. Johnny planned to go to Beeville for the primary and to Fort Worth for the Texas Democratic Convention in September, where—barring some huge political surprise—Coke Stevenson would be confirmed as the new U.S. senator from Texas.
On primary election day, Johnny voted at Precinct 21 in Beeville. When the polls closed at seven, he went downtown to the election party. Main was blocked off between Bowie and Corpus Christi streets. A large blackboard listing precincts and candidates was mounted on a scaffold in front of the Bee-Picayune office. The blackboard showed three names for sheriff: Ennis, Robinson, and Wachtendorf. G. M. Robinson had entered the race at the last minute. Nobody knew why. He was well-known in the northern part of the county but not otherwise.
Vail’s serious challenger was H. D. Wachtendorf, a Texas Ranger who had almost beat him in the previous election. In 1946, Wachtendorf carried almost half the precincts and won a 70 percent vote on the west side. The issue hadn’t been decided until the following morning, when votes from the city precincts had been counted and recounted. Precinct 1, all Anglos, decided for Vail.
Wachtendorf was a burly fellow who favored cowboy gear. He campaigned hard in 1946 and now again in 1948. During the month of July you couldn’t walk a block in downtown Beeville without seeing H. D. Wachtendorf—all business, the picture of a lawman, stocky, jaw set, eyes narrowed, watching for felons. H. D. Wachtendorf let folks know that he wasn’t impressed one bit by Vail Ennis’s reputation. He and Vail went back a long way. Both had been deputies (Wachtendorf the chief deputy) under Sheriff Will Corrigan in the early 1940s. If Wachtendorf had stayed in Beeville instead of going off to join the Rangers, Vail would never have been sheriff. Backing up Wachtendorf was Bud O’Neil, the county’s only real politician, the man who had organized the failed 1946 ouster movement. O’Neil’s group had money, and they printed a ton of Wachtendorf posters, papering the west-side bars and the downtown telephone poles.
The tone reflected