Patrick

“The master of ceremonies was "Cactus" Pryor, "the George Jessel of Texas"; he apologized to the chancellor "because they had been unable to find a way to barbecue sauerkraut." There was a Mexican mariachi band, square dances by the Billyettes, a precision dance team (not all that precise) from Fredericksburg High School and then the German carols sung by cowgirls - the St. Mary's High School choir in full cowgirl regalia: Stetsons, blue skirts, white blouses and red neckerchiefs - under the direction of a nun in head-to-tie black habit. They closed with "Deep in the Heart of Texas" - and that was in German, too. "Die Sterne bei Nacht sind gross und klar / Tief in das Herz von Texas..." After each couplet, the traditional four Texas claps. At the conclusion, a cowboy yell, echoed by the audience. Only after that did the explanation for the grand piano appear: tull, curly-haired Van Cliburn of Fort Worth, whom newspapers had been calling "the pride of Texas" ever since his victory in 1958 in the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. The thunderous chords of the young virtuoso's selections from Beethoven, Brahms and other German composers filled the rickety little building.”
― Robert A. Caro, The Passage of Power

“I’d have Lee too, and Jackson and Albert Sidney Johnston, walking around the midway. Hire some people with beards, you know, to do that. I wouldn’t have Braxton Bragg or Joseph E. Johnston. Every afternoon at three Lee would take off his gray coat and wrestle an alligator in a mud hole. Prize drawings. A lot of T-shirts and maybe a few black-and-white portables. If you don’t like that, how about a stock-car track? Year-round racing with hardly any rules. Deadly curves right on the water. The Symes 500 on Christmas day. Get a promotional tie-in with the Sugar Bowl. How about an industrial park? How about a high-rise condominium with a roof garden? How about a baseball clinic? How about a monkey island? I don’t say it would be cheap. Nobody’s going to pay to see one or two monkeys these days. People want to see a lot of monkeys. I’ve got plenty of ideas but first I have to get my hands on the island.”
― Charles Portis, The Dog of the South