GOOD OLD DAYS IN TEXAS

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 113, 6 February 1937, Page 23

GOOD OLD DAYS IN TEXAS

Memories of El Paso 40 Years Ago “My Texas ’Tis of Thee” by Owen P. White (London: Putnam). Mr. White’s Texas is full of the gunmen, gamblers and bartenders so often encountered In yellow-backed noveltttes, but there is a difference; he is not writing a fictitious, and sensational romance, but of people he knew, of personal experience and of a period that passed with, for the author, genuine feelings of regret. Born 50 years ago in a one-room adobe hut at almost the geographical centre of what is now the city of El Paso, the author’s early acquaintance with the virile life of Texas, fortunately made against the background of an intellectual and cultural home, has enabled him to revive stirring memories with convincing reality. The book is mainly composed of a gallery of Texas eccentrics preserved in their original atmosphere that is so well conveyed in the writer’s reminiscences of his boyhood. There is action and gusty humour on every page. » In those days most of the prominent “citizens” owed their success to their ability to “tote a gun,” and a few shootings made an exciting day! The stories that led up to the events, however, lived longer than the actual killings and it is from these that the author’s most exciting and amusing tales are drawn. Soak’em O’Riley who l)ad to light to maintain his self-respect; Luke Short who shot dozens of men in bis time but who'finally died in bed without a scar on his body, and Mrs. Priestley, stories of whose past intrigued the author while he was still a school-boy, are typical of the characters that enrich these memories of bis wide-eyed youth. To-day, the author laments,. El Paso has very little to commend it. The leading citizens carry golf clubs in their leisure hours instead of guns and the good old days are no more. Justice is meted out not by swift-barking guns but by the dull routine of the law courts, and “graft.” while probably just as prevalent, has more chances of suecess than in the days when any man might settle his own grievance in his own manner. Mr. White’s vigorous story-telling conveys the atmosphere of his period excellently,. his characters are appropriately droll and his first-hand knowledge of the men of whom he writes carries, conviction.