The Nome daily nugget., 1935-04-01

1 hold everybody in town, as a warn ing" is local saying.
 Through the suburbs you meet more groups coming to work. In a flower garden a sandal-footed man is setting out young plants to make fancy pattern of birds and flags. Workers in Clay. From the tail of his big black dog, asleep beside him, an old In. dian artist plucks a few hairs, twists them deftly into his tiny, frayed brush, and resumes painting eyebrows on a clay head of Rancho Villa, master outlaw.
 Other heads, new and shiny, stand on board: Obregon, Carran- ga, George Washington, Henry Ford-and an American Shriner in red fez.
 Pose for your own bust, if you like, and watch your nose and ears form swiftly from the mud. In half an hour old Pandura (Hard BreadD, famed Indian sculptor, makes fair likeness.
 "This Guadalajara clay art Is fragile and hard to ship" says buyer from the States. But 1t sells well. Not the busts so much but these urns. vases, and water bottles, in old Aztec patterns. These dancing girls are good, too, in their wide skirts and big sombreros."
 Around Tonala village and the suburb of San Pedro Tlaquepaque, Indians have worked in clay from time immemOrial. The Spaniards found them at 1t. making dishes for domestic uses. making idols. images. and figurines of men and beasts.
 Untaught, and working far from the batter of studios and talks on art, these Indians produce excel lent sculpture. Tiny pack mules, street hawkers, market women with chickens and baskets of fruit, vaqueros on rearing horses-all are formed and painted with fidelity to life. Sophisticated and erotic pieces also appear, with miniatures, ornaments, and vessels carrying raised fretwork of deer, rabbits, ferns or palms. A fat clay pig, hol- low, with a slit in his back through which coins can pass, is much sold as a child's savings bank. Happily for the child, these figures break easily; all you have to do Is drop them.
 San Pedro Tlaquepaque, once the retreat of Spanish wealth and fash lon, is linked with the city proper by tram, through an old customs gateway. Country people taking things into town to sell had to pay a tax in the old days to pass this gate.
 A tiny, bright-eyed nurse girl, cer- tainly not more than ten, comes by, carrying a big fat baby. You feel the baby should get down, for change, and carry the tired little girl
 Gambling Is Prevalent.
 On the curb's edge, three soldiers are playing cards with greasy deck. One man deals, calling "Ocho de espadas," eight of spades, and other faces as they turn up.
 Gambling Is not thought a vice. Men accost you, holding up yard long strips of colored lottery tick cts. You can buy whole or part ticket. Such peddlers work on a commission for the official lottery, which holds regular drawings. is run in a strictly business manner, and devotes net profits to charities.
 Police appear dragging two dis orderly men, one badly cut in street fight. Certain knives here are made to fight with. Any battle scared mining or cow-ranch vet eran will tell you he'd rather face gun fighter than Mexican trained with the knife.
 After the knifemen comes a boy leading very skinny horse. 'Play us tune on your harp" shouts a clerk, Mexican witticism implying that the horse is so bony his ribs look like harp strings
 Up the street past your hotel, late in the night, comes a squeal- ing orchestra, preceded by three young men. One of this trio Is celebrating his birthday. Hiring musicians to play in ones honor is good form, in keeping with estab- lished social practice. If you write poem, win horse race, or van quish rival, 1t is customary to hire a band and stroll from one cantina, or saloon, to another, or past the homes of your friends, with the music playing.
 Here music seldom ceases, and most of it Is good. This makes you wonder how the many organ-grind- CTS earn living. till one explains: They are subsidized by a fund willed to the city to insure free music in perpetuity."