Up from Potterville

from Longview, Texas "Strange, isn't it? Each man's life touches so many other lives. When he isn't around, he leaves an awful hole." --Clarence to George Bruce Edge remembers the 1994 newscast that announced the opening of a nude tanning salon just down the street. At first it was a little confusing--were they talking about tans-with-no-lines? He frowned to his wife, who was also watching. No, wink wink, the bikini-clad salon employee made it clear that the sunlamps were superfluous. The XTC Tanning salon was selling sexually explicit "lingerie modeling," not sun. Women entertained men--to greater or lesser degrees, depending on the size of the tip--in private tanning rooms. "That's when we knew we had had enough," says Mr. Edge, a retail store owner and a school board member for nine years. "This was in a shopping center with a video store, a baseball card shop. It just wasn't right that it could open up there. It was time for somebody to do something." The Edges came to this Texas oil patch just out of college, drawn by the small-town lifestyle. That lifestyle was changing, and Longview was getting a reputation around the region as a convenient sleaze-stop on Interstate 20. Downtown SOBs--sexually oriented businesses--appeared first, though when the casinos in Shreveport began attracting regular Dallas traffic, such businesses positively sprouted up overnight. The most infamous was the East Texas Chicken Ranch, a club billing itself as an all-nude steak house. The Chicken Ranch was just off the highway and just this side of legal. State law says that alcohol can't be sold in bars where the girls are totally nude, so the Chicken Ranch was a BYOB establishment. Other bars included the Executive Club and the Fox Hunter, regular topless bars. Longview's weak nightclub ordinances and lax enforcement did as much to attract the SOBs as the location, but whatever the reason, nearly a dozen sprang up by the spring of 1994. "It was time for somebody to do something," says Judy Edge, a bright, smiling blonde woman about as big as a whisper. "So the night before the tanning salon opened, we made some hand-lettered signs and we got ready to protest. We laughed about being in college in the '60s and never having done this before. So the next day, we got our camera, our VCR, our lawn chairs, and we went and sat down outside the salon." They began it by themselves, but soon others joined in. That first day, the relatively under-equipped Edges found a sympathizer in the shopping center's owner. He offered them the use of the storefront next door to the tanning salon. And before the couple had been there an hour, an elderly woman drove slowly past and asked what in the world they were up to. "We're protesting!" Judy shouted back. "Well, wait a few minutes and I'll go get a chair and join you," the woman said. Later, the woman, Evelyn Scott, would help found Citizens Against Pornography in Texas (CAP-IT) and help organize more than 200 volunteers from 29 area churches. Soon a canopy was loaned to the group, as the Texas temperatures began to rise. Then floor fans. And food--so much food, coming from well-wishers and local businesses and bakers, that "we're still trying to get rid of some of the weight we gained then" admitted Mrs. Edge with a smile. "Maybe we should have had an exercise bike out there too, I don't know." The protests became social events; the Edges' two sons, ages 19 and 14, and other youths from area churches began bringing their dates to the protests on Saturday nights for dominos and fellowship. Bruce admits the campaigns might have hurt his business a little (the family owns two Morrow's Nut Houses, both in area malls), but the friendships that we forged during that summer still survive. Almost weekly, he adds, shoppers stop in the stores and thank him for getting involved. "You see, George, you were not there to stop Mr. Gower from putting poison into the capsules . . ." --Clarence Potterville is more than what might have been in Bedford Falls; it's the natural result of a community that doesn't care. "These kinds of businesses are usually the first wedge for the elements of disorder," says criminologist Andrew Peyton Thomas, who serves as deputy counsel to the governor of Arizona. "In the short term, they contribute to high crime rates, of course, and in the long run they help break up families. I think it's great that a town has seen the danger for what it is, and is resorting to a sort of rough justice and running these guys out of town." The Old West metaphor holds; while vigilantism in the past has meant people enforcing the law without the sanction of government, the CAP-IT protesters were enforcing community standards while a court-hobbled civil government stood by. Throughout the long summer of protests and confrontations, Gregg County Sheriff Bobby Weaver watched community members do what he couldn't do. "It wasn't that we were unaware of these clubs before the protests," he drawled. "We'd made some arrests before, but to be honest, offenses of that type don't always have a high priority with prosecutors and judges." But CAP-IT forced the issue. Suddenly, it was good politics to prosecute and punish the offending clubs, dancers, and patrons. SOBs have an undeniable effect on a community, Sheriff Weaver concurs: "You spend a disproportionate amount of time in areas where you have them, you have increased numbers of calls for service, you generally have narcotics and sex crimes that go along. What it means is that someone's neighborhood isn't being patrolled because I've had to spend my resources there." Nationally, there's growing recognition that these so-called victimless crimes actually do hurt people. Cities such as Los Angeles are starting to publish the names of men arrested in prostitution "sting" operations, and after a long, bitter fight in City Council chambers, the city of Dallas enacted a "Dance Hall Ordinance" to firm up the state's toothless sexually oriented business statutes. "You can't hide in a little town like this . . ." --Mr. Potter to George It's the cockroach effect, says Bruce Edge: Turn on the lights and watch 'em scurry for cover. Cameras--still and video--have proven to be the most effective weapon against SOBs. "That goes against the notion that there's nothing wrong with these places, that no one gets hurt, so it's okay," says Mr. Edge, the son of a Baptist minister. "You can videotape me going to the grocery store, or to the gas station, no problem. I'm not ashamed of those things. But when you put a camera outside a sexually oriented business, you start scaring away customers." Shame works. The Edges began collecting information on customers and XTC employees, such as license plates, the make of their vehicles. They had a friend in law enforcement run the plates for them, so they had names and addresses. The threat was there: Postcards could be mailed out, wives could be called, or names could be published in the newspaper. "There were a few minor confrontations," said Mrs. Edge. "One man said he would call his lawyer. We offered to let him use our cell phone." Actually, the confrontations were frequent and often ugly. There was verbal abuse from employees, then obscene gestures from passersby. "We refused to be intimidated," Mrs. Edge said. "We just tried to keep a sense of humor about things, and stick with it." That's why the women who spent the most time at the protest site made cardboard score cards. They had been regularly "flashed" and "mooned," but when they started issuing ratings (-2, -4, sometimes a -6 for those obviously in need of a real tanning salon), that practice ceased rather quickly. And on a few occasions, angered men approached the protesters seemingly with malice on their minds--but by this time, Judy's rapport with the employees of XTC was so good that a bouncer at the tanning salon ran out with a baseball bat, ready to defend Judy and the others. "It takes a lot of character to leave your home town, start all over again. Here, you're broke, aren't you? Consider this a loan. That's my business, building and loan. Besides, you'll get a job. Good luck to you." --George to Violet Bick Their friends in the community seemed to have an institutional instinct that food can help turn hearts around, Mrs. Edge said. If the protesters were truly at the salon out of concern for their community, then that concern didn't stop at XTC's door. "We had more food there than we could eat, and we were looking for a way to convince the employees that we really did care about them. So we began bringing them some of the cakes and pies and sodas that people dropped off with us. At first they refused everything. But then one hot day, we had homemade ice cream, and they couldn't turn that down. That's when they started seeing us as something other than adversaries." A day or so later, Judy arrived at the site in time to set up shop but was having trouble handling the large canopy tent. So she marched into the tanning salon and went to "the boy who cussed me most" and asked for help. He stared at her in disbelief, but he seemed unable to turn down a request made so politely and boldly. "He came outside, helped me put it up, then went back inside," she recalls. "He never said a word. But from then on, he greeted me. Then he started talking a little. And then we became friends." But CAP-IT's real commitment was tested late one summer night when a woman who worked at the salon called the Edges at home, asking for help. She was at a local motel, she said, and wanted to talk. "Think about the setup possibilities!" exclaimed Mr. Edge. "A photo of me going into a motel room with a woman? But we couldn't say no. So two other men went with me, and we found her in that room, desperate. She was with her two children, they were broke, and she was estranged from her parents." Bruce took care of her immediate needs, and another CAP-IT member found the woman a job, doing medical testing for an insurance firm. That woman is now back with her parents, and she still keeps in touch with the Edges. They say she's served as a go-between to convince other dancers and employees that these Christians are sincere in their concern. Clarence: "Your lip's bleeding, George." George: "Yeah; I got a bust in the jaw in answer to a prayer a little bit ago." At times, CAP-IT's campaigns became difficult, and even dangerous. It's a constant war of wills against the club owners and workers. When Judy and Bruce Edge, along with other CAP-IT members, moved their signs and cameras to the Chicken Ranch, they faced a different kind of fight. There was no friendly storefront with air conditioning, electricity, and restrooms. There was just a vacant lot next door to the club, off a highway, away from civilization. The XTC protests resembled a camp meeting or a family reunion, with pitchers of tea and tables of dominos, but the Chicken Ranch campaign at times resembled a street fight. Judy was injured when workers put up a fence in an effort to screen the Chicken Ranch customers from CAP-IT's cameras. A worker set an auger bit on her foot, threatening to start drilling if she didn't move. She was on her side of the property line, she says, so she didn't budge until the machine was started. She pulled her foot away in time, but the bit hit her leg. That worker was later arrested for assault. Several times, gunshots were fired over the heads of the protesters. Most of the time, though, the obstacles were more annoying than dangerous. The manager of the Chicken Ranch had a brainstorm and decided to water his grass, and while he was at it, the grass on the lot next door. Protesters brought umbrellas and rain slickers, but kept taking pictures. Signs were added to the arsenal--"Real Men Don't Have to Pay For It" read one that seemed to inspire a few "turnarounds" (cars that drive up, see the protesters, then drive away for fear of being named publicly as a customer). That brings up a good point, Judy adds: CAP-IT never had to publish the names. The threat was enough. However, the names and license-plate numbers did do some good. Several times, the protesters saw obviously drunk patrons drive away; they were able to notify the police and give a description of the cars, the plates, and the drivers. And one afternoon, a distraught older woman drove up, got out of her car, and asked if a certain man had ever been in. Judy looked up the name, confirmed that he had, and the woman thanked her and left. The next evening, that same woman drove up to the Chicken Ranch, walked in, then emerged a few seconds later dragging a man by his shirt. Judy could hear her berating her son for leaving his wife and newborn baby at home, to come and drink and watch naked women with his buddies. "Kinda hard to live that one down to the guys, I guess," Judy grins. "You know, George, I feel in a small way, we are doing something important." --Peter Bailey to George Shame does work. Bruce Edge's instincts were correct. Politics and governance aside, economics are what drove the XTC Tanning Salon, the East Texas Chicken Ranch, and most of the other SOBs out of business. In the 59 days that XTC was open, only 27 customers braved the cameras for the advertised "lingerie show"/tanning session. During the last days of the salon, owner Andy Anderson told customers to drive up to the Chicken Ranch, and his limo would drive them the three miles to the salon--he promised them anonymity. What they got was a paper bag to put over their heads as they stumbled from the smoky limo to the salon. Only four customers took him up on his offer. When the salon finally closed, CAP-IT members lent a hand packing boxes and loading furniture into a U-Haul truck. Protesters quoted Scripture and had a barbecue, while former XTC employees told the newspaper that they were going to miss the protesters and their kindness. "I definitely will be back to [visit] this town," said business manager Chris Miller. "I know they are all praying for me." The Chicken Ranch, out on the highway, lasted longer, but it, too, was closed because it just became too expensive to fight the bad publicity, the bad feelings in the community, and the stepped-up law enforcement this campaign engendered. Observant protesters reported various health code violations to the county, and officials (elected, by the way) slapped the Chicken Ranch with fines of more than $50,000. A co-owner was actually put in jail for a few days, charged with contempt of court for not installing a better septic system. The protests began more than two years ago, but people still approach Bruce and Judy Edge in grocery stores and at their retail shop. They thank the couple for caring, for organizing the protests, for not giving up. For Judy, CAP-IT remains a full-time work; she's helped residents of Kilgore and Texarkana (Texas) rid themselves of sexually oriented businesses, and she's now working with state legislators on cleaning up the state's often-contradictory laws about nightclubs and nudity. "I'm glad to know you, George Bailey . . ." --Violet