A Document On A Courthouse Wall Beats A Statue
The statue stands on the north side of a courthouse square in a Texas county seat. A man in bronze on a granite plinth, with his name, two dates, and one word cut underneath. I have crossed that square a good many times and I have never once seen anybody stop in front of it. Inside the same building, on the corridor wall between the tax office and the district clerk, there is a bronze panel carrying the full text of the order the commissioners signed when the county was organized. People stop at that one. They stop because there is something on it to read. People who know me as Rosser Newton, an investor who spends his working life in Texas energy, are sometimes surprised to find me in a county record room on a Tuesday morning. I arrived at those rooms through the writing rather than through the business. What the habit taught me has less to do with records than with public memory. Why A Statue Settles An Argument And A Document Starts One A statue is a conclusion. Somebody d...