Abilene Christian College - Prickly Pear Yearbook (Abilene, TX)

Page 21 text:

Cuftuw (U SlCW stu mts {now tf e cj)its ancf TficTowiv Culture in Abilene? In that wine city situated in the West Texa; plains among the prickly pear cacti, the mesquite and rattlesnakes? In the dusty town where the cowboys and city folks have finally met, finding that chaps and couture, Cadillacs and cattle cars really can (and do) blend? In a town that has been known as the pits of Texas? Yes, even in the midst of all this you can find culture in Abilene. Oh, it may not be your every-day, run-of- the-mill culture found in such out-of- the-way places as New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, or even Dallas, but it's there with a flavor all its But, just what is culture? One author has said that culture is the study of perfection, and another has said that -culture is no better than its woods. Yet another author describes culture as “the sum of all the forms of art, of love, and of thought...” Still, even that doesn’t quite explain culture in Abilene. Abilene culture is all wrapped up in its agriculture and petrolem operations, in the Larry’s Better Burgers and Kiva Inns, the Paramount Opry and Thouvenal String Quartet performances, the religious atmosphere created by three church-related colleges and churches on almost every corner and the shopping sprees in such extremes as The Mall of Abilene and the St. Vincent de Paul Salvage the city that more than 100,000 people from around the globe have come to call home — the Key City. Located 1,738 feet above sea level in the heart (well, almost the heart) of the Lone Star State, Abilene is the central city of the Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area that includes Taylor, Jones and Callahan counties. Established in 1881, the city’s economy originally was based on agriculture, and while much of the activity in the area still hinges on ag- ribusiness, the economy since about 1960 has shifted more to oil and manufacturing related operations. Plants in the area manufacture aircraft parts, building materials, apparel, trailers, electrical ap- pliances, as well as many other products, and the area continues to expand annually. In addition to its three colleges — ACU, Hardin-Simmons and Mc- Murry — Abilene is the home of a $100 million strategic air command installation, Dyess Air Force Base. The mixture of personalities and backgrounds brought together by this combination is a large part of Abilene’s unique culture. Vifflinq Oub Those “statistics” are all im- portant in the city’s culture, but getting to the heart — or, more appropriately the stomach — of the matter, we find restaurants for A favorite for all college students after those long hours of study is a piece of pie. And what better place for the delicious pastries than Virginia Lee’s Pie Shop, located at 3266 S. 14th. This family-owned business offers more than 40 kinds of pie, priced between 69 and 89 cents per piece, including the usual fruit varieties, several kinds of cream pies (all topped with whipped cream, of course), the house specialties (lemon chess, custard, millionaire’s delight, caramel- banana. blueberry-banana) and everyone's favorite, fresh According to the owners, Bobby Green and Alton Davis, fresh strawberry “is the big thing,” far outweighing any other kind as a “favorite. The next most popular kind, they said, is caramel banana. Although a good deal of Virginia’s business comes from McMurry students, a large percentage” is from ACU. The busiest times as far as student patronage is concerned are “after movies and later at Virginia Lee’s isn’t limited to pies, however. The menu also offers old- fashioned fasting bowls of soup or beans, with crackers or homemade cornbread, starting at about $1.50, and the grinder sandwich with three meats and three cheeses for $3. Other baked specialties include birthday and wedding cakes and cookies, all made and decorated in the shop. Nothing could be better to top off a good piece of pie than some good homemade ice cream from Larry’s Better Burger Drive-In, another array of culture is

Page 20 text:

ally been the realists” crew be murdered. After the killings, he ordered his followers to commit suicide. He called the women and children to come first to drink a cyanide laden drink.“We must die with dignity,” Jones told them. Over 900 people obeyed this “messiah.” Some had to be coerced by guns, but most took their lives willingly. “We all fall tonight, but he’ll raise us tomorrow,” one of Jones’ followers said. The news of the deaths shocked Americans. The American press covered the horror with explicit photographs, tapes of Jones’ death orders and statements from ex- members. The most shocking aspect about the coverage is that it was all true. The idea that so many people could believe in someone as insane as Jones just didn’t make sense. He was a man who offered confused people vacant solutions to life’s problems. They longed for peace — peace they thought they couldn’t find in America. Sadly, they didn’t which opposed her. When we left Vietnam we were in effect saying that we no longer believed in the American way enough to fight for it. We became tolerent, even com- placent, of our ideological enemy: Russia. This tolerence was best illustrated in President Carter’s embrace with Russia’s head of state, Leonid Brezhnev, at the end of the SALT II meeting in 1979. It was summed up in Carter’s 1977 Notre Dame commencement speech. He said, “We are now free from our inordinate fear of com- never thinking that fire is better find it in i V Guyana either, ietnam can be traced I belief that our coui fought with water.” This fire “...failed with Vietnam, the best example of its intellectual and moral poverty.” Vietnam can be seen as a striking out at Communism. In the late ’70s we began to try to make peace with the Russians. We called it detente. We sold the Russians grain, shared technology and lent them money. We Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, a Nobel prize winner and Russian dissident, said, “Communism needs...detente for one purpose: to gain additional strength with the help of Western financing (those loans will not be repaid) and Western technology before it launches its next large- scale offensive.” His words rang pure and true as Russia rumbled into Afghanistan at the twilight of the ’70s. What Solzhenitsyn had said in 1978 at Harvard’s commencement was made even more relevant by the Russian invasion. In the speech Solzhenitsyn accused Americans of being self-centered and of caring little for other people, especially those of other nations. The tolerance of Russia was nothing to be proud of, Solzhenitsyn said. This toleration marked a “decline in courage” in America. Solzhenitsyn said America was slumbering; they were in for a rough awakening. His points about Russia were important, but even more important was what he said about the decline of the American spirit. Maybe we aren’t as happy, as brave or as optimistic as we once were. Perhaps it’s because of the flood of information that greets us every day. It’s difficult to be cheerful when murders, robberies and invasions are flashed at us constantly by the media. But the problem isn’t the tool; it’s how we use the tool. This flow of information can cause us to lose sight of what our life is like. We become aware of what is around us, but forget what is inside us. The ’80s? I’m ready. Yes, there are problems. Yes, there are threats. You can read about them in a newspaper, see them on a TV or listen to them on the radio. But a newspaper, a TV or radio can’t tell us what will happen. We determine that. I think of what novelist John Cheever said, “The future doesn’t look dismal. I detest the extravagant uses of decay and decline as applied to this country. The Yale magazine wrote me and asked if things were going to get worse in this country. I wrote back that if people continue going around asking questions like that things are bound to get worse. “This is a haunted country,” Cheever said. “Haunted by a dream of excellence.” We need to look at the Vietnams and the Watergates and see where people went wrong. We need to pick out the mistakes. It was unfortunate that so many people suffered in the two situations, but it will be much more tragic if we fall into similar situations because we did not learn We can learn something about the dream of wealth from Elvis Presley, and something about Communism from the dead millions of Cambodia. From it all, I think we can learn to see what should be, through the realities we experience. As we look back on the events of the ’70s and anticipate the events of the ’80s, it is necessary that we realize the importance of the lessons we should have learned throughout the past decade. “At best the future is uncertain,” John Lee, of the New York Times, wrote. “But in the American ex- perience, the optimists have usually been the realists.” DavidRamsey

Page 22 text:

cyaUces of ‘Ifie City's cufture’