Burnt Orange Report

I actually wrote an editorial for the Texan on this issue two weeks ago. It can be found here:

http://www.dailytexanonline.com/news/2005/04/12/Opinion/Viewpoint.Noted.In.Passing-920735.shtml

Thanks for the link!

Yesterday was so-called "Former Member" day at the Capitol, where dozens of ex-House members showed up for a BBQ.

I was thrilled to see former Speaker Jimmy Thurman, a great Texan and friend who was a mentor to me when I was a young man starting out at the Capitol.

Representative Mark Homer (a Democrat, like Speaker Thurman) has sponsored legislation to name a strip of highway in East Texas in Jimmy's honor. The bill keeps lagging in the Senate, because members in that body want to refrain from naming roads for living persons.

I think it's a shame. I want to name roads for Jimmy Thurman, Willie Nelson, George H.W. Bush, Lady Bird Johnson, James Addison Baker III, Jan Bullock, my dog and every other worthy Texan.

I'd rather drive down Laura Bush Blvd. and turn on Lyle Lovett Lane than motor through 91st Street.

Andrea:

Willie is 72 today. Despite petty people like Wentworth and Ogden, many roads in this great land are and will be named for Willie Nelson. If it's only in our minds, then so be it. In fact, there will be more roads named for Willie than for either one of these protectors of humanity, so-called. (My first "Willie Road" was riding with "momma" from El Paso to Fort Stockton in the middle of the last century and listening to the AM radio in that push-button Mercury. That's the first I knew of him, I suppose. I was there some two decades later when he made his way to Luckenbach in 1972 at what at that time was the "Luckenbach World's Fair" that Hondo Crouch and Guich Koock concocted. I have never traveled either road again without hearing Willie in my head. And there are many more roads he's become a part of since then.)

What a big guy Willie is. He's the eight-lane freeway, the U.S. Highway, the country road and the dirt lane. Ogden and Wentworth don't rate an obscure footpath by comparison.

Okay, me and my dog (named "Willie," by the way, after Willie Nelson, William Barrett Travis and William Jefferson Clinton, are going out in the backyard and take a leak.)

On the road again,

Ken Molberg

Ken--

Thank you so much for your post. That was one of the most beautiful, eloquent posts I've ever read on BOR. You're absolutely right.

Willie is part of the nation's highways, wide open spaces, and best of all, part of the nation's collective heart and soul. A legend.

In the musical concert of life, Willie is the stage and lights, and Ogden and Wentworth are the port-a-potty that was knocked over in the parking lot.

Thanks again for your post--I always enjoy reading what you have to share.