Editor’s Note: This document discovered stuffed in a Shiner beer bottle that was found floating in Cummins Creek in late August of 1997. The author’s identity is unknown.

I was minding my own business at a Chamber of Commerce meeting, circling in on my next tidbit from the dessert table, when suddenly the Mayor appeared out of nowhere and handed me an official-looking piece of paper.

“Here,” he said “sign this.”

I looked at him quizzically and said “What’s that?”

“It‘s nothing.” he said “Just sign it!”

I tried to take a closer look at the document but the Mayor’s arm was covering it, making it impossible to read. “Mayor,” I complained “I can’t sign anything I can’t read.”

He tried another tact. Smiling, he assured me the form was no big deal... just a little legal document putting my name on the ballot for town council.

By now a small, inquisitive crowd was peering over the Mayor’s shoulder. “Oh no, you don’t want me to do that. I wouldn’t be good at being a politician. You know I told you I don’t want to do that,” I squealed like a stuck pig.

“Just sign it,” said the Mayor. All around me, accusing eyes glowered at my unwillingness to fulfill my civic duty. I crumbled.

“Oooh...” I moaned “Okay.”

That’s how it all began. Now I’m trapped. There seems to be no way out of it. At this point I’ve lost all hope of defending or justifying myself. As the editor of the Round Top Register, I was already a well-known liar and there wasn’t much chance of me gaining any credibility by becoming a politician, so I don’t expect you to believe a thing I have to say. I don’t believe politicians myself so why should you.

My only hope is that by telling the story of my disgraceful fall into the quagmire of small town politics, I might be able to save some other poor schnook from making the same mistakes I did.

In that self-sacrificing spirit, I’m going to tell this tale even though I know I may not survive the telling. After all, I’m a town alderman and therefore a marked man. Everyone else in this town of 81 is already mad at me anyway. What have I got to lose?

I’m going to spill my guts.

In the end, we neither saved nor ruined it. America just waited us out, minding its own business, until my friends and I got a little older, cut our hair and got real jobs. The times they kept a changin’. Before long, many of us were Republicans.

Despite the rise and fall of the hippie hypocrite, not everything about our radical viewpoint changed over the years. Watergate and Kent State still resounded in our minds. Most of us still held to one of the most basic political beliefs of the 1960’s... Politicians can’t be trusted.

The world’s aging flower children may have become a bunch of BMW-driving yuppies, but they never lost their distrust of bureaucrats and politicos.

That basic suspicion of anything and anyone political...is what saved my generation from the bad reputation we acquired burning our draft cards. Suspecting politicians is the red-blooded American way. Our distrust made us good patriots.

My generation did not invent doubting politicians. Distrust of politicians has long been the guiding principle of the American political experiment. Our bunch was handed the politician-bashing torch by great Americans like Will Rogers. Old Will could body slam a politico way better than Jane Fonda...and he could make ‘em smile while he did it.

Will learned his chops from a riotous bunch of politician-baiters we refer to today as our “founding fathers.” Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, trouble-making politician-doubters one and all.

So you see, due to my patriotism, I began my term as an alderman for the Town of Round Top with a bad attitude and a laundry list of serious misgivings.

Round Top is so small that eventually almost every male who lives within the city limits and is not dead has to serve on the town council.

For some reason that is unclear to me, women are never asked to serve. This is troublesome as most of the smartest people in town are women. Over the years however, this strange and most likely doomed practice has been mitigated by the fact that the men who are selected for office are usually well trained in following their wives’ instructions. Since everyone knows my wife runs things at my house, I was considered prime alderman material.

Thus, the women run the men and the men run the town. Gloria Steinem would most likely frown on the process, but then, I guess a number of the citizens in town would frown on Gloria Steinem.

Like any other political system, democracy in Round Top is a complex and cumbersome process. You have a Mayor and five aldermen. They are all unpaid. The Mayor gets $200 a year but has to pay his own expenses which add up to considerably more than his salary.

Round Top claims to have the lowest municipal tax rate in the state and therefore has no money to pay a staff. The town treasurer works for practically nothing and is responsible for keeping up with the town’s less than considerable funds. Even so, the potholes have to be fixed, the grass on the “Square” has to be mowed, the public bathrooms (2) have to be cleaned and somebody has to be responsible for the day to day maintenance of a town that on most days has only 81 people but from time to time may welcome 10,000 visitors in a single weekend.

The current mayor is the son of a man who was the mayor of Round Top for almost 30 years. He tells a story that is famous in these parts about a call he got from an elderly citizen right after he was elected. The citizen informed the new mayor that there was a dead armadillo on the highway in front of her house. She explained that when his father had been mayor, he always came and picked up the dead armadillos. She wanted to know what his son, the new mayor, was going to do.

“I’ll be right over.” he replied.

So this is the way that Round Top has managed its political affairs throughout its history. People just did what needed to be done for love of the town. Mostly they weren’t acknowledged as they should have been. More often they suffered complaints from the very people that they served. We joke about it but the bank president really is the fire chief, the biggest merchant in town and the leader of the local brass band. A few people have taken the lion’s share of responsibility for the affairs of the town. A few people pick up the armadillos.

This was one of the reasons I was so lacking in enthusiasm when the Mayor asked me to assume a public office. Two years before, I had remodeled the Mayor’s house. I got to know him and his wife pretty well. He’s a good guy and his wife is even better than he is.

I watched his life as mayor from the inside for a while and the experience reconfirmed my fears about the hazards of public office. The mayor takes a lot of _ _ _ _.

I realized that just like me, most people don’t trust politicians...even those politicians that are true public servants.

In those days, the mayor avoided the post office. Postmasters have grave political power in a small town. At the post office the mayor was fair game. He’s was a target for the frustrations and disappointments of the citizens of the Town of Round Top, some of whom had a lot to say...not all of it very nice.

The mayor’s health wasn’t very good. Daily pot shots interspersed by an occasional hour-long reaming had taken a toll on him.

Despite these facts, he liked his job. I realized while I worked on his house that I was glad he had it instead of me.

Even in those early years, I loved Round Top a great deal...but I didn’t love it enough become a politician.

Then my sister-in-law, another woman who runs my life, decided to start a merchants’ association. She’s a real dynamo and it wasn’t long before we had a rip snorting Round Top Merchants’ Association that included almost every business in town and the surrounding countryside.

She made me help. I didn’t want to do it. I was busy and was not seeking additional responsibilities. However, I surrendered and followed her instructions when she told me to serve on the fledgling organization’s Board of Directors. Before long, we were whipping out projects... white Christmas lights on all the buildings in town, a visitors’ center, a brochure and eventually, a newsletter. We had a contest to name the little quarterly newsletter and the name Round Top Register was chosen. That’s how this newspaper came to be. It was a volunteer project for the first year of its life.

Anyway, it was at one of those meetings that the mayor caught me.

We had an election. I think 26 or 27 votes were cast. Not bad if you consider that it’s a town of 81, a few of the citizens are too young to vote and all five positions ran unopposed. Three of the aldermen on the ballot were new to the job. All three of the new guys were from “out of town”. One of the other aldermen was my brother-in-law. We were elected.

From the mayor and others I began to grasp the complex political landscape of Round Top. Many different groups competed for influence.

The merchants were one. They wanted things to look nice for the tourists. They wanted the parking fixed. They wanted more events to bring more tourists. Mostly, they wanted to make a living off their businesses so they could stay in Round Top.

The older local folks were not interested in such things. They didn’t want anything to change. They referred to these proactive new move-ins as “those Houston people.” One woman coined the phrase “importers.”

The “locals” were still in the majority when I first moved to town but many of the “old home” Round Top people had passed away in the years before I took office. The “importers” were on the rise. The political scales were tipping.

Nobody was sure how they felt about that fact. Especially me.

The “old Round Top” folks are special people. When I first came here, Annie Schatte and her brother Joseph Knutzen were two of my favorite people in the world. They had been born and raised in Round Top. They were brother and sister but had not spoken for years.

Annie was a world-beater real estate agent and ruled the coffee klatch at Klumps. Most of the people who had moved to Round Top in the last forty years had done so with her help. When I knew her, she was in her early eighties and still working. She made quilts by the dozens and had an awesome garden. I made her a cedar handrail to go beside the steps down to her office. She helped me get my house.

Joe had been the fifth grade teacher and a blacksmith. He loved kids and telling stories. He was a wild and untamed man. He hunted coons at night and had skinny dogs. He showed off coyote ears. He made porch swings. He sold me the land I live on. He would not clean his yard and so he and Annie were at odds.

Both could tell a story that could open your eyes or leave you in helpless laughter and both told you exactly what they thought. They were symbols of what Round Top magic was to me in my first years here.

Those two are gone now but many of their friends and relatives still live in Round Top and perpetuate the German community that has remained vital and virtually untouched from the 1850’s until the 1960’s. Some had a college education. Some had left school after the eight grade. Most had lived in Round Top their whole lives and so had their parents and grandparents. They were smart, down-to-earth, hard working people.

We “importers” cherished them. Even though the new people who had moved to the town in the last twenty or thirty years came from an entirely different and most often urban environment, we respected the special things that Round Top had to offer and that included its people.

But just like everywhere else, people from different backgrounds sometimes misunderstand each other. Sadly, as the years went by, political camps sprung up on both sides. Flags were raised. Shots were fired over the bow.

The “importers” wanted zoning and architectural controls. They were scared somebody would come in and build something ugly that would ruin the town. The “locals” thought the new people trying to “change the town” and wanted them to stay off their land and out of their business.

The “importers” wanted more tourists and lots of cute shops and B & B’s. The “locals” wanted to have a little peace and quiet.

The town had a few other problems. About half the businesses in the business district (which consisted of 8 or 9 going concerns at most) had sewer problems. They wanted a citywide sewer system.

The “city” water comes from Industry. It’s a long way to Industry. A good deal of colorful sediment gets in the “city” water on its trip here. Some people wanted Round Top to have its own water.

When Round Top has big events, which it does with regularity, the traffic control, parking and safety issues are demanding. The latest estimates place 50,000 people in the area for April and October antique events.

So there was lots to work on. The problem was that we on the council, including the mayor, had no clear idea what percentage of the people of the town wanted what. Some people complained louder and more often than others.

I suggested to the mayor that we get together and make a plan for the town. I knew about as much about city planning as I knew about running a newspaper so I figured it would be easy. We met a few times and drafted a Round Top Strategic Plan. We were ready to go.

The mayor didn’t call a council meeting for four more months. I think he was trying to tell us something.

At our next to last meeting before the hiatus, the mayor explained that the “Do Your Duty” club was interested in “beautifying” the town square.

The DYD club (Do Your Duty) is the principle women's organization in Round Top. The women of the town created the club way back in the 1930’s to take care of the town square. They weeded the flower beds and kept the town hall spruced up. In the beginning, they raised money by selling tamales.

When Emma Lee Turney came to Round Top in the 1960’s and asked to put on an antique show in the Round Top Rifle Association Hall, the DYD began to sell booths on the “Square” to arts and crafts people. They did a good deal better with booths than with tamales and by the time I became an alderman, the DYD had more money than the town itself did.

The DYD and the “Ladies Lunch Bunch” (organizations that share a number of the same members) have a lot of informal political swack in the town.

After all, these were some of the same women who were telling the aldermen and the mayor what to do. Just like the town as a whole, the DYD was enduring political change. The older women were having a hard time letting go and the younger women were having a hard time being patient. Neither group asked any of the men their opinions.

When the “importer” contingent in the DYD gained a voting majority, they went to A & M University and got a nice landscape architect to draw up a preliminary proposal for a “beautification” project on the town square. They asked the council for our approval and some money.

The mayor asked a couple of the aldermen to join him in reviewing the plan. We did so. It sounded like a fine, public spirited project to us. However, part of the plan called for removing a number of existing trees on the town square and planting some smaller live oaks. The mayor was concerned about the removal of these trees and asked me to talk to the DYD committee that was managing the project to negotiate a settlement on the tree issue.

I was very excited about my first real political challenge. It was a project I had a real interest in. I love trees. I built my house in the trees. I don’t like to cut down trees. I could use my new political power to protect my tree brethren from harm.

I felt so purposeful. It was like I was back protesting the Vietnam war after Kent State. I thought I might be able to do some good from within the “system.”

I met with the ladies and we doggedly negotiated. They pointed out that some of the existing trees were diseased. I could see they were right. Okay, I countered, the sick trees could go but they would have to leave the big one in the back, the nice healthy one up front and the cedar we used for a Christmas tree.

It took three meetings but we hammered out an agreement. It was like Camp David, Yalta and Helsinki all wrapped up in one. I was so proud. I called the mayor. I explained the “agreement.” We got a voice vote from the other aldermen and the plan was approved.

I felt so statesmanlike. I imagined I had many things in common with the Presidents of the United States. Just like Franklin D. Roosevelt, I had fought the good fight. Like President Wilson, I had brought about compromise. Like Nixon, I was “not a crook.” Like President Carter, I had committed adultery in my mind...

With seemingly no respect for my presidential qualifications, that next week, the tree men came and clear cut the square.

I don’t really understand what happened.There was some confusion and some last minute decision making and the result was that not only the sick trees, but also the ones that the “agreement” was created to save, became firewood. I found out about it after it was too late.

All hell broke loose. The kindling hit the fan. I was hearing stories about enraged people coming from as far away as Houston. It was a debacle. People wanted to lynch the mayor. The DYD officers were offered rides out of town on a rail. Not only that, but I had failed my buddies, the trees. I was sad and humiliated. My political career came crashing down around my ears.

This was not an auspicious start for the “beautification of the square” but it had begun nonetheless. We had violated the sanctity of the holy square of Round Top and we soon discovered we were damned well expected to make it good.

The aldermen and the DYD ladies went to work. One of the aldermen rebuilt the square’s sprinkler system from scratch. He and my brother-in-law spent days and days digging and running plumbing in order to save scarce funds.

I browbeat one of my subcontractors into giving us a good price on the concrete work and my electrician offered us a good buddy deal on the lighting and electrical work.

Our county commissioner sent people and equipment over, did a lot of work and donated all the equipment time. The DYD ladies got the old fence painted and did the landscaping. A small group of people were doing the work. A lot of other people were complaining. I was not having a good time. Our painful fiasco with the “beautification” project forced the mayor and the council back to the drawing board. We returned to the “strategic plan” for answers. That’s what politicians do when they’re lost...make plans and follow them. That way, if things don’t work, it’s a bad plan instead of bad leadership.

Upon reading our “strategic plan” it became immediately obvious that we needed to move to the next step, which according to the “plan,” was polling the citizens and other people who were heavily invested in Round Top about their opinions on the issues facing the town. We wanted to involve some more citizens in the process and try to build a consensus on those issues where a majority agreed.

With great trepidation, I created the Round Top Questionnaire, a comprehensive, if somewhat addled, survey that went not only the citizens of the town but also to people outside the city limits who had a vested interest in the town. It went to the Festival-Institute at Round Top, to the Winedale Historical Center and to people who owned property within the city limits.

We held a council meeting and over forty people showed up. Counting the council, that was equal to over 50% of the town’s population. Talk about participation in the political process. Can you imagine what would happen if 50% of the people in Houston went to a city council meeting?

Well, they came... and we listened. Some people frothed at the mouth and some people were gentle and reasonable. It was a wild, tempestuous meeting. Almost every single person got up and had their say. Some attacked us and some patted us on the back. I only lost my temper one time. It was when the Register’s Sales Manager, who I work with any time he isn’t fishing, and his significant other, both good friends, came down the council’s throat, complaining of a lack of due process.

Et tu Brute?

The next day, in a later conversation, the same man coined perhaps one of the most quotable remarks of the entire event. “If I hear the word proactive one more time...” he threatened “...I’m going to hurl!”

I wondered at the time if Abraham Lincoln had to endure times like this?

A few days before the questionnaires came back, I met one of the other aldermen and two other citizens he had drafted for the task of raising the two new flag poles. The grass had gone in the day before. The big decorative lights were being installed by our generous electrician. The project was almost complete and I felt like I had been through a war.

Perhaps I’m being overly dramatic, but as we put our sweating shoulders against those new, gleaming flagpoles, destined to fly the symbols of our great state and nation above that hallowed ground at the heart of Round Top... and as we pushed with the last bits of our failing strength... and as, at last, those proud, gleaming standards rose towards the sky....I imagined what it must have been like on Iwo Jima...

Okay, so I’m pushing it. Let’s just say, the entire experience made me feel like pouting.

The questionnaires started to come back in. That was a good thing and a bad thing. People let us know what they thought alright... with a vengeance.

One respondent, when asked where a new sewer system might be located, responded “On the mayor’s land.” Some people wanted to know who created the “stupid” questionnaire anyway. Some people had written books. Everybody had strong opinions. At first glance it appeared that the “Local vs Importer” war was hopelessly deadlocked.

Then we looked closer...and discovered something truly amazing.

Almost everyone who returned the questionnaire, and that was a big majority of the households in town, wanted a number of the same things.

76% wanted to restrict some parts of town from commercial development.
90% wanted a noise ordinance.
92% wanted to limit the types of businesses that were invited to open in Round Top.
74% wanted architectural controls.
75% favored establishing walking paths.
79% wanted to establish a permitting system for signs.
100% wanted to encourage artists and craftsmen within the city limits.

Everybody wanted Round Top to stay a small town. What they were all saying in one way or another was that they loved our little town and they wanted to protect it.

As my wife and I tabulated the survey results, I began to see an opportunity for consensus and cooperation amongst the citizens of our little town that I had previously thought non-existent.

My bad attitude about the political process began to dissipate. I suddenly saw what a special experience the last year had been.

Round Top is small enough to allow everyone in town to know everyone else. There are very few communities on this planet where that can be said. It’s a charmed life and few people get to live it. My family occupied one house in Houston for eight years and only met three families on our street. I had been in Round Top less than five years and knew almost everybody in town and many others across Fayette County and the surrounding counties where I do business.

“What a miracle to have a whole town of people engaged in deciding their future.” I thought. I began to see great possibilities for America. I fell into an idealistic haze, dreaming about the better world that Round Top’s consensus might create.

“If Texans got involved in their political process the way Round Topians do,” I thought, “kids would be transferring into Texas high schools from Harvard and Yale, we’d have more parks than parking lots and we’d have the best health care on the planet.

“Why if Americans could get together like Round Topians do, the deficit would be child’s play. pollution would be a thing of the past and we’d already be on Jupiter instead of just touching down on Mars. There’d be shopping malls on the moon.

“If the people in our world could cooperate like Round Topians do, everyone would be able to afford a home and hunger would end on the planet. We could create a paradise.”

I was so excited I was ready to write congressmen, paint banners, march in parades, wear stupid hats... On the council, we felt like we had a mandate for action. We appointed three resourceful local leaders to chair “task forces” to get on with the “will of the people.” We were on a roll.

Then came the next council meeting. It started quietly. The Mayor and the council complained to each other about the heat, a ritual bonding in Texas, and made small talk while we waited for the meeting to start.

The first sign of trouble came when four citizens who had been particularly vocal in the last meeting marched up to the town hall, obviously there with a mission in mind.

Several others trickled in from both sides of the issues, including my combative sales manager. The Mayor opened up the meeting, and he might as well have brought his gavel down on Pandora’s box. All the world’s pain and sorrow filled the room. Complaints and criticism flew round the town hall like flocks of harpies.

One particularly aggressive citizen began grilling the council about the sidewalks that he imagined we were planning for his yard. We said we had no plans for any sidewalks across anyone’s yard.

He said he wouldn’t have it. He didn’t want anyone walking in front of his house. We said we knew of no plans to build any sidewalks across his yard.

He said he would lay down in the dirt in front of the concrete truck if we tried it. We said we had no plans for sidewalks now or in the future.

He wanted to know how we had accumulated the results of the questionnaire.

I said my wife and I had done it and he asked if he could see the questionnaire forms because he didn’t believe the results.

I looked at the Mayor and said “Well, I guess so.” Then it suddenly struck me that I was being called a liar.

I don’t remember the remainder of the council meeting very clearly. The rest of it seemed to be occurring in a red haze. I think I was hyperventilating...or perhaps it was a mild cardiac infarction.

The gentleman with the sidewalk phobia had the floor and chose to filibuster. The Mayor objected to this. Around the room, people began to object to all sorts of things. Before long the whole meeting was objectionable.

The highlights I remember through my apoplectic haze were an accusation that the council had “illegally” appointed the chairmen of the “task forces,” a suggestion that the only people who wanted walking paths were “strangers,” (no matter how long they had lived in town) and a demand that we redo the entire process of the questionnaire, using less “subjective” questions.

The meeting was like a long session with a sadistic dentist.

The last thing I remember hearing was my buddy, the sales manager, his voice lifting above the crowd... “Democracy is not pretty!” he bellowed and I could not have agreed more. As soon as the meeting was over, I ran through the clumps of angry, finger-pointing debaters and drove home to my mommy.

“Friends, Romans, Countrymen” indeed! I was getting the hell out of Pompeii while I could still duck the falling lava.

I spent the next month pouting and whining to my wife and friends about the ways I was being abused by the democratic process. I got increasingly more paranoid. One day, the mayor called me and asked for the questionnaires, saying certain citizens had requested a re-count by an “impartial” third party. Later that day I met him at Klump’s restaurant and complained that people were out to “get me.”

He looked at me with tired, knowing eyes and asked, “Who’s out to get you?”

I said the people who wanted the recount and he replied. “Nobody’s out to get you. People just complain. They always complain.”

As the next council meeting approached, I resolved to be quiet and let the process proceed naturally. I promised myself that I wouldn’t get defensive and argue with the council’s detractors.

I made it through the first half of the meeting okay but before the evening was over, I lost it. I verbally bodyslammed grey-haired ladies and publicly ridiculed my critical sales manager. I had become someone I hardly knew...an angry, defensive politician.

I was trapped...a political prisoner with no honorable way out.

Likewise, we keep politicians around so we have somebody to blame for the shape our nation is in. Most of us don’t want to take responsibility for the condition of the world around us. So, we delegate the political hot potato and play like it doesn’t affect us.

The less we are involved and the less we speak up, the less our views are heard. The more the views of a more organized, corporate and institutional America take over our lives, the more we become cogs in the machine.

Despite their claims to the contrary, we all know that many of the folks running things in Washington, on Wall Street and on Madison Avenue don’t really care about us and our niggling little concerns. They just want our votes and/or our money. The big “importers” are a lot less sympathetic than the Round Top version.

But maybe those that do care don’t get much of a chance to prove it. Maybe cynics like me have robbed the truly caring and committed public servants of the opportunity to make a difference. If that’s so, it would be a shame. In fact, it’s pretty much the political equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot.

The thing that is working in Round Top is the fact that the issues before our town have engaged a majority of the citizens in the political process...in other words, turned them into politicians.The criticism, fair or not, may have hurt my feelings but it also provided the same kind of system of checks and balances that our founding fathers built into the federal government. So maybe the grief we give politicians is necessary...or maybe not.

Across this great country of ours there are many problems, a lot of work to do... and not enough politicians to get the job done. It takes a large number of involved citizen/politicians to bring about positive political change and being a politician is an unpleasant job. Few people with normal thresholds of pain are willing to do it.

After my experiences as a small town politico, I think maybe we need to take a little more care about who we criticize and condescend to. Maybe we need to separate the political wheat from the chaff. Maybe, if I dare say it, we need to be a little nicer to our politicians. If we do, perhaps more of us would be willing to take the job.

We criticize our politicians for being cold, calculating and insincere but we have put them in an environment where they suffer so many personal and professional attacks that only a “cold, calculating” person can survive.

I realize now that I ought to have been able to take the political process less personally. I wonder if Bill Clinton feels like that sometimes. I hope so. I hope after all these years of being hammered he still has feelings. I think it would be pretty hard for him to properly represent me if he didn’t.

In Round Top, I try to make up with my neighbors when we have disagreements. In a town of 81, I can’t get away from them so it’s just easier. If I don’t settle my differences, they just keep cropping up like a bad smell.

When, like President Clinton, you’re getting insulted by thousands of people every day, it must be hard to settle your differences. I think maybe that’s a lot to ask from one person. I think the guy needs a little help from a few more of us politicians. In fact, I think he needs as many politicians as he can get.

Running our communities and our country with so few politicians has proven to be pretty risky business. When you have a couple of hundred million people and only a few thousand politicians, it puts a lot of power in a few hands. In some countries, they have just one politician and a lot of bureaucrats. It’s called a dictatorship. My wife won’t let me vote for that.

That’s why I had to write this story, to tell you what I found out as a reluctant small town politician and how it changed my life.

I wrote it in the hopes that you would become a politician too.

God, it still sounds scary saying that.

The first was that I was quoted on the front page of the Houston Chronicle.

I’m a guy that likes attention. For years I have been designing and building homes and restoring old houses. My work has made it into a few magazines, but I never made the front page of the Houston Chronicle as a builder or designer.

My little newspaper has been written up on the New York Times Internet site. We made the Fort Worth Star Telegram and Editor and Publisher Magazine but there has never been any mention of the Round Top Register or its hapless editor on the front page of the Chronicle.

For years, I wrote songs, played my guitar and sang in clubs. I dreamed of being a rich and famous rock n’ roll star but I never made the front page of the Chronicle as a folk-singer.

The story wasn’t even about me. It was about Round Top’s amazing arts attractions and I was quoted as “...Round Top city councilman, Chris Travis.”

After all those years of seeking fame, when it finally arrived, I made the big time... as a politician!

At first, I was disappointed, but after I thought about it a while, I decided it wasn’t so bad. In fact...I was pretty damn proud to be a “city councilman” of the little town of Round Top, Texas.

We were in the middle of the first reading of a proposed town noise ordinance. There was a lot of discussion. The councilman reading the ordinance came to the part where “loud dogs, birds...” etc were prohibited and their owners faced with a $500.00 fine when one of the old timers piped up in the back.

“You can’t keep the birds from singin’.” she said. She pointed out that the ordinance wasn’t very practical for how would you catch the offending birds in order to give them a ticket? “Those owls hoot all night long. You can’t stop ‘em.”

At first I laughed but the more I thought about it, the more profound it seemed. There are natural limits to the laws of man. Thank goodness.

I had pointed out to the assembled masses that a lot of people, on what appeared to be opposite sides of political issues, were actually after the same thing and the mayor’s wife jumped in.

“See,” she said “...everybody’s just trying to say that they love Round Top...and that we all love one another...

“If we love one another...that’s all we have to do.”

It was a comment that I think could bear repeating on the floor of Congress.