Fort Worth Weekly // March 30 - April 5, 2022 by Fort Worth Weekly

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The Disinherited Fort Worth powerbrokers rid themselves of a troublesome pre-WWII book about the local aristocracy the old-fashioned way — by burying it. B Y

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B I L L S

METROPOLIS Like every other college, TCC wouldn’t survive without adjuncts but still pays them like crap. BY S TAT I C

EATS & DRINKS Is Roy Pope’s brisket better than Goldee’s? Hmm. BY LAURIE JAMES

STUFF Mr. TCU has his eyes on the Olympics for weightlifting. BY BUCK D. ELLIOTT

MUSIC Maybe the most aggressive hardcore act in town, Phorids is about to unleash some new material soon. BY JUAN R. GOVEA

inside

2022

Vo lum e 17

Number 52

INSIDE The Star-T goes deep but comes up short. By Anthony Mariani

Risk it for Brisket Our food critic assumes a challenge pitting Goldee’s brisket against Roy Pope’s. By Laurie James

Bob Niehoff, General Manager Ryan Burger, Art Director Jim Erickson, Circulation Director CONTRIBUTORS

Ever Hear of The Inheritors? Banning books? Pfft. Back in the day, tout Fort Worth just buried them. By E.R. Bills

Phorids Real

Their new album can only cement their reputation as one of the hardest-hitting punk bands in North Texas. By Juan R. Govea

Megan Ables, Christina Berger, E.R. Bills, Jason Brimmer, Sue Chefington, Buck D. Elliott, Juan R. Govea, Patrick Higgins, Bo Jacksboro, Laurie James, Kristian Lin, Vishal Malhotra, Cody Neathery, Wyatt Newquist, Linda Blackwell Simmons, Madison Simmons, Teri Webster, Ken WheatcroftPardue, Cole Williams EDITORIAL

Emmy Smith, Proofreader Michael Newquist, Regional Sales Director Jennifer Bovee, Marketing Director Stacey Hammons, Senior Account Executive Jessica Kirksey, Account Executive Julie Strehl, Account Executive Tony Diaz, Account Executive Wyatt Newquist, Digital Coordinator Clintastic, Brand Ambassador

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fwweekly.com MARCH 30 - APRIL 5, 2022 FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY 2

Edward Brown, Staff Writer

Anthony Mariani, Edward Brown,

Cover art by Taylor Teachout DISTRIBUTION Fort Worth Weekly is available free of charge in the Metroplex, limited to one copy per reader. Additional copies of Fort Worth Weekly may be purchased for $1.00 each, payable at the Fort Worth Weekly office in advance. Fort Worth Weekly may be distributed only by Fort Worth Weekly’s authorized independent contractors or Fort Worth Weekly’s authorized distributors. No person may, without prior written permission of Fort Worth Weekly, take more than one copy of any Fort Worth Weekly issue. If you’re interested in being a distribution point for Fort Worth Weekly, please contact Will Turner at 817-321-9788.

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JUAN R. GOVEA

School-to-Prison Pipeline

STAFF

Mar c h 30 - April 5, 2022

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METROPOLIS

The Star-T spent a lot of time and effort on a deep dive into local schools criminalizing children with disabilities but ignores a huge determining factor. B Y

A N T H O N Y

M A R I A N I

Like seemingly every other mainstream media outlet, including The New York Times and CNN, the Star-Telegram continues lurching further to the right to attract more/

Static In one year, Tarrant County College’s recently terminated chancellor — the alleged philandering administrator who, based on court documents, doesn’t know what tenure is — earned the equivalent of 20-plus TCC adjunct professor salaries. The disparity is a stark reminder of how those at the top of higher education frequently take advantage of lower-level instructors who teach the bulk of community college courses. Eugene Giovannini’s tenure was marked by two possibly retaliatory terminations within the past two years, and those are only the cases we know about so far. Several former TCC employees told us that, under Giovannini’s leadership, campus culture allegedly left no room for dissent (“A Pattern of Poor Leadership?” Mar 18). The college’s board of trustees recently voted to remove him after an independent investigation found that he retaliated against a former employee. Kristen Bennett told one TCC attorney about an alleged intimate and wholly inappropriate relationship between Giovannini and a female subordinate. Even with the ouster, life must have been good for the 11 years that the college’s top administrator raked in $432,836 a year. “The adjuncts have been known to eat out of the food pantry on campus, which is why the chancellor’s salary is so appalling,” said Sam, a TCC adjunct who asked that we hide their identity. According to TCC’s website, adjunct professors earn around $500 per class taught. With an average load of three

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Higher Ed, Lower Wages

any subscribers, having run out of left-leaning souls to offend via rightwardly skewed political coverage. The other day, the daily paper of record devoted seemingly half of its available column inches to just more right-wing appeasement masquerading as indepth reporting. The piece in question was a typical daily paper-y story about some “classroom to courtroom” pipeline. Readers of this magazine and many, many others may pause because that phrase closely resembles “school-to-prison pipeline,” because that’s what it’s been called for nearly a decade. The Star-T doesn’t care about that. The paper did somersaults to avoid making race the primary focus of “ ‘Broken system’ sends North Texas students with disabilities from classroom to courtroom” when race is the primary focus of any discussion about classrooms and courtrooms. The story ends up a terrific waste of resources and data, and writing, all to avoid upsetting the delicate snowflakes who comprise the North Texas GOP and the Star-

courses per semester, adjuncts earn between $18,000 to $25,000 annually for the contract position that frequently requires a master’s degree. Full-time faculty earn easily three times that amount. TCC maintains 750 full-time professors and 2,222 adjunct instructors. Tarrant’s community college is far from alone when it comes to pay disparity in higher ed. A recent report by the American Federation of Teachers found that onequarter of adjunct instructors across the country rely on some form of public assistance. TCC’s current contract for adjuncts appears to ban the contract employees from unemployment and other state benefits. The contract reads, “I understand that my compensation is not comparable or equivalent to that of full-time faculty, and, as a consequence, I am eliminated from eligibility for state benefits or service time credit,” TCC’s adjunct contract reads. TCC’s communications liaison said his office does not comment on personnelrelated issues. Sam told us that adjuncts frequently lose classes to full-time faculty — sometimes with little to no notice. That can leave the instructors who planned on a full semester of work with no income. During the worst of the pandemic under TCC’s old contract, Sam continued, several of their colleagues received unemployment. The new contract, Sam alleges, allows the college to forgo paying into the state’s unemployment system. Based on the website of the Texas Workforce Commission, the governmental group tasked with providing unemployment benefits, “Employers pay unemployment insurance taxes and reim-

T’s precious subscription base. I guess with the recent addition of more conservative columnists to the Star-T staff, we should have all seen this coming. Before the Karens and Kyles accuse me of “making everything about race!,” my problem is that the Star-T punted on offering a smart, helpful, brave analysis of a serious problem involving race because the higherups are clearly afraid of getting into the pelican pose in their offices in front of mean online comments or losing subscriptions from people in Westover Hills, Arlington Heights, and Keller. First of all, why is the Fort Worth (!) Star-Telegram still referring to North Texas as “Dallas-Fort Worth”? Anyway, the gist of the piece is that some? a couple? many? all? — the story doesn’t say — “Dallas-Fort Worth” schools “push some children who need special education services out of school and into the criminal justice system for perceived misbehavior.”

Cour tesy of TCC

Writing Around Race

TCC’s adjunct instructor contract may violate state labor code laws.

bursements that support unemployment benefit payments.” A spokesperson for the state workforce commission declined to comment on this story, but Texas’ labor code is clear on the matter. “An employer may not require or accept a waiver of a right of an individual employed by the employer,” the code reads. Any employer who violates Texas’ labor code can be fined no more than $1,000 and face imprisonment of up to six months in jail, the code reads. TCC’s human resources department appears to be violating their employees’ rights, and, even if there is legal wiggle room to do so, it’s an incredibly shitty way to treat the instructors who are the backbone of our county’s college. TCC’s leaders know full well their adjuncts are underpaid and overworked. The instructors likely en-

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joy the work and probably don’t want to risk losing their job by filing complaints or contacting the Texas Workforce Commission directly. It’s a modern-day form of indentured servitude that allows for high salaries for administrators who earn several times the earnings of the men and women who do the difficult and important work of teaching tens of thousands of Tarrant County residents each year. Sam said TCC leadership should take steps to convert more adjuncts to fulltime faculty. Given Giovannini’s exorbitant salary, administrators can’t argue that there isn’t enough money. Students often opt for classes with their favorite adjunct instructors, often to the detriment of enrollment in courses led by faculty. When faculty-led classes don’t fill, Sam said, adjuncts shouldn’t pay the price by losing enrollment. In recent months, several former TCC employees have reached out to our news magazine with horror stories that aren’t tied to Giovannini’s recent ousting. The college’s attorneys have gone to great lengths to block our open records requests for basic information about the college, and, to this day, all of our media inquiries have been ignored. Based on our first-hand conversations with current and former TCC employees, Giovannini’s termination may be just the beginning of a cascade of scandals and lawsuits that will hit the college in the coming weeks and months. This column reflects the opinions of the editorial board and not the Fort Worth Weekly. To submit a column, please email Editor Anthony Mariani at Anthony@ FWWeekly.com. Submissions will be edited for factuality and clarity.

Recent Acquisitions 2002–2022 Through April 24

The Modern begins its twentieth year in its Tadao Ando-designed galleries with a permanent collection exhibition focused on works acquired since the building’s opening. Both floors showcase paintings, photographs, sculptures, and videos by artists from a wide range of cultures and geographies. With works ranging from provocative to contemplative, the exhibition encapsulates the varied and complex nature of contemporary art. Pictured: Takashi Murakami, Mr. DOB, 1997. Inflatable vinyl chloride. 93 × 119 3/4 × 71 inches. Collection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Gift of Perrotin. © Takashi Murakami Takashi Murakami, Kawaii! Vacances d’été: Perfect Time, 2018. Gold leaf and acrylic on canvas. 118 1/8 × 275 ½ inches. Collection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, The Friends of Art Endowment Fund and Museum purchase. © Takashi Murakami

Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth 3200 Darnell Street Fort Worth, Texas 76107 817.738.9215

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Knowing the school-to-prison pipeline exists and is real, the next question to pop into the reporter’s head should have been: How many of those pushed kids are poor? And that should have been immediately followed by: How many of those pushed kids are Black or Hispanic? Since the school-to-prison pipeline is indeed very real and involves race, let’s use the Star-T story as its own data source for the real story they should have published: “Black and Hispanic children, whether they receive special education services or not, are disproportionately criminalized and impacted by the school-to-prison pipeline, said Andrew Hairston, the School-to-Prison Pipeline Project director of Texas Appleseed,” a nonprofit devoted to justice in schools statewide. “A 2012 study by Texas Appleseed found Black students as a whole were 31% more likely [than all others] to receive disciplinary action.” Well, then, Star-T, how many children ending up in local juvie because they’re not properly diagnosed with a disability are Black? While the Tarrant County Juvenile Detention Center does not track disabilities for unknown reasons, the Star-T says, “Bennie Medlin, director of Juvenile Services in Tarrant County, estimated about half of the children held at the Tarrant County Juvenile Detention Center” — that ends up being about 1,722 of them — “have some form of mental health or developmental diagnosis.” Now, since “44% of the juveniles referred to the center [are] Black” — even though Black people account for only 17% of Tarrant County’s total population, according to the most recent U.S. Census data — we can extrapolate that about 758 Black kids in Tarrant County juvie might not have been properly diagnosed. Now that’s a story that would have represented an even more imperiled demographic, considering that poverty rates are highest among African Americans (18.7%, according to the Census) and that Blacks, and Hispanics, don’t have nearly as many mental health-care options as other groups. For a Black family struggling to get by financially, add a clinically depressed kid or kids who can’t get help anywhere, even at school, and you have a pretty accurate snapshot of our country writ large. Telling their stories, though — like we try to when we can — would force the editors and publishers of mainstream media publications like the Star-T to stop offering coverage that appeals primarily to their

wealthy, white subscribers and angry keyboard warriors. In the Star-T story, the writer hyperlinks part of the sentence “Across the country, children with disabilities are disproportionately incarcerated” to a Teen Vogue piece that’s mostly about the same subject but nationally focused. Even while tightly homing in on disabilities rather than other factors, including race, Teen Vogue cannot write around the reality, saying in only the fourth graf, “The situation is further complicated by disability’s intersections with other identities, which make certain kids more vulnerable than others. Black children are more likely to go through school with untreated disabilities and to be diagnosed with behavioral disabilities that funnel them into what could be called a special-education-toprison pipeline. [My emphasis.] Children in poverty” — also mostly Black — “are impacted harshly by having a disability, because it’s more difficult for them to access resources outside of those offered by their public school.” The Teen Vogue writer also tries to write around race but seems to relish in failing, to their credit. In August, the story goes on, a report by the Ruderman Family foundation … found that “nonapparent disabilities” — like the kind we’re talking about here, mostly cognitive rather than physical — “are overrepresented in children already at-risk, including Black, Latinx, and Native kids, those in the foster care system, and trauma survivors.” The report goes on to say that in addition to “zero tolerance” policies at schools, the at-risk students are “suspended at disproportionately high rates and ultimately criminalized. The result of this systemic discrimination is that over half of our incarcerated population has a mental illness and another 19 to 31% have a nonapparent disability, like cognitive or learning disabilities.” The worst part is that “conscious and unconscious racial biases” are affecting which students are considered learning disabled, which is a decision ultimately made by teachers, who, in the United States, are mostly white. “Black students,” Teen Vogue goes on, “are more likely than any of their peers to receive special education services for ‘emotional disturbance,’ ” which does not take into account that, yeah, maybe the Black kids are going through a lot of shit in their homes and neighborhoods. There are actual studies about this question: Are people sad that they’re poor? Sounds like a job for the Star-Telegram. l

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FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY

Metro

The Disinherited

Fort Worth powerbrokers rid themselves of a troublesome pre-WWII book about the local aristocracy the oldfashioned way — by burying it. B Y

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B I L L S

FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY 6

This is no golden legend. Instead, it is a bare, transcripted tale of youth. A guy named Mumford spilled a little blood on the story, and all of us helped the action along, but there was no great bravery involved. It all

A r t b y Ta y l o r Te a c h o u t

In late October of that year, the gentle folk of Fort Worth began to register unpleasant rumblings. Faint at first, the tremors quickly grew more noticeable and less infrequent. Coffee pots in mansions rattled just a little, and there were barely perceptible trembles of picture frames in local society halls. But then the rumblings became a gossipy din. Soon the stately offices and brownstone porticos of the prodigally privileged were on full alert. And by the time the Nov. 10, 1940 edition of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram — with a review touching on the cataclysm — was retrieved by servants from the most luxurious lawns or by most of the rest of our forebears from modest lawns, everyone knew why. Virulent rather than violent, the volcano was not an earthen aperture protruding dramatically from the prairie landscape. It was the explosive response that a book elicited from the River Crest Country Club set. Its eruption was more literary than lavabased, but it blew chunks of Cowtown society improprieties sky-high (for all to see) and was followed by a spew of vitriolic outrage by the masters of Fort Worth commerce. Metaphorically speaking, however, their response would not resemble ancient Pompeii’s. Upon the manuscript’s release by The Dial Press on Nov. 8, 1940, the offended parties immediately summoned and exercised the kind of absolute dominion that only the deepest pockets in American capitalism enjoy. And they wielded their control in a way that today’s would-be and actual Lone Star political powerbrokers can only dream of. The seismic, literary roman a clef behind the pre-WWII convulsion in Fort Worth was The Inheritors, and it was written by Fort Worth native James Young Phillips under the pseudonym Philip Atlee. Peruse, if you will, parts of the introduction and try to gauge the general indignance Cowtown “elites” must have experienced.

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In 1940, a volcano erupted in Fort Worth. Let me repeat that. In 1940, a volcano erupted in Fort Worth.

happened in Fort Worth, Texas, but that was only an accident of narration. The story could have been told anywhere in America, about any place that had a country club. Let no one think that the group herein described was atypical of youth. We were only a fringe, but there were a few of us everywhere. Many of our contemporaries, in the middle thirties of the twentieth century, led admirably sane lives and had a brisk Y.M.C.A. outlook. These are the ones who will undoubtedly save the country when the going gets toughest, but, as Cavin Jarvis said, they were damned uninteresting. I suppose the formation of character is a tedious thing. … The overlords of Fort Worth inhabited the quietest streets. Their large homes fringed the golf courses, and had three or four-car garages back of them. The interiors of these homes were lightened by pictures the owners did not understand or care to understand, and, in some cases, actually disliked. The wives of the owners were well tended and usually apprenticed to the intelligentsia. They were women who bought Shakespeare in handsomely bound volumes; they bought him and then had their maids dust him at regular intervals. The pages were usually uncut, but the owners were proud to have captured Shakespeare so that he could not get away. They trotted about, these women, to garden festivities and quick culture clubs, and they played bridge for rapaciously high stakes. Their husbands did nothing but make money, but they could not be blamed for that. It was all they had been taught to do, and most of them were expert in the field. They were, for the most part, patient men who had been so strongly indoctrinated with the virus of the dollar aristocracy that they could not

enjoy themselves fully even when they were financially able to do so. Therefore they were principally that sad sight, paunchy American business men floundering around, flailing ineptly at a white golf ball. And set down in the heart of the town were the children of the country-club bludgeoners, the children who were being readied to catch the torch of Business. Not all of them were like us. We were well taught, but we were taught too much, and not of the right things. We drove fast cars and drank too much. The inference was given us, by well-bred curlings of the lip, that it was neither good nor desirable to be skilled in a trade. Instead, we were taught to prize the professions, which insisted on the profit motif in every conscious act of life. … We were the inheritors in this last decade of the twentieth century. … We had no great respect for our elders, and we could smell, by some strange clairvoyance of despair, the neat destruction that was being built for us. … At this ripping, dream-destroying junction of responsibility and awakening, we needed meaning as individuals. We needed it badly. … For lack of something to believe in, we came toward maturity as ill-met and unmannered pilgrims in a fog. The first chapter begins with main character George Bellamy Jimble, III (based on Phillips himself) waking with a hangover, and sophomoric episodes of masculine debauchery promptly ensue. Phillips’ Jimble is a self-described “decadent Tom Sawyer,” and his real-life friend Roy Lawrence Harris — depicted in the book as “Cavin Jarvis” — qualified “as a chromium-plated Huck Finn.” Phillips’ Jimble and Harris’ Jarvis are the

two main characters of The Inheritors, and for the next 24 chapters, they drink, chase girls, pursue a questionable, easy-money grift for liquor money, express profoundly dim views of country club gaiety, and undermine the entire Cowtown “dollar aristocracy” with unexpectedly powerful jabs and bullseye quips. After watching the attendees of an outdoor River Crest Country Club dinner, for example, Jimble silently observes that one very wealthy middle-aged couple nearby had little more to do then watch their fortune grow and that they “were very careful people and ate every bite of their salads,” Jarvis expands. “Can’t be happy,” he continues. “Too rich. Been rich too long, and they aren’t people anymore. Just deadheading along until they grow cold.” Then Jimble and Jarvis turn their attention to another wealthy couple. Jarvis delineates between the manicured twosomes. “Different. Entirely different. He’s just passing through his money like a thirsty man passing through a green country. He’s using it, making it buy him things. He knows there aint [sic] pockets in a shroud.” “It could be,” Jimble answers. “Maybe they ought to lock the people up in the bank vaults and let the money do the living.” Later, at the same gathering, Jimble and Jarvis’ commentary becomes more incisive. When an orchestra begins to play, Jimble takes in the ostentatious display and flatly asks, “What’s the good in it?” Jarvis stares at Jimble, his eyes smooth, “glazed by drinking” but unblinking. “The same song and the same singers,” Jarvis says. “We’re not people; we’re just a set of attitudes walking around with logic-locked approaches to everything in life, and thirty phrases locked up in back of our teeth.” On another evening occasion as WWII approached, Jimble’s thoughts on a high balcony before inebriation once again holds sway, are eerily prescient. For his generation and generations to come. I tried to convince myself that I should not get drunk at the hotel, that I should be at home ruining my eyes over ponderous tomes concerning The Really Important Things in Life. I tried to think of one thing I could have learned in four colleges that would be an index to avoid fear of getting drunk or fear of being killed in a war started outside my ken and not touching me in any way. … I tried to think of all my elders had taught me, and I tried to believe that some things were worth dying for, worth being gallant for, or even worth thinking of before sleep. But all my thoughts were flawed; they were all false rabbits and the hounds of belief would not run for them. Jimble and Jarvis and the rest still keep up the proper appearances. “The group of us, locked behind paneled doors and brocade curtains in an eyrie over the streets of Fort Worth, was conscious of knowing how to react conventionally under given situations, and of being a scrubbed and presentable segment continued on page 7

As a first novel by a somewhat immature and confused young man, bewildered by his own task, The Inheritors is a flaming story of a group of over-age adolescents afflicted by their overstimulated instincts, their amorality and a rather stupid, cruel inheritance not of their own making. … Any confidant of young Phillips knows he was deadly earnest, honest and even crusading when he wrote The Inheritors. Thereby, he fell innocently into the trap to ‘tell all.’ The novel suffers from an overextension of candor in several incidents that should have been saved for a privatelyprinted book of limited circulation. America, alas, is hardly mature enough for some of the scenes in The Inheritors, as artfully as they may have been described. From the standpoint of literary merit, The Inheritors reveals a young author with a poetic sense which follows him into the gutter, an insatiable curiosity about life which amounts to obsession, and a rare knack for apt phrases and meaningful words. The Inheritors may be a product of a poet who cannot quite turn realist without being nasty about it. Many contemporary Texas newspapers followed suit. The Feb. 23, 1941 Wichita Falls Times review of The Inheritors panned it “because of the filth it descends to in places.” So, essentially, instead of noting this new, talented Fort Worth writer, Cowtown society dismissed him as a crank, disowned him, and literally attempted (and, for the most part, succeeded) in erasing him from annals of Fort Worth and Texas literary history. Meanwhile, other Fort Worthians began creating and circulating textual keys that identified the real-life characters portrayed in The Inheritors’ pages. Imagine if sales of the book had not been kneecapped. What status might it or its author have achieved in American letters? The general public has a short memory and a limited attention span. Fortunately, writers do not. When George Sessions Perry — National Book Award-winning American novelist, World War II correspondent, and one of the highest paid magazine contributors of his time — put together Roundup Time: A Collection of Southwestern Writers in 1943, he included excerpts from the The Inheritors alongside those of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, continued on page 8

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of country-club Christianity. We were all comforted by the unspoken realization, and so we talked earnestly, said nothing, and drank our drinks.” And, in the end, the main characters — like Phillips’ description of “Mumford,” who “never lost his zest” and “was the nearest thing to a one man revolution” Jimble was “ever privileged to witness” — all futilely tilt their lances at “capitalist windmills.” The book was a brilliant but scandalous marvel in its day, and those portrayed unflatteringly immediately forbade its presence and never forgot its author. Harris, a.k.a. Cavin Jarvis, would show up in Hollywood and get on with Universal Studios shortly after The Inheritors itself was published after actually presenting a volume as part of his resumé. He would go on to act in 19 films under his given name but, after serving in WWII, performed under the name Riley Hill. He appeared in more than 70 Hollywood films altogether and had a steady run on TV classics like The Lone Ranger, Dick Tracy, The Gene Autry Show, and The Range Rider during the early 1950s. He played the apostle John in the 1952 series The Living Bible and spent the rest of the decade playing parts in The Roy Rogers Show, The Cisco Kid, Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, The Adventures of Kit Carson, and Mackenzie’s Raiders. In terms of success and future prospects, The Inheritors would do the opposite for Phillips. The book faced the wrath of Cowtown’s “dollar aristocracy” unbound. They bought up every copy they could find and no doubt dispatched threatening letters to Phillips’ publisher in New York, where Phillips was then living. The book, the volcanic eruption, and the volcano were snuffed out almost immediately, and Fort Worth went back to business as usual. At the time, however, The Inheritors garnered no small amount of praise and accolades outside of Texas. The Dec. 1, 1940 edition of The Baltimore Sun called the book “unadorned and powerful and reminiscent of James Caine [author of The Postman Always Rings Twice (1936) and Double Indemnity (1936)] and the early Hemingway.” The Dec. 23, 1940 edition of The New Republic said the author “writes of the younger Country Club set around Fort Worth with a freshness and ease of a natural talent on the loose,” and the story “has the vitality and conviction of a scandal whispered in the cloakroom about the merrymakers you can glimpse in the ballroom beyond.” The Jan. 19, 1941 review in the Pittsburgh Press calls Phillips’ George Jimble “a rich man’s Studs Lonigan” and issues a warning: “There is danger of taking a book like this too seriously. There is a greater danger in not taking it seriously enough. … There’s some very fine writing to be found.” Back in Fort Worth, however, The Inheritors was relegated to rash petulance and plebian bluster. The dismantling of the book’s import and legacy was practically already complete.

TO ALL INTERESTED PERSONS AND PARTIES: Texas Materials Group, Inc., has applied to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) for renewal of Air Quality Permit No. 48355, which would authorize continued operation of a Hot Mix Asphalt Plant located at 7151 Randol Mill Road, Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas 76120. Additional information concerning this application is contained in the public notice section of this newspaper.

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Before the book was released, the June 15, 1940 Kirkus review of the work was encouraging. “This is a book that will appeal to those who started on [F. Scott] Fitzgerald and followed through to [John] O’Hara [author of Appointment in Samarra and Butterfield 8], and who demand the best in that particular genre. It is even tougher than O’Hara; there’s some of Caine’s sadistic side; it is a full-blooded job, written in a virile, vital prose style which makes a terrific impact.” The Fort Worth Star-Telegram’s Nov. 10, 1940 post-publication review of The Inheritors concedes Phillips’ obvious literary talent, but it concludes with a hardly coincidental — and probably obligatory — hatchet-job.

FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY

Feature

Oliver La Farge’s Laughing Boy, and works by J. Frank Dobie, Katherine Anne Porter, O. Henry, Conrad Richter, and more. All names that appeared repeatedly in readers’ digests and American lit classes for decades to come. Some advocates suggested The Inheritors was an adult version of The Catcher in the Rye a decade before J.D. Salinger’s adolescent classic written for adults, but The Inheritors was edgier and contained more heart and more honesty. A chapter near the end boldly and poignantly chronicles Jimble’s trip with a young society woman to San Antonio for an abortion. It was scandalous in its day — it would probably get them both sued or arrested today. In 1981, A.C. Greene, a widely respected Texas journalist, fiction writer, historian, and book critic, published The Fifty Best Texas Books. The list included the usual suspects, including Coronado’s Children by J. Frank Dobie, Blessed McGill by Bud Shrake, Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter, 13 Days to Glory: The Siege of the Alamo by Lon Tinkle, Hold Autumn in Your Hand by George Sessions Perry, Hound Dog Man by Old Yeller author Fred Gipson, and an unknown, lost classic that hardly anyone had ever heard of: The Inheritors by Philip Atlee. And Greene’s remarks are worth sharing.

In The New Frontier: A Contemporary History of Fort Worth and Tarrant County (2006), Ty Cashion wrote that The Inheritors “rocked Fort Worth society a generation before Grace Metalious’ Peyton Place would cause the blue blood of New Englanders to run cold.” In 2011, Texas author Bill Crider brought it up again, after grabbing The Naked Year, a renamed re-release of The Inheritors published in 1954. Crider called it “excellent writing” and “sort of a hardboiled Gatsby, set in Fort Worth.” Except Fitzgerald’s Gatsby buys into America’s “dollar aristocracy” completely, while Jimble and Jarvis express open contempt for it. In 2019, one day after his death, the Big Bend Sentinel published much-beloved Texas historian and raconteur Lonn Taylor’s investigation into The Inheritors under the title “A Stealth Author from Fort Worth is Revealed” in his theretofore syndicated column, Rambling Boy. Taylor says his story was “two years in the making,” and it took him so long to finish it because he couldn’t find anyone who actually knew James Atlee Phillips.

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This isn’t Cowtown. This is the young social set — carousing driving big cars too fast, going from party to country club to any kind of devilment and eventual crack-ups — physical and mental. It’s an overindulged generation. … The story is well done, and it was told thirty or forty years before its time. Few Texas books have been able to repeat the harsh dismay, the inspired brutality, of The Inheritors.

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The inspiration for one of The Inheritors’ characters, Fort Worthian Roy Lawrence Harris, a.k.a. Riley Hill, appeared in dozens of Hollywood pictures in the 1940s and ’50s.

A 1961 graduate of TCU and actually a former student of the TCU instructor The Inheritors was dedicated to, Lorraine Sherley (whom the Lorraine Sherley Professor of American Literature at TCU is named after), Lonn Taylor was a former historian and director of public programs for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. Here in Texas, he helped curate exhibits for San Antonio’s HemisFair in 1968. In 1970, he became the director of the University of Texas’ Winedale Historical Complex. After that, he served as a curator for the Dallas Historical Society. In 1983, he also served as the guest curator of an exhibit celebrating the American Cowboy for the United States Library of Congress. Lonn Taylor was no lightweight — and even he couldn’t dig up much on Atlee. But hardly could anyone else. As Taylor notes in his piece, “Copies of The Inheritors are as scarce as hen’s teeth.” One of the only known copies around was tucked away in the Fort Worth Central Library’s special collections. And, inside it, someone at some point wrote “Phillips, James Young” under the publisher-printed “Philip Atlee” on the volume’s frontispiece. If you look up the author of The Inheritors on Wikipedia, his name is listed as James Atlee Phillips. As Taylor himself noted, Phillips was a “stealth author.” This was a vast understatement.

James Young Phillips — a.k.a. James Atlee Phillips, a.k.a. Philip Atlee — was born on Jan. 8, 1915, in Fort Worth. His father was a lawyer for members of the River Crest Country Club’s big oil families and made a handsome living. The Phillipses had a big house right off one of the greens of the River Crest Country Club golf course. Edwin Sr. was a member of the law firm of Phillips, Trammell, Chizum and Price. Edwin Sr. was a director of the Farmers and Mechanics National Bank before its merger with the Fort Worth National Bank.

And Edwin Sr. served as the president of the prestigious Fort Worth Club. But in the late summer of 1928, he grew ill and, on Sept. 5, succumbed to pneumonia. Edwin Sr.’s affairs were in order, and his wife, Mary Louise Phillips, and their children — Edwin Jr., James, Olcott, and David — seemed at first to be fairly well provided for, but a little over a year later, the 1929 stock market crash wiped out the family’s savings. Practically destitute, Mary sold what she could from their big house and went to work for the Fort Worth Independent School District. She and her sons were suddenly poor in a mansion in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the nation. If you recognize Mary Louise Phillips’ name, it’s probably because there’s a FWISD elementary school named after her south of I-30 in on the West Side. She worked hard and distinguished herself, and she did the best she could for her boys. Atlee Marie Phillips, James Young Phillips’ grandniece, recently told me that in everything she heard about her granduncle, her granddad, and their brothers, she always sensed that they were profoundly affected by their sudden poverty in a neighborhood of such incredible wealth. “It was really hard on them,” Atlee said. “They tried to keep up appearances, and it was extremely difficult. And then Jim writes this blistering commentary about all of these people.” In a letter to his mother, who was a distant relative of Major Clement R. Attlee, lord privy seal and unofficial deputy prime minister of England at the time (and Winston Churchill’s chief adversary), Phillips shared his thoughts on The Inheritors (which he originally thought of calling “Threadbare Galahad”). The characters are principally composite, but some situations are grounded on fact. I shall, in all possibility, create a tidy little corps of antagonists and it may even be that you will not like what I have done. But remember that I write no line, salacious, embittered or pornographic, that I didn’t write truly. Mrs. Phillips, vacillating between pride in her son’s writing and sympathy for those his sizzling prose offended and those who might criticize or even attempt to ban it, wired him this message: “Everyone will be shocked and no wonder. But Philip Atlee has written the truth about the thank god-small segment of youth which he knew. He writes with a wallop and is going to be a writer.” Or at least that was her son’s plan, and the reviews almost everywhere except home seemed to reinforce his intentions, but the influence of the “dollar aristocracy” he crossed had scope and reach and doused his early aspirations before he got very far. Then WWII intervened. Phillips joined up, and many reports suggest he advanced quickly, first training pilots at Hicks Airfield north of Fort Worth, then serving in Burma and other spots in Southeast Asia. Then he joined the Marine Corps and spent the last two years of WWII

working as the associate editor of The Leatherneck, the Corps’ official magazine. While editing The Leatherneck, he was also getting fiction published in magazines like Collier’s, Argosy, and Blue Book. After the war, Phillips moved to San Miguel de Allende in Mexico and was able to live there comfortably selling a couple of stories a year. When he and his first wife, former model Joyce Clayton — whom he married in 1940 — divorced in 1949, Phillips returned to Burma. He worked for Amphibian Airways during the Burmese civil war and also had a stint at Cathay Pacific Airlines. Many assume Phillips was an intelligence operative during this period (if not before), but this claim has never been substantiated. His brother David, however, would become the head of C.I.A.’s Western Hemisphere Division, and many conspiracy theorists believe he was connected to the JFK assassination. In 1952, Phillips relocated to the Canary Islands and, in 1954, ran into fellow Cowtown native John Graves, author of the Lone Star classic Goodbye to a River (1959) while residing on the main island of Tenerife. Later, in his book Myself and Strangers (2004), Graves wrote that Phillips’ frustration with the reception of The Inheritors had hardly waned. Phillips reportedly told Graves that he’d love “to buy a petty little atom bomb and at cocktail hour one afternoon he’d drop it down the chimney of the men’s bar at River Crest Country Club.” Phillips would go on to dabble in Hollywood, helping to salvage the screenplay for John Wayne’s 1952 film Big Jim McLain (which Phillips later called “simple anticommunist baloney”) and the 1958 film noir Thunder Road, starring Robert Mitchum. Phillips also wrote for projects involving Jane Russell, John Forsythe, and a young Stanley Kubrick. In 1963, he began writing the Joe Gall “Contract” series, the first book of which was The Green Wound (later changed to The Green Wound Contract) but also under the pen name Philip Atlee. The series would include 22 novels and win him an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America in 1970. But perhaps the most important line in the entire series was the first line in the second chapter of The Green Wound: “The story of my life is: ‘He rambled till they had to cut him down.’ ” In 1984, the reclusive Phillips sat for an interview with Francis M. Nevins, an author of six mystery novels and, until recently, a professor at the St. Louis University School of Law. Nevins published the interview in his 2010 book Cornucopia of Crime: Memories and Summations. Phillips doesn’t say much about The Inheritors, but his fierce contrarian intelligence is on full display. The most telling exchange in the interview is initiated by Nevins, who tells Phillips what he liked most about his spy novel writing was the intriguing sense of moral and ethical schizophrenia — that unlike Ian Fleming’s James Bond books, Joe Gall isn’t always shilling for the “good” guys. Phillips’ response harks back to everything we should admire in him. continued on page 9

The first mention of The Inheritors I encountered occurred about 10 years ago. I don’t remember the exact circumstances, but I made note of it. Then I got busy with other things. When I did finally double back, I —

After The Inheritors was buried, Phillips/ Atlee went on to write spy novels, including the Joe Gall series, starting in 1963.

like Lonn Taylor — couldn’t find a copy. I just found a Judy Alter and James Ward Lee chapter on it in their 2002 book Literary Fort Worth, but the entire chapter was basically just Phillips’ take-no-prisoners introduction to The Inheritors — which I shared excerpts from early in this article. Eventually, I became

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Phillips eventually settled in Corpus Christi, where he died on June 2, 1991. His New York Times obituary referred to him as Philip Atlee, and most of the rest called him James Phillips or James Atlee Phillips. They all ignored Phillips’ middle name, which is unfortunate in its own right. The “Young” comes from his maternal grandparents, and his grandmother, Mrs. G.A. Young, known to friends and relatives as “Mother Young,” was active in the women’s suffrage movement and organized women in Houston during one of the first elections in which women were allowed to vote.

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That’s because there was bifurcation in my own temperament. As a writer, I know that if you don’t have the bullshit to keep it moving from page to page, you’re going to lose readers. At the same time, I wasn’t willing to admit to being such an absolute dunce that I didn’t know it was bullshit in the first place. … Gall knew what he had to do but he knew that it was a lot of bullshit, too, and that he was on the wrong side.

and called him by his name. Priscilla also identified Davis to police, saying he had shot her and Farr, disguised only by a wig. Police arrested Cullen Davis that night, at the house he shared with Karen Master, who would later become his third wife. Davis, whose wealth was estimated at $100 million then, was tried for the murder of Andrea but, even with two eyewitnesses, found not guilty. The prosecutor, Tim Curry, was blunt. He said the prosecution was “outbought and out-thought.” The trial of O.J. Simpson — who was not an inheritor — two decades later was a carnival sideshow compared to the Cullen Davis trial, because, at that time, Davis was considered to be the wealthiest American man ever to have stood trial for murder in the United States. Later, in 1985, R.L. Paschal High — by then a little less affluent, a little less well-todo, and a lot less white but still attended by children of the “dollar aristocracy” — produced the Legion of Doom, a group of prominent A-list academic, athletic, and inheritor-like white boys bent on enforcing their privilege and ridding their school of unwanted elements. They vandalized lockers and threatened classmates with guns. They built a homemade bazooka and a gasoline bomb. They denigrated poor kids and homosexuals, pipe-bombed a classmate’s car, and left a gutted cat splayed across another’s steering wheel. But after they were finally caught and charged, they got a slap on the wrist. And many of the families who were

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aware of the copy available at the Fort Worth Central Library and made three trips there to start reading it. Then, again, I got busy with other projects. But The Inheritors struck a chord that never stopped reverberating. How could so few of us know about this book? Class and wealth have always been a big thing in Fort Worth. My father, for example, grew up dirt poor on the south side of town, and he was not terribly welcome when he attended R.H. Paschal High School in the mid-1950s, when it was an institution for wellto-do and/or rich white kids. He and other students from low-income households were reminded of this fact often. In the late summer of 1972, a plotline fit for The Inheritors played out in what is soon to be a new Stonegate real estate development just east of Hulen Street, south of I-30. An intruder entered the former Stonegate mansion of oil tycoon Cullen Davis — one of the inheritors of Hugh Roy Cullen, patriarch of one of biggest oil fortunes in American History. Davis’ former mansion (demolished in late 2021) was then inhabited by his second ex-wife, Priscilla Childers Davis, and the intruder killed her 12-year-old daughter, Andrea Childers, and Priscilla’s former TCU basketball star boyfriend, Stan Farr, and shot Priscilla herself. Priscilla staggered from the house being pursued by the killer just as family friends Beverly Bass and Gus Gavrel Jr. drove up the mansion driveway. The killer shot Gavrel, paralyzing him for life, after Bass identified Cullen Davis as the pursuer

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Feature

part of the local “dollar aristocracy” openly sympathized with these young men who — let’s be honest — ultimately committed acts of domestic terrorism. A copy of The Inheritors popped up on eBay a year or so back, and I gladly overpaid for it. It wasn’t in great condition, but it was worth every penny. I read it immediately, and I was amazed and dumbstruck and immediately otherwise busy again. But the recent antics of Texas State Rep. Matt Krause and chairman of the Texas Legislature’s House General Investigating Committee — who is now running for Tarrant County District Attorney — made me pick The Inheritors up, again, and reread it. Late last year, the Fort Worth Republican forwarded a now infamous letter to a Texas Education Agency official inquiring into 849 books in school libraries around the Lone Star state. The titles Krause focused on address topics ranging from race and racism and sex and sexuality to abortion and reproductive rights and LGBTQ rights. In the letter, Krause wanted to know how much was spent on these books, which allegedly include material “that might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex.” In terms of Republican politics, it was brilliant. GOP leaders are peerlessly adept at making political footballs out of anyone who isn’t white, male, and straight, but if you’ve lived in Fort Worth for a while and know about the “volcanic” eruption here in 1940, Krause looks more like a clumsy, bantamweight amateur than the true heavyweights of old. Because back in the day, if the big boys had a problem with a book, they didn’t wait for a local politician to do something about it. The big boys took care of it themselves. And they didn’t bother with political theatrics or publicity-grabbing threats or bans. They simply made the offending text disappear.

MAR 17-APR 10

MARCH 30 - APRIL 5, 2022

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A play by Jen Silverman

FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY

Play with ﬁre and you might get burned.

GET TICKETS stagewest.org | 817-784-9378

Make reservations for pre--how dining at The Lobby Cafe Stage West 821 West Vickery, Fort Worth 76104

Tue, Apr 1, 6pm Ikebana: e Art of Flower Arranging

First Tuesdays: Unique curated experiences each month

There is no question the “dollar aristocracy” has done some good in Fort Worth. And there’s no way Cowtown would be home to first-class, internationally renowned art museums, a world-class zoo, the Van Cliburn competition, Bass Performance Hall, Amon G. Carter Stadium, Dickies Arena, and more without our super-privileged overlords. But not everything they’ve done has been good any more than everything they achieved was earned, much less good or right. On July 1, 1862, the U.S. Congress enacted a “duty or tax” with respect to certain “legacies or distributive shares arising from personal property” being passed down, either by will or intestacy, from deceased persons to their descendants or heirs. The modern American estate tax was enacted under Section 201 of the Revenue Act of 1916. Section 201 used the

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The Inheritors was renamed and re-released as The Naked Year in 1954.

term “estate” tax, but by the 1940s — just after The Inheritors was published — opponents of the estate tax began calling it a “death tax.” In the 1990s, crafty Republican Newt Gingrich made hay out of this shrewd neologism, and now “inheritance tax” and “estate tax” are practically dirty words, and the fortunes passed down to the inheritor class aren’t really taxed at all. Today, inheritors aren’t just politically connected. Like George W. Bush or Donald Trump, they often go on to run their state or the entire country. Or like Paris Hilton (an heiress of a vast Texan hotelier fortune) or the Kardashian ladies (whose lawyer father or stepfather was one of O.J.’s lawyers), they can have their own TV shows or clothing lines and make millions or billions on top of what they have already inherited. That line above from the Nov. 10, 1940 Star-Telegram lambasting of The Inheritors really sticks out now: “America, alas, is hardly mature enough for some of the scenes in The Inheritors, as artfully as they may have been described.” Sadly, it seems just as true now as it was then. This is America, not old Europe. We don’t have blue bloods. The dollar aristocracy is composed of capitalist green bloods, and if you peel back the red, white, and blue veneer of the United States, that’s what you see. Green. A smarmy green constantly fueled by greed. And whether or not our Cowtown overlords have generally done right or wrong by us in the bigger picture and broader timeline is certainly a subject worth debating, but we were all cheated and disinherited by the local dollar aristocracy’s sabotage and expurgation of The Inheritors and the potential literary legacy of James Young Phillips. And our town and our citizenry remain the worse for it. l

Artspace/tattoo studio Corazon Negro Art Gallery (1416 W Arkansas Ln, Friday Arlington, 817-617-2347) has the laughs. Hosted by comedian Sequina, April Fool’s Smokes and Jokes features comedy sets by Big King, Kim Wadsworth, M-Dot, Olivia Pascal, T-Bone, and Shawn “The Snoman” Kay. This event is BYOB, but vendors will be on hand for food purchases. Tickets are $10 at the door or in advance at Vato Loco Tattoos (916 W Division St, Arlington, 817-617-2347).

“Arlington never has rap concerts — let’s fix that,” said local rapper/promoter Saturday Miles Canady. And so he has. Canady headlines Pastel Fest 8pm12am at The Black Box (215 E Front St, Arlington, @BlackBox215), presented by Pink Hat Gang and Trang Vu Productions. This event also features rappers AASHA2K, Honey Whiskey Jr, Ivy Candy, Jevon Angel, Justin King, and Roman da Fro, plus an opening DJ Set by AJ Bobbitt. The cover charge is $10 at the door.

With our own ArtsGoggle festival happening in late April on the Near Southside, Sunday take a practice run at being an arts-fest attendee at the Deep Ellum Arts Festival 11am-11pm Fri-Sat and 11am-

North Texas is pretty evenly divided geographically between the D and the FW Tuesday when it comes to professional sports. In what I like to call the Eastern Conference (wait, what?), you have the Mavs and the Stars in Dallas. To the west, the Rangers play baseball and the Cowboys do whatever it is they do (something closely resembling football) in the Entertainment District in Arlington. If it’s time for a hockey fix, get the puck to American Airlines Center (2500 Victory Av, 214-467-8277) and watch the Dallas Stars of the actual/non-fictitious Western Conference face off against the New York Islanders at 7:30pm. Tickets start at $24 at Ticketmaster.com.

The Here to Stay Benefit Show featuring artwork, Wednesday clothing, and vegan baked goods available for purchase and live music by Smothered with Aliens Overhead, The Ends, and Gluestick is 7pmmidnight at Tulips FTW (112 St Louis Av, 817-367-9798). This event supports two area nonprofits: community action group Say It With Your Chest TX (@ SayItWithYourChestTX) and LGBTQ Here to Stay (@LGBTQHeretoStay), which unites LGBTQ+ artists and musicians with mutual aid organizations. Tickets are $15 at doors or $10 during presale at Prekindle.com.

By Jennifer Bovee

Promotional Feature No. Underground Cigars owner Don Wiggins did NOT buy the Weekly. He did, however, buy a new building right across the way from his old shop. Stop by the new location (6409 E Lancaster Av, 817-507-3640). “Let us pair you with a great cigar, and come enjoy your new home away from home.” The old adage goes, “It takes one to know one.” When you step into the Underground, you will absolutely know you are in the company of cigar lovers. From the aesthetic to the men and women who grace our door each day, to some of the rarest and most special boutique selections to be found, every aspect of the Underground is designed with one thing in mind-pairing the right cigar with the right cigar experience. You can browse our humidor’s current inventory at UndergroundCigars.com. While they continue the philosophy of keeping things simple and unpretentious, from the lounge that is always being reimagined to best suit your fine cigar needs, to its admittedly-NSFW décor, UG knows that it isn’t just about the space. “It’s about who you share that space with.” Any cigar lover knows how difficult it is to enjoy their cigar in public or link with like-minded aficionados. UG takes great satisfaction in attracting and cultivating one of the best crowds of regulars and patrons from all walks, trades, backgrounds, and creeds. “We believe in family, first, and at the Underground, you’re family. Whether you spend all day here or just stop in for a quick smoke, you’re always welcome and you’re always home.”

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Stone Cold Steve Austin is not here to do your laundry. He’s here for WrestleMania Thursday on Sat-Sun at AT&T Stadium in Arlington. But first, there’s a pre-party in the Stockyards. While there’s no guarantee that his merch people haven’t worked cold-water detergent and rasslin’ stuff into the mix, you’re sure to find plenty of beer swag at Steve Austin’s Badass Broken Skull Bash at 8:30pm at Billy Bob’s Texas (2520 Rodeo Plz, 817-624-7117). This promotional event hosted by El Segundo Brewery (@ ElSegundoBrewingCo) and Broken Skull IPA features entertainment by Austin-based Americana band Reckless Kelly and a special appearance by Steve Austin. Tickets start at $25 at bit.ly/SCBASH.

In celebration of 20 years of Harry Potter at the movies, Alamo Drafthouse Monday Cinema (3220 Town Centre Tr, Denton, 940-441-4233) is doing a 7pm screening of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2, the final film of the franchise. “Closing in on Voldemort’s last Horcruxes, Ron, Harry, and Hermione prepare for an epic final showdown that will see Harry and Voldy finally face-to-face on the battlefield — and may require Harry to make the ultimate sacrifice. The stakes have never been higher, and our heroes have never been more courageous than in this final fight for the future of the wizarding world. A fist pump-inspiring, tearjerking conclusion if there ever was one — and you’ll love every magical minute of it.” This film is 130 minutes and is rated PG-13. Tickets are $10 at Drafthouse.com/DFW.

April Fools!

MARCH 30 - APRIL 5, 2022

LIVING LOCAL

FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY

See Stone Cold Steve Austin at Billy Bob’s Thu.

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NIGHT &DAY

8pm today. This adult-oriented visual and performing arts event is located within the five-block area of the Deep Ellum Cultural District on Main Street from Hall Street to Exposition Avenue and the cross-streets of Elm and Commerce. More than 200 juried decorative and visual artists will commission and sell original works alongside artisans with handcrafted items from various disciplines and food/drinks vendors (so no coolers are allowed). Plus, 100 bands and performers will be entertaining the crowd on six stages and two performance areas. For performer details and a complete festival guide, visit DeepEllumArtsFestival.com.

You Are Invited To Step Inside … Sundance Square’s Plaza is often called the “Living Room of Fort Worth.” So, what better place to showcase Fort Worth and Texas art and music. To be enjoyed from Noon to 7 pm. Plus, the Sundance Stage will feature live Grammy Award winning musicians (TBA soon) in the evenings (8 to 10 pm).

FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY

MARCH 30 - APRIL 5, 2022

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Art Gallery Line Up

Music Line Up Thursday, April 7 Ginny Mac Steve Story Kristyn Harris Kelly Willis Calder Allen TBA: Grammy Headliner

Friday, April 8 Robin Hackett Dustin Welch Jonathan Tyler Jordan Whitmore Bill Carter TBA: Grammy Headliner

Saturday, April 9 Gregory Newman Jazz Quintet Tatiana LadyMay Mayfield John Doe Trio Noel Iverson Orchestra Bukka Allen TBA: Grammy Headliner

Sunday, April 10 Kirill Raskolenko & Alex Hand Squeezebox Bandits Tony Palos Trio UNT Latin Jazz Lab Band Rosie Flores & the Talismen Brasuka Laura Latin

B U C K

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Our society, especially this time of year, spends a boatload of energy focusing on team sports. Our city devotes almost equal intensity to TCU teams and their athletes. Though many Fort Worthians have become acquainted with Brandon Victorian, it’s probably through his magnetic personality rather than his athletic accomplishments — until now. Weightlifting is a term most used by exercisers going to their local gym to throw some iron on a curl bar and start grinding away while staring uncomfortably back into their own eyes in a floor-to-ceiling mirror. Add in some texting combined with flexing, and someone just completed a session of weightlifting. But weightlifting as a sport — or Olympic weightlifting as it’s commonly designated — is a breeding ground for some of the most explosive athletes in the world. These lifters don’t care about biceps. Instead, they’re focused on accumulating the heaviest possible total between two lifts: the snatch and the clean and jerk. For the uninitiated, a snatch is lifting a barbell from the floor to overhead in one synchronous motion. The clean and jerk is similar, but the bar is first lifted from the ground to the shoulders in one motion (clean) and then jumped and pressed from the shoulders to overhead (jerk) afterwards. This type of lifting is featured in the Olympic games and isn’t something that Team USA has thrived in much this century, though many are working diligently to change that, including — possibly — Victorian. In American sports culture, the Olympic lifts are generally something that’s done to increase power output in preparation for other sports. Most high school football players train the power clean, which simply means they’ll lift the weight from the floor to their shoulder without dropping into an ass-to-ankles

squat like a weightlifter will when receiving the bar. That was Victorian’s experience as he had performed the clean only while training for football in high school. Originally hailing from Monroe, Louisiana, the Horned Frog alum didn’t have aspirations of attending TCU until it was suggested as a possible destination by a family friend’s daughter who invited him to join them for a campus visit. Resigned that staying local and attending Louisiana Tech was probably his best option, the three-sport varsity athlete — who didn’t have college athletics aspirations — thought staying close to home would be a good way to keep up with friends and keep college affordable. His visit to our city changed his mind, somewhat, but the undeniable expense of our purple and white private institution still made the decision unrealistic for the pragmatic Victorian, who intended to study engineering. His destination, and consequently his life, changed at the hands of a TCU admissions counselor who suggested he apply for the Gates Millennium Scholarship — an initiative funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation to provide tuition and expenses for outstanding minority students — just to see what would happen. When confirmation of the prestigious scholarship arrived in Victorian’s mailbox, he was still planning to stay local and become a Bulldog — before he was reality-checked by his mother, who wanted to see him move away and take advantage of the tremendous opportunity for a TCU degree without going into debt. “She kind of gave me this death glare,” Victorian recalled. The decision was solidified when the TCU admissions counselor he’d met called him to check in after he was awarded the scholarship. The boot-state transfer quickly settled into campus life and became a well-known facilitator for Frog Camp, the new-student introduction program, and eventually a director of the program

during his senior year. Victorian became so popular on campus that he was nominated for the designation of Mr. TCU during homecoming week of his senior year in 2018 and voted the winner. During his undergraduate, he worked out at the campus recreation center to maintain his fitness in addition to playing intramural sports with friends from the engineering program, but it was during his final year that he became interested in the sport of CrossFit after watching a documentary on Netflix. CrossFit, an evermore prevalent exercise racing sport, incorporates the Olympic lifts of weightlifting into many of their workouts. Victorian was dabbling in the lifts — admittedly learning the form mostly from YouTube videos and recounting high school techniques — and attending CrossFit workouts at various local gyms. One Saturday, he agreed to meet someone for a CrossFit workout, which his partner never showed up for, but afterwards he met a group of people who were seemingly off in the corner doing their own thing: It was the Blue Wave barbell club. Originally housed in a partnership with another gym, Blue Wave Weightlifting now stands independently in a facility northwest of the Camp Bowie traffic circle. The group encouraged Victorian to start training with them, and his numbers — which were already impressive for a beginner — started to climb as his form was refined by the coach and owner, Chris Lofland. Then working for Recaro Aircraft Seating using his electrical engineering degree, Victorian was enjoying the dedicated regime in his new sport when COVID-19 forced all of his training to become remote. Undeterred, a friend with the requisite equipment cleared the way for the aspiring lifter to drill his technique in a garage until closure mandates were lifted. In October 2020, Victorian competed at his first meet in Dallas. His performance qualified him for the state competition

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Victorian recently traveled with a 10-lifter USAW team to a meet in Cuba, in which he secured a bronze medal in the 81kg weight class.

MARCH 30 - APRIL 5, 2022

A weightlifter from Fort Worth just made international noise in Cuba.

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Snatching the Bronze

C o u r t e s y Wa l k e r J a n e P h o t o g r a p h y

STUFF

and eventually nationals, where the newcomer had the third heaviest snatch in his weight category and finished fifth overall. His first competition season proved impressive enough for Victorian to start making bids to travel to international competitions with the USA Weightlifting team (USAW), the first of which was the XL International Tournament, “Manuel Suárez in Memoriam,” in Cárdenas, Cuba, which he had just returned from when we spoke. Competing in the 81kg (178.2lb) weight class, he was able to snatch 138kg (303.6lb) before cleaning and jerking 173kg (380.6lb), the latter of which was a personal best. Mr. TCU’s individual lifts were each fourth best in his weight class, respectively, but his combined total of 311kg (684.2lb) meant he returned with a bronze medal. When asked about his trip, two things stood out: heat and money. It was surprising to hear a native Louisianan and now Texan be overwhelmed by the temperature. Victorian said the lifting venue had no air conditioning and that our harsher than typical winters had not prepared him for the profuse sweating. “You were sweating a lot,” said one of his USAW teammates in a half-joking manner as they returned to their hotel. “We were concerned for your health.” Money — or, more specifically, currency — was also a laughing point from the bronze medalist who was told to be prepared with dollars, euros, and pesos depending on what you were trying to buy and where. “One place we bought espresso from the previous day just stopped taking any money at all, so we had to charge it to our hotel.” After considerable success following a relatively short time training in his sport, naturally I inquired if the Olympics were a possible goal for the 25-year-old engineer. Weightlifting, like many sports, designates its athletes by weight class. Victorian is naturally in the 89kg (195.8lb) class, and an athlete must weigh in below that designation to compete. He worked to get to and now competes in the 81kg class. The Olympic committee generally designates seven classes with names akin to boxing (featherweight, bantamweight, heavyweight, and so on), and the weight ranges for those classes change over time. During the Tokyo Games, Victorian would have been considered a middleweight 73-81kg. The Paris Games in 2024 will consolidate weight classes into only five categories, effectively bumping him into an 89kg class along with correspondingly stronger athletes. Undeterred, Victorian is just enjoying his progression and is planning his training around the American national championships and American open meets through USAW to see where he might fit at the next level. While still somewhat niche, the sport of weightlifting is expanding all the time, and we have a local lifter who’s likely to be wearing a USA patch on his lifting singlet and representing USAW for many years to come. l

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B Y

L A U R I E

J A M E S

For the first several years I wrote about food for the Weekly, fellow columnist Christy Goldfinch served as a gracious mentor to me. During the time she helmed the opinion column Chow, Baby, she had a cadre of Gentle Readers, who suggested various places to visit or dishes to try. She’d go, try the thing, and give feedback via her column that was by turns savvy and savage. I’m not

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The brisket-bonus at Roy Pope is that you can enjoy a nice cab on the patio.

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Roy Pope Grocery & Market, 2300 Merrick Rd, FW. 817-732-2863. 7am-9pm daily. All major credit cards accepted.

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A Gentle Reader is right: Roy Pope’s Saturday slabs are the Reale [cq] deal.

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Brisket Battle

Chow, Baby, and I rarely get emails, so I was delighted when Gentle Reader Mark H. wrote in after my review of Goldee’s Bar-BQ (“Goldee’s Goodies,” Mar. 9). “After the Goldie’s [sic] review, send Laurie James by Roy Pope Grocery on Saturday mornings. Best BBQ there is. Thanks to Chris Reale.” Challenge accepted, Mark. Shortly after the Arlington Heights mainstay store reopened as Roy Pope Grocery & Market last spring, Weekly writer Sue Cheffington wrote, “This may not be your grandfather’s Roy Pope, but that’s a good thing.” When I walked into the sunny, open space that acclaimed chef and local son Lou Lambert (Dutch’s Hamburgers, soonto-be-revamped Paris Café) and owneroperator Chris Reale carved out of what I remembered to be a dark and slightly dusty enclosure, I wasn’t prepared for the change. This is a dadgum fancy bodega, which is what Lambert and Reale intended. On a gloriously warm Saturday when the moody March weather was suitable for al fresco dining, I set out to sample the Reale goods. I hadn’t been to Roy Pope since 2008 or 2009, when I was writing for a Texasbased music magazine. I had the fortune to befriend Leonard Callaway II, one of the most interesting people on the planet. He

Laurie James

EATS & drinks

Roy Pope Grocery & Market Meat and two sides ................................... $19 House cabernet ......................................... $8

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would eventually go on to graduate from Texas A&M University decades after some youthful indiscretions got him shown the door out of College Station, but in 2008 Callaway was managing a bar. Callaway grew up in the Fort, and he was scandalized that I’d never been to Roy Pope, so we went and decided to agree to disagree about the food there. For him, and for many Fort Worth natives, Roy Pope Grocery was a throwback to the time when King Ranch chicken was the best thing for dinner, everyone drank Coors, and nobody made whiskey locally. Callaway died earlier this year. The guy had the biggest heart in the world, and I’m still in shock that it’s not beating anymore. But I’d like to think he would also love the changes at one of his favorite places. The brisket is sold only on Saturdays, purchased by the pound or as part of a meat-and-two plate that runs an astronom-

The brisket at Roy Pope is lovingly tended by owner-operator Chris Reale but is available only Saturdays.

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ical $20. I ordered my lean brisket with its perfect, slightly glistening coat of peppery rub and a good one-eighth inch of cherry smoke ring, along with pinto beans and grilled mixed veggies. I took the plate to the register, where I added a glass of the house cabernet, then took myself outside to the generous covered patio, where a half dozen people were enjoying lunch, brunch, coffee, and goodies. If we’re comparing the two briskets, Reale’s version is prettier than the one at Goldee’s. The delicious rub is slightly less salty at Roy Pope. The lean brisket wasn’t as tender as the fatty point, but it wasn’t chewy. And it didn’t need the robust, tart sauce to dress it up. Roy Pope’s sauce was slightly thicker than Goldee’s and a little clingy and, oddly, had chunks of tomatoes that were a bit unappetizing. The beans were actually vegan (so no brisket debris in the mix) and surprisingly tasty –– more tomatoes and some secret spices packed in the flavor. The veggies came served room temperature, and the carrots, squash, mushrooms, and onions had been roasted until caramelly and slightly sweet. The cab was delightful. The wine smelled like warm plums and was medium fruity with a little bit of bite on the finish. I’m only mentioning this because it’s a luxury to drink a nice glass of wine on a patio in the middle of a Saturday and not have to wait in line for barbecue. As for the free accoutrements –– at Roy Pope, there was no homemade bread. There were some fancy dill spears and a bit of sliced white onion. However, the brisket slices stood alone without the need for any augmentation. And the $20 plate served two: I brought half home to my personal ’cue expert, the Grillmaster, for his opinion. So, Mark H., in answer to your challenge, I liked Reale’s brisket just as much as Goldee’s version. Perhaps more importantly, the ’cue expert in my home agreed with you that it’s better. Should we let the brisket experts at Texas Monthly know? Maybe not. They can get their own Gentle Readers to help with research. l

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The brisket at Roy Pope is as good as Gentle Reader Mark H. says it is.

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MUSIC

Phorids is about to destroy your stereo system as if it were a concert stage. The hardcore quartet known for its blistering live shows has released a bevy of records, starting with two EPs, the six-song EP S/ Tep in 2019, a 2020 single, and a two-track demo on Bandcamp earlier this month, culminating with the yet-to-be-titled album hopefully by early June. Frontman Brad Barker said the group feels like the new tracks are good, strong songs as a band because in the beginning, the musicians were kind of feeling one

APRIL 15 - 17

MAIN AT SOUTH SIDE 3 DAYS | 2 STAGES | 29 BANDS ART | VENDORS

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S T O R Y A N D P H O T O S B Y J U A N R . G O V E A

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Barker (center): “I think we’re coming to be what we always knew we could.”

MARCH 30 - APRIL 5, 2022

With their debut fulllength en route this summer, probably the most blistering hardcore act in town is stepping on the gas.

another out and getting used to one another’s writing styles and influences. “I feel like we’re progressing and getting closer to the sound that we had initially envisioned for this band, rather than straying from our roots and becoming overproduced and out of touch,” Barker said. “As for the guys, I think that they’re generally happy with the songs and feel about the same. … I think we’re coming to be what we always knew we could.” The two demos, recorded DIY-style in drummer Travis Brown’s home studio, reveal the fiery temperament inherent in every Phorid track with a little hattip to the ’80s hardcore scene. One of the tracks is a cover of “Heart Attack Man” off the Beastie Boys’ 1994 album Ill Communication, which itself paid tribute to the trio’s punk phase before turning to hip-hop. For mastering of the new material, Phorids will send it to Rarefaction Mastering in Sacramento, California, and the home of engineer Andrew Byrom, a friend who has mastered all the group’s music thus far. “Everything I’ve done I’ve had mastered by Andrew,” Brown said. “He’s someone who I also bounce a lot of ideas off of to educate myself.” Before joining Phorids, Barker sang

FO R T WO R T H W E E K LY

Phorids to the Floor

Featuring former members of HEATER and Rome Is Burning, Phorids put on quite a show.

THURSDAY

SATURDAY

Music

how we lay the different parts and the influence of lyrics from what’s seen out there,” Barker said, adding that he and Greer have written most of the lyrics. Barker said they don’t try to adopt any stances, just write what they know and feel. “There’s ugly stuff in our world in local heavy rockers Antirad, and Brown played guitar and sang for the underground that people should be angry about, but garage outfit HEATER. The group is without a partisan bent on anything, our rounded out by Shannon Greer, the former band doesn’t want to take a solid political Rome Is Burning guitarist who replied to stance,” Barker said. Phorids said they’re still talking about a Craigslist ad submitted by Barker, and veteran bassist Chris McGill, who’s played trying to expand their reach but don’t have in a few groups in his home state of New any big plans on touring too far outside of Jersey. After moving to Fort Worth a few Texas. “We would love to tour,” Barker years back, he had also replied to the same said, “but being that we’re all older guys Craigslist ad. The Phorids guys are excited for the with good jobs, children, spouses, and album to come out after three solid years of responsibilities, it just really makes it hard. playing local venues like Lola’s Saloon and I think if the right opportunity presented MASS. McGill said that playing hardcore itself, we would jump on it, but it would punk is a way to ignite energy onstage have to be significant. We are hoping to do some smaller, maybe three-day-weekendwhile sharing that energy with the crowd. Phorids’ material sounds a lot like type tours in the near future, and we’ll “first-wave hardcore,” Brown said, and it probably start off with hitting some of the makes sense since the guys are strongly bigger cities in Texas, Austin, Houston, influenced by groups like The Germs, San Antonio.” In the next five years, Barker said Dead Kennedys, early Beastie Boys, and they’re set to keep writing and progressing Black Flag. And like the best hardcore bands of as a band and said they would ideally like yore, Phorids offer a punk take on relatively to have a few more full-lengths under simple, mundane situations (or people). their belt. “We’re at a point now where “Stupid Haircut” is a simple take on a trip we’re really hoping to play some bigger shows locally, opening to the barbershop while for larger touring acts. another track is about We’ll continue to play waiting in line at a Phorids record store on Record the smaller shows, Sat, Apr 16, at Growl Records, Store Day. which we love, but 509 E Abram St, Arlington. $10. “Traditionally, I maybe slightly more 682-252-7639. used to have more time focused.” l to write off a hook and

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continued from page 19

FRIDAY

Hearsay Maybe Now for Bobby Duncan

Contact HearSay at Anthony@FWWeekly.com.

Duncan: “I was enjoying a part of life I hadn’t experienced before. That’s when I started writing the songs that became this album.”

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Cour tesy BobbyDuncanMusic.com

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Who’s your favorite Country Jason? If it’s Aldean, I can’t help you, but if your Country Jason preference leans more toward Boland, Eady, or Isbell, I think you’ll enjoy Bobby Duncan’s new album. Maybe Next Time is the local singersongwriter’s fifth release and fourth studio album, and it is essentially a reflection on trying and failing and finding your way, what Duncan calls his “most honest and personal collection of songs.” Duncan has been playing music professionally since he was 18, putting out his first album, the Walt Wilkinsproduced Lonesome Town, in 2006. In the intervening years, he released two more: Faith Hope and Everything Else in 2009 and, in 2012, Forever from Here, as well as a live album recorded at the dearly departed Live Oak Lounge, released in 2017. Forever from Here, written with longtime writing partner Donovan Dodd, found Duncan trying on a more pop-oriented sound, but he also took stock of the toll 200 shows a year was taking on him. He was on the path to getting married, and the combination of burnout and a new stage of life inspired him to dissolve his band and promote the album as an acoustic artist. Then 10 years went by. According to the press material, some of the material on Maybe Next Time dates back to 2010. Of this time, Duncan said, “I was enjoying a part of life I hadn’t experienced before. That’s when I started writing the

songs that became this album. We got married, started having kids, and the years picked up pace.” And on the title track, Duncan sings, “I’ve been a seeker / I’ve battled faith / I’ve searched for answers and been lost along the way,” and later there’s a lyric about being a gambler who’s “never put it all on the line.” It’s an album that finds a man looking back on where he’s been, wondering how he might have done things differently vis a vis his transition to fatherhood. There’s also an ode to Magnolia Avenue, appropriately titled “Down on the Avenue,” which adds some breezy levity to an introspective collection of songs. “Adding levity” suggests the other songs, by comparison, are veritable dirges, which is not at all the case. The record is, however, one of those works where, for all the feel-good hooks (of which Maybe Next Time has plenty), there’s some real everyday contemplation going on here, the kind of record the non-Aldean Country Jasons excel at. This is not to say that Maybe Next Time is a clone of Something More than Free or whatever, but when a person moves away from one way of living into something else, that shift is inevitably heavy-feeling. Duncan reckons with what it means to leave the “I” time of his life behind in favor of the joy of being a husband and dad, part of a “we.” And singing earnestly and honestly about the ups and downs of moving on to a regular-ass type of life is what makes this record a great listen. — Steve Steward

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CLASSIFIEDS

bulletin board/ public notice

Texas Commission on Environmental Quality

NOTICE OF RECEIPT OF APPLICATION AND INTENT TO OBTAIN AIR PERMIT (NORI) RENEWAL PERMIT NUMBER 48355 APPLICATION. Texas Materials Group, Inc., has applied to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) for renewal of Air Quality Permit Number 48355, which would authorize continued operation of a Hot Mix Asphalt Plant located at 7151 Randol Mill Road, Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas 76120. This link to an electronic map of the site or facility's general location is provided as a public courtesy and not part of the application or notice. For exact location, refer to application. http://www.tceq.texas.gov/assets/public/hb610/index.html?lat=32.783611&lng=-97.203333&zoom=13&type=r. The existing facility is authorized to emit the following air contaminants: carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, organic compounds, particulate matter including particulate matter with diameters of 10 microns or less and 2.5 microns or less and sulfur dioxide. This application was submitted to the TCEQ on February 25, 2022. The application will be available for viewing and copying at the TCEQ central office, TCEQ Dallas/Fort Worth regional office, and the Fort Worth Public Library-East, 6301 Bridge Street, Fort Worth, Tarrant County, Texas beginning the first day of publication of this notice. The facility’s compliance file, if any exists, is available for public review in the Dallas/Fort Worth regional office of the TCEQ.

The deadline to submit a request for a contested case hearing is 15 days after newspaper notice is published. If a request is timely filed, the deadline for requesting a contested case hearing will be extended to 30 days after mailing of the response to comments. If any requests for a contested case hearing are timely filed, the Executive Director will forward the application and any requests for a contested case hearing to the Commissioners for their consideration at a scheduled Commission meeting. Unless the application is directly referred to a contested case hearing, the executive director will mail the response to comments along with notification of Commission meeting to everyone who submitted comments or is on the mailing list for this application. The Commission may only grant a request for a contested case hearing on issues the requestor submitted in their timely comments that were not subsequently withdrawn. If a hearing is granted, the subject of a hearing will be limited to disputed issues of fact or mixed questions of fact and law relating to relevant and material air quality concerns submitted during the comment period. Issues such as property values, noise, traffic safety, and zoning are outside of the Commission’s jurisdiction to address in this proceeding. MAILING LIST. In addition to submitting public comments, you may ask to be placed on a mailing list for this application by sending a request to the Office of the Chief Clerk at the address below. Those on the mailing list will receive copies of future public notices (if any) mailed by the Office of the Chief Clerk for this application. AGENCY CONTACTS AND INFORMATION. Public comments and requests must be submitted either electronically at www14.tceq.texas.gov/epic/eComment/, or in writing to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Office of the Chief Clerk, MC-105, P.O. Box 13087, Austin, Texas 78711-3087. Please be aware that any contact information you provide, including your name, phone number, email address and physical address will become part of the agency’s public record. For more information about this permit application or the permitting process, please call the Public Education Program toll free at 1-800-687-4040. Si desea información en Español, puede llamar al 1-800-687-4040. Further information may also be obtained from Texas Materials Group, Inc., 420 Decker Drive, Irving, Texas 75062-3952 or by calling Mr. Robert Brown, Environmental Manager at (903) 561-1321. Notice Issuance Date: March 4, 2022

SHIPPING/RECEIVING

Position Summary: Verifies and keeps records on incoming and outgoing shipments and prepares items for shipment by performing the following duties. • Clearly and effectively communicate using email and telephone shipping related information to customers, vendors, and co-workers; effective communication skills • Organize and prioritize work orders to meet shipping • Audit work to ensure accuracy and completeness of shipping orders; attention to detail Identify potential delays and/or address immediate shipping delays and provide an effective and timely resolution and/or contingency plan; problem solving • Work independently with limited supervision; self starter Physical Demands and Work Environment: Occasionally exerting up to 70 pounds of force; frequently exerting up to 50 pounds of force; and constantly exerting 10 pounds of force to move objects. Frequent stooping, crouching, reaching, standing, and walking are required. Frequent talking, hearing, and seeing with close visual acuity are required.

CHECK OUR WEBSITE FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THESE POSITIONS Equal Opportunity Employer/Protected Veterans/Individuals with Disabilities

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OPPORTUNITY FOR A CONTESTED CASE HEARING. You may request a contested case hearing if you are a person who may be affected by emissions of air contaminants from the facility. If requesting a contested case hearing, you must submit the following: (1) your name (or for a group or association, an official representative), mailing address, daytime phone number; (2) applicant’s name and permit number; (3) the statement “[I/we] request a contested case hearing;” (4) a specific description of how you would be adversely affected by the application and air emissions from the facility in a way not common to the general public; (5) the location and distance of your property relative to the facility; (6) a description of how you use the property which may be impacted by the facility; and (7) a list of all disputed issues of fact that you submit during the comment period. If the request is made by a group or association, one or more members who have standing to request a hearing must be identified by name and physical address. The interests the group or association seeks to protect must also be identified. You may also submit your proposed adjustments to the application/permit which would satisfy your concerns.

Job Summary: Four day work week! Fit and weld natural gas delivery products built from raw materials according to blue print specifications in accordance with API 1104 certification standards and procedures. • Receive project raw materials and match to corresponding blue prints/drawings • Fit and weld project in accordance to blue print/drawing specification and API 1104 standards • Responsible to maintain production schedule to ensure minimum ‘reworks’ so that product is delivered to the client on time • Accurately maintain required records and documentation for each project as outlined by Fabrication Foreman and/or Manager • Maintain a clean and safe work area • Report any maintenance requirements needed for equipment in your work area timely so that production schedule is not affected • Follow ALL corporate safety requirements and standards including but not limited to welder safety equipment, protective clothing, protective lenses/goggles, steel toed boots, etc. • Safely operate a forklift

MARCH 30 - APRIL 5, 2022

PUBLIC COMMENT. You may submit public comments to the Office of the Chief Clerk at the address below. The TCEQ will consider all public comments in developing a final decision on the application and the executive director will prepare a response those comments. Issues such as property values, noise, traffic safety, and zoning are outside of the TCEQ’s jurisdiction to address in the permit process.

NOW HIRING FOR THE FOLLOWING POSITIONS IN CEDAR HILL, TX ENTRY LEVEL WELDER

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The executive director has determined the application is administratively complete and will conduct a technical review of the application. Information in the application indicates that this permit renewal would not result in an increase in allowable emissions and would not result in the emission of an air contaminant not previously emitted. The TCEQ may act on this application without seeking further public comment or providing an opportunity for a contested case hearing if certain criteria are met.

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Beer & Bible @ Tulips FTW

Can you be queer and be a Christian? This is the question that the newly founded Ark Church is posing. On the 1st and 3rd Wednesdays of the month, they would like to explain why they believe that “yes!” is the resounding answer. On April 6th at 6pm, head to Tulips FTW (112 St. Louis Av, 817-367-9798) for Beer & Bible, the church’s gathering, and drink some pintes while chatting about the Book of Acts. More info at:

Facebook.com/ArkChurchDFW

COWTOWN ROVER

Inspection Almost Due? Are You Road-Trip Ready? With our handy pick-up and drop-off services, having your car checked out could not be easier. Get ready for the holidays. Call today!

THE RIDGLEA is three great venues within one historic Fort Worth landmark. RIDGLEA THEATER has been restored to its authentic allure, recovering unique Spanish-Mediterranean elements. It is ideal for large audiences and special events. RIDGLEA ROOM and RIDGLEA LOUNGE have been making some of their own history, as connected adjuncts to RIDGLEA THEATER, or hosting their own smaller shows and gatherings. More at theRidglea.com

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Medical Technologist sought by Texas Health Huguley Hospital Fort Worth South in Burleston, TX, to perform clinical analytical testing of blood &/or other biological specimens; perform various pre/post analytical work processes; perform a variety of standardized tests including advanced & specialized tests using techniques, lab eqpmt & reports results; perform QC, preventative maintenance & calibrate eqpmt as well as solve eqpmt problems proactively. Reqmts: Bach’s deg (or foreign equiv) in Clinical Lab, Chemical, or Biological Science, or related field. ASCP Certificate. Mail resume to Lauren Pattison at 900 Hope Way, Altamonte Springs, FL 32714.

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