In this rare family photo, Dave Nagel (left) is captured
in an intimate moment with his father, Don Nagel, just after the
official cannon firing at Round Top's (oldest west of the Mississippi)
Fourth of July parade.

MAYOR'S OFFICE RULED
BY POLITICAL DYNASTY



Round Top - Forget the Kennedys, the Roosevelts, the Bushes. Those Daleys in Chicago are amateurs. If you really want to know how to succeed in politics, ask a Nagel.
When Dave Nagel was elected mayor of Round Top in January of 1990, it just seemed natural. After all, his father had been mayor for twenty-nine years. It seemed to folks that a Nagel had always been mayor. Dave’s father Don was known as "Mr. Round Top" by people all over the state. He and Mr. John Banik, the local historian, were the prime movers behind the continued success of the Fourth of July Parade which first drew statewide attention to this area. Stories about Don, Mr. Banik and Round Top history attracted such notables as Miss Ima Hogg who then in turn brought James Dick, the University of Texas and Faith Bybee to Round Top. Of course, the duties of the Mayor of the town of Round Top differ a bit from those of mayors in Houston and Austin.
Dave likes to tell a story about a call he received right after being elected.
"This lady calls up and says ...‘I’ve got a dead armadillo in my yard out by the street...your dad, when he was Mayor; he picked ‘em up. What are you gonna do?’

I said ‘I’ll be right there’"

The job pays a little less than that offered a big city mayor. The town pays the Mayor $200 per year but as Dave picks up his own expenses and mileage for his considerable promotional efforts on the town’s behalf, the truth is that it costs him money to be the Mayor of Round Top. That’s the difference between a politician and a public servant. The Nagel’s have been public servants for close to 35 years and that is why they keep getting elected.
Dave and his father grew up in different times but both led interesting lives. Don Nagel opened the Round Top Service Station during the first years of the depression. He was a small businessman with a limited education but a great love for his town and a lot of energy.
Dave, who grew up fixing cars in his dad’s station, was hired out of the University of Texas by Ford Motor Company as one of eleven young men from around the nation that were hand picked as management trainees and trained by Ford as design engineers. He was on the team that designed the first Mark II Continental. His boss was one of the top ten automobile designers in the world. He worked daily with William Ford.
After a few years with Ford, Dave left Detroit and moved back to Texas. He had Polio as a child and poor circulation caused him to suffer from the cold in Michigan. For the rest of his career, he worked as a consulting engineer and an inventor and developed patents on a startling variety of high tech devices in the oil and gas, pipeline , plastics and related industries.
Among patents too numerous to name, he and/or teams he managed developed much of the technology behind horizontal drilling, the Ashbrook aerator (the most commonly used aerator in sewage treatment and paper industries), offshore blowout preventers, various valves, new pipe coating methods, the Linelog tool for non-destructive testing of pipelines in place and scores of other devices.
"My answer when somebody asked me if I could design something was always ‘Yes!’. I didn’t care what it was, I could design it. I was that confident."
As a consulting engineer and designer, Dave had to sign away his rights to the patents and inventions he developed while in the employ of various companies and research groups. At home, he was constantly working on new ideas.
"I had the first working weedeater, years before that guy came out with his. He lived right down the street from me. I used it in the yard...those inline roller skates you see today I had one...the skate companies in those days weren’t interested. I had a design for a skateboard but I had spent so much money on the skates that when the patent attorney called me up and asked me what I wanted to do with the design...I said "abandon it."
At home Dave developed electric fire starters, he got the patent for a way to put wheels on metal garbage cans. Not long afterwards, Rubbermaid came out with rolling plastic cans.

(I did a little research after hearing all this about Dave’s career. It didn’t seem fair that a guy this creative, that had authored so many innovations, should have reaped so few rewards. What I found was surprising. Turns out that we don’t always reward our inventors fairly. According to one author, Edison died a comparatively poor man with an entire estate of less than $100,000, a tidy sum but not much in comparison to his contributions. Eli Whitney realized little if anything from the cotton gin. McCormack didn’t invent the reaper but won the rights in a dubious court battle. Even Robert Goddard, the father off modern rocketry, who developed many items... gyroscopic stabilizers, fuel pumps, landing devices etc. died in 1945 and got nothing from his researches. Only 15 years after his death did his wife win a suit for patent infringement from the government. )

Then, while serving as Vice President of Design at a high tech engineering firm, Dave had a major heart attack. The doctor told him if he wanted to live he would have to change his lifestyle. His father had begun to have health problems too; so in 1988, Dave moved back to Round Top with his wife.
I interviewed Dave and his lovely wife Carol around their dining room table in the same house where his father and mother had lived when Don was Mayor.

What is your favorite thing about being Mayor of Round Top?

It’s really a good feeling when you go to a Mayor’s meeting and I hand ‘em this newspaper...they were just here...I gave them a tour of Round Top. They didn’t know all this was here. They couldn’t believe it. They have things themselves but they don’t have anything like we’ve got. The 4th of July is a good experience too. Everybody seems to appreciate the parade. It was like that when I was a kid.

What’s the worst thing about being Mayor?

It’s hard to keep everybody happy. It’s very difficult. You can have ordinances but you see, it’s the Mayor that has to see that these ordinances are kept. You create a lot of enemies. You get people angry at you just by talkin’ to them. I get a little gun-shy when I go to the post office. I try not to go when everbody else is down there. That’s where they find you. Particularly if something happened the day before and you go to the post office and this person is there and...I assure you they’re going to talk to you.
My dad faced that problem. We were in good communication the whole time he was Mayor. My wife and kids came down here all the time. He asked me about a lot of things he made decisions about.

In your time as Mayor, you’ve already accomplished a lot. What goals do you still have for the city?

Well the thing I think we really need is we need a sewer line and at the same time a sidewalk project from at least the Historical Society to Festival Hill. Also when these things are done, there could be a dramatic increase in people moving into this area so I think its mandatory that you have to have some kind of control...because when people can build buildings on a small portion of a lot because they can get septic and water...there will be more concentration of houses, it won’t be Round Top like it is today if we don’t have some kind of control.
That’s more or less like it used to be. Back in History, Round Top had two or three hundred people and the houses were closer together. Of course all these things cost money and we have to develop a way to raise money. We need a standing committee on these long term things. I can’t do all these things myself.

Tell me about your childhood in Round Top.

I’m writing about that in a book. Life was a lot different than it is today. My brother and I, we had to work hard. My mother and dad saw to that cause I was born in ‘29. My dad had just built this building in town and my mother took in boarders to make ends meet and fed them.
I was changing tires when I was seven years old. Later in life (we were good with cars) we asked my dad for a commission on weekends. He agreed. So on Sundays we told all our friends to bring their cars in. We’d turn in a lot of volume to get our commissions up high.
Particularly around Christmas time, we’d make these acetylene bombs. We bubble acetylene into a balloon and put a dynamite fuse in it and we’d hang it out on the highway in front of cars, we tried to set the fuse so it would explode just when they went by and they’d kind of loose control a little bit. (laughs) We did a lot of foolish things. We’d climb up the sign (at service station) and spiral down with our bodies hangin’ straight out. I tried that later in life at a square dance and busted my nose. My dad would help us with all these projects. We used to get salesman to pay us a quarter or fifty cents and we’d put on a boxing exhibition. One time we got a PA system and put it in a two hole john, a WPA john, put a speaker down below and we’d wait for these cross country travelers to come and this lady drove up in a truck and she ran across the ditch and went to the bathroom and we figured how long it would take until she sat down, you know ‘till she got her pants down and sat down and my dad said on the PA, "Lady, would you please move over, I’m painting down here."
What did she do? She hit the door with two hands, pants down at her ankles, knocked the lock off the door and we were watchin’ her and she yells out ‘Let’s get the hell out of here!’ (laughter) That’s a true story.
On weekends, when people used to come to town and sell their eggs and chickens and so forth...they’d sit in there and drink too much beer and sing songs in German and English...mostly German and tell stories...customers would get too loaded and dad would go in there and say "Let the boys take you home." Later they’d come hobbling out to the car and dad would try to keep them away from the car and if they wouldn’t let us take them home then dad would give us a signal and we would chain their wheels up...chain his wheels to the frame of the car. One time we did this and he had wooden spokes on the wheels and we had too much slack on the chain. This guy goes back and forth then pops the clutch and BANG, breaks the wheels and the car falls down to the axle. He looks over at my dad and say "Don! What happened to my car?" So dad says..."Well, the boys’ll take you home." By the time he came back, we had fixed his wheels. We did that a good number of times.

Tell me about your dad.

I couldn’t have had a nicer mother and father. He was well respected in the community. He was a strong man, physically strong. I never saw him get beat in Indian wrestling.
The cannon on the square was a partial cannon and my dad had it restored for the sesquicentennial by a man in Austin. Prior to that time, the ball end of that cannon was placed behind a monument on the square. The ball had a hole in it where you could put your fingers in it. My dad used to say that you weren’t a man in Round Top until you could pick up that cannon and just to prove it he would go pick it up to here (chest high). My brother, when he tried, could lift it about two inches but I was older than him and I could never lift the thing. So finally, after I had that oilfield job down in El Campo for Texaco, I was finally able to lift the thing and had witnesses there to confirm it...(laughs)...that I was a man. It weighed about 400 and somethin’ pounds.
My dad was Mr. Everything. Besides being Mayor, he was the fire chief. He was on the church council; he was on the school board; he was on the grand jury a number of times. He was in the semi-pro baseball hall of fame. He was the first person voted in as the "Most distinguished Person In Fayette County." The citizens of the community had a Don Nagel Day for him.
Miss Ima Hogg was a good friend of his. She wrote him from overseas. Pictures of my mother and dad’s garden is hanging in the architectural building at the University of Texas. He was as honest as the day is long.
He was funny, comical. A man would come in and ask him to take off some break drums and he would get this little tool and hit it with a hammer and the drums would come off. When the guy would ask him how much, he would say, "Two dollars and ten cents" The guy asked him how come the two dollars and ten cents, he would say..."The ten cents is for hittin’ it. The two dollars is for knowin’ where to hit it."
My dad was a deputy sherriff under Jim Flourney.(of "Best Little Whore House in Texas" Fame) Some prisoners escaped out of prison over by Rosenberg and they came this way..all the police departments, the highway patrol and all them were after them. (The Sheriff) called and told him they were comin’ this way down 237 so he called all his customers out that direction but their was one man he couldn’t reach because he had no telephone. Back then he had a ‘59 Ford truck. He didn’t take his gun or badge or anything along. He drove out that way, just the other side of Festival Hill (where it is today) and he saw those two guys. They were talkin’ to Mr. and Mrs. S___. He hit the breaks and turned the wheel and came sliding down the road making a commotion and then jumped behind the truck into the ditch and yelled for them to put up their hands. So they held up their hands and he talked to Mr. and Mrs. S____ in German and asked what the men wanted. Mrs. S___ said they wanted some food...that they were hungry. So he asked Mrs. S___ to ask them if they had any guns and they said they had thrown their guns out in the field and they didn’t have any. So he told them to come to him and he would take them downtown and feed them. He drove them to Round Top and got them some breakfast. He was sittin’ there and eating with them. Then Sheriff Jim and all the law enforcement boys came to town and said "Where are those prisoners?" and folks said "Ol ‘ Don’s got them over at the store and he’s feedin’ ‘em." The sheriff wasen’t too happy with that. That was written up in the front page of the Houston Post.

What do you think makes Round Top special?

The people. That and the history and what we have here today. I always thought Round Top was special when I was a kid. People have respect for one another.

What would you like to tell people who are visiting our town or who are considering moving into the area?

Well, I would tell ‘em that they would have a hard time finding a small town that has as much to offer as this town does. I tell a lot of them that I see more cultural things here in one year than they see in Houston in ten.

This is my last question and it’s really important so I want you to think about it seriously. Now everybody says your wife is smarter than you and obviously she is better looking...so what we want to know is when you retire someday, is she going to be Mayor?

I don’t know but if not, my son has already bought property up here. (laughter)

As we were finishing up, Carol told me the story of their engagement. "I knew the night he asked me to marry him ‘cause he came with yellow roses and he was all excited. We went out to eat and afterwards he took me to Hermann Park under the statue of Sam Houston, ‘cause Sam Houston is from Tennessee (so is Carol) and he proposed to me and he swallowed a whole pack of gum while he did it.
The next day we went and picked out my ring and he put it back in the box and he wouldn’t let me look at it until we got back under that statue of Sam Houston and there he put it on my finger.
So every time we pass by (the statue) ...every time our kids pass by , they remember. He wanted it to be something we would always remember.
Dave wants people to remember the things that are special, like Round Top. So did his dad. This town owes them more than it can repay. Many other citizens have served this community over the years. It struck me as I wrote this article that many cities pay their public servants a lot more for a lot less.



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