Aug. 1, 1996
By MATTHEW MIRAPAUL
All Is Not As It Appears
In the 'Biggest Little Town in Texas'or God's sakes, definitely I didn't write it," political columnist Joe Klein told The New York Times in February of his then-anonymous authorship of Primary Colors.
Chris Travis has a slightly different approach to journalistic veracity.
"It is always the best policy to speak the truth," reads the motto of The Round Top Register, "unless of course you are an exceptionally good liar."
Travis is publisher, editor and pretty much everything else at The Register, a Web-based quarterly newspaper that covers the apparent comings and goings in the self- proclaimed "biggest little town in Texas" (pop. 81).
First-time visitors to The Register's site could be lured into believing that its articles and interviews are all part of an elaborate tall tale.
Tabloid-style headlines yodel information like "Tiny Town Says Round Top Not Smallest In Texas" and "Mayor's Office Ruled By Political Dynasty." A drama teacher relates how he founded a Shakespeare festival after a wealthy patron said: "There's a barn over there. I want you to go in and look around."
But suspicions were aroused that The Register might actually be real when a recent update added a section on nearby arts activities and included a conversation with the well-regarded, if improbably named, classical pianist James Dick.
Then, a close reading of Travis's transcriptions of his oral-history sessions with local luminaries gradually increased the sense that the site might be a triumph of offbeat truth over fiction.
What, then, to make of a promotional listing for the Mad Hatter Inn, "a cottage for romance," even if it does have a listed phone number?
And who could disagree with the sentiment that "My computers try to trick me when I'm not looking," even when it is expressed by the 191-year-old proprietor of Uncle Sack's Internet Depot in an on-line editorial?
Travis parried an inquiry about the real-world accuracy of his reportage with a simple, straightforward assertion: "Everything in there is true. All the words come straight from the dictionary."
In that case, there must indeed be an Impact, Tex., with 25 enraged citizens who are challenging Round Top's claim to the title of smallest incorporated city in the state.
A call to directory assistance yielded a definitive assurance that no such civic entity exists, which was further confirmed by a wild-goose Web search.
So the contentious letter "on behalf of the Greater Impact Metropolitan Area Chamber of Commerce, tourism office, visitor's center, constabulary, grand opera, public library (all branches), civic ballet and international airport (both locations)" must be a fabrication of Travis' fervid mind.
Yet a few days later, an unplanned stroll through the dark caverns of the Texas Commerce Department's site led to a chart that officially locates Impact three miles from Abilene.
Leafing through the extensive electronic pages of the Round Top Register is somewhat akin to touring the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles.
As described in "Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder" by Lawrence Weschler, the natural-history institution houses curiosities that may or may not be genuine geological and biological artifacts, all exhibited with the utmost sobriety and sincerity irrespective of provenance.
The museum is overseen by a curator who, like Travis, steadfastly declines to acknowledge that anything is other than what it seems -- whatever might be.
Travis said that one of his published interviews prompted a Round Top resident to exclaim, " 'Wait a minute. I've lived here all my life and I don't know this man.' We just told her, 'He's a quiet man. He keeps to himself.' "
Real or not, the Register conjures a palpable sense of place through its consistently folksy tone and thick-as-cornbread slices of rural life.
In this self-contained universe, The Register is something of a Web-based Prairie Home Companion for the Lone Star State, where the men are loquacious and the women are octogenarians.
While Garrison Keillor's whimsical meanderings may provoke a few wry smiles, Travis's material can produce beer-belly laughs.
Madame Biola's Sensible Household Horoscope advises Libras not to buy dented soup cans. A police report includes such entries as "chased by dog through square" and "emus run amuck." Restaurateur Bud Royer discusses the tenets of his cafe's "Bud-ist" philosophy ("The premise is that the food is not the issue").
"There's a fair number of eccentrics in this town," Travis admitted.
Travis, 45 years old and a fifth-generation Texan, is a restoration contractor who specializes in the rebuilding of old homes.
He moved his family from Houston to Round Top in 1991 after a vividly idyllic dream involving a lake, a hill covered with live oaks, a tree house and a stone church.
He told his wife's sister and her husband about the dream, and a few months later, while searching for a place to open a bed-and-breakfast, they found the very spot that Travis had described: Round Top, 100 miles from Houston and about the same from Austin.
"They got the property and hired me to restore the old buildings," he said. "The 14 months of work financed our move to Round Top."
A former journalist at The Austin American Statesman, Travis had considered starting a town paper for five or six years, but did not launch the enterprise until his pickup collided with a tractor-trailer 19 months ago.
"The accident was no one's fault," he advises. "We were both driving right down the middle of the road. That's what you're supposed to do on dirt roads in Texas."
Recuperating in a wheelchair and unable to clamber around his construction sites, he decided to tackle the Internet.
The Register's Web site went on line in October 1995, and Travis said that it now receives 300 to 400 hits per day.
Travis is amused that the most frequently visited page is "The Girls of Round Top," a revealing chat with three longtime residents, the youngest of whom was born in 1918.
He prints a version of The Register on paper and distributes 15,000 copies around the state to support the city's tourist activities, including Pianist Dick's annual music festival.
Mail subscriptions to The Register are available for $5 per year, and Travis now claims to be locked in a circulation battle with The New York Times. Of course, that boast could be as legitimate as any other reportage on the site.
For example, Mayor Dave Nagel really is part of a political dynasty; his father preceded him as the highest-ranking town official.
Asked about the accuracy of his own Q&A session on the site, Nagel replied, "That's pretty well true."
The mayor says the citizenry of Round Top, now numbering in the low 70s, do enjoy Travis's editorial efforts.
"He seems to get more constructive criticism than criticism," Nagel said.
But could everything that Travis prints in The Round Top Register be considered as truthful and accurate?
"He's got a lot of imagination," Nagel said. "He's the kind of guy, if you give him enough rope, he'll use all of it."
Pushed to admit that the Register is not based strictly on reporting, Travis deflects the question.
"The place I live is so unique and so special that it is often hard to separate the far-fetched fiction of my imagination from the facts as they live in the minds of the citizens," he said.
"I am living a writer's dream and I know it."
arts@large is published weekly, on Thursdays. Click here for a list of links to other columns in the series.
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The Round Top Register is the official Web site of the biggest little town in Texas. Or Maybe It Isn't.
Copyright 1996 The New York Times Company
