A Gringo in Rural Mexico: Quick Points

Friday, 1 February 2013

Quick Points

(1) The explosions in Turkey and Mexico are perplexing. Barak and Hillary have their Love Dance of Death, before they begin to rip each other to shreds later, to pat each other on the back for saving the Arab world from itself. And they are content in the knowledge that the Arab world is very proud of Obama and America. Just think, they say to themselves, on the air, of all the things Barry and Hilly have done for and given to the women and the children. And, while the Turks and the Kurds are not Arabs, they are Muslims. Something is going on, there.

There is also a problem with the explosion in Mexico City. The PEMEX central administration building there in near-northcentral Mexico City is a wondrous building, very modern, a building that has scoffed at 7 and 8 level earthquakes. The best way to structurally compromise a building of this sort is to destablise it from the lowest point possible. Obviously, a bomb of the highest potency possible is the best solution. Even the "Blind Sheik" knew that before he tried to blow down the Twin Towers in 1993.

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The 50+ story PEMEX
central administration
building

Both of these events could be just what they seem to be. The one in Turkey is just a run of the mill lunatic Muslim extremist trying to get to the front of the 72 virgin line. And the one in Mexico is just an incident of oversight of a boiler or the like. The problem with the Mexico angle is that El Gringo Viejo had opportunity to work inside of that building on a couple of occasions, and its ventilation and exhausting of the auxiliary power and climate control/filtering/air movement systems was quite good. It was not a Mickey Mouse operation, although PEMEX is frequently criticised for a myriad of errors in terms of corruption and maintenance throughout the country. It must, as well, be pointed out that PEMEX over the last 10 years especially has made great strides to become a "thoroughly modern Millie", and they really never were so totally corrupt as some might have suggested. There is a saying in Texas, among those who have dealt with PEMEX, and that is "Nobody has ever taken a PEMEX check that bounced."....and that is true. The Mexicans are so dumb that they even paid off the bonds that they used to indemnify the Foreign Oil interests after the expropriation in 1938.

The reason that El Gringo Viejo is concerned about this is because Pen~a Nieto is leaving the door pretty much wide open to the possibility of significant privatisation of the government owned company. Many Mexican Bill Aires types lurk around in Mexico...unrepentant, unconvicted, communists, murderers....who are TOTALLY opposed to PEMEX privatisation. Therefore, it follows,"If I am against something, I get to kill innocent people because I am against something."

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(2) We shall be down at our little place on the face of the Sierra Madre Orental for the next little while. We should be able to maintain a fairly frequent contact with everyone via email and this blog. It is time to do considerable pruning and preparation, as well as to begin the last stages of a couple of projects that are unfinished. Nothing too difficult, but things that need to be done have a way of needing to be done. We are going to have, by this time next year, a carport with a crown of bouganvilla and duranta that will make all the ladies in the ejido bitterly green with envy. It will also serve to demonstrate that El Gringo Viejo stayed in with them during a Winter of Discontent that was quite a trial for everyone. While it was not like Valley Forge, it was, is, and will be a life-moment that leaves certain scars.

We are not done with the issue as of yet, but there are assurances that the Army remains and the Naval Infantry remains, and to this point what has been promised militarily has also been complied with. The willingness of the common people of the area to drop dimes has been a pivotal point in the victories accomplished to this point, and we are hopeful that we can move now into a new era of passive enforcement.

This has all seemed to pretty much follow El Gringo Viejo's timeline of events. If anything, it is a little quicker than we thought possible. In any regard, we have continued along our path, openly, so as to underscore our commitment with the local people, most of whom know that El Gringo Viejo is crazy, but who still like to point out that he hasn't done a lot of damage to the Ejido de Francisco I. Madero and that they tolerate funny-looking foreign people who talk in funny languages.

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El Zorro lives on the other side of these mountains
a good long ride from here. El Gringo Viejo
lives on this side.

(3) We are going to be requesting that El Zorro send a commentary once every four to seven days...more if he can find the time. We will rely on his input during these coming days if he wishes...and it would be preferred that his contributions be as frequent as he can manage.

     El Zorro is a specialist in areas where El Gringo Viejo is not. He and I agree and/or concur to a 99% level on everything.   He remains an American, however while I have decided to jump the fence and become a Texian, native born and by birthright. His takes are refreshingly different from El Gringo Viejo's....although he is native born as a Texian, and with even a greater lineage and birthright to declare himself Texian.
   So, we hope to be bringing you a little more of the ranting, conjecture, observations, and conclusions that reasonable men do when confronting obstinance, arrogance, and destructive forces that work against our understanding of right and wrong, good and bad.    I shall try to chime in when possible from my place on the side of the mountains. Some day soon, we shall spring for the antennae adapter for a laptop tap computer (I know...sooooo 2012)...that can be used by guests to essentially make face to face phone calls, etc. We have that capacity now available, but I am just to cheap and lazy to do anything about it.   Maybe down the road.

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(4) To those American Republicans who still think your ship of state is salvagable, we urge that you advise the Republican Party that issues raised by the Socialist Democrat Party are not issues with which you should identify, nor concern yourselves.   Among the Anglos you are not going to gain the votes of the steely-eyed marxists, the lazy union thug who thinks he deserves something, the spoiled and narcissistic child who wants to be given a starter position at 56,000 dollars/year just because he graduated from RustBuckette University with a BA in the History of Left-handed Toothbrush Repair.   You are not going to gain the votes of the Anglo guy with the Meth Lab in his baby daughter's crib room.
   The same goes for trying to assume that "all Hispanics...." anything.   The consumer/dependent class of Latins are drawn from a tradition of peonage that was almost abolished, but that the Mexican central government kept on life supports for the entire post-revolutionary period until around 1996. There are still vestiges, official supports for prices, silly medical and food programs, and so forth, although theirs are being refined and are being morphed into private sector alternatives.
      We have invited the left-overs unto ourselves in the United States, and they have arrived with a vengeance with the notion that "Uncle Sam and Tio Obamaham, is better than that stupid Mexican government that just doesn't seem to want to give a single mom with four "special needs" babies ages 1 through 5 about 90,000 dollars/year worth of food, shelter,
"free"medical care, therapy for her children's various birth defects, transportation, WIC, AFDC, etc.     You, as Republicans will never be able or prepared to provide that to her or anyone else.
     Only the Democrats and corrupt businesses (collaborators in socialist deviancy) practice this insanity.   If you, as Republicans, try to out "immigration" or out "welfare" the Hispanic issue from the Democrats, you will lose because the Socialist Democrats are not bound by the truth, and they will always outbid you.   The Republicans promised you a 29,000 inch 5 dimensional Televsion made in Red China, we are giving you 70 million inch atomic television that pours out 30 million barrels of beer and doritos per second and shoots quadzillions of pampers per second into every parking lot and sidewalk in a billion, million universes.
     The Socialist Democrats can and will promise to teach all of your children about diabetes and how it is the pinche gabachos' fault, and they will provide free classes in soccer and how to form new gang signs and do indelible graffiti.   Plus they will provide free funerals for all family members killed in drive-by shootings when the shooters are using firearms released to gang members and criminal elements by the USGovernment.

   In short, you must only be concerned with Latin people as you are concerned with all people.   "Our people" are the skilled labour people, the professional people, the "worked their way to be manager at MacDonalds people, the small business people, the professional and trades people, military and most police people....that is where our people are....and there is not a dime's worth of differernce among them when they are all together supporting an issue. Their commonality of thought is amazing.   THEY ARE THE STRAIGHT-THINKING HUMANS.   In Texas among the Latins, the percentage of conservative voters has increased. So please do not listen to Socialist Democrats diagnose and prescribe concerning maladies within the conservative and/or Republican group.

My faith and certain knowledge is that the Republicans will not listen to this madman, shouting in the wilderness.   They are driven to be kinder and gentler and to be liked, when it is written, "Dependent proles and consumers HATE REPUBLICANS. Republicans have things and also make the dependent people who live by invading the work and investments of other feel guilty. They make up for their guilt by HATING REPUBLICANS. THEY HATE REPUBLICANS."   See the words glowing on the wall!

Belshazzar's Feast - From a work by Rembrandt
The King beholds the ominous message of
Mene mene....Meaning that Calamity
Awaits
From the Book of Daniel

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We shall depart the field of battle for a bit. Perhaps to-night and to-morrow we shall buckle the swash, scale the mael, prance the lance and all that good stuff. Come Watson! Bring your pistol! The game's afoot!
El Gringo Viejo

El Zorro lives on the other side of those mountains...quite a long ride by horse. El Gringo Viejo lives on this side.

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

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

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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

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

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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.