A Gringo in Rural Mexico: Some Odds and Ends After Our Absence

Saturday 22 December 2012

Some Odds and Ends After Our Absence

_____________________________________________________________

The cats helped a bit with the cold episodes. They are adept at waiting for El Gringo Viejo to nod off on his slightly undersised recliner during the Houston Texans game, knowing that heat travels upward and is to be dedicated to the comfort of felines. They, as I, have long ago determined that even if the temperature is comfortable, there should be no waste of warmth during the Winter. As we are situated quite close to the Tropic of Cancer, the period near the Solstice on the Calendar tends to be very cool during the nighttime hours. We were out about a month (we haven't counted up the days) and almost every night was in the 40s...ending up with Thursday's early morning reading being 35 degrees F.

The last blast from the north came in just before and brought winds of 50 - 60 miles per hour sustained, and gusts up to 80 during the first moments of passage. It is pleasant to report that throughout the area of our part of rural Mexico, there was not one power outage. Excellent when it is considered that the sustained winds endured for a period of over 18 hours.

We call attention to the fact that our little place is very rustic. Some new readers might not want to dig through our 600 previous postings to read about the "mud hut", or to visit our webpage (linked on this page), but even with the cold nights and slightly coolish days, the temperature inside stayed a constant 72 degress....a tribute to the really old fashioned adobe and plaster approach to forming the lobster shell of a house.

It is also of note that the "situation" has improved to the point that people are actually speaking confidently that a reasonable semblance of the old imperfect order has seemed to return. On our return yesterday, the highways were super over-saturated. Extremely heavy traffic accompanied this traveller for the entirety of the 239 mile route that was followed this time. Traffic coming, and going. Busses heading south must have numbered 200 common carriers of the 1st class and deluxe variety. Thousands of motorcars, 90 percent of which were families returning from buying expeditions in the Commerce Cathedrals (shopping malls) in McAllen and other places in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Another number were those Mexicans who live in the United States legally and make the Christmas trek in SUVs and station waggons, with and without trailers, loaded up like some kind of adjunct delivery service for Santa Claus.

This whole phenomena is a result of the perceived improvement in the security situation. While the chance of being involved, in actuarial terms, in some kind of crossfire or other related event was always very low in real terms, it is now perceptually, truly, obviously, and undeniably very, very diminished. There is the apparent perception and understanding as well that the new administration is not going to move in the direction of "adapting to a reasonable alternative"(benign neglect of the cartels). We are hopeful that what is essentially an imperfect victory will not be squandered by yielding to the notion that sociological rot will not finally overtake an entire huge nation if left unchecked.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

AN IRRITATION:

It disappoints, as always, when FOX News decides to join into and reinforce the popular perception created by the leftist press about the situation in Mexico. The whole picture is not that much different than here in the United States. In many ways, quite frankly, things are better South of the Border. So when O'Reilly, or the voices on The Five, and others on FOX News were admonishing that Mexican prisons are Hell Holes where the cartels run the show, and that especially Americans are targeted by the criminal and general population of Mexico, and that everything is corrupt.....it brings to mind motes and beams and eyes, kettles, pots, and black. While O'Reilly, for instance, was warning that if "President Nieto" did not release Corporal Hammer, that Mr. O'Reilly would "take care of Mexico's tourism industry". Mr. O'Reilly is such an expert on matters Mexican, that he is unaware that it is President Pen~a....not Nieto. The paternal surname immediately follows the given name(s).

The Hammer case was already essentially resolved. The Mexican Secretary of the Navy had declared the issue to have been warrantless and that no crime had been committed because the person involved had voluntarily revealed the shotgun in question and requested permitting for said instrument. The telephone calls received by the family were from prisoners and/or their family members who commonly attempt to extort money from family members of other prisoners, especially the newly arrived. American prison gangs do the same thing.

The fear held by this observer was that what ground had been covered might possibly have to be re-ploughed because Mexican arrogance is similar to American arrogance. If they are pushed, they tend to push back, sometimes to their own detriment. O'Reilly fell into this category in a way.

Many things about this case that were commonly known in Mexico were not reported. The most vigorous operator in this matter had been the the Tamaulipas State Chamber of Commerce. The final attorney in Mexico City had served well. The usually useless Human Rights Commission (totally pinko) served well. Various State and local elected officials had also been pointing out behind the scenes that the Secretary of the Navy's position was totally accurate. The federal customs and immigration official had overreacted to some personal affront, and "behaved stupidly" in the words of a great American leader. It was all but unreported that Corporal Hammer's friend was not detained during this same incident. And, while even Laura Ingraham had to pile on, please be assured that of the 1,000 Americans behind bars presently in Mexico, somewhere between 950 to 1,000 are not the type of person with whom you would like your teenaged daughter to be spending time. As well, of the 140 Americans killed in Mexico during the last year, O'Reilly and Laura and the rest of the choir seem to leave out that 130 or so were very, very probably involved in the drug trafficking business. Here, there is something usually stated about fleas, dogs, and lieing down with, etc.

It is my judgement that the full weight of the blame....at least 99% of the fault in this issue....lies with the Mexican customs officer. All he would have had to have done, at worst, is to have ordered the individual back to the American side. There is some blame to be spread onto the American border agents who apparently told the boy that there would be no problems, just to declare the gun and get the permits. The permits have to be obtained before going in.

And while all this is going on, there is a 340,000 tonne elephant sitting there on the FOX News set, minding its own business. "Don't go to Mexico, it's dangerous and corrupt, and they are always doing things all the time to everybody...especially Americans", they say. While we have Benghazi unresolved....Fast and Furious left unresolved....20 dead children in Newtown, Connecticut....overwhelming corruption at all levels in the United States Government....Solyndra ignored....expropriation of General Motors and Chrysler....and some jackass from Chicago talking about reasonable new firearms legislation, like, you know, Chicago....where "One a Day" would be a substantial improvement. Thank the Lord that Chicago has stringent firearms control. That solved all the problems.

Please allow us to include that during El Gringo Viejo's professional and business life, he conducted, permitted, licensed, escorted, guided, scouted, and otherwise attended to the issues of hunting game birds in Mexico involving hundreds upon hundreds of hunters, and thousands of shotguns, scores of thousands of importations of rounds of ammunition. Never had one man detained.

Thanks for the opportunity to unload, perhaps inform to a level of greater understanding, and swim upstream. These might be the last days for contrarians and other sorts of folks who have knowledge and opinion that is true but not part of the common understanding.

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.

______________

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

__________________________

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

oooooooooo

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

oooooooooo

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

oooooooooo

“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

oooooooooo

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

Abraham Lincoln

oooooooooo

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.