Ed Clark, Christmas Guest

December 28, 2016

Maybe non-Texans younger than a certain age have no idea who they are looking at in this photo.

Here's a hint:  

Here is the same man directly behind President Johnson's right shoulder outside the Australian War Memorial in Canberra.

Still stumped?

Then you may not be ready to understand why Davis named his Best Christmas Present Ever! after him.

Apparently, this is what every man wants (and coincidentally,what we gave Davis this year):

According to Davis's self report, this is a better gift than a kayak, an electric piano, a new interview suit (last year--and it worked!), or any of those other Must Have! gifts that I tracked down and procured over the years.

The key to complete happiness was finding the perfect name.  Suggestions poured in:  Jeeves, Roomie, Alfred.  These just didn't ring true.

Then, I thought of the man our friend Walter Hall called, The Fixer, Ed Clark.  I thought that was his own personal pet name for his long time compadre, who, by the way returned the nickname favor by calling Walter Hall, The Little Loan Shark (which I always thought was sort of a funny thing to call one of the only solvent liberal Texas bankers I had ever met).

Anyway, I went looking for a photo of Ed Clark and discovered that The Fixer was what A LOT of people called him, as you can read in this Texas Monthly article published a couple of months after his death:  "Death of a Fixer".  

So now you know.  For half a century, in Texas, if you needed something done or if you had a mess to clean up: 

 He got things done, usually without leaving so much as a fingerprint. If you were Governor Jimmy Allred in 1935 and you needed someone to massage a few recalcitrant anti-New Deal state legislators, you called on your chief political adviser, Ed Clark. If you owned a chain of stores and needed to get the Office of Price Administration off your back in 1943, you contacted attorney Ed Clark, who would then use his influence to see that a crony was hired in the OPA’s Austin branch. And if you were Lyndon Johnson and you needed any number of things—money from Brown and Root, votes in Duval County, an endorsement from an East Texas newspaper—then Ed Clark was the man to call.

Now Davis and his Lyndon has what everyone needs, A Fixer.  And I have been the lucky recipient of multiple test runs and my house is officially roomba'd.

Seven second demonstration.

I'm so glad Ed Clark came to my house for Christmas.