Hr. 5. Ayres,
Eat tie" "cuse,
Mobile, Alabama.
Dear Barrel: -
V’a returned from the Valley Saturday night about 10:30. I am enclosing you a few of the clippings.' Haven't had time today to look thru all'the papers but they certainly gave us a royal welcome on our entire trip. * The only fall-down in the program was that we stayed at Falfurrias the first night and there cams up a storn next morning about 4 o'clock. V/e left Falfurrias at 7:15 u.rn. in the rain ana the ainu was blov/ing so hard that it looked as if there night be daryor of ic turning the car over.
V.'w jot out of the one storm before we jot to the Brooks-Hidalgc county line but by that time we began to jet to the point where the rain was heavier. They had about a six inch rain from there bo San Juan. Fortunately the entire road is near! 5 c mpl ited across the sand. There were nine miles on the lower end that had a big pile of brush every fifty feet. I could climb about two-thirds of the brush piles with the car, but one-third of them were trees that I didn't ware tackle, sc I had the three fellows puli tress out of the road, ar.d we got over the nine miles in about two hours. This threw us behind time of course. We were due ar Harlingen at 13 and got there at 3:50.
I telephoned ahead and got them to go ahead with the dinner party and postponed the mass meeting from-2:15 so 3;30, and they arranged for the fun Benito people to come over there ana joint them so we could jvajp from Harlingen to Brownsville, ft the night meeting in Brownsville in the chamber of Commerce every available inch of space was taken, including standing room arouna the wails, and the outer office was full of people. The interest was fine. On our return there were about 200 at LaFeria, ever 300 at Barcodes, and all the other towns along the line had good crowds.
He had about 250 at HcAller.ond would have had more only it seems that Secretary Lewis tried to si op'1 the game or didn't carry out his part of the program. I found that oneiof the members of the board of directors of the Chamber of Commerce was an cla time friend of mine and used to work for me. I just tola aim what I thought of Hr. Lewis as a commercial secretary and he advised me that he felt just like I did. Ed Bentley is President of the Chamber of Commerce and Ed also exprassihimself the same way. At 3 o'clock that afternoon the board cf directors had Hoy Hardin, secretary at .ission, come over and they hired him away from Mission. Hr. Lewis 'was out of town and I guess he is looking for another job by this time. In a way this seems like rather harsh methods but I am going to have an organization in aach one cf those towns if I have to import someone to organize it and be members of it. I will be awfully badly fooled if I don't orga. iza Mercedes as scon as I can get back to them.
I am just in receipt of your letter of the 31st. Note what ycu say and appreciate your confidence in me, and I don't want to jump the game but I can't afford to fool along with this proposition in this shape. The Association owes me a hundred dollars from last month and vl75 for this month, making 0375., besides some expense money. So ycu
San Antonio, Texas. Ami’ll 3rd, 1923