Word: texarkanas
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...everything had been infected by decadence. American journalism has always been inspired more by the Mafia than by the Gray Ladies. Moreover, it has a recurring weakness for the kind of tunnel vision that imagines a glimpse into Plato's Retreat reveals the daydreams of the inhabitants of Texarkana. So it is useful to remember the warp of many impressions of the '70s that have gained currency. Some result from the tendency to mistake the new and exotic for the prevalent and enduring...
Perhaps there is no more consistent conservative in Congress than Texas Republican Senator John Tower, a laconic politician who uses a pithy campaign slogan, HE STANDS FOR TEXAS, and that, son, speaks for itself. On a campaign flight between Texarkana and San Antonio, Tower expressed a sense of vindication at the turn of events: "What is happening is what we said would happen all along. Eventually, Government would get so big that it would become oppressive...
Billboards on the highways leading to town proclaim that Texarkana is TWICE AS NICE because it is two cities in one, but half as nice might be more accurate. An overgrown railroad junction and manufacturing town, it squats on the state line where the north Texas plains lap at the Arkansas hills. State Line Avenue, which divides the two Texarkanas, is a garish neon strip with honky-tonks and liquor outlets on the Arkansas side facing fast-food and, religious book stores on the dry Texas side. The region's wooded terrain makes it an appealing hiding place...
...beleaguered sheriff is Earl Sabo, 48, a onetime security guard and a relative newcomer to Texarkana. His troubles began in 1974 when one of the town's leading attorneys, Harry Friedman, staged a country-music concert in back of a nightclub he owned. Nervous state troopers moved in to make a number of drug and liquor collars; Friedman's son was nailed on a driver's license violation, and Friedman himself for interfering with a police officer. Some troublemakers were tossed into Sabo's jail, and the sheriff could not be located to approve bail...
...speed prosecutions and unclog court congestion. Result: while there were 799 case dispositions and a backlog of 1,149 cases in 1970, by 1976 there were only 587 dispositions and a whopping 2,400 cases pending. Overall, the LEAA cornucopia has pumped more than $2 million into the Texarkana, Texas, criminal justice system. Yet major crimes, numbered at 898 in 1971. jumped...