Sunday, April 28, 1996

Temple Dickson, Maestro of the Rocks, hasn't slowed down

By KEN ELLSWORTH
Staff Writer

SWEETWATER - Former state senator Temple Dickson has been on the back of a horse since breakfast.

Spurs still ride on the back of his boots as he sits down to lunch at his 69 Ranch 20 miles south of Sweetwater.

"At least I think I was on horseback all morning. If I wasn't, I sure feel like I was," Dickson says in response to a question.

Four men who also wear spurs and jeans sit down familiarly with Dickson at a narrow, window-facing table. Plates are laden with steaks, beans, potatoes, biscuit, and the apple pie that Kathy Dickson, his wife, has spent the morning preparing.

Through the wide, ranch house window, a portion of the hundreds of yards of limestone fences that Dickson has spent years erecting can be seen curving through the property.

"(Building) those fences is what keeps me out of trouble," Dixon says.

Also out the window, dozens of finches flutter to a feeder that swings wildly in the West Texas wind.

"Oh, Temple feeds all the birds," Kathy Dickson says.

The men at the table, including the gray-bearded and relaxed Dickson, have spent the morning working cattle. They eat heartily and gladly tell stories, laughing loudly and without inhibitions.

Tales are told of cowboys getting thrown by recalcitrant horses. Another story is told about a seasoned ranch hand shying away from a rope that is placed just so to look like a rattlesnake.

Twenty-two-year 69 Ranch manager Rex George tells of the time years ago that he placed turtle eggs in one of Dickson's bluebird houses. He had hoped, he says, that Dickson would run to his bird books to try figure out what sort of bird had laid those particular eggs. The prank had been disrupted, however, when one of Dickson's young daughters, not understanding the prank, innocently let her dad in on the joke.

"I could just imagine Temple looking through his bird books trying to find those eggs," George says while everybody, including Dickson, laughs.

Dickson, a biscuit in hand, says he had just learned something interesting in a book he had been reading about the explorers Lewis and Clark.

"Yes," he says, according to the book, "Indians used to cut (castrate) their stud horses."
George says, "I'd often wondered about that myself. Of course, it would have been something trying to control those horses if they hadn't."

There is also talk of sheep-worming chemicals, rabid skunks, whether the dead animal down the road was a javelina or something else, and the recent deep, life-renewing snow.

One subject does not merit conversation.

There is no mention of politics, even in this election year.

Dickson, 61, once had lofty political ambitions. As his father before him, he had been a state representative. He served from 1965-71 as state representative. In 1988, Dickson defeated the politically powerful Grant Jones and became a state senator.

Maybe, Dickson hinted in a newspaper article at the time, some sort of statewide office was within his reach.

Those ambitions were brought to an end when he was defeated in the 1992 state Senate Democratic primary race by current state Sen. Bill Sims, who will retire this year. A federal court in 1992 had ruled in favor of a redistricting plan that hurt Dickson's election chances.

"The court took my damn district. I still bitterly resent that damn court," Dickson says, but adds that it did not matter. He was through with running for office.

"I'm just a citizen," he says. "It is neither deep as a well or as wide as a barn door, but will suffice," he added, loosely quoting Shakespeare.

He says his primary loss to Sims may have, ironically, saved his life.

Shortly after the loss to Sims, a small, malignant tumor was discovered in Dickson's right lung. Dickson, then a smoker, said had he won the primary he would have been too busy running for office to pay attention to his symptoms.

Surgery in 1993 for the small tumor was successful.

"But only because they caught it so early," Dickson says. "And so far, so good."

Dickson, an alcoholic who has not had a drink in 23 years, says quitting smoking was far more difficult than stopping his drinking. He has become an activist against the tobacco industry and is a charter member of the Tobacco Education Project, an association dedicated to the support of and election of legislators who are anti-tobacco.

"I have never engaged in a more important effort. Please help today. There is nobody else but you and I," Dickson wrote in a February mailing that asked for contributions for the association.
But that's as far as he goes politically, he says.

The real reason he ran for office in 1988, he jokes, was that, "The dogs had died and the kids had graduated."

But there remains, on occasion, the itch to participate in the Legislature, he admits.

"I've been imbued with it by my daddy and granddaddy before him. And sometimes something comes up and I'd sure like to have something to say on it and there have been several issues that I would like to have a vote on," he says. "But it's not even close. It's not enough to make me want to go back to Austin."

Sitting on his porch, Dickson reflects again.

"Politics is a hard game ... a young man's game. You're doing something every night and every day. You work hard in a pressure cooker, night and day."

That game, he says with a smile, might even be hazardous to one's health.
"After all, I got lung cancer and Sims had a stroke," he quips.

Dickson now divides his time between his Sweetwater law practice and the ranch.

Politically, he is unwilling even to endorse candidates.

"If somebody asks, I'll give them my opinion," he says. "People don't much want anybody telling them how to vote, but I do support my friends."

Now, Dickson savors his less hectic life.
"I'm doing some things I wouldn't have had time for," he says. "I'm learning the land, smelling the flowers, and identifying the flowers."

He has become, he says, more and more a conservationist and environmentalist.

"We try to use as few chemicals on the ranch as we can," he says. "We're not chemical free, but we do the best we can."

Kathy Dickson, too, is mindful of nature. She owns a small shop in Sweetwater, which is open Fridays only, where she specializes in ordering environmentally safe garden products for clients.
Dickson, himself, has become a lover of trees.

"I used to kill a lot of trees, but not anymore. Especially big trees," he says. "If there is any rationale to save them, I do it."

A big mesquite in his yard bears testimony. Dickson has propped up the tree's old and weakened limbs.

In addition to birds, Dickson also feeds deer and smaller mammals just outside his glassed-in den, which he calls a "blind." In the den, Dickson treats himself to classical and country music, and watches the wildlife. He says he is occasionally a casual observer of the night sky.

Dickson has time now for reading. His shelves contain good books, including several volumes of Shakespeare.

"Shakespeare said everything there was to say, and he said it better than anyone else," he says.
There is also time for Kathy and Temple Dickson to spend with the families of their four grown daughters. The Dicksons are considering expanding their home, which is too small for family gatherings, Kathy says.

The oddest, and possibly most compelling, of Dickson's activities is his continual construction of the rock fences that meander throughout the open spaces near the house and keep him, as he says, out of trouble.

"Temple's got an artist's eye," Kathy Dickson says as she talks about the fences while cleaning up after lunch.

Later she looks down a line of stone that curves in and out and runs downhill to a little well-kept ranch park and says, "I just think that is so pretty the way that he has made it (the fence) turn."
The rock walls run everywhere, but are purely aesthetic, keeping no creatures in or out.

"They do not open or close," Dickson says.

He says he has never measured the combined length of his rock fences. But to the casual observer the fences, which are more than three feet high and two feet wide, appear to wind at least half a mile.
They represent 15 years of labor, Dickson says.
The work will go on.

"You kind of get hooked on it," he says. "I can't stop building fences. I'm the maestro of the rocks."