The Canadian Record (Canadian, Tex.), Vol. 113, No. 17, Ed. 1 Thursday, April 24, 2003 Page: 2 of 32
This newspaper is part of the collection entitled: Hemphill County Area Newspapers and was provided to The Portal to Texas History by the Hemphill County Library.
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THURSDAY 24 APRIL 2003
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Good bill gone bad
HARD TO SAY WHO WAS more surprised by the
news that a Senate bill to ban off-roading in and
along the State's rivers will not protect the Canadian
River. It might have been the regional news media, all
of whom reported last Wednesday that the ban in-
cluded the mighty Canadian. Or it might have been
Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs, who has
been a supporter of Senate Bill 155, and who was
quoted in the AmqHMq Globe-News as saying that
damage from off-roading has been most severe at the
Nueces, Canadian and Llano rivers.
The original bill that was introduced certainly in-
cluded the Canadian River in its protection. That bill
earned the support of groups in Texas as diverse and
as seemingly disparate as the Texas Farm Bureau
and Southwestern Cattle Raisers on one end of the
spectrum, and the Texas Audubon Society and Lone
Star Chapter of the Sierra Club on the other end. But
the original bill did not include one critical exemption
that has been written into the bill now wending its
way through the Legislature, which reads: "This
chapter does not apply to any river with headwaters
in New Mexico or Colorado and a confluence in
Oklahoma."
Don't bother getting out your maps or geography
books. There is only one such river, and it is the
Canadian.
Perhaps if we lived in closer proximity to the Capi-
tal steps we, too, would understand why such a signif-
icant exception was so carefully disguised in language
meant to blur its real intent. Out here in the Panhan-
dle, though, it just feels like we got screwed one more
time.
The only question now is who did the screwing and
Continued on Page 3
RECORD
INCORPORATED FEBRUARY 1998
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SETH DAVIDSON
MEMBER
2003
TEXAS PRESS
ASSOCIATION
I'M NOT PRONE TO BITING my tongue for prolonged periods of
time, but have done so rather admirably throughout the Slim Graham
trailer trash chapter of recent municipal history. I thought I'd made it,
too, after our newly ensconced City Manager Beth Briant presented
Slim with a rather generous offer to have City crews remove the debris
of the mobile home from the lot where it had been placed in violation of
municipal ordinances.
It was a win-win deal, really, though if you tried to convince the City
workers who spent two days clearing the lot, you'd be wasting your
breath. By offering their services to remove the debris, the City would
benefit from having the whole mess gone, and Slim would benefit by
avoiding the prospect of costly fines which were accruing daily as long
as the mess remained.
Briant waived the fines, and charged Graham nothing for the labor.
But Graham responded with the graciousness I've come to expect from
him, seeking compensation from the City Council for the costs he in-
curred moving the trailer in when a permit was granted, then finally
tearing it down when the permit was revoked.
Some might say the City owed it to him. Actually, Slim said the City
owed it to him. But others might say so because Slim was, at one point
many long months ago, granted a permit to set a mobile home on the lot
next to his shop. Forget for a moment that the mobile home he dropped
smack dab in the middle of beautiful downtown Canadian looked like
poop in a punchbowl. That wasn't the problem.
The problem was that the requested permit was for a 48' trailer, and
this one was about 19' longer. The problem was that the lot was zoned
for commercial purposes, and Slim clearly intended to use this as a
home. The problem was that the City ordinances require any building
placed on the same lot as an existing one to be subordinate to the origi-
nal structure. This 67'-long trailer was clearly not subordinate to
anything.
There's been more than a little suspicion on my part that Slim Gra-
ham was just thumbing his nose at the Economic Development Council,
whose office was adjacent to the mobile home location. Before turning
his attention to the City Council, Graham had haunted several EDC
meetings, displeased with that Council's repeated decisions to deny
him a Main Street grant because his renovations did not meet their
guidelines.
Finally given a grant, Graham missed the deadline for completion of
his work, and the check was returned to the EDC coffers. So there's
bad blood behind the whole deal, a point Slim amplified when he visited
The Re-cord office when this whole stink broke out in January. On the
subject of the EDC, Slim groused: "They've tried to keep me from do-
ing anything."
I don't think he even listened when I tried to explain the difference
between not letting him do anything and not paying for him to do what-
ever he darn well pleased. That was a subtlety that was wasted on Slim
Graham.
Slim Graham is a fine boot- and saddle-maker, whose craft I have
admired and written about in the past. Considering his vocation, Slim
ought to recognize a dead horse when he sees one and quit beating it.
The City Council wisely passed on his kind offer to pay him compen-
sation this week, as Briant—who's gone a sight further down a one-way
road to accommodate Graham than I would have—recommended. Gra-
ham, who has threatened lawyers and lawsuits and Presidential visits
and picketing war veterans and all manner of retribution, ought to quit
while we're all behind, but the odds of his doing so are pretty poor.
Whether or not Slim returns to the City for another round, the
Council should not miss the real point of all this thrashing about: not
only is it time to get the City's zoning ordinances in spit-and-polish or-
der, it is also time to put the planning back in "planning and zoning." It
is time to think about what we want Canadian to look like in five years,
in ten years, in twenty years...and to write zoning ordinances that pro-
tect the investments many have made in beautifying and restoring our
downtown.
Can we do that and still honor our differences, our individualism'.' I
believe so. But we cannot do that without a pretty substantial public
conversation about what we want, and how we want to get there. We'll
be a lot better off if we start that process now, while we are so acutely
focused on what we don't want, than if we wait until the next bad idea
comes along.
Y'know...the great thing about biting your tongue for so long is that
it feels awfully good when you finally stop.
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Ezzell, Nancy & Brown, Laurie Ezzell. The Canadian Record (Canadian, Tex.), Vol. 113, No. 17, Ed. 1 Thursday, April 24, 2003, newspaper, April 24, 2003; Canadian, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth220576/m1/2/?rotate=90: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Hemphill County Library.