TEXAS: Rustle in Bug Tussle

It is the accepted observation in Texas—whereobservations are made at the drop of a Stetson—that all you need to stir up a devil-duster is a little bit of wind. The wind started to blow when Dallas Morning News Columnist Frank X. Tolbert allowed as how it was curious that Denison-born Dwight D. Eisenhower had given Tyler as his birthplace when he enrolled at West Point.

Instantly the denizens of Denison (pop. 19,984) leaped into a bipartisan fury, charging that Ike indeed was born in Denison and was so registered in the county records. Not so reckoned one Paul Bunting of Tyler (pop. 51,540): Ike’s father bought a home in Tyler when Ike was 11 months old, and if it is true, as Ike’s mother has said, that she “carried” Ike in Tyler, why then he “might” have been born there. From a rancher came a letter insisting that Ike came from Commerce, Texas (pop. 6,200). Then the word rustled out of Bug Tussle (pop. 10), 35 miles north of Commerce, that one elderly Bug Tussler had known the Eisenhower family there “in the old days.” At West Point, officials dug into the archives, came up with the incontrovertible word: Ike did indeed give his birthplace as Denison.