A Gringo in Rural Mexico: Long, Tough Two Weeks....

Sunday, 6 February 2011

Long, Tough Two Weeks....

Hello again.
We are back in town for a bit, driving up yesterday.

THE BRIDGE (lane) to NOWHERE:
     Yes, yesterday afternoon at around 2:00 pm,   arriving in time to wait at the Anzalduas crossing for and hour and a half.   The bridge is a nice and convenient crossing point for people who live/work from western McAllen , Mission, and the Palmhurst-Penitas-La Joya area of the Magic Lower Rio Grande Valley.     It has a problem, though, in that the people who have the "quick pass" to avoid the lines....by using a pre-paid, pre-screened profile, bioscopic pass (about 250 dollars/year)....have a lane of approach, but no inspection booth...(????).
         One hapless fellow, apparently a well-to-do person from the city of  San Pedro de Garza Garcia, part of the Monterrey metroplex, drove up the vacant line, passing quickly by the rest of us dopes who were moving up at about 100 yards every 15 minutes.    He soon saw the fact that his lane lead to nowhere, except to some place called "Aekuandri". I think it is the town they named after TaeKwanDoh's sister.
    He stopped beside me, lowered his window of the new Audi sedan, and inquired, "What do I do? "   He chose me because I was the only Gringo in the left-most line....all lines having 300 or more vehicles.    It serves to note that we were about 20 vehicles from the finish line. He still addressed me in Spanish, probably because he was impressed with my 92 Dodge with the scars of 350,000 miles of service.

I advised, "Sorry, but I do not go into service until 3:00 pm......You have to understand that we are the most advanced people in the world, so this is not actually happening. I think it is what happens when the bridge is designed and operated by the government in Washington." We laughed a bit...and he showed me his "Sentri Pass Card"....declaring "I am really not trying to break the line....it causes me a bit of shame to be here like this".....

Interrupting him, I observed, "The deal is that you paid a lot of money for your expedited pass and had to sit around in American Counsel for two or three days to obtain the pass...and you come to a bridge that says the have Sentri Pass....and then find out at the last minute that the system is not installed as of yet. There's not a lot of shame in that....." . Then I told him to pull in front of me with the next movement of the line and he could go with the flow. If anything it was a little embarrassing for me as an American....but I shall allow the President to apologize in his next round of teachable apologies for the shortcomings of America and the Americans.

BITTER, LONG-LASTING COLD

THIS HAS BEEN A fairly tough period for an Old Gringo. The cold finally arrived with a vengeance. By Wednesday last the tongue of Arctic invasion oozed into the Mexican tropics, splashed along the face of the Sierra Madre Oriental, leaving the Monterrey area covered in ice, sleet, and copious amounts of snow at all elevations. Our mountains had a good amount of snow, freezing rain, and freezing fog. The Quinta had a few brief flurries and a bit of freezing rain. From Wednesday night through Friday night the temperature never went above 32 degrees F. My lowest recording was about 21.5 degrees, and the majority of the episode vacillated between 26 to 30 degrees....day and night.

One of the disadvantages in revelling in the low-tech environment of exposed wiring and plumbing.....(It's easier to repair, don't you know, by the rustic maestros when things need fixing).....is the fact that if the plumbing and wiring are exposed then the chance that repairs will be needed at all are substantially enhanced.

In this case I had to, of necessity, stay awake during the entire period, with very small exceptions, in order to keep going back and forth to run each and every water line however briefly so as to prevent tubing ruptures from ice expansion. One time the Old Gringo managed to fall asleep in front of the television for about 2 hours.
My efforts were rewarded with having a still intact system on Saturday morning, when the temperature went back above freezing for the first time since Tuesday before. The electricity stayed on for the entire period, save for the brief moment that power was turned off while electricity transfers were being made to Texas. That later proved to be an impossibility because as the hours went by it became apparent that the cold wave was probably going to be as bad or worse in northern and central Mexico as it was being in Texas.

As the weather events worsened to unanticipated levels it became apparent that this was not going to be a two-day affair with an overnight frost. Freezing temperatures continued all the way down to between Cd. Valles and Mante, which are situated well below the Tropic of Cancer.

DEALING WITH THE CATS and DOGS during prolonged inclemency

Nephertiti takes a personal interest

in my special, prize winning cats

The poor dogs found the shelters I made for them with boxes, old blankets and towels.....they still appeared forlorn and abandoned....giving mournfully long stares at the cats who excersized their Pharaohnic discretion to come and go, inside and out of the house at will. Prince, Pinto, Trouble, and New Puppy could only imagine life inside the adobe walls, sprawled in front of the fireplace on a personalized bathroom throw rug for each Daughter of Nephertiti.....Smokey, Cleopatra, and Calico. I would even allow old Sylvester, Smokey's black and white son with the two-crooked tail, most of both ears still, and one good eye still to come in and eat Whiskas in his personal bowl, with an after-dinner bit of warmed half-and-half with three kitty-kookies as a little extra favour. Nothing too special, because you never want to spoil a cat.

I did feed the dogs at "their time", which is 04:00, warmed Gravy Train, and one large dog biscuit, plus one small dog biscuit, followed by another similar feeding around 14:00 hours. These feedings require more supervision, because Prince is accustomed to "forgetting" that "this bowl is for Pinto, and this bowl is for Trouble, and this bowl is for you". He usually "forgets" when I go back inside, eating freely of all three simultaneously....so sometimes, even in the cold, one needs to keep an eye on things.

"Prince! Bad Dog! That bowl belongs to Pinto!"

Prince skulks off, head down, tail lowered, but not between the legs. "But you told me in English and I did not understand."

To which I respond with an accusatory glare, "Yesterday you said that I had told you in Spanish and you did not understand.....so which is it?"

There is no response as he slow-foots off to his personal box to curl into against the brutal wind. He knows I won the argument....it feels really

good to beat a dog in a domestic dispute....kinda rather re-instates me as the Alpha Dog in this pack.   Keeps things on an adult level.....

REASONS for COMING UP THIS TIME:
       There are always things to do and check into.   One of the main reasons for being here this time is that we have a potential long term client....also an active person who has lived in some very interesting places in Mexico over the years.    This potential client has interests in Texas that require being a little closer to the border, and it is very probable that we can develop a mutually advantageous long-term relationship.    Tomorrow we should know.
       Other matters are the purchase of a sundry of supplies for the Quinta.
The time has come to close this post as things change and remain the same.   Thank you all for your attention.   Your many comments have been reviewed and sincerely appreciated.
El Gringo Viejo

Click to visit our little Adobe Hideaway…

This is our rustic, but very comfortable place, out in the rural area to the northwest of Ciudad Victoria, Tamaulipas…the State's Capital. From a bustling city of 400,000, we placed our domicile a bit more than 20 miles into the scenes of mountains, citrus groves, spring-fed creeks and rivers with crystal clear waters, and an abundance of bird species that make veteran birders shake their heads in wonder.

We are all but adjacent to the venerable Hacienda de Santa Engracia (about 500 yards away), which dates to the 1720s and has ancient structures still in use, very elegant, and mystical in many ways. It has operated as a guest hotel since the 1970s.

Our little place rests on three and a fraction acres, fronting on the Rio Corona, which is lined with over-1,000 year old cypress trees. The nearby Sierra del Cautivo…a major segment of the overall Sierra Madre Oriental that dominate most of eastern Mexico, lies to the west by about three miles. guards the many springs that maintain the almost perpetual flow from those heights (up to 12,000 fasl) while our place is situated right at 1,000 feet above sea level.

Give us a call, come by and visit…it is truly a different venture in the most positive sense. We can be reached by our email - privatouring@gmail.com - which is our preferred method of communicating.

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What is an OROG?

Once a person lands on our page, that individual becomes a member of the Order of Readers of the Old Gringo, (OROG). There are no dues or assessments to pay, no meetings, no requirements. We are not associated with the KKK, the WCTU, the French Masons, or the Global Warming Glacier

Protection Committee.

We do have a distant connection with the Knights of the Golden Circle and hold the maps to the internment sites of 34 tonnes of Confederate Gold, and 1,000 tonnes of Mexican Imperial Silver (bar and coinage) derived from the collapse of the Reign of Maximillian von Hapsburg, Emperor of Mexico (1863 - 1867). I think we can remember where we put it.

All kidding aside, we are acerbic, but we do not bite. We do believe in our antiquated philosophy, but we try to not impose our quirks and beliefs so far as to be disrespectful.

El Gringo Viejo

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Wise Words

Communism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy. Its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

Winston Churchill

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Be sure you are right, then go ahead.

I bark at no man's bid. I will never come and go, fetch and carry, at the whistle of the Great Man in the White House, no matter who he is.

I told the people of my district that I would serve them as faithfully as I had done. But, if such was not to be, then you may all go to Hell, and I shall go to Texas!

David Crockett

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And on and on it goes. The more the Government gives away, the more it takes, and the less Americans do for themselves, until finally, like Europe, there is nobody left to do anything, and there is nobody left to pay for, the nothing that is not done.

And, yes, Virginia, there truly is a Santa Clause, and he and Mrs. Clause and their helpers care greatly for the good children of the Planet. So long as there is happiness, kindness, charity, generosity, and the Spirit of Fellowship, Santa Clause will be there, representing those noble things, and he will always move in a spiritual way so as to provoke humankind to goodness.

El Gringo Viejo

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“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

Booker Tallaferro Washington

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It is impossible to make a poor man rich by making a rich man poor.

Abraham Lincoln

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El Gringo Viejo: a fair description

Life for El Gringo Viejo began on the Texas-Mexico frontier, near McAllen, Texas literally on a real, live farm. The farmer, as one might imagine, was his father, who had moved with his parents from Gwinner, Sargent County, North Dakota in 1915 - 1916 period, down to the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. (And yes, Virginia, that is the way Sargent County is spelled.)

His parents farmed in an area close to the new community named after its founder, called Ed Couch, in Hidalgo County of Texas. My grandfather is buried in the Weslaco Municipal Cemetery about 10 feet away from his friend, Ed Couch.

After studies, and a stint in the 1st Cavalry, 12th Regiment (mounted), Headquarters Squadron of the United States Army...riding warhorses back and forth along the Rio Grande from the late 1920s and early 1930s. He did not speak much about his service, but we determined that he apparently made rank of 1st Lieutenant.

El Gringo Viejo's Father established his farming and citrus grove-care operation just north of McAllen, Texas. Mother was a housewife and a professional woman....a learned, eloquent, well-read woman.

They were educated people, my father winding up as a Superintendent of a major school/facility of the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation in Austin, Texas after a twenty year career in education at the secondary level. He had degrees in History, Psychology, and Education Administration.

El Gringo Viejo is the last of three children, all males. Number one was Milton Birchard, Jr. who was born in 1936 and died in a vehicular incident in 1988. He was narcoleptic. He held a doctorate in geography from Louisiana State University and was head of the Department there for a good while.

Number two is Norman Francis, who was born during the WWII situation in 1942 and became an important Republican political engineer and fundraiser. He served as Executive Director of the Republican Party of Texas during the late 1960s and early 1970s and as Senator John G. Tower's immediate Executive Assistant. The Senator is the Godfather of Norman's first son.

Norman died at age 77 in Austin, Texas and I was one of four eulogists who was chosen to speak at his en memoriam at the Austin Club in downtown most Austin…within sight of the State Capitol.

It was a personal duty and very rewarding

in every way.

My arrival was in 1947, and I was destined to confound my parents and all those around me. Educated entirely in public schools in McAllen, skipping the third grade, and stumbling out of my high school in the upper 90% of a class of 606. I

attended and graduated from Southwest Texas State University (now named Texas State University, unfortunately), being one of the few conservatives to graduate out of the School of Sociology, although my treatment at the hands of my tormentor-professors was not so unpleasant in those days. Emphasis of studies were social demography, and Latin American Affairs with a concentration on Mexico's history and current political evolution, with a minors in History, Geography, and Political Science.

El Gringo Viejo is one of the old, unreconstructed high-church Episcopalians. Politically, he is very fundamentally conservative. He prefers Baseball to football, and considers that baseball with a designated hitter for the pitcher should be called "poofy-ball". Favourite major league team of all times? The Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950s. It will never be the same again.
El Gringo Viejo's father was born to a Hudson Valley-type girl and a man who had lost two older brothers who served in the Pennsylvania 96th Regiment of Volunteer Infantry during the War Between the States.

The surnamed line (Newton) originated from East Anglia, not far from a place called Washington in northeastern England. They came into Boston Harbour, Massachusetts in 1642 (the 1st voyage of the Mayflower had overbooked), and settled there and in Maine as well as spreading out to Vermont, New York, and Pennsylvania, over the generations for the first 220 years.
Another batch of folks, mainly Anglo, settled in the middle Hudson Valley. There was another group of Celto-Teutonics types from Saxony and Prussia, establishing and settling along the Hudson River from around what is Catskill County northward to Duchess and Rennselaer Counties around a place named Red Hook. The main group came in during the early 1650s.

My mother's people were another English line of long-term Southern and Tennessee people, from the Eastern part of that State, who originally came in during the 1660s through Virginia and North Carolina, and finally into Eastern Tennessee, settling in and around a county to be named Franklin, and helping to establish the city of Winchester. Almost all of these people originated from southwestern England, near the frontier with Wales.

Only recently did we verify that she had many people involved in the service of the Confederacy. One died in northern Mississippi, another Captain Asa Grant, 2nd Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry, was severely wounded and succumbed to his wounds finally in 1869, and another hung around in an Ohio POW camp (Camp Chase) for about 13 months, while three others were either wounded or died in action, including David Limbaugh, Lieutenant, 42 Tennessee Infantry. Another five made it through relatively unscathed.

Almost all were, oddly enough, related to the great-grand uncles and gggg-grandfathers down to gg-grandfathers of Rush Limbaugh. The gggg-grandfather came into the Colonies in the early 1740s from a Prussia and Saxony background, and served in both civilian and military capacities to the Continental government and Army. He was the XO of a Militia Battalion of 3,000 Pennsylvania effectives. They honed their military readiness under the supervision of Gen. von Steuben and someone named Washington at some place called Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

A grandson of his, Isaac, settled in Tennessee after the War for Independence against King George III. So Rush and I share grandfathers, four generations deep on the American Continent.

It should be stated here that were I to be called to declare, my allegiance would still be with the Southern Cause, although I bear no rancor against those who feel the same about their instinct to maintain the Union. Oddly enough, both my mother (a Southerner) and my father (a true Yankee by blood) believed that we would have remained closer if we had separated, and each side gone the ways of their own yearning, but amicably.

The last of the English (El Gringo Viejo's) line came during the time between the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. They left County Wicklow, where they had been involved, apparently, in that peculiar Anglo - Scots/Irish practice of making whiskey by the use of peat for fuel. They were also involved in the business of production and processing of various types of grains as well as the production of whiskey, gin, and beer. By their surnames one would know that, while coming out of Ireland, they were actually English, one with the surname of Christian and the wife, Webster. They had, in fact, married in Christ's Church Cathedral, Anglican, in downtown Dublin in 1796. They landed in New York, set up shop in the City among previously arrived relatives, and then in Albany. We have some record that this Christian who married the Webster had actually lived in the colonies, but travelled several times back and forth between the Spirits businesses in England and Ireland and the New World. They wound up as the generations progressed in and around Minneapolis (St. Anthony) & Saint Paul, Minnesota, and Racine, Wisconsin. My particular line went from New York to Alabama, then North Carolina, and then Wisconsin to join up with the rest of the extended family, finally in Minnesota, before the War Between the States.

The Time Line of entry of all lines of my children's blood ancestry on their mother's side in the New World begins in 1578, when Spaniards of mixed Hebraic and Iberian peoples, and others of ancestry from Portugal, Galicia, and southern Spain entered into what was to become Monclova and Saltillo, Coahuila. They are brought under the auspices of the Explorer, Conquistador, and Colonizer Jose Luis Carvajal y de la Cueva, with elements settling in Lampazos and Cerralvo (Nuevo Leon), in Palofox (Texas), and Revilla (Tamaulipas) on the Rio Bravo.
Also, the Count of the Sierra Gorda, Col. Jose de Escandon brought another group of mainly Spanish, Portuguese, and Azoreans in the early 175os, settling along the Rio Bravo (Grande), and then on the north (Texas) side, spreading up to what is now Yorktown, Texas (near and southeast of San Antonio de Bexar, more or less) before and during the Texas Republican period.

My children and theirs are qualified to join the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Sons of Liberty, The Sons of the Grand Army of the Union, The Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the Daughters of the Confederacy. By my side they are 16th generation English Colonial - American and 6th generation Texian. By my wife's side, my children are 23rd generation northernmost New Spain, Texian, and American. Isolating Texas alone, my grandchildren are 15th generation Texian.

LIKE?

Cats, and then dogs.

Fishing, even a bit of bird watching, now and then.

Really good music..antique, old, 1950s and early 1960s rock and roll, classical - Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven, both Strauses, and many others, African tribal sounds en chorus, Mexican bolero...mariachis when they play out-of-doors, some country and quite a bit of the old western (Sons of the Pioneers, the Texas Ploughboys, Marty Robbins "Gunfighter Ballads, for instance.), even some of my own piano works, bagpipes, Enya, marimba, Caribe.

The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess always seemed to me to have been, and remains, a true masterpiece of Americana.

Well maintained Firearms, smooth running small equipment, old autos that respond to repair and upkeep and keep going. Used to have BMWs and so forth, but being old helps tone things down a bit.

Antiques, and antiquities...Meso-American archeology...and religious history. Formal religious services among the Orthodox..as in Anglican, Roman, Orthodox and Conservative Jewish services and celebrations. Hard to find, now.

Overnight radio, rightwing talk radio until it becomes overly tedious and repetitive.

Weather and climate.

And strangely during the past few years,cooking. Not just barbequeing...but actually dishing up gourmet-type stuff...and gardening to a purpose.

We grow a lot of our own spices for our little bed and breakfast and we specialise in flowerng plants, bushes, and trees that attract bees and literally hundreds of species of common to extremely rare birds to our place.

Lifelong Republican, honourably discharged - United States Army (conscripted).

Now drifted into the position of favouring the amicable withdrawal of Texas from the American Union. My grandchildren are 15th generation Coahuila/Texas by my wife and 8th generation Texas by me and my will is to have them answer for the debt of Texas and not for the debts incurred by the National Socialists who have taken possession of the central government in Washington, D.C.

DISLIKES?
Any kind of socialism...bolshevik, national, marxist, social democratic, Trotskyite, progressive, ....and any kind of socialist.

The Ku Klux Klan and such types who figure that they have to hate somebody because of how he/she was born. They are just role players, resucitated by the Communist Party USA in the 1920s, whose members are fueled by a well deserved sense of inferiority.

And almost all social activism.

Almost all labour union officers and almost all labour unions. (There are some exceptions.)

Public assistance of any kind. All welfare and/or charity should and must be privately handled in order to avoid the trap wherein we have fallen, that being the multigenerational slide into the abyss of forlorn hopelessness that is government slavery and dependence. That slide is cheerfully supported by politicians who love to buy votes with other peoples' money.

Lotteries operated by governments.

Litter, filth, graffiti, gangs, and waiting in line for people using food stamps whil'st they argue with the cashier about how they "need" this or that to be covered...when they have three carts with 450 USD of snacks and things we cannot afford because we are in an 'upper income" category.

Church reformers who want to change my church instead of them going to another church and just leaving me alone.

Medications for boys who are over-active, and medications in general.

Lite beer, lite Coca Cola, fat-free, lo-cal, artificial sugars and sweeteners, anything marked "healthy" on food packages, sugar-free, margarine, and driving 23 miles to buy gasoline over there because it is 2 cents per gallon cheaper.

Any government programme designed to help anybody; 94% of the time the programme winds up morphing into some kind of monster. Then liberals and do-gooders will propose another programme, twice as costly, to cure the ills caused by the first cure-all.

Officiousness, and the term "non-profit", as if there is some kind of moral superiority in the failure to produce wealth.

Physical abuse of an animal, an extraterrestrial, a child, slave, woman, or anything like a tractor or power tool, firearm, sewing machine, or an auto, etc.
Loud and/or sharp noises, especially when such noises have no particular purpose.

Wasting anything, from paper towels to Clorox to cake and cookie batter...anything. And....waiting in a line.