A Gringo in Rural Mexico: Catching Up - Odds and Ends - Commentary about the American Election Process

Thursday, 31 December 2015

Catching Up - Odds and Ends - Commentary about the American Election Process

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THE PAST MONTH AT THE QUINTA:

As the regular OROGs (Official Readers of the Old Gringo) know, we were out for about a month at our little place in the middle of nowhere Mexico. All in all it was a pleasant exile, quite dull save for a few Christmas pyrotechnics that drove our cats and dogs crazy.

We were covered up by hummingbirds, perhaps eight or nine species. There was a strong return of the mountain-dwelling bumblebee hummingbird, said to weigh something between the weight of an American nickel and dime. They are bright-black, and ever-so-tiny; two inches is the length of a male. Ten years ago they were fairly numerous in the lower skirts of the Sierra Madre Oriental during the Spring, but gradually became fewer in number, sometimes skipping out on the entire downslope visit business.

Other species of our feathered friends were especially numerous, considering that we were entering the darkest days of the year. Mornings were quite brisk, always in the lower 50s and several early morning readings in the 40s and even a couple of drops into the upper 30s. Afternoons were always comfortable with highs in the upper 70s and lower 80s.

Our little water pump that charges our running water inside the walls of our adobe cottage, as well as providing for garden watering at times, gave up the ghost after almost 15 years of faithful service. So that required quite a bit of diagnosis, kibitzing, tinkering, and finally Unction, followed by a run into Ciudad Victoria to buy a new pump.

The years have provided the same effect upon pump motors as they have all the electronic stuff that surrounds us. Everything is smaller and more powerful. With a bit of skepticism and the shelling out of about 3,500 pesos (about 200 dollars) we returned to our little place in the Santa Engracia outback. Alvaro, our majordomo, summoned the maestro plomero (master plumber) Arturo, and within an hour had the new motor installed and running smartly.

We always scratch our heads when the Maestros of the various blue-collar skill groupings charge for their labour. In this case we had to fork over to Arturo the massive amount of 350 pesos, which is around 20 USD at this point. And our workmen are the types who clean up everything after the job is done, and who do not leave until they have checked out the functionality of their work, be it new construction or an installation, or a repair.

Another interesting development was the request for accommodation by the last remaining offspring of the last great hacendado (traditional hacienda owner). The lady, born Alicia Martinez, daughter of Jose Martinez Gomez sent a long-time, local personal attendant to our humble place to ask if we could put up a couple of Don~a Alicia's friends at the end of the year.

We were surprised because Don~a Alicia has two large homes across the street from the Hacienda de Santa Engracia where she was born and raised. The two large houses, adjacent to the old stables which housed some of the finest horses in Mexico at one time, are antiques, dating from the 1830s. Having been in only one, and then only briefly, it was easy to appreciate that they were are are still very elegant properties, especially on the inside.

As it turned out, Don~a Alicia was having a small get-together, and was going to put up a couple of people in her main house, a foursome in the second twin house adjacent to her lodging, and then was hoping to have us take another couple in for a couple or three nights. We thought it a bit strange, because she had the Hacienda de Santa Engracia right across the street, and no-one alive has more connection to that facility that Don~a Alicia.

Remember that the Hacienda is also a 5-star hotel, full of lore, gardens, a swimming pool, scores of ghosts, and other attributes. We learned a bit later that, due to the various changes in the composition of the ownership, Don~a Alicia no longer has any particular leverage on rates or anything much beyond respectful treatment.

Her personal assistant painted out what was needed, and then asked if we had any space available. El Gringo Viejo was a bit surprised to say the least, but responded that we had our room available for the dates that had been mentioned. The assistant, named Carolina, called on her cellular to her mistress and advised that El Gringo Viejo had space and would keep it reserved for her two friends. So, that was that.

I asked Carolina if perhaps she would like to see the room. She seemed almost astonished for some reason, but then responded in a very animated manner in the positive. Upon entering she declared, "Que hermosa habitation!" (What a beautiful room!). I directed her to the bath, which is, in fact, quite large and well equipped, especially for the area. Carolina was very animated, and was already dialing up Don~a Alicia as we walked back to where her brother was minding a grandson.

Carolina extolled the quarters she had seen in very glowing terms, and suddenly asked, "Don~a Licha would like to speak to you, if possible." So, El Gringo Viejo took the telephone and engaged the revered aristocrat carefully. Once we were through and settled on prices and conditions, we parted company. It was all very interesting. ("Licha" is a diminutive and/or nickname for Alicia.)

We had come full cycle. An eccentric Gringo interloper accommodating guests of the daughter of the last great Hacendado.

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THE AMERICAN ELECTION:

(1) We are replacing a man who was elected by people who were/are stupid.....according to a certain Dr. Gruber, the architect of the Obama Socialised Medicine Initiative. The American Obsolete Press has buried Dr. Gruber deep into the confines of some dark swamp. The Stupid never knew about Dr. Gruber before, during, or after either of the elections of Barrack Hussein Obama. Still to this day, very few, beyond those in the Conservative camp, have ever known of the existence that particular personality.

Why? Because they are generally intentionally ill-informed, incapable of being informed, uncaring, or aloof and committed marxists.

(2) We are presented with eight years of truly slimy, undeservedly arrogant, incompetent, racist, and marxist oriented presidency that will supposedly be followed by another eight years of the same. This time the incumbent will be an equally mendacious, incompetent, America hating narcissist. She, like Barack Hussein Obama, is under the control of a Persian communist. Huma controls (Sir Edmund) Hillary passively, perhaps the way she controls her hubby, the famous Anthony Weiner.....the famous auto- photographic - email specialist.

The other president, soon to be gone, perhaps to be named President of the United Nations for life, has a controller who is much more assertive, Valerie Jarrett who also has a communist family background, as well as Persian background. Both controllers were born in Persia (now known as Iran), both Presidents are hopelessly shallow. The only thing that has allowed these two Presidents to remotely maintain sway over the electorate, as we now return to the first point, is the willing lack of critical thinking or even interest in the American political-economic complexion on the part of what appears to be a slight majority of the electorate.

That willingness to be apathetic and ignorant is cultivated every second of every minute of every hour is the Obsolete Press and the popular performing culture.

Harold Stassen

Candidate for the Republican
nomination for President on
ten (10) occasions from 1940
through 1980

We are not saying that two female Rasputins are the sole controllers, or handlers of the marionettes strings. We realise well that they represent only two of the several thousand who awake daily to go about the work of killing the Republic and imposing upon the hapless citizenry a totalitarian national socialist Gulagstag. How peculiar.

On the other hand, we watch as the Republican Party undergoes a very, difficult labour and delivery. All form and nature of Republicanism is on display. It is keenly apparent that the stodgy pseudo-conservative control group known as the Establishment is quaking it it collective boots.

They seem to be dedicated to the notion that we must nominate the only person who can win, a non-binding philosophy of moderation that they say has been successful every time it has been employed. Referred to as the Harold Stassen Rule, they have had many successes. Ford, GHW Bush, Dole, McCain, Romney, and Hoover have clearly demonstrated their brilliant strategy of presenting mayonnaise and healthy, low fat margarine to the public as a Republican campaign platform.

We are left with a good set of candidates after all the posturing, clucking of hens, and preening of show-cats. Christy, Bush, Kasich, and some others are still bravely rowing towards the finish line, although their canoes have long since stuck themselves into some kind of sandy goo in the part of the river that has no water. This leaves Carson, Fiorina, Paul, Rubio, and Cruz to weld a conservative battering ram that might be able to distract the American Lemming Association from nominating the Republican version of Hope and Change.

Donald Trump is the American political equivalent to some organism composed of the personalities of Ross Perot and Harry Houdini. He unites everyone who can believe, if only for a moment, that Trump "thinks the way I think and feel". One can almost envision the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing "When You Wish Upon a Star" as cameras pan across the crowds of dolts who believe in the Republican equivalent of "Hope and Change".

As for this Gringo Viejo, my lot is cast not for the lesser of evils but for the candidate he deduces is best, and that person is Cruz. It would be possible to support the four others named before him with energy, listed above. But, as a Texan, and as one who has followed the man with interest over the past eight years, I made my commitment early on for him and his dedication to strict constitutionalist and republican government.

There, we have railed forth and bellowed long and loud. We are back in the saddle again. More to-morrow.
El Gringo Viejo

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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

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

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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.