Committees were assigned, for example, to investigate the feasibility of hiring a policeman to ride through the addition at night and keep the streets clear of parked cars, to draw up a resolution to be sent to nearby airports protesting low-flying airplanes over the addition, to consider support of a group trying to get legislation for removal of signboards along highways, to draft a strong complaint that buses were speeding through Southampton. As Christmas drew near in a waning year of the Depression, residents were asked to bring canned milk and canned tomatoes to the club's monthly meeting for distribution to poor families. They appointed a committee to investigate complaints of poor drainage on Rice Boulevard in rainy times, and of too much shell dust from the new Rice Institute parking lot in dry times. They voted to change meeting dates to the second Monday in each month to avoid a conflict with the Houston Symphony Orchestra's concert schedule. Clearly the Southampton Civic Club had become in ten years a social group that scolded erring neighbors in a voice heavy with gastro-cultural undertones.
Tougher tests lay ahead.