Dish, Texas – EchoStar Communications Corp. has just branded one of the most contentious little towns in Texas.
The people of this rural, working-class community formerly known as Clark have just won 70 channels of free satellite TV – for the next 10 years – by renaming their town after EchoStar’s Dish Network.
EchoStar chose Clark, about an hour’s drive north of Fort Worth, over nearly a dozen other contenders, said EchoStar president Michael Neuman, who visited freshly renamed Dish on Wednesday.
EchoStar, based in Douglas County, hopes to use the proud, happy faces of Dish in national promotions.
“We will … leverage the fact that we have an entire town that we hope will become evangelists for better TV,” he said.
The town may be better suited for a gritty reality-TV series.
“It stinks,” says L.E. Clark, 72, of the new name. He is the namesake – and former mayor – of what used to be Clark. Regarding the new mayor, Clark says, “He’s just doing this to jab me.”
Bill Merritt, 31, a polished former Dallas lawyer who defeated Clark in May, led the charge to rename the town. Bill and his father, Mitch, want to position the town for growth. They sell and lease manufactured homes on 1-acre plots and have been feuding with Clark for years.
The Merritts once wanted to subdivide their land into half-acre sites, but Clark blocked them. Clark and the Merritts have also battled over Dumpsters, gravel roads, alcohol sales and the construction of a steel building that serves as city hall.
Last year, at the height of the feud, residents of the Merritts’ development de-annexed themselves from Clark, bringing the population down from about 350 to 125. Now, with a new mayor, a new name and the lure of free satellite TV, they may want to annex themselves back.
Dish is a cluster of farmhouses, trailers and double-wides scattered on a windswept stretch of Texas rangeland like Lego blocks on a playroom floor.
Clark bought a hog farm here in 1976 and turned it into a private airstrip where he leases out hangars for small aircraft. He spent $6,000 to incorporate the town in a move to fend off the expansionary boundaries and high taxes of Fort Worth.
Ironically, some townsfolk complain that Clark ran Clark like a fiefdom, taxing and spending as he pleased. There are no city sewers, water taps or garbage trucks.
“The only service the city provided was a taxing authority,” said Merritt, who has cut local taxes by 34 percent.
Clark said he was building up a surplus for needed projects. He challenged the election results in court, sparking a voter-fraud investigation. But in the end, Clark lost to Merritt by one vote.
After the election, Clark removed the flagpole from city hall, saying it was his. He now wants back the old “Clark” signs that have been replaced with “Dish” signs. He is still bitter about the election.
“He hauled in enough illegal votes to win,” Clark said of Merritt. “He has all the trailer-house trash. … Most of those people over there are renting from him. That’s how he controls them. … There’s a bunch of those rednecks that live over there in that mobile-home park. Why someone hasn’t pounded him into the ground, I don’t know.”
Merritt shrugged off those comments. And the Dish idea didn’t begin with him.
It was Stephanie Paul, 44, who raises horses, sheep and goats on 63 acres, who first saw the promotion. She said she hopes the new name will heal wounds.
“It just left a bad taste in your mouth,” she said of the feud. “The town needed a new beginning.”
Even Clark, who says he watches EchoStar competitor DirecTV, says he’s now considering signing up for free Dish.
“I just might get a free satellite dish and put it on my motor home,” he said.
Then there’s Billye Phariss, 46, who has been getting just a few channels through a rabbit-ear antenna atop her TV. She was beaming as Dish technicians wired up her double-wide on Wednesday with the latest technology.
“I’m into the morbid, gory stuff,” she said. “I’m a big ‘CSI’ fan. … I am actually studying to be a funeral director, and on the Court TV, they do a lot of forensic shows. I even know the channel (number) already.”
Al Lewis’ column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Friday. Respond to Lewis at , 303-820-1967, or alewis@denverpost.com.
