
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 12, 1990                   TAG: 9003122992
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Ed Shamy
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

WHO WANTS TO TAILGATE RV TOWN?

Recreational vehicles are fine and I have nothing against them, as long as they stay out of my face. I don't want to drive behind them on the Blue Ridge Parkway and I don't want to see them when I'm camping, and I consider them a blight on the American landscape. Otherwise, they're great.

To think there is a city in this country that embraces these road-hogging, forest-fouling vehicles is beyond the scope of human imagination.

Welcome to Brownsville, Texas, the nation's 174th-largest city. Brownsville loves RVs, lures RVs, considers RVs an industry.

Brownsville proudly boasts 44 RV parks (daily LP gas delivery available) with 3,500 sites.

Well, I live in Roanoke, the 175th-largest city in the country, according to the Bureau of the Census. My bile churns at the thought of being a few heads smaller than RV-town, U.S.A.

We must surpass Brownsville in the coming census.

Brownsville is on the Mexican border just inland from the Gulf of Mexico. There are groves of pink-grapefruit trees and thick RV orchards ripe with northern retirees wintering along the Rio Grande.

Across the river is Matamoros, Mexico. Each February the twin cities celebrate Charro Days, a celebration of RV heritage, jalapeno peppers and folk dances. The gala begins when the mayors of Brownsville and Matamoros stand on their respective shores of the river and shout at each other.

That is the truth.

Of course, what with the pounding they take from hurricanes on the gulf and stray Sandinista mortar shells lobbed from nearby Nicaragua, the mayors deserve an occasional holler.

Baldemar Alaniz knows that. He's the mayor of Port Isabel, just outside Brownsville.

Alaniz is running for county judge in tomorrow's primary in Cameron County, Texas. A county judge in Texas is the equivalent of a county supervisor in Virginia. I am not sure what they call real judges in Texas, or if they have them at all.

Candidate Alaniz is the same guy who just last month publicly apologized for dragging a man through a parking lot and forcing him to bark like a dog.

Clearly, he is a charismatic man with the type of strong leadership we need from our county judges.

Politics are clean and fair in Brownsville, a place that has some problems with aquatic Mexicans and Central Americans who swim or slosh across the Rio Grande into the Estados Unidos.

The major issues: Unemployment is about 12 percent, homelessness is rampant, and the main street is called Boca Chica Boulevard - Small Mouth Street.

What's a civic leader to do? Logico. If you're a Brownsville city commissioner, you install a phone in your auto and charge the city. Calls expensive? Let the city pay. Three out of five commissioners tightened their belts and went along with the scheme.

Sleazy? Sure.

What do you expect from a city that revels in RVs? Statesmen?

We must pass Brownsville in the 1990 census. Please, Roanokers. Adopt a child or two. Let an out-of-town friend crash on your sofa on census day.

We must seize the 174th spot from Brownsville.

by CNB