A Gringo in Rural Mexico: Called to Mean Old Joe's Saloon in El Diablo, Texas

Sunday 20 January 2013

Called to Mean Old Joe's Saloon in El Diablo, Texas

El Gringo Viejo had a bit of a different deal of the deck this time. He was picking up stuff that he couldn't find in at the General Store in Dusty Gullet Gulch, so he came over to El Diablo where Old Felipe has a store that is quite a bit better, but it's futher away and Felipe likes to talk (and pick up gossip, the number one sport in El Diablo). Felipe's sons had finished loading our two-ton buck and were getting ready to re-tack and hitch the two mules after their watering and otherwise being spoil't, when a little Latin squirt came running up with a message. "Sen~or Gringo, Sen~or Gringo, El Zorro esta' por alla en la Cantina del Viejo Jose, el otro Gringo. Me mando a decirle que quiere hablar contigo! Pero, de urgencia!!" So there we had it. Urgent! It is? Why, when, and where did all this come about? But, such an earnest child, complying with an adult's orders, just had to be obeyed. I thought I knew who it might be, but it was odd that such a meeting should be called out in the open and without regard to El Zorro's normal secretivity. El Gringo Viejo strode over the one block to the west and across the dusty street, to the somewhat ramshackle, but clean, saloon owned and operated by Old Joe Wilkins, who had never been known to smile in 30 years of running his bar...weekend restaurant...and-on call blacksmithing service.

Upon entering, there were no other clients to be seen, save for one old lady, looking the worse for wear for various reasons. Nope, nobody else around...but little "Chon" , the messenger was pointing purposefully at the old lady, and motioning that I should take a chair at that table.

As I sat down, the Old Lady stood up and took of her dress and wigs and began to wipe off the makeup....It really was El Zorro! "What's the point of all of this," I laughed. Thankfully, El Zorro had his trademark black outfit on underneath the dowdy-looking dress...and his hat nearby. The cape thing was always overdone, something he almost never used or uses....except, now that we up in years...I use the old over the head goat's wool poncho, and I would imagine that El Zorro would have liked to have that cape with the January night setting up clear...crisp...and more than cool.

He responded,"I don't really care who sees me leave, I just don't want anybody to know that I'm here or that I arrived. Look, here is something that I wrote up. This issue becomes more serious every day. We need to remember our basics...like in shooting a rifle, or pitching a baseball, or heck, just doing an arpeggio on a piano. We have to practice our thought and thinking process. We've been poisoned by the mainstream marxist press to think that a President is like Fidel or Hugo or Kim or Ho. We need to push the default button on our own people and allow them to remember what it is...in black and white...what it is that we are fighting for. Franklin's words, de Toqueville's words warn us about that. Adams and Jefferson as well. Madison speaks to it. But this paper here is what I want published to remind our folks....we are fighting for the maintenance of processes that were wisely installed and that also work when used."

Mountains to the west of
El Diablo, Texas, near the border

And then the preaching was over. It was not so much an instructive, but rather an order. And the message is more than worthwhile. El Zorro says little, ventures away from his two or three haunts and recesses only rarely, and for that reason the observations and conclusions that are made in his messages are arrows whose shafts are .925 silver and points are 18k gold. After a few rounds of Old Mean Joe's best Mexican beer, we went into the darkening hour. The mules would know the way home. I noticed that Old Felipe had put two carrots on the bench seat...one for each of the mules upon return to our little adobe hut about 5 miles to the west...towards those mountains.

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MESSAGE CONCERNING THE CORRECT ASSIGNMENT OF DUTIES and RESPONSIBILITIES, AS SPECIFIED AND REQUIRED BY THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ITS ARTICLES AND AMENDMENTS. TO WIT:

January 21, 2013 - another inauguration of the executor of the will.

Does it occur to anyone that the executive of the United States, aka President, is in function, simply the "executor" of the Constitution as opposed to the "manipulator" of the Constitution? The job, as is expressed in the inauguration oath, "...I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve protect and defend the Constitution of the United States...". It is unfortunate that the phrase "to the best of my ability" is in the oath because it has given something of a loophole for this president to wriggle through.

There is a racoon in our stable that coexists with 3 cats. It is impossible to coax this critter out and we get no assistance from the felines. We have to daily clean up the mess of the previous nights' pandemonium. There is a mechanical door with collar sensors worn by the cats that allow the door to open and close for their entry and exit. Obviously the racoon does not have a collar but he is very satisfied to live in the building where there is food, water, and warmth.

Actually that has nothing to do with the president or the inauguration except for the frustration we have in that, despite all our efforts, we cannot rid ourselves of this varmit.

Back to the point we would make, most responsible individuals have a will so as to protect their heirs from government looting of their inheritance. Also with a will the responsible individuals will have an executor whose responsibility is to enforce the conditions of the will. The executor has no power to change the conditions of the document without the express direction of the originator. This is where we make the analogy between a will and the Constitution, the legal executor and the President of the United States. The definition of executive in the context of our government: "the branch of government responsible for carrying out laws, decrees, etc.; administration".

Article I of the Constitution establishes the legislature which is the sole authority to legislate (make laws). Article II establishes the executive branch and specifies the powers of the president which do not include making laws. His job is not to be the boss of the Congress or the Judical branch established in Article III of the Constitution.

We have three branches of government, estalished in order of priority, which none we now have seem to know what their responsibilities under the original law of the country are, nor do they understand the premise of our form of government which is a constitutional republic, not a democracy as our elected officials so often suggest. What this means, for low information voters or low information anybodys, our government is established to protect the the rights of the minority from being abrogated by the majority.

The esteemed Senator from New York, "Chucky Schmuky Schumer" as he is affectionately called, showed his hand on the issue of the rights of the minority off handedly in a recent conversation with Joe Scarborough of the Morning Schmo. To paraphrase, he said that he thought the next four years would bring more compromise between parties in the Congress and the President. He said Leader Boehner was working to bring more comprimise to the House but for 50 rebel members in his chamber. He and his ilk would have us believe compromise / good, but standing on principles / bad. The 50 members are the 2010 Tea Party members who are the hope for the nation. These junior members will ultimately prevail with help in the mid term elections of 2014 to increase their numbers in the House and gain a majority of the same quality individuals in the Senate.

This President continues to campaign. He is not to be underestimated. His gains in his first term are historic. He will try to be even more effective in this second term with immigration and gun control to name a couple. He will continue to bash us over the head with "all Obama all the time". His blathering about compromise and those bad representatives who refuse to bend over will be in your face at every opportunity. He is already using his campaign staff from 2012 to defeat us in 2014. We have to start looking now toward a candidate for 2016.
Yours truly likes Ted Cruz even though he is a junior Senator. He has all the values conservatives should rally behind (in our humble opinion). Senator Cruz already has more experience than did Obama at his first inauguration. He will have four years experience by the 2016 election. It would be a grand occasion to hear Senator Cruz repeat "...I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will, to the best of my ability, preserve protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, so help me God."

El Zorro

('nuff said, and well said. 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.