Word: homespun
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...innovations, the state fair is too rooted in traditional carnival tackiness ever to change appreciably. Yet in these volatile days, any sort of permanence, even homespun vulgarity, has a stabilizing effect. So it is momentarily comforting to go home again and rediscover this preposterous adobe Oz, where benevolent witches primp their flocks with hot combs, and happy little people fly giddily about on magic Caterpillars and Black Widows, and raspy wizards chant tall, dark tales of the Alligator Lady who crawls on her belly like a reptile. Ah, yes, the State Fair of Texas still has the power to charm...
...flurry of investigations into the career of Illinois' Mr. Downstate Democrat. Powell served 30 years in the state legislature before becoming secretary of state, including three terms as speaker of the house and four terms as minority leader of the assembly. He was an orator given to ungrammatical homespun anecdotes and a campaigner whose baby-kissing forays through county fairs belied his statehouse reputation as a master of patronage. His annual "flower fund" was required charity for all Powell appointees, and with 2,000 patronage jobs at his disposal during his five-year term as secretary of state...
Died. Herb Shriner, 51, low-key comic, whose homespun, Will Rogers-like style entertained a generation of Americans; with his wife Eileen when their car left the road and hit a tree while they were returning from a nightclub date; in Delray Beach, Fla. Shriner broke into vaudeville in the '30s with a routine that combined the harmonica and wry, sly jokes about life back home in Indiana. ("I came from a small town. Well, I'll give you an idea of the size of it. It was between the first and second signs of a Burma Shave...
Died. Ralph E. Flanders, 89, former U.S. Senator from Vermont, from 1946 to 1958, and a leader in the fight against Joe McCarthy; of heart disease; in Springfield, Vt. More than once lawmakers chuckled at the homespun Flanders, who occasionally voted "yes or no-as the case may be" on Senate motions and once upbraided Ike for relaxing tariffs on imported clothespins. But there was no laughter in 1954 when he risked his career by becoming the first Republican to challenge the feared Wisconsin Senator. Charging that he belonged to "a one-man party whose name is McCarthyism," Flanders introduced...
...University of Texas, wears tailored three-button suits and adopts a low-keyed, tutorial tone with his players. "When he explains something," says Quarterback James Street, "it's like getting a lecture from a professor." Royal also likes to bring his charges down to earth with such occasional homespun homilies as: "There ain't a hoss alive that can't be rode, and there ain't a man alive who can't be throw...