- I'm Steve Davis, I'm
our literary curator here.
And we're so excited to
have this celebration
of J. Frank Dobie.
Many of you know,
that it was a gift of Dobie papers
from Bill and Sally Wittliff
to this university in 1986,
that established the Wittliff Collections.
Bill and Sally have inspired
so many of us over the years.
And it's thanks to them
that I first began working on this book
and their support and
encouragement throughout guided me.
And so it's only fitting that
the essential J. Frank Dobie
is dedicated to Bill Wittliff
and to Sally Wittliff.
Sally, thank you.
(loud clapping)
So this new collection
of Dobie's best writing
is published with our partners and friends
at Texas A&M University Press.
I think a couple of them are here today.
Shannon Davies and Maryanne Jacob.
Hey, you found seats, great, okay.
And as you know,
we have an all star lineup here today
to help celebrate Dobie.
And you'll see that each of our speakers
shares a special
connection to Frank Dobie.
And in a bit,
we're going to show you a short video
of Bill Wittliff talking
about his relationship
with Dobie and a little
bit of bonus footage
on Dobie from Dobie himself;
which there's not a lot of
video out there on Dobie,
but there were some done
just a couple of years
before he died that you'll
see a few seconds of.
And what I really like to do
to sort of begin our program
is to tell you a bit about J. Frank Dobie,
who wrote the stories in this book,
most of which are nonfiction
and most of which tell us a good deal
about what it means to live in Texas.
Dobie was born in the late 1800's
at the tail end of the great cattle drives
in the brush country of
south Texas in the 1920's.
After he served in WWI,
he became an english instructor
at the University of Texas,
and there he was teaching
British literature.
At that time,
there was no such thing
as American literature,
because as far as the
Academy was concerned,
American writing had
not proven itself yet.
So, and as for Texas, you know,
you can say that reading
and writing came kind of late to Texas.
(hearty laughing)
Dobie, he understood that
while that was the case,
our state did have a very proud
oral storytelling tradition
among African Americans, Mexican
Americans, Anglo-Americans.
And he had grown up
hearing real life accounts
of these epic quests
from the frontier days,
for lost mines and buried treasures.
He learned of renegade longhorns
that had busted out of northern stockyards
and traveled 800 miles to return
to their beloved (mumbles).
He knew vaqueros who'd encountered ghosts
every bit as real as
that of Hamlet's father.
And he'd heard accounts
of trickster coyotes
that rivaled anything the brothers Grimm
had ever dreamed of.
And so, Dobie was worried, you know,
here he is teaching British
literature to kids from Texas,
and he was thinking,
much of our own cultural heritage,
which never been written down
is in danger of disappearing.
So he made it his mission to
go out and collect stories
from the surviving old timers.
He turned those stories
into bestselling books,
and then the process invented
what we consider Texas literature
and Dobie went on to
inspire many other writers.
He dominated the state's literary scene
for the rest of his life.
But he was also more than a writer,
believing that Texas needs
brains more true now than ever.
(hearty laughing)
Dobie, no, it is true, right?
(loud clapping)
(muffled talking)
Dobie constantly fought for human rights
and intellectual freedom.
And the 1920s,
he single handedly integrated
the Texas Folklore Society.
One of the writers he
mentored Jovita González,
became president of that society in 1930.
And if you know anything
about the history of Texas
to know that a Mexican American woman
was leading this major
intellectual organization,
of state tells you a lot
about what was happening
around Dobie and the people at that time.
In 1934, Dobie invited J. Mason Brewer
into the Folklore Society,
its first African American member.
And during the 1940's,
Dobie was the most prominent
white Texan to champion civil rights.
He publicly called for integrating
the University of Texas in the 1940's.
And guess how the university liked that?
(hearty laughing)
Yeah, they fired him.
(hearty laughing)
And then he was investigated
by J. Edgar Hoover's FBI
as a possible communist.
And beyond, just his courage
on and his leadership on civil rights.
Dobie was also a visionary
environmentalist.
He helped inspire a
Big Bend National Park.
He campaigned against the widespread use
of chemical poisons, such as DDT.
Dobie understood the balance of nature.
And as part of that,
the role of predators in an ecosystem,
in ways that our society
is only now beginning to catch on to.
And if you're familiar with
what happened in recent years,
when wolves were reintroduced
to Yellowstone National Park
and the land immediately rebounded
because those deer weren't
just getting all fat
and happy eating all the grass they wanted
along the river banks.
Now, they have to sort
of make a run for it
every now and then.
And that's the kind of stuff
Dobie was talking about 1940's.
And Dobie was actually ahead
of his time in a lot of ways.
Back when he was going out
and collecting those stories
from the old timers,
all of the proper historians were busy
chronicling the military
exploits of generals
and presidents, the great
man theory of history.
And Dobie, was really not interested
in gunfights and military battles.
He was interested in
exploring the ways people live
among each other.
And no one had really coined the term
social history at this point,
but that's exactly what Dobie was doing.
What he was chronicling
was our social history
and in doing so, by rescuing our stories,
he left us this priceless
cultural inheritance.
A lot of that you'll see in this book.
And over the years,
a lot of authors have been
inspired by what Dobie was doing.
Larry McMurtry I'll mention,
borrowed quite heavily from Dobie
in writing Lonesome Dove.
And as I point out in my
introduction to this book,
Cormac McCarthy adapted
Dobie's own writing,
nearly word for word in
crafting one of his own novels.
I'm just going to say that again,
this man considered one
of the greatest writers
in the world thought enough
of J. Frank Dobie's writing
to pay him the ultimate
compliment, stealing from him.
(hearty laughing)
And that's actually in the archive here.
And when I saw that, that's
when I realized, you know,
with just a little judicious editing,
basically printing back some
other brushy overgrowth,
'cause Dobie did like to digress.
If you print it back,
just a little bit of that.
Dobie's eloquent and (mumbles) voice
comes bounding back to life.
He's no longer a dusty old
relic from a bygone era.
He's a writer for our times
as much as his own times.
And this book is full of
great stories that only Dobie
could tell, many of them,
enlivened by his personal adventures.
This is a guy who, as many of you know,
was in England during
WWII, dodging Nazi bombs.
And then after the war, postwar Germany,
he traveled throughout
that country for the army.
And so he witnessed the Nuremberg trials.
He was Dachau.
He went behind Soviet lines
to tour Hitler's chancellery
before it was destroyed.
And so Dobie is really
a citizen of the world
in a lot of ways.
But at the same time,
he was completely at home
riding by a mule for months
across the mountains of Mexico
in search of the greatest
lost mine in North American
history and finding it.
But as far as Dobie was concerned,
the real treasure where the
people he met along the way
and the stories they shared,
that's what he was looking for.
And so the best of Dobie stories
are collected in this book,
and reading them connects you
to some of the best elements of Texas.
And I want to tell you
something about Dobie.
He still has legs.
Within a month of this book's publication,
it has sold out, our friends
at Texas A&M University.
(loud clapping)
It's amazing.
I'm going to, I'll just say,
I get a lot of credit for this,
but it's Dobie
because I've I've had books before
and none of them have ever
sold out in the first month.
(hearty laughing)
This guy.
Our friends at A&M are rushing
a second edition into print.
A couple of online places
still have some copies,
but the title is on back
order at most bookstores.
But, get this, at the Wittliff Collections
because we are forward thinking,
we staged our own raid on
the A&M Press warehouse
before the book sold out.
So guess who has copies
for sale here today
of this first edition?
(hearty laughing)
(loud clapping)
So if you're thinking
about buying this book
or thinking about buying
two or three copies
as gifts for family
members, deserving friends,
you should definitely go
ahead and do it today.
And let's see, before we
begin with our guest speakers,
I do want to recognize just
a few of the people here.
Our university president,
Denise Trauth and her husband,
John Huffman are both
here, thank you both.
(loud clapping)
And we have our vice president
for information technology
Ken Pierce with his wife, Jill.
(loud clapping)
And our associate vice president
in charge of the university library,
Joe Heath is here, I believe, Joe.
(loud clapping)
And I want to do a special shout out
for our Wittliff Collections
Director, Dr. David Coleman,
because David's not the kind
of person who will ever toot
his own horn.
It's one of the lovable
things about David, honestly,
but I do want to say a
couple of words about David
and his leadership.
David is in Dobie's own words,
a paisano, a fellow countrymen.
David is an extremely intelligent,
perceptive and hardworking
and goodhearted person.
He came here nearly a decade
ago as a photography expert,
but he also has one of the
most astute literary minds
of anyone I've encountered.
Perhaps best of all,
David is a excellent,
brilliant strategic thinker,
and he is the perfect person
to lead the Wittliff Collections
at this time as he has been
for much of the past decade.
And I will tell you that Bill
Wittliff had absolute trust
and competence in David as
does everyone on David's staff.
Our successes here are due to many people,
the Wittliff family,
university administration,
our wonderful staff,
many friends and supporters we have.
And we all worked together as a team
to make great things happen here.
But I want to just point out very quickly
that it's through David's leadership,
that we have acquired some
of those amazing archives
in recent years,
that are the envy of any
collection in the country.
David's the one who led the
charge for us to acquire
the papers of Sandra Cisneros
and Naomi Shihab Nye,
Mary Carr who wrote The Liars' Club,
John Richy, the author of City of Night
and the Extraordinary Ramón Hernández
Tejano music collection.
So you can see we're in such great shape
with David leading this collection.
David is also guiding newest phase
of the Wittliff expansion.
And you may have noticed a bit
of construction around here.
This is, David is working
with the construction people
to bring us these beautiful new spaces
that will open next spring.
And we'll be able to showcase
more of our treasures,
including a brand new gallery
devoted to Texas music.
And so I just want to say, David,
I know this is embarrassing to you,
but I want to thank you
for all that you've done
and all you are doing.
(loud clapping)
Thank you.
Let's see, and I heard some rumors.
There might be a few members
of the Dobie family here today.
Is that true?
If you're a Dobie family member,
could you stand up so we can recognize you
and welcome you please.
Come on Dobie, all right.
(loud clapping)
Welcome.
And did Patty Clark make it in today?
Is Patty here?
Oh, there you are.
Hey, Patty Clark, taking
a break from her job,
directing the Austin zoo
to come join us today.
And she's the one who
donated hundreds of these
amazing vintage magazines
and journals that have
Dobie stories in them.
Many of which never made it
into any printed bibliography
because Patty's a genius
at using the internet
to find things.
And all of this stuff, really,
(mumbles) as I was doing this book,
you'll see several of these
beautiful publications
with the current display.
So it's so good to see you, thank you.
And I also want to mention
that Louise O'Connor is here today.
And Louise is such a good friend
of the Wittliff Collections.
And she gave us recently
this very special edition
of the Longhorns; which was
owned by her grandmother,
Kate Stoner-O'Connor.
And Kate O'Connor and J. Frank Dobie
were good friends for a long time.
And Dobie stayed at the O'Connor
ranch while he was writing
The Longhorns and wrote
this lovely inscription
to Kate after the book was
published; which you'll see.
And then this is an
example of Dobie's kind
of complex relationship
with a lot of people.
After Dobie died,
Kate O'Connor opened up
that copy of The Longhorns
and she wrote something inside, she said,
basically that J. Frank Dobie died today,
unloved and unborn because he had defected
to the enemy, communism.
(hearty laughing)
So we have that on exhibit.
Be sure to look for that.
And thank you Louise,
because that's just an
amazing artifact to have.
So, you know, I could go on
and on with this kind of stuff.
There's so many of you to thank.
A lot of you were in acknowledgements.
A lot of you,
we just really appreciate
everything you do for the Wittliff.
So if you're a donor, an
advisory council member,
a staff member, a supporter or friend
who just helps make books
and events like this happen,
thank you all very much, we
really appreciate, thank you.
(loud clapping)
And so it's time for our first presenter,
Chip Dameron is a professor emeritus
at UT Rio Grande Valley.
The author of 10 books of poetry.
In 2016, Chip was awarded
a Dobie paisano Fellowship.
And he took up residence
at Dobie's old ranch outside of Austin.
And I'll tell you why I wanted
to bring Chip here today.
He has written a wonderful new book
about his stay at paisano ;
titled Mornings with Dobie's Ghost.
Some of you may have seen already
that Chip has this book
for sale here today,
and he is signing copies.
Mornings with Dobie's Ghost,
as a unique and completely charming book
of poems that gets J.
Frank Dobie, exactly right.
And Chip is generously agreed to come up
and share a bit of that book with us.
So welcome Chip Dameron.
(loud clapping)
- For those of us hard of hearing,
speak into the mic a little higher.
I couldn't hear him.
- Okay.
Well, it's a great
pleasure to be here today.
Is that clear?
- Yeah.
- Clear enough.
And thank you so much, Steve.
And I can tell you that I
have read the new Dobie book
from cover to cover and
it is just wonderful.
So, it's a great treasure.
And as Steve mentioned,
I did have the opportunity
to spend four months
at the ranch,
what a wonderful experience.
I was there with my wife.
And shortly after getting there
and feeling the sort of
the spirit of the place.
It occurred to me that getting up,
if I got up in the mornings
and went out early with
a cup of coffee that,
Dobie's spirit, Dobie's ghosts,
might visit a visiting writer like me,
step in and have something to say
about his past or maybe
things that have happened
in the 50 years since
he passed away in 1964.
And so I've sort of channeled
his spirit, I guess.
And so these poems are in his voice.
I'll read just a few, give you a flavor.
And the first is called: Ranch and Creek.
You've been here two weeks now,
and ought to feel why I bought it.
Takes 10 minutes from
the gate at the main road
to get to the house.
That's close enough.
Too bad the town just
keeps coming this way.
Like those mountains,
mansions on the ridge,
just past where the sun comes up.
You can see a bunch from
the rise on the road,
but at the house they're mostly hidden.
And too far to hear from,
still an abomination.
I surely liked the original house,
but I know it was breaking
down like an old horse
that's seen too many winters.
At least it wasn't torn down
like so much else from my day.
But modernized as you folks require now.
I'm getting used to the
limestone siding on the new part.
Good Texas rock.
You can still hear the Creek, can't you?
Day and night.
I wouldn't have a ranch without one,
just a plain piece of land otherwise.
One place as as good as another.
And I had Waller Creek singing
to me at our place in town.
I'll promise you one thing,
if this Creek ever dries up for good,
I'll disappear too.
(loud clapping)
Thank you.
For the next two poems,
I'd like to give a shout
out to William Jensen.
I don't know if he's with us today,
but he's the editor of
Southwestern American Literature
and he and his staff
published five of these poems
in a recent issue of the journal.
This one is called: Totem.
And as many of you know,
The Road Runner or Paisano
for which Dobie chose
the name of his ranch
was a favorite animal of his,
and kind of a totem figure.
And the poem goes like this.
We were cut from the same
cloth, the paisano and I,
both bound to this land,
both with two toes aimed forward,
and two stuck firmly in the past.
Bertha claimed my white hair stood up
like a roadrunner's crest
when I got wound up and feisty.
Some wag back in the 40's
taped a sketch to my office door,
a bold paisano with a boot
against a rattlesnake's neck,
pecking out the brains of
a head labeled UT Regent.
(hearty laughing)
Well, I might've wished then
I could be that ruthless,
but it sure did give me a belly laugh.
I've long admired that brazen bird:
smart, tough, and faster on two legs
than any cow-man can
go except on horseback.
Good to have a totem
that can leave this earth
on short flights of fancy,
but prefers the feel of
common dirt between its toes.
(loud clapping)
And a second poem that
I'll read from the...
That was published in the
journal here from Texas State.
Now, this one, Steve mentioned McMurtry,
McMurtry in the 60's,
you know, Dobie died in '64.
McMurtry was a rising novelist
who was doing some excellent work
and also had some strong opinions
about those who had preceded him.
And he had some fairly harsh
things to say about Dobie
and his work.
And so this,
this is what a Dobie's ghost
told me about all of this.
(hearty laughing)
It's called: A Novelist
and the Storyteller.
I'm giving McMurtry credit
for what he's done with all those stories.
He's a real novelist
knows how to get inside
his men and women,
create a world that pulls the reader in
and on like a long winter dream.
Hell, I knew he was a writer
when he reviewed Henry Miller in college.
His pot shots at me,
were pretty easy to get
off after I was gone.
And some of his bullets were on the mark.
I found my anecdote, which
could get tedious too,
but I wasn't a novelist,
I was a storyteller taking
tales from far and near,
open campfire or some
old cowboy's living room
and shaping them on the page,
giving them as much of the grit
and texture of the brush
country or west Texas desert
as I could.
Yarns and folk tales and ghost stories,
gifts received and passed on.
And maybe old Larry,
older now than I ever was,
owes me a bit of small thanks
for pointing toward the
longhorns and mustangs
and turning him loose.
(hearty laughing)
(loud clapping)
And the last poem,
as some of you well know,
and Steve documented in
this new collection too.
Dobie had terrible trouble in the winters
with cedar fever in the Austin area.
And so this poem,
gives him a chance to
reflect on that: Cedar Fever.
It may be December and cold now,
and lots of ranches going dormant,
but come over here and
take a look at the cedar.
See those rusty tips,
dressing up the shaggy limbs.
Well, tell you what, here
tomorrow or next week,
one day real soon,
thanks to the wet spring
and wet months this fall,
you'll be blessed with a
fine mist of cedar pollen.
And right across the creek valley
between the gate and that bluff,
you'll see a haze, not
from a fire or pollution,
but mountain cedar.
Betty (mumbles) used to get my goat
this time of year, saying
that's incorrect, Dobie.
You mean ash juniper, not mountain cedar.
And I'd say, hell Betty,
give it any name you want.
It's still playing evil.
(hearty laughing)
I had to leave town, turn
my classes over to Bertha,
it crippled me so.
Best place was west Texas,
out in the desert air
where I could grade papers,
write a little on another book.
One thing good about being dead.
These damn trees can't torture me anymore.
(hearty laughing)
(loud clapping)
Thank you.
(loud clapping)
- Hey Chip...
(loud clapping)
I just want to ask you a
couple of quick questions.
- Sure.
- You mentioned to me
in an email exchange that your
sort of personal relationship
to Dobie went back far beyond
your Paisano Fellowship.
Can you just talk about that a little bit?
- Yeah, when I was growing up,
my dad had a collection of
books and I remember seeing them
up on the bookcase and
one of them was a Texas,
a Texan in England.
But you know,
I never read it back then, but that...
When I was working on this project,
my brother, who's here today,
and who's the historian of the family.
I had kept that copy
and had pointed out to me
that that it was inscribed.
It had a special inscription.
It was my mother
inscribing it to my father,
who was a naval officer in WWII
and was on his way back
from the war in 1945.
And so it was her
Christmas present to him,
two years before I came along.
So that was special.
It also happened that when I was early,
early in my graduate student
years at UT in Austin,
to make ends meet,
I was a dorm counselor at
the Dobie Center Tower there,
27 story residence hall.
And, you know, and of course
I knew who it was named for.
What I didn't realize then was that Dobie
had a great distaste for the UT tower;
which was built in the 30's.
And he just thought it was an abomination.
Thought it ought to be taken
and laid down flat
and what I'm sure he,
turned over a few times in his grave
when they named this tower for him.
(hearty laughing)
And then one last thing
maybe four or five years after that,
I was living with several
friends on the corner of a house
on the corner of Hampton
Road and 26th Street.
Unbeknownst to me,
I was just about a stone's throw away
from the Dobie house.
At that time, Edgar Kincade,
Bertha's nephew was living there.
She had passed away
and he would have been living there then.
And I had no idea,
but I must've ridden past that place
hundreds of times over a year and a half.
And then I was delighted to find out
during my time at the ranch
about that house and the wonderful job
that Dudley Dobie Jr. did to
save it and to renovate it,
and then to see that it got returned
or turned to UT
and it became
the Michener School of
Creative Writing location.
So anyway, those are kind
of special connections
that have occurred for me over the years.
- Okay, thanks Chip.
- Thanks very much.
(loud clapping)
- Coincidentally, this
was not choreographed,
but our next speaker
is Dudley Dobie Junior,
who was born here in San Marcos.
His father, Dudley Senior was
Frank Dobie's first cousin,
and the two men were very close.
Both were educators and
writers, Dudley Junior
graduated from law school
at UT Austin in 1964.
The same year Dobie died.
Same year Sally and Bill
were getting the Encino Press
underway with a volume
of J. Frank Dobie's.
And Dudley has enjoyed a
very distinguished career
as an attorney,
but we're not here to talk about that.
We're here to talk about Dudley
being such a notable friend
and benefactor of Texas culture.
He's been on the executive council
of the Texas State Historical Association,
and he's a donor to the
Wittliff Collections.
And as Chip alluded to,
Dudley and his wife
Saiza who is also here,
had done so much to preserve,
and you can really say save
a big chunk of J. Frank Dobie's legacy;
which we will talk about in just a moment.
But first we have Dudley here to present
a very special Dobie story for us.
Dudley Dobie.
(loud clapping)
- Thank you, Steve
and President Trauth,
Director Coleman, Mrs. Wittliff,
and Steve, I'm so grateful
for the opportunity
to be here today.
I want to make a full disclosure upfront
that I was born with this
name and did not earn it.
(hearty laughing)
Chip remarked about paisano,
and Steve, if I can take
a couple extra minutes
to add a little footnote to paisano.
Chip, and I have both known
Doctor Michael Adams at UT Austin,
the long time director of the
Paisano Fellowship Program,
and he is a warrior.
He would call me occasionally
and just moan
about how developers were salivating
over the Paisano Ranch
because it's a pristine 200 acre property
on the upper reaches of Barton
Creek, just West of Austin.
And I want to take this opportunity
to acknowledge a person
here, a long time friend,
of Saiza's and mine, Charlene Johnston.
Who's right here in the third row.
(loud clapping)
Charlene is the daughter-in-law
of Ralph Johnston,
a prominent Houston citizen,
and he was a student of J. Franks.
And after J. Frank died,
the Ralph Johnston and the Johnston family
funded the initial purchase
of the Paisano Ranch
to preserve it for fellowship purposes.
And Charlene, your
family's been wonderful.
(loud clapping)
What a privilege it is to
participate in this event
for a new book by Steve Davis,
celebrating not only his gifted writing,
but the gifts of another writer.
In speaking of writers at the
Inaugural Voices of Texas Gala
in Austin in 1993,
then governor Ann Richards
quipped with her classic rise smile,
that what a writer likes to write most
is his signature on the back of a check.
(hearty laughing)
And I'm sure that that's
the case with many writers,
but it's not true of Steve Davis,
as noted on the back of the
dust jacket of this book.
Steve has donated all of
the royalties of the book
to the J. Frank Dobie Library Trust,
and thus his generosity will
directly benefit libraries
in small towns in Texas
for years to come.
(loud clapping)
Congratulations Steve, this
is a beautiful new book
that reflects with great credit
your meticulous research
and skillful editing.
Well, my reading from the works
of J. Frank Dobie is a replication
of a reading presented two years ago
at Bill Sibley's and Mary Margaret's,
Mary Margaret Campbell's,
Dobie Dichos, down in Live Oak County.
And we'll hear from Bill in a moment,
and I know Mary Margaret is here,
and I should say
that I hope both of you will forgive us
for borrowing this from your venue.
I should mention that what I will read
presents a certain irony
in that it is not included
in Steve's new book.
So it may be the case
that it's not essential.
(hearty laughing)
But you should know that
Steve personally requested it,
so perhaps it's a close
runner up at least.
And what I'm gonna do
is read from this book
titled: Tongues of the Monte.
It was J. Frank's fourth book,
and it was published originally in 1935
and was reprinted twice more after that,
once under a different title:
The Mexico I Like.
And then reprinted again,
under the title Tongues of the Monte
and keeping with the central theme here,
I'm endeavoring to adhere
to time limitations,
although it's not gonna happen Steve.
(hearty laughing)
And I'm excerpting pieces
about only one of the book's characters,
whose name is Enosensio.
And more specifically
about Enosensio knife,
that was named The Faithful Lover.
First, some relevant background
that J. Frank provided
in his introduction to a
later edition of the book.
And he said in 1928,
the country gentlemen,
to which magazine I was
doing considerable writing
about that time,
sent me at my request on a pack trip
across the Sierra Madre
of Chihuahua and Sonora
to write the story of
The Lost Tyopa Mayan,
as Steve alluded to a moment ago.
And that story is in
course in Steve's new book.
At the time,
I thought the most
interesting story of adventure
any human being could imagine.
The Guggenheim Foundation
gave me a grant of money
for living in Mexico a
year to gather materials.
During this year,
and during years that
immediately followed,
I made various trips on
horseback or mule back
with pack outfit
and moso, moso being a
combination guide and servant.
Wandering through the vast
unpopulated mountains of Mexico,
lingering at ranches and mining camps,
living the truest freest times of my life.
The written result was this
book, of course, this book.
So here we go about his guide and servant.
"I was to come to know Enosensio
"Better than I know most men
"And to owe him my life.
"In certain ways,
"He justified his name Enosensio,
"The younger vaqueros
called him Don Enosensio.
"Enosensio pulled from
its long scabbard a knife
and begin wetting it on a
stone taken from his morale.
"That looks like a particularly good knife
"You have, I remarked."
Of course, this is J. Frank.
"Yes senior, one of the
other vaqueros spoke out,
"And it has a name and it has a history."
"What is its name?"
"I addressed the question to the man
"Who had given me an
opportunity to ask it.
"The Faithful Lover."
He answered with a laugh,
"Read what it says for itself."
"And there was stamped crudely,
"But plainly on one side of the knife.
(speaking in foreign language)
Which of course means I love you.
Enosensio said, "During times
of revolution, years ago now,
"Destiny took me above the
mouth of the Rio Soto River
"Above the Pacific ocean.
"For a while,
"We kept camp in a pueblo
where the men fished
"And where there was a priest.
"The priest was a good man,
"But always went by the rules and books."
Enosensio said, "One day,
"While some women were washing down
"At the edge of the water,
a chamaco, a little boy,
"Waded out to catch a horse of the devil,
"A dragon fly with red wings.
"The dragon fly went farther
out and the boy followed.
"He was just playing his mother told,
"She heard a scream and saw
a shark cutting him in two.
"She rushed to the rescue,
"But all she got was the
legs and part of the trunk,
"Poor little boy, poor little
mother, poor little father.
"The father," Ensensio continued,
"Was in his house just a little way off.
"It happened that I was talking to him
"At the moment when the cries
of the women came to us,
"He grabbed his knife,
"Which was always at hand.
"When we got to the water
"And saw what was left to the boy.
"He ran for the priest.
"Well, the priest came at once.
"He looked at the pieces
of the child saying,
"It is not possible for the church
"To perform rights over
this, the head is gone.
"The heart is gone.
"The home of the soul is not here.
"And it is for the soul
that the church acts.
"Then his father turned to the mother.
"Show me exactly where the
shark was, he commanded.
"She pointed and threw a rock to indicate.
"He didn't say a word.
"He threw a bait into
the water at the spot
"Where the rock fallen,
"Knowing that the shark hungry for more
"Was hunting, waiting.
"As he cast the bait, he
began walking toward it.
"His eyes searching,
his knife in his hand,
"He was not disappointed.
"The shallow water compelled the shark
"To show part of his body
"As he grabbed the bait.
"The man with the knife was against him.
"I could not say how long
"The two fought,
"I was without power to
help," said Enosensio.
"Every person there
looking was stone still.
"It was nakedness with a knife
"Against teeth and lashing tail.
"The water showed streaks
of blood, but in the end,
"The shark was dead.
"The man hauled him to the bank
and slashed his belly open.
"And there, the head and heart
of his son showed themselves.
"The priest had not said a
word during all this time,
"Not one little word, but now he said,
"The church will bury the child."
"Thanks be to God," the father said.
Then J. Frank asked,
"And so this is the knife,
"The Faithful Lover
that killed the shark?"
"Si, senior, for a favor the
boy's father gave it to me."
And now I'm moving to the
closing chapter of the book
and the end of J. Frank's
travels with Enosensio.
"J. Frank continued.
"I felt regret that the
morrow's night would find us
"At Sierra Mojado,
"Wince a train runs to Chihuahua City.
"There, Enoensio the good old
man who had served me so well,
"And I must part.
"He to go back and I to go on.
"Enoensio said to me, and
now my master and my friend,
"You have been Frank with
me and you understand.
"After God you are next with me,
"With a little embarrassment
tinging his pleasure,
"Enosensio laid the scabbard
"Containing The Faithful
Lover upon my bed.
"I was to keep it as a...
(speaking in foreign language)
"A memento of one who
wished always to serve me.
"I stood on the platform
of the lurching car
"Until a curve cut off
view of the station.
"As long as I looked,
"I saw the old man who
could be stately though,
"And who had muscles that never tired,
"An enormous straw hat
on the ground beside him
"Making the gesture of the
open heart, towards me,
"Touching his breast with his fingers,
"And then extending his arms
"And holding them
stretched out wide apart.
And thus ends the story of
Enosensio, as well as a book.
But I have a footnote to all of this.
We tend to discount the
factualness of folklore.
And thus, the question is the story true?
A few of you know, what's coming next.
After my father died,
we found in his collection,
a knife and a scabbard
with a handwritten note.
And I'm gonna read you
the handwritten note.
This is my father's note.
"This knife has engraved
on the right side.
(speaking in foreign language)
"Which means I love you.
"This knife with the
scabbard was presented to me
"By J. Frank Dobie shortly
after he returned from Mexico,
"Following his travels there on horseback,
"In search of materials for
his book, Tongues of the Monte,
"Frank relates how his moso, Enosensio
"Gave him the knife;
"Which he refers to as The Faithful Lover.
"And he mentions the scabbard."
Close that quote.
Well, perhaps folklore
indeed can be factual
and I'd be happy to show any of you
later that the knife.
Steve, pleasure to be with you.
(loud clapping)
- Thank you for that.
(loud clapping)
What an amazing artifact.
And so can you tell us a little bit about,
my understanding is that the Dobie house
or Dobie's lived in Austin
was slated to be torn down
and turned into a 7-Eleven,
at some point.
Can you tell us what happened
to prevent that from happening?
- Well...
I'm gonna refer to a
note here in a moment.
That's exactly right.
In 1984, Bertha Dobie died
and Chip mentioned that Edgar Kincaid,
her nephew, inherited the
house and lived there.
Well, he died just a few years later.
I'm sorry, Bertha died in '74.
Edgar lived there until '84
or '85 when he died.
And he left the house to
his longtime secretary
who had been J. Franck's
long time secretary,
Willie Bell-Coker.
She had decided that it would be sold
to the South End Incorporation of Dallas,
and it was gonna become a 7-Eleven store.
So, Saiza and I, after some efforts to,
you know, Winston Churchill
was famous for saying,
"Americans always do the
right thing after exhausting,
"All other possibilities."
(hearty laughing)
We exhausted all other possibilities,
and we decided we would buy
it ourselves, and we did.
We spent 14 months
totally rehabilitating it.
And it became our home for several years,
until 1995.
At that time,
James Michener, the famous
writer had then recently,
and endowed the new center for writers
that would bear his name
by giving $40 million to
the University of Texas.
And he became interested
in the Dobie house.
He carried a lot of weight at the time,
obviously, with the powers
that be at the university.
He persuaded the university
that it should become
the headquarters for,
what became known as the James
Michener Center for Writers
at the J. Frank Dobie house.
Here's what I was looking for.
There was a dedication of the
house as the writer's center
on November 29, 1995.
And Mr. Michener of course
was specially recognized
and gave remarks at the dedication.
And here's an exact
quote from his remarks.
He said, "No one in this
room could possibly know
"That when I was a beginning writer,
"I received a letter from Texas that said,
"Mr. Michener I have read your work.
"And it has real promise
(hearty laughing)
"If you're ever down this way,
"Look me up.
"I think that we have a lot in common."
It was signed by J. Frank Dobie.
(hearty laughing)
Then Mr. Michener closed by saying,
"Tonight, I have answered that letter.
(hearty laughing)
(loud clapping)
- And let me just ask
you one other thing, too.
So of all the people here, you sort of,
you and your sister Marcella over here,
probably got to spend
more time with Frank Dobie
than anybody else.
So can you tell us a little
bit about what he was like
in person, in your memory?
- Well, I could go on for a long time,
but I'm gonna make this very short
and I think I'll divide it, Steve,
into three parts, three very short parts.
First, was his memorable trademark image.
And you did a wonderful job
of capturing that image on the...
- That's a Edward Weston photograph
by the way.
- Cover of this book.
So here was his trademark image,
a Stetson hat.
He always wore a khaki shirt
with shoulder epaulets.
Khaki pants always had a bentwood pipe.
He always had a broad smile.
He was the type of person I
looked forward to being around
because of his warm personality.
And people were just drawn to him.
The second part of this
and Chip mentioned
the house on Waller Creek.
He loved water.
He loved everything about water,
including how to mix it with whiskey.
(hearty laughing)
But having grown up in the droughty brush
country of south Texas,
he obviously made a conscious decision
that in his adult life,
he was always going to live around water;
which he did on Waller Creek,
there in Austin where his home was.
His first retreat
was the Cherry Springs Ranch
in Burnet County;
which incidentally straddled
three different creeks.
And then in his later
years to be closer home,
his retreat, The Paisano Ranch;
which was on Barton Creek,
as we mentioned earlier.
But lastly,
I want to comment on
his diligence as a writer
and a teacher.
He had lots of causes
and he took people and
things to task unmercifully,
but it was always that diligence
as a writer that took center stage
and he loved to nurture other writers.
So those are my best recollections.
- Okay, thank you very much Dudley.
(loud clapping)
- Thank you.
- Next up, we have William Jack Sibley,
Bill to his friends.
He's a dynamically talented novelist,
playwright and screenwriter.
Bill writes hilarious
and even mad cat stories,
always infused with a generosity of spirit
and a deep appreciation for
the nuances of human behavior.
Bill can do it all.
He's written dialogue for TV soap operas,
he's been a contributing editor.
Andy Warhol's Interview Magazine.
His plays have won several awards,
have been produced off Broadway
and around the country.
Bill's won several festival awards
and seen numerous film
options as a screenwriter.
He's also the author of two
acclaimed award winning novels
set in Texas.
And like Frank Dobie,
Bill Sibley comes from a brush
country, ranching family.
And for the past nine years,
you've heard a little bit about this,
Bill and Mary Margaret Campbell,
who's also here,
have been the host
and Bill has been the MC
of an outstanding literary
festival called Dobie Dichos;
which, where Bill brings
together the leading writers
in the state every year
and has them interpret the
works of J. Frank Dobie.
And when Dudley was
doing this two years ago,
Bill Wittliff was also
a part of that event.
And you know,
Bill has really done so much
to spark this kind of current
Dobie revival that we're seeing right now.
Bill is as dynamic in person
as he is on this page.
So please join me in
welcoming Bill Sibley.
(loud clapping)
- I really want to meet
this Bill Sibley one day.
That's a great and introduction.
I want to thank the writers
who come to Dobie Dichos
that are here.
Naomi, Chip, John, Felipe,
John Phillip Santos,
Who else is, who am I looking at?
Who else has come to Dobie Dichos?
Steve, Bob Flen, thank you guys.
It's Mary Margaret and I
started this nine years ago.
Mary Margaret, where are you?
There she is.
Nine years ago to pay honor
to the Mark Twain of south Texas.
The great storyteller of our great state,
J. Frank Dobie.
It's been amazing.
Every writer I've asked has
said, "Yes, I'll be there."
I think Mary Margaret has
had the same acceptance
from performers and musicians
that have come out there.
It's been absolutely amazing.
We welcome you all to
please come visit us.
It's always the first Friday in November,
sometimes it's hot, sometimes it's cold.
We had a great year this year.
We had a Chip Dameron
and we had a Sergio Troncoso,
and we had Celeste Walker from Houston.
And who am I missing?
(muffled talking)
Tishina Hossa was there
and Sarah Bird from Austin.
Yes, thank you.
So, anyway, as a child
growing up in south Texas,
I would read the only books
that my grandparents had
in their home by this gentleman
called J. Frank Dobie.
And I really,
for the first time in my
life realized that this man
was writing about places
that I actually knew of
it wasn't castles in
Europe or some fairytale.
These were places that
I'd been to as a child.
It was, it was monumental
that somebody could write
about dry dusty south Texas
and make it so compelling and interesting.
And wow, what a great place.
So anyway, Dobie has always been somebody
that I've looked up to, I've admired.
He's a bit of a crank,
which I really admire.
He spoke from his heart, from his soul,
from the beginnings of his
life, growing up on that poor,
hot desert, south Texas ranch,
that country that I know very well.
And he's a great inspiration.
And Steve's book, by the way,
he did the most amazing
job of, as you say,
cleaning the rust off of some
of Dobie's flowery parts.
And it is, I got into bed one night
and I started reading it.
And this is the greatest
thing a writer can hear is,
I hate you,
I couldn't go to sleep last night.
'Cause you stayed up all night
reading the book and I did,
and it was fantastic.
And you have brought Dobie back to us
in a really powerful, beautiful way.
And I thank you very much.
(loud clapping)
So, I'm gonna be reading:
Only a Man with Eyes in Back of His Head;
which was written in 1943.
And I'm gonna start this off
in my best Texas gentlemen voice.
This is the voice of J. Frank Dobie.
"At our mother's home in
Bayville for Christmas.
"My brother Elrich gave me some advice.
"I always liked to listen to Elrich.
"He told me to quit being
critical of affairs of state
"And society and go back to cows,
"Cow horses, barbed wire, roadrunners,
"And a thousand other items
in the tradition of Texas.
"He might be right, I
don't want to be personal,
"But a man's bound to think these days.
"I'm going to try to keep
the dust out of my eyes
"So that I can see the main target.
"I want to see whether the
target is the good of mankind,
"The freedoms, or just greed."
J. Frank Dobie.
"Something over a 100 years ago,
"Davy Crockett of Tennessee
killed 105 bears in one season.
"And the next summer got elected
"To Congress on his reputation."
(hearty laughing)
"Littler man had been elected
for smaller reasons since."
(hearty laughing)
"Crockett looked wise,
"But later confessed that
he did not know any more
"About the judiciary than a
hog knows about a side saddle."
(hearty laughing)
"Because of his picturesqueness
"He cuts something of a swath in politics.
"The national government
was at that time compared
"With the present.
"As simple as the setting
up of a backwoods homestead,
"All a man had to do was to
find a wife squat on free land,
"Build a cabin out of tree logs.
"Kill is meat out of the woods,
"Raise a little corn and a few pumpkins.
"It cost Crockett at about
$10 to furnish his cabin.
"There was land fertile
"And free for everybody who wanted it.
"The government had not yet
begun its policy of subsidizing
"Railroad companies with the
158 million acres of land.
"An area about the size of Texas,
"A wonderful catalyst for free enterprise
"Among railroad magnets,
headquartered in Washington.
"The government had
hardly begun its policy
"Of protective tariffs.
"That was the make the great
manufacturing enterprises free
"To reach into the pockets
of the poorest farmers.
"The great American forests
stood in their pristine nobility
"And waved their beautiful tops
"Over tens of millions of acres
"Of land as yet untouched
by the free enterprisers
"Who were to turn them into deserts,
"Regardless of the effect
on erosion, on floods,
"On soil owned by farmers and
without regard to national
"Needs for timber and
the next generation."
You get where we're going here?
(hearty laughing)
"Without regard to anything
but booming profits
"For the free enterprisers themselves.
"So far as an ordinary
citizen was concerned.
"There might almost
have been no government,
"No foreign power threatened us.
"Although, there was slavery
in a way the white citizens
"Of America were nearly as free of control
"As were the great herds
that mustang horses
"To send it from escape,
"Spanish stock grazing on
free grass of coastal prairies
"In high plains.
"The free grass and free soil
"Was conducive to free enterprise.
"Then about 10 years
before the century ended,
"There was no longer either free grass
"Or free soil to speak of.
"The free mustangs that
had tossed their heads.
"So wild and beautiful on the
free grass had been killed
"And roped off by men who
wanted to use the grass.
"The mighty herds of
buffaloes that once moved
"On the great sea of grass,
"As primordially as the winds
were all bit annihilated.
"Only a man with eyes
in the back of his head
"Could expect now to return
"To free grass and free soil normalcy.
"While the century was
approaching its end,
"A great drought caused
widespread distressed
"Among settlers on western lands that had,
"But recently been grazed
by mustangs and buffaloes.
"Congress voted in appropriation
"To relieve the distressed president,
"Grover Cleveland vetoed the appropriation
"With the observation that
it was the business of people
"To support the government
"And not the business of the government
"To support the people,
"The great corporations that had so long
"Been beneficiaries of
government enforced tariffs
"To protect the goods they manufactured.
"Piously agreed with the president.
"Meanwhile, the country was
striding in seven league boots
"To become what it is today,
technically and mechanically,
"The most highly developed
"And most abundantly
supplied in the world.
"The man with the hoe
"Regarded from times Memorial
as the brother to the ox,
"Most followed the science
of soils and cultivation,
"If he is to reap profit
from what he sows.
"The banker who used to do nothing,
"But sit in his counting house,
"Counting out his money
must now know how to obey
"And how to get around
several volumes of tax laws,
"Must be prepared to administer
a state so complicated
"That they would stump
a Philadelphia lawyer.
"And he is enough of an
economist to look with contempt
"On political charlatans,
"Who try to laugh the science
of economics out of existence.
"We laugh at the alphabetical combinations
"That indicate government bureaucracies.
"I hold no brief for bureaucracy,
"But it seems to me that in the army,
"There are as many
alphabetical combinations
"Representing technical operations
"As there are in the government.
"Think of how much more
accrue of one of those
"Flying fortresses must know
"And how much more they must coordinate
"Than the driver of a Ford truck.
"Then think, how much there is to a truck
"Than there was to an old time cart
"And Davey Crockett's day.
"We became a machine geared
technical scientific world
"Quite a while ago.
"We accepted it for every part of life
"Except for politics and government.
"We still favor a Davy Crockett
"Who killed 105 bears in one season.
"And though he does not know the judiciary
"From Adam's off ox.
"We will elect him to make laws
"That not even a wise
judiciary could serve
"The country from.
"We elected the United States Senate,
"A conscious ignoramus
"Who cannot give a single
concrete fact about democracy,
"Who has not the least
conception of constitution,
"Who has never seen an imagination guessed
"At the far reaching and intricate effects
"Of tariffs whose sole interest
"In two world wars has
been to avoid service
"In the first and then to
complain about rationing
"During the second.
"It is infantile to go back to normalcy.
"Harding's motto, less
government in business
"And more business in government.
"The government is going
to stay in business
"Because it is the people's business.
"I'd rather fish than think.
"But if I go fishing
anywhere inland in America,
"I'll be fishing for fish
"Planted and controlled
by government agencies.
"Wishing for the simple old
days will not bring them back.
"We had a simple government
when we had a simple life,
"A complex government is
required to coordinate
"And balance the maze and complexities
"Of our increasingly
complicated and technical world.
"Maybe someday the whole structure
"Of scientifically mechanized civilization
"Will topple over and we
will wear fig leaves again
"In apple orchards instead
of electrically heated suits
"To keep us warm in the stratosphere
"Where the air we breathe
comes out of tanks
"Until then the wisdom in government
"Will depend on science on knowledge.
"It is sweet to sing
the old time religion,
"But religion by itself cannot
manage this tangled world.
(loud clapping)
And that is J. Frank Dobie.
- Yeah, and that that quote,
that conscious ignoramus we elected,
who was he referring to?
(hearty laughing)
- Only he knows.
- And we do know,
it was actually Pappy Lee O'Daniel,
who was like you to the Senate.
Dobie had lots of issues with him.
So, Bill and thanks for
telling us about Dobie Dichos,
your personal connection to Dobie.
Take just a moment to tell us about,
so these two novels
you've written in Texas
that turned out to be
part of a trilogy, right.
And you're finishing,
tell us about the novel that
you're finishing, currently.
- I was telling Naomi earlier.
These are kind of adult books.
They're not about granddad's
arrowhead collection.
I went to Marfa to do a book signing
and I got there and the lady
running the book (mumbles)
was very excited and she said,
"Oh, there's so much going on tonight.
"I didn't think anybody would show up.
"We've asked the Methodist
ladies club to come."
(hearty laughing)
"I read the nicest
cleanest part of my book.
"They bought all the books, I
got out of town real quick."
(hearty laughing)
- Thanks Bill.
(hearty laughing)
(loud clapping)
All right, well, we're going
to show you this short video
and you're going to see a
couple of different snippets
of Bill Wittliff talking
about J. Frank Dobie
and that Dobie footage I mentioned.
In the second part of
this little short film,
you're gonna see Bill Wittliff
from just two years ago
or about a year and a half ago.
And for that footage,
I just want to mention that
we have our vice president
for information technology
and cinematographer extraordinary,
Ken Pierce to thank for
capturing that video, thank you.
- One day Sally was walking down the drag
and Dobie was in the co-op signing books.
So, it was my birthday.
So when Sally got home, she called Dobie.
And she said, would you sign
a book for my boyfriend?
And so Dobie said, "Sure, bring it over."
So Sally did,
and he wrote a really nice inscription
and on my 21st birthday,
that's what Sally gave me as a gift.
And of course I thought
that was really cool.
I was gonna marry this girl.
(hearty laughing)
But it took me about four
months to work up the courage,
to call Dobie and ask if I could come over
and visit and get a book signed.
And he said, "Sure, come on."
Dudley, of course, you know this story,
but he said, "Sure, come, come over."
He said, "Come after 4:00."
He said, "I take a little siesta,
"But if you come after 4:00
"I'll be glad to chat with you."
And some so precisely at 4:00,
I was at Dobie's front door
on Park Place knocking.
And there was no answer.
I knocked and I knocked
and I though, oh well,
but I walked around the backyard,
which was on Waller Creek.
And Dobie was back there,
in a pair of cutoff, khaki pants,
little glass of Jack Daniel's
whiskey and a garden hose.
And he was taking a shower bath.
(hearty laughing)
So I walked over and introduced myself
and we chatted for just a second.
And he said, "Well, come on in the house."
And Dobie house, you walk from
the backyard to some steps.
And then you went up the steps
and there was a little landing.
And then you went into
the house on the side.
So Dobie led the way,
as he got to the landing,
I was just hitting the bottom step.
And it was at that moment
that he turned and he said,
"Are you out at the university?"
And I said, "Yes, sir,
"I'm in the school the journalism."
And when I say journalism,
I mean, his eyes flashed.
He spun on me and he said, journalism.
He said, "God damn you, boys."
"Why don't you take something?
"That'll put fiber in your mind."
(hearty laughing)
So that was kind of the
start of the relationship.
And I went many, many,
many times to visit Dobie,
always with a book.
And I would always come home
with maybe 10 other things
that he gave me while I was there.
- In all this writing about the cowboys.
Well, the Zane Grey School,
the (mumbles) school, won't
let one come quietly out,
but he doesn't come out the door.
He jumps out the window
and he's not shooting one set
shooter, he's shooting two.
I can't, I know I get
ashamed of myself sometimes
for having written so many stories
about lost mine and buried treasure
because people think
I've living directions
for finding the wells.
Well, I never opened it.
Of course, you know, I wrote this.
I was in love with the story.
I met 100 stories, not 100
across mine buried treasures.
And, a lot of these stories
are made by very credulous people.
But, they don't lie about life.
- As I said, every time
I would go visit Dobie,
he would just load me up with things
he thought I ought to read.
And he never said it,
but it was because he thought,
I'm sure that I was
pretty close to the ground
ignorant on a lot of things.
And so he would give me these things here.
You ought to read this (mumbles).
Anyway...
Sally and I got married
then off I went to basic training
in the Air National Guard.
And I was in my second or
third week of basic training,
which is not, not a good place.
And all of a sudden I
got a letter from Dobie
who was at the Huntington Library
at the time he wrote.
And how he got it to me.
I don't know,
because a military address,
a military address, you know,
it's this and it's this and it's this,
and it's forever long.
But all of a sudden here
was a letter from Dobie
with my basic training address.
So I opened it and it was an article
on the proper use of language
from the Saturday Review of Literature.
And he said,
"You read this and you pay attention to it
"And try to learn from it."
And so on, and then at the end,
he said, "I am interested in you."
And I'll tell ya what a gift, what a gift.
And so, you know,
blessings on you, Mr. Dobie.
(loud clapping)
- Yeah, and as lovely as
Bill's story of Dobie is,
the archive is just full of those stories.
One of the things we have on
exhibit is a kid who is about,
I think he's 11 or 12, maybe.
I can't remember now,
but he sent in Dobie a fan
letter and Dobie just wrote him
back right away and
just was so encouraging.
And there were so many
writers that he mentored
and from what James Michener did
to what Bill and Sally Wittliff did,
it's just, it's a lovely
thing to be a part of.
So our next reader here
is John Phillips Santos.
He's a national book award finalist;
whose beautifully written books
explore how the uniquely blended cultures
of this part of the world came into being
and how this (mumbles)
represents our future.
Born and raised in San Antonio,
John Phillip won a
scholarship to Notre Dame
and then became the first
Mexican-American Rhode scholar.
He moved to New York writing and producing
Emmy nominated television
documentaries for CBS and PBS.
And then John Phillip came back to Texas.
He now teaches at UT San Antonio,
where he is the university
distinguished scholar
in Mestizos cultural studies
to the Honors College.
John Phillip is a visionary
public intellectual.
In addition to his acclaimed books,
he's written many enlightening essays,
including a recent
article in Texas Monthly,
that dissects the relationship
between Américo Paredes
and J. Frank Dobie.
John Phillip is one of the
brightest lights in Texas,
someone where you so pleased
to have join us today.
So please join me in welcoming
John Phillips Santos.
(loud clapping)
- Thanks y'all,
I'm caviling right now.
You know, the term
caviling, old Chicano term,
I'm caviling on celebrating
my master J. Frank Dobie,
who I held so close as a young writer,
he represented to me the Hano Baroque.
I thought for a while, he
might be a Chicano writer.
You know, I mean,
I first started reading him
before there really
was Chicano literature.
So I came to J. Frank Dobies work
partly for the way that he
revealed the connections
of what we knew as Texas to
our most ancient origins,
the indigenous world and
the world of the landscape.
And I'm also humbled to be
here celebrating Bill Wittliff.
It's the first time I've been
here since I saw Bill last
at a celebration for Sandra Cisneros work
and the photographs that surround us,
just also give testimony to this story,
that in a sense he did inherit
in some part from Dobie,
but brought his own incredible
visionary visual gift
to this telling of this story.
The fact that it begins
with the vaquero world
and that gallery over here in the work
that Bill did in the 70's,
to this last work, this cosmic work,
the connection between the landscape,
the vaquero world and the cosmic world.
It's just something
that I think Dobie had
some role in imparting.
I don't think you really can
claim to be a Texas writer
unless you've stolen from Dobie, right.
(hearty laughing)
So I didn't know Cormac
McCarthy was as well,
unabashed about it as Steve
points out in his introduction.
But I know that I learned
how to write about Mexico
in part through Dobie.
So when I was writing,
in the book that Steve mentioned:
Places Left Unfinished
at the Time of Creation,
I know I copped a lot of ranch writing
from the Dobie lexicon
and from his gestures
and his way of connecting
the everyday to the
cosmic, to the universal.
I'm also going back to
Tongues of the Monte,
there as Dudley did.
And it's also somewhat humbling
to stand in front of Dudley.
I don't know if anybody
else is getting it,
but he's a dead ringer for his cousin,
his cousin ancestor, the
Dobie gene runs very strong.
You know, I wanted
before I read the section from
Steve's brilliant anthology,
but I'm wondering actually
how Dobie would feel
about the fact that this visionary writer,
Steve Davis, would follow his biography.
His biography of Dobie with
a biography of Timothy Leary,
Dobie and Leery,
two of my idols.
(hearty laughing)
I wonder what Steve is planning next,
but yeah, Steve didn't include
this section in a paragraph.
Really, another aspect of
Dobie's visionary Texaness
is the (speaking in foreign language).
Is from the preface to
Tongues of the Monte.
And actually this,
this edition of Tongues of the Monte,
that was a gift I gave
to my father in 1977.
The dedication was...
(speaking in foreign language)
A piece of the blessed
land, merry Christmas, '77.
So here's Dobie being prophetic
about a certain aspect of Texaness.
"I can not remember my first
association with Mexicans
"For I was born and
reared in a part of Texas,
"The brush country towards
the border below San Antonio,
"Where Mexicans were and still
are more numerous than people
"Of English speaking ancestry.
"At that time, few of them spoke English
"Though many of them were native born.
He was visionary about
being majority minority.
It was an incredible story in his origin.
So this is a little section
from Tongues of the Monte.
Something maybe a little point of envy
between myself and Dobie was, you know,
he got a Guggenheim to go
ride horseback in Mexico
for a year.
(hearty laughing)
Where do we get in line for that?
(hearty laughing)
It's an extraordinary book as,
as Dudley already mentioned.
And it's consistently evoking something
that I spoke about in this
essay in Texas Monthly
about this relationship
between Américo Paredes,
Mexican-American visionary,
and their long relationship,
complicated relationship to Dobie.
Paredes had this idea of greater Mexico,
that greater Mexico constituted
those lands that had been usurped
after the Mexican-American War.
Dobie had a comparable
term, which he never coined.
I've coined for him of greater Texas,
a kind of borderless land that stretched
from the Sierra Madre,
at least to the hill country.
And in both, Tongues of the Monte,
he rides in the Bolson de Mapimi,
Timiya, a part of Mexico that
I actually knew very well.
Part of what I stole
from him was familiarity
with this landscape
in part of (mumbles).
And here in the epigraph,
that Steve reproduces from the book,
he evokes this very neatly,
he says, "The great Comanche War Trail
"Was worn deep by the hoofs
of countless travelers
"Over generations of time
"And was lined with the
whited bones of horses.
"In Texas, it has been plowed up
"Tramped over, cemented under, trains,
"And automobiles annually carry across it
"Thousands of English speaking people
"Who are not aware that it ever existed,
"But across the Bolson de Mapimi
"And the land fringing upon it,
"The Raiders who beat
out the Comanche Trail
"Ride vividly in memory
"For days that stretched into weeks.
"We rode after twisting up
(speaking in foreign language)
"Lined with cedar, traversing
arid and unstopped mesas,
"Merely patched with grass
"And threading passes over
mountains fringed with pine
"And (speaking in foreign language).
"We left all fence lines and
came by degrees out on to that
"Vast and vaguely defined desert
"Known as the (speaking
in foreign language).
"Some old maps call (speaking
in foreign language).
"Land of Death.
"This is the southern most portion
"Of that Chihuahuan Desert.
"Ranging below the big bend of Texas
"From the Rio Bravo southward
through western Coahuila,
"And into neighboring Chihuahua
"And Durango skirting Zacatecas
"And San Luis Potosi,
maddeningly monotonous,
"Except two one who can read
infinity in a grain of sand."
A quote from William Blake."
"The Bolson de Mapimi is an
immense seemingly barren land
"Yet productive of a fantastic life.
"It stretches out on
irregular elevated basin
"Hemmed around by low naked mountains
"That infringe up and crumple
it and are always in sight.
"These shed the sparse
rainfall into arroyos
"That are bone dry,
"A few hours after a rain
"And sink into the parched solitude.
"It is as if a vast
ocean had been petrified
"To remain forever silent.
"A traveler through this region
is fortunate to reach water
"Of any kind once a day.
"And he must take his course to do that.
"The patches of course
wire-like sabanita grass,
"Or the equally tough
(speaking in foreign language)
"Or the fibrous chino are
always far from any watering.
"Generally we camped with no water,
"Except that carried in canteens.
"Occasionally we stopped at
a lone rancheria of poverty.
"The nights grew freezing cold.
"The days remained blazing hot.
"The sun flooded the
immense vacuity of sky,
"that intense light blinding
against the ashen soil.
"The powdered alkaline
dust raised by the feet
"Of our horses were swept
into the nostrils of both
"Man and beast.
"And so we rode, it was
as if I had never known
"Any other land, any other life.
"The foothills were
covered with black rock;
"Which appeared to have been
spewed out of a furnace.
"Now and then we came to sand dunes
"On which grew gray switch mesquite
"And gray chamiso their
roots affording fuel.
"Far away, sometimes a
valley appears green.
"That green is an expanse of the ocotillo,
"Each stock studded with thorns
"Protecting its miniature stemless leaves.
"All one afternoon,
"I rode through a plane
of big balmas, yucas,
"Flooded with thousands
and tens of thousands
"Of silent migratory bluebirds.
"Moving seamlessly as
slow as the desert tarpon
"Day after day through the gray
"And immense solitude
of the Bolson de Mapimi.
"A man grows to feel that no
human drama ever was enacted,
"Ever could be enacted
"On such an unrelieved and empty stage.
"Yet here also,
"Human history has written itself.
"Somehow the long lone cry of a bolson
(speaking in foreign language)
"In the night, suggests human destinies
"As eloquently as the broken arches
"Of the Colosseum ever spoke to Byron.
"By day, the omnilucent glare of the sun,
"Palpitates an Iliad of vanished races,
"Vanished centuries, and
vanished ways of human life.
"Under that sun long, long ago,
"The conquistadors rode north this way
"To gather Indian slaves for their mines.
"They rode back and behind
them came the Comanches,
"Beating out their great War Trail
"West of the Pecos in Texas,
"On the two great paralleling
(speaking in foreign language)
"Of Mexico and over the broken plateau
"That lies between them.
"It usually rains in the summer.
"The average rainfall varying greatly,
"According to the lay of the land.
"By September, the grass is ripe
"And the holes are full of water.
"And so to old people in Northern Mexico,
"The September moon is still
the moon of the Comanches.
"Though the Comanches themselves
"Called it the Mexicano moon.
"For it was under this moon
"That they annually swooped down,
"A stride half wild horses
captured from the mustang herds
"Of the planes or from the
(speaking in foreign language)
"Of Mexican rancherias
"Raided the season before.
"They rode on stirrup
plus pads of sheepskin
"Or buffalo hide,
"Their bits and bridle
reins alike of raw hide.
"Their arms were mostly bow and arrows.
"The bows of osage-orange,
"The arrows of (speaking
in foreign language).
"Or other tough growth.
"The arrows were carried in
a quiver of wild cat hide
"Slung from the shoulder.
"Each warrior was provided
with a lance of ash wood
"And (speaking in foreign language)
"Or a shield of dried buffalo hide.
"Some of them carried Bowie knives;
"Or machetes from Mexico.
"And here there was one
armed with an old blunder
(speaking in foreign language)
"In the time of the Comanche moon,
"They rode down the Comanche War Trail,
"Which was from their range on the...
(speaking in foreign language)
"To the depths of the Bolson de Mapimi,
"Half a thousand miles
"Southward stretched as
plain as a chalk mark
"Once across the Rio Bravo,
"These cossacks of the desert,
"Scattered some to push up the
(speaking in foreign language)
"To the very walls of Chihuahua City.
"Some to harass the ranches
of far away Durango,
"Some to veer east and raid haciendas
"In Coahuila, where in the
region of Saltilo at least,
"Cattle went unbranded for years
"Because there were no
horses on which to work them.
"The Comanches even raided
into the states of Zacatecas,
"San Luis Potosi, and Aguascalientes.
"Boys, girls, young women and
horses where their object,
"The children to be
raised as true Comanches,
"The young women to serve as squaws
"And horses, never enough horses, to ride.
"The symbol of power and glory and riches
"Of all the plains Indians.
"Before the bitter note,
"This a winter blew
down the trail was again
"Vivid with life northward bound.
"On some of captured horses
"Were the last captives.
"About the belts of the captors
"That drove them dangled
scalps taken from the kinsmen
"Of the captives.
"The dust from the hoofs
of horses rose in clouds,
"Behind them rolled clouds
of smoke from grass fires
"Set to impede pursuers.
"Now and then bands deflected
"From the trail to shun avengers.
"Against this ravaging,
"The central government did nothing,
"Far removed from the center
where politicians lied
"And generals fought to
possess the spoils of office
"Haciendas and ranches
comprising an empire
"Where by a few hundred naked Comanches
"Kept shuttering with terror.
"The only remedio was a bounty on scalps.
"The governor of Chihuahua
stipulated that 100 pesos
"Would be paid for the scalps of warriors
"And 50 pesos for squaws.
"Then into the bolson and the Sierras
"Rode James Kercher and John Joel Glanton
"And other scalp hunters.
"Some of them from Texas, a
scalp was a scalp to them.
"And when their perfidy in
murdering innocent natives
"For the bounty was discovered
"They had to flee.
"In New Mexico,
"The bounty was on ears instead of scalps
"And in the governor's palace at Santa Fe,
"Where windows of glass
"And festoons of Indian ears were laid.
"When the Englishman George Wroxton
"Reached Chihuahua City in 1846,
"He saw dangling over the
portals of the cathedral,
"The grim scalps of 170 Apaches
"Who had lately been treacherously
and inhumanely butchered
"By the Indian hunters
and the pay of the state.
"28 years later,
"August sent Leben noted freighter
"Of the Chihuahua Trail saw on the Plaza
"In front of the cathedral,
"A procession of conquerors
accompanied by bands of music,
"Displaying scalps on poles.
"For half a century,
"The price of scalps rose and
fell and not all the raiders
"Who rode down the War
Trail lived to ride back."
Thank you, thank you.
(loud clapping)
Sorry, a little grim.
That was, it was Cormac
McCarthy and Sam Peckinpah.
I think may have drawn from that.
(hearty laughing)
It was so hard to pick things
from Tongues of the Monte,
'cause that is, that book
is full of great stuff,
but you know,
that story in this anthology goes on
and you see Dobie riding
through the desert,
and ending up at this little
rancheria, where yeah,
they're sort of given the last
corn and these people have.
(muffled talking)
So talk to us a little bit,
because you mentioned to me that you were,
a lot of people in this
audience may not be aware,
but Dobie is as seen as
controversial at best,
among many Chicano scholars and so forth.
We were talking about,
you were at a talk in San
Antonio a couple of months ago,
and you heard a very
prominent Chicano scholar
basically called Dobie
a racist or whatever.
Can you talk a little bit about
how you think we sort of
know how that happened
in a lot of ways.
- Yeah.
- But can you talk about, your
article and texts (mumbles),
so you see how this kind of going.
- Yeah, I mean, I grew
up, as I said earlier,
I grew up with a sense of
kindredness about Dobie,
partly because I had
the story from my mother
that she remembered him
hanging out with my grandfather
on the porch of their
grocery store, in Catula.
And that he would be there
quite often, hanging out,
listening to stories and writing down.
She said it with a tiny
little pencil in a notebook,
she remembered a cigar,
maybe it was a pipe.
She was not a smoker.
She wouldn't be discriminating
about these things, but,
you know, so I had this sense.
And as I, you know,
as a young reader got
into Tongues of the Monte,
Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver;
which are my two favorites,
the sense of Dobie's simpatico
of the Mexican world.
There was this other story
about Paredes taking on Dobie
in his legendary work with
his pistol in his hand.
(speaking in foreign language)
Cortez story.
He takes on not only Dobie,
and this was Paredes as
a young doctoral student,
takes on Dobie and even more notoriously,
Walter Prescott Webb.
- And the Texas Rangers.
- And the Texas Rangers.
- So it was a kind of a
trifecta of sacred cows
that Paredes sets out to
gore with his first book.
What I uncovered in doing that story
was the deeply moving way
that Dobie and Paredes,
then over many decades,
struck up a kinship
and they were both undervalued by UT,
Paredes in his own way.
He wasn't summarily fired
in the way that Dobie was.
But, I ultimately was able to connect
with Alan Paredes, Americo's son,
who remembers very fondly,
his dad hanging out with J. Frank
at the Paisano Ranch.
And then, actually Steve pointed out
an extraordinary moment,
kind of only a bibliographic
nerds get kind of moved
and get shivers of these kinds of things.
There was a particular section of,
with this pistol in his hand,
where Paredes was describing
the horrific violence
and the misappropriation
and usurpation of lands
by the hands of the Texas
Rangers against the Mexicanos
of the Valley.
And Steve pointed out that
there was a little note from,
in Dobie's copy,
of With a Pistol in His Hands,
where Dobie says just about right.
Yeah, pretty much the truth.
- Pretty much the truth.
- In other words,
an incredibly moving story about that.
I think they found some
reconciliation on their own terms.
I think, I'm hoping that the
anthology brings people back
to these works that really illustrate
not the sense of Dobie as this
kind of international mind,
but the way that he was rooted
in the south Texas reality
as Bill mentioned.
His kinship that he speaks about early on
in Tongues of the Monte
with the vaqueros of his family's ranch;
which must've been his kind
of first point of contact
with the Mexican world.
- And, you know, and as you're talking,
I think I can see why Dobie identified
with young ignorant people,
like, Bill Wittliff...
I know that feeling very well
because Dobie himself was that way.
I think a lot of people
have gone back to his
very earliest writings
and use that to sort of to find him,
and seeing how he's evolved
over the course of his life.
- So a big kudos.
- Thank you so much John.
(loud clapping)
All right, you've made it
through our Dobie marathon.
Thank you all for sticking
with us through this.
Those of us who are kind of a (mumbles)
or feel like geeks are
having a great time here.
So, I'm gonna mention in
introducing our final speaker,
that it was about a year
ago when my wife, Georgia,
and I drove our daughter
Natalie to Houston,
and we joined 70,000 other
people at an intimate concert
venue known as Reliant Stadium.
(hearty laughing)
And we found our seats there
and saw a stage far, far away.
And we had made this
journey to see the band U2.
And I had trouble actually
seeing Bono from that distance,
but they had these giant
screens, of course,
behind the stage where
you could see everything.
And it was on these screens
that this wonderful surprise happened.
And for me, it was the highlight
of the concert, honestly,
because U2 begin scrolling a poem
and it's poem with these words,
"Before you know what kindness really is
"You must lose things."
Anybody know what that's from?
Naomi, she had kindness.
And so, one of the most
influential rock and roll bands
in history thinks that Naomi
Shihab Nye is cool enough
to feature her poetry at their concert.
And this should give you
some idea of Naomi's reach,
her influence, her way of
knitting diverse communities
of people together through
her wondrous poems.
Naomi recently had a new poem
published in the New Yorker,
every subscriber, age 65.
At the same time,
that she was being named the
Young People's Poet Laureate.
She's the author of more than 30 books.
The winner of possibly thousands of awards
actually tried to count them all,
but I gave up last night
about midnight, Naomi.
So those who know Naomi
understand that she is
the literary treasure.
Her words have touched
and helped heal so many
people around the world.
She is our patron Saint
for poetry here in Texas,
and like the rest of us,
she has a keen appreciation
for J Frank. Dobie.
Please welcome Naomi Shihab Nye.
(loud clapping)
- Thank you, thank you.
Thank you so much, Steve,
you have done a wonder work
with this incredible anthology.
I love it so much.
Thanks to everyone who's
here this magical day.
I've never had a chance to
meet any members of the Dobie
family before.
So it's a great honor just
to be in the same room
with all of you,
to David Coleman here.
I want to thank you for
your support of all of us
and all we do to President Trauth,
it's been such an honor
to be on the faculty here
for the last three years.
Such a pleasure.
I love Texas state.
And Sally Wittliff,
there's no day that goes by
that I don't think about Bill and you
and what he meant to all of us
who had a chance to meet
him in the early 70's
at Encino Press.
The first conversation he and I ever had
was about J. Frank Dobie
in Encino Press in Austin.
He will always be a
hero to Michael and me,
and we thank you for your continuation
of his wonderful dreams.
And Bill Sibley for the
greatest festival, Dobie Dichos.
We all love it so much.
Thank you for all you have
done to bring that voice
we've loved into larger,
larger appreciation.
Many, many years ago,
Maury Maverick Junior,
a hero in San Antonio
and of the state of Texas
sent me a letter in the mail.
I was young then,
I had never met him.
And he said,
"I would like to commission
you at this moment
"To read the mustangs poem by
J. Frank Dobie at my funeral."
(hearty laughing)
And I thought so, I wrote
him back and I said,
"I would be honored to.
"I also liked this poem very
much and I love J. Frank Dobie,
"But wouldn't it be nice if
you and I were friends first."
(hearty laughing)
We became very close friends
for possibly 25 more years.
And then I did read that
poem and Maury's funeral.
And I cannot even remember
when I fell under the spell of Dobie.
When I first met John
Phillip 45 years ago,
I already knew Dobie's work and loved it.
When I was combing
through rare books stacks,
as a young person arrived
in Texas at the age of 16,
I still have some of those
early Dobie books I found,
but to have this book in our
hands now is the great gift
because we can buy it for other people.
So thank you, Steve Davis,
and your generosity is so enormous.
I also want to thank the Dobie family
for rescuing the house.
For more than 20 years,
I was privileged to teach
for the James Michener Center for Writers,
in what I always told the
students, was Dobie's bedroom.
I'm not positive it was his bedroom.
It could have been an
upstairs sitting room,
but they were quite spellbound by this.
And I always had them read,
read Dobie as well as
Michener during our semester,
they were fascinated.
Most of them were not from Texas.
So they were fascinated to
read the stories of Dobie
and learn about him;
since we were there in
his own house and room.
It was a tender time in that
room, many tears, much passion.
It was a very intense class
that James Michener himself had devised,
the first year seminar.
And it meant a lot to be there
in that particular building.
And I came to feel closer
and closer to Dobie over the years,
even once ending up spending
the night in the house
by myself, at which point I felt
that he entered the house around 3:00 AM
and did things.
And then later would learn.
It was the UT trash collection department
(hearty laughing)
That came to the house
every night at 3:00 AM.
It seemed weird to me, but anyway.
So because our table felt like a campfire.
I wanted to read a few lines
from the campfire chapter;
which I love.
And also I wanted to say that that night,
when I spent the night,
I took the liberty of taking a scrapbook;
which I had noticed
for years on the shelf,
but had never touched,
that was made by J. Frank's mother.
And in it,
she had pasted all these
beautiful articles about him
in his early years of appearances.
And there was one when he appeared
and she would write little
notes in the scrapbook.
Maybe that scrapbook is living here now.
I'm not sure where it is,
but it was incredible.
And she said at the
Ladies Tea Club of Dallas,
after speaking to 200 women,
he shook the hand of every woman
at the end of the tea party.
And that really touched
me because he seemed to me
in my love of his work,
like someone who would shake every hand,
"I like the campfire when it is blazing.
"And I like the last
dim glow of it's embers.
"I like talk by it and I
like silence beside it.
"It makes company more companionable
"And it makes solitude richer.
"I remember certain campfires,
"As I remember certain
faces, certain friends,
"Certain experiences that
make human sympathies glow.
"I made various pack trips,
"Mostly alone across the Sierra Madre
"And winding around through the
mountains of western Mexico.
"I can look back on myself
at certain campfires
"On those trips as another man,
"After riding all day in the
cold without seeing a human
"Being or offense,
"He makes camp behind
a windbreak of trees,
"A creek of clear water,
"Flanks it on one side
and a glade of matted,
"Mesquite grass on the other.
And then it goes on talking about,
"He fills his pipe and smokes
it, looking into the fire.
"He is comfortable inside and out.
"The sound of the wind,
"Only moderately high in the
branches adds to his feeling
"Of being an un-striving master of time
"And of being in place without ambition
"To turn the place into capital gain
"The man's mind tracks
back to many things,
"To love, to his childhood
hearth, to action,
"To illuminations out of
literature, to good companions.
"Thoughts come to him on subjects,
"Far remote from the life he is leading.
"Yet nothing seems remote to the light
"And the warmth of the fire.
"He spreads his hands before
it not because they are cold,
"But out of geniality,
"He remembers with understanding
the ancient Persians
"Who worshiped fire.
"He feels thankful to the unknown for wood
"And the mystery of its burning.
"The mystery of its burning."
I thank J. Frank Dobie
for helping us all being
more in place in Texas.
And I thank you, Steve,
for this masterpiece of
a book you've given us.
Thank you.
(loud clapping)
I know, thank you.
I've always felt that
when people finish books,
everyone should give them gifts.
And especially when you
finish an anthology,
because an anthology is really a labor
of profound love and devotion.
So this morning I was looking
around my house and I thought,
what do I have in this house
that J. Frank Dobie might have liked?
So I found this basket that
I bought in Chiapas, Mexico
on the street at least 35 years ago.
And I would like to
give it to you in thanks
for the basket of words you
have given us, thank you.
(loud clapping)
- Thank you.
- Thank you so much.
- Well, you talked about
your connection to Dobie
and being at the Michener House.
And, I just want to ask you,
I saw that you have a new book of poems
in the works called,
is it called Castaway?
- Yes, it's called Castaway.
I already apologized to Bill Boyles here.
And he said that was okay,
that he didn't make that up either,
but it's about trash.
It's about trash collection
and my lifelong interest in
cleaning up the place, so...
(hearty laughing)
And it's also has some poems,
a series of poems called trash talk.
And there are some things
about our time in history
and different relationships to trash.
(hearty laughing)
- [Steve] This February, is that right?
- It's coming out in
February, yes thank you.
Thank you so much.
(loud clapping)
- One of the things Bill
Wittliff liked to say
is that we are trying to
do with this collection,
the very same thing and Dobie
was doing with this writing.
And that is to connect us
to this spirit of place
for this part of the world,
to help us better understand,
and even being inspired by
our rich cultural inheritance.
And here's how J. Frank Dobie put it.
It seems to me that other
people living in the southwest
will lead fuller and richer lives
if they become aware of what it holds.
Thank you all for joining us today.
And I think we all lead
richer and fuller lives
by reading the best of J. Frank Dobie.
So be sure to grab a book if
you haven't already, okay.
(hearty laughing)
Thanks very much.
(loud clapping)
