The Prohibited Question: Too awful for even battle-hardened combat veterans to withstand. Imagen the Children....

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     We have fully recovered after the shock to our nervous systems.  We learned that the United States Census Bureau might ask a question in the coming Census (a Constitutional requirement) concerning whether or not the respondent is a citizen, legal alien, or person who is in residence without authorisation.

     It has been stated, repeatedly, in the media that this is the first time anyone has ever inquired about illegal aliens being in residence.  A furor has developed over this matter, and it is quickly pointed out that this is a Crime Against Humanity, a return to the gas chambers when Hispanics and left-handed people were led to the gas chambers in Alabama and Bavaria like back during the Battle of the Cinco de Mayo, on the 4th of July, in Puebla, Louisiana, in 1917.   Everybody knows that.

    The only problem is that all the above, as any OROG knows, gibberish.  But gibberish-thought is what is ruling and guiding us now.   We enumerate the maddening falsities of the "common understanding below:

     (1)    My mother took the Census in 1950.  That census included a question concerning illegal alien status of the respondent.  Almost all the illegal aliens censused responded honestly.  There was a follow-up re-assessment of the census in 1953, and I was even more aware of what was going on, now being 6...going on 7 years of age.   My mother had been a Lead Enumerator, supervising a team of Census Takers.   She and some of the same people did the re-assessment.

     We were all racists in those days, and hated Mexicans worse than Negroes, so it logically follows that my mother and her lackeys were trying to pry out the dirty Mexicans and ship them to the Salt Mines State Correctional Institution for Subhuman Criminals.   That is the present day image the professorial class has of us, our time, and our attitudes.

     We put the above paragraph into this submission for two reasons.  We fulfil the image the Left has of us, as ruralist Texians in the early 1950s.  And we give them the opportunity to get off at this stop so they can run screaming, "We found the people Steinbeck was describing in his book "Tortilla Flat!!!"...we found them, we found them!!!"
   Of course, Steinbeck was the one who re-invented the image for the Left of Emiliano Zapata as a poor Zapotec Indian, hat in hand, who was simply searching for a return of a few properties that had been stolen by the Church and the Rich and the Politicians.   It turns out that the real image of Zapata is that he was easily the richest pure-blooded Zapotec Indian in the large area where the Zapotecs dominated.   Easily, he was a multi-millionaire.
    How else, one might ask, could and would he group up one of the fiercest infantry and cavalry peasant armies in the history of the world to help bring down one of the most entrenched "legally elected" dictators in the history of the world, José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori, known to the world as Porfirio Diaz, General and Presidente de Mexico...for over 30 years of rule.  He was expulsed from Mexico in 1911, and died in France soon after and was buried in the Montparnasse
Cemetery of Paris...perhaps an appropriate end to a Mexican dictator from Oaxaca.

     The fact is, especially for anyone under the age of 50...they, in their broad majority, don't know, don't care, don't want to be bothered by old stuff.

(2)   We were very careful with our Mexican workers.  The local Mexican / Spanish American (of biological origin) residents in the Rio Grande Valley who were in the main, various types of colonial and older Mexican sorts who had always been either "from around here, or nearby" were all obligated, employed, and already spoken for by reality.  Our workers were not among those folks, because they, the local residents, were already working...small proprietors, clerks, office workers, skilled blue-collar, doctors of various types, nurses, teachers, farmers and farm-management.

     Our workers came from distant parts of the Republic of Mexico...a times 1,000 miles, at times 200 miles away when those distances were considerable, even in Texas.   Mexico, after all, is three times the size of Texas...(do not tell anybody).   Many of our workers could not speak Spanish at all or very well, due to the fact they spoke native indigenous languages.
     We had Braceros - the legal, temporary workers, and the "tourists", people who just happened to show up, because they had heard that my mother and father paid fairly, a little better than the going rate, and only directly to the worker or his wife in Mexico (by Telegrafos de Mexico)..no contractors.

     Our people always returned when they were called, and if they could, sometimes they would call and say they were "available".  In those days, either way, the caller could be charged 16 - 22 American dollars for a 90 second call.  This is not a joke.

(3)  In those times there was a requirement that a legal alien, seeking resident alien status so as to begin the process to naturalisation have legal status in the United States, and finally citizenship, would have to endure, and endure, and endure, finally arriving at that point when the "examination" would come, and thing would move very quickly.

     I remember driving back from Brownsville and the Federal Court with my mother and Godmother and another gentleman (name forgotten), and Aunt Marty Clopton (not a real aunt, but a Southern "aunt").   They had been sponsors to Guadalupe Herrera as a petitioner for American citizenship, and she had complied with all the language, civics, and moral requirements and was noted as a productive and positive person.   She was sworn in with 16 others, and received the incredibly elaborate, Magna-Carta quality parchment, lots of original ink and signatures,  I had never seen anything like it. 

     It was troubling that in spite of all this formal falderah, and her becoming an "American", Guadalupe was weeping, controllably, but weeping, none-the-less.   "Mom, why is Lupe crying?"  I asked.  My mother said, "She is not crying, she is weeping with joy for now being an American, and she is weeping with a bit of sadness because the country she left is one of the very most beautiful and interesting countries on the Earth.  You will learn those things as you grow older.  Now Lupe is your Auntie, like Lucille and Marty."   I sat in silence back to McAllen, sixty miles, remembering all my maps and language works.   It was 1953.

     It is not fair for people to come over and slob onto the welfare system, when the woman identified above was a legal alien, provided for herself and others, and paid taxes during her legal stay in Texas.   She paid legal fees from her own efforts and purse and attorney's fees that arrived at something like 1,400 dollars, American.  You can imagine how much that is worth, when we bought our first Volkswagen in San Antonio, in cash for 1,660 Yankee dollars in 1956.  Suffice to say, all of Guadalupe's children...not her worthless husband...wound up being very, very high level blue-collar construction experts, RN nurses, or white-collar managers or business owners.  Guadalupe's husband was a third generation American Citizen and the laziest pontificator and dominoe player in McAllen.

      His number one son became a crew leader with my Godfather's construction company, and then a Site Superintendent, approved by the Corps of Engineers, during the time of the completion of the Falcon Reservoir Project.  He had masters certificates in plumbing, electricity, and gas control from the Republic of Texas...having passed all of the tests with a 105 average.  He was awarded five per cent for his service during the Korean War in  the United States Army.  

  (4)  Yankees and liberals would come down and blatantly ask how we could live with the idea of "keeping down" the Latin "underclass".  The low wages, the demand to speak English, signs here and there, like the ones for Negroes up around Austin and Houston...how could we endorse such things?   We, as most Southerners, would not respond to the questions, except, perhaps obliquely.

     Finally, to make a very, very, very difficult question to answer understood we wish to leave you with this thought.

     The Latins were just ....there....The majority was White by law, and many were whiter than the Angloids.  But everyone attending public schools in McAllen would go to neighourhood schools for the first six years.   After that, it was "WELCOME TO THE REAL WORLD!!"   I can imagine the Latin girls going back home and telling their mothers that all the Anglo boys had lots of pimples and were very pallid and sickly looking.

     There were many, many very attractive and well-presented Latin girls that would have been reported by the Angloid boys to their mothers in a substantially different manner,  (if they were telling the truth).

    Many wanted to know more about about the life on the farm for the workers.   Reporters, preachers, Border Patrol, etc.  But we were not into that .  We built cabins that were way beyond the minimum,  required.  But the "dumb Mexicans" declared that they would like to build bamboo and cane and palm portales and cabanas.   We had plenteous supplies of bamboo and palm, so we said, "Okay".   They  made almost elegant places there, right by the main terciary canal and well under the canopy of "growies" that dominated the two acres adjacent on the east of that canal. 

    You can imagine when the "dumb Mexicans" brought us buckets of dates for Christmas.  They were from our same palms  (McAllen was known throughout Texas as "the City of Palms").   The dates had been cured by soaking in brown sugar, rum, and mescal for 30 days.   Nowadays they would have been worth 250 dollars.  Back then, my father had to hide them from his parents-in-law and  portion them out to his fellow farmers.

    We shall try give a few more glimpses into the real life of farm / rural people during those times.  I have to go to the peculiar precincts of Central Texas early Saturday Morning.   For that reason we shall be picking up where, here we have left off.   Upon return,  we intend to be at the Quinta by the 4th of April...and it will be necessary to be there for a while.  Our Mayordomo is also a small businessman, and he has to dance on the pinhead we both pass to each other...something like a relay race baton.

More Later

El Gringo Viejo

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And Furthermore - God Bless the Truth that Stamps Out the Lies.... (updated and corrected)

THE BIGGEST SINGLE CAUSE OF THESE MASSACRES:

     We would like to express the one perfect and total solution to the eruption of massive public murders by firearm and / or bomb during the past forty years.   We include the Luby's - Temple massacre (1991),  now long forgotten, wherein 23 people died, along with the satanic perpetrator.  Before that, we had a perpetrator, a Marine, who went up into the University of Texas "Tower", several times one morning, carrying oddly shaped crates and boxes, Charles Whitman went up, and around noon one August day in 1966, set about murdering (besides his wife and mother earlier) 19 people and wounding 30 or so, from ranges between 600 and 1,400 yards.    And the libs said he was insane, and the fault was with the gun...just having the gun in the house provoked him into killing people.....?????
     The fact is, he was under the care of a psychiatrist, associated with the University of Texas professorial class.  Whitman had been using "behavioural control" medicines for a while, and the mixing was considered normal.   My father, who was "on campus" that day giving a lecture, was discussing differential assessment of non-English speaking children when measuring Intelligence Quotient.  He thought it might be a good idea to administer the test in an understood language.
     As a person fluent in Spanish, he managed to assist in the release of almost 150 children that  had been sent to the facility for the un-helpworthy, mentally retarded, due to the fact that their actual IQ's ranged from 115 to nearly 150.
     And we were paying taxes to maintain people of this intellectual level?  God Save the Queen!!

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    The feel-good notion about "ending fully-semi-automatic gun deaths that are always killing children and me all the time"...allows us to re-open the issue from yesterday's blog entry.   We would like to demonstrate what a leftist rally always looks like at the end.  Leftists are full of their own hubris and egotism.  They feel whatever they do is "right-on" by definition.

    Perhaps this is because they were raised by parents who used Dr. Spock as their guide.  Perhaps it is because the parents hate their children and give them anything they ask for just to get them out the door, out of sight, or anywhere save for where the parents are.  Dr. Spock's greatest fear was that the darling little angels might encounter negativity at some point within the first 400 or 500 years of pre-adult life.

     We are amazed who the Great Spokesman for the "student movement against fully semi-automatic, NRA-produced, B-52 long-clip, assault rifles" is when he has such difficulty making it through two or three sentences without dropping several "f-bombs".

     When your humble observer was a pre-delinquent back in the 1950s and 1960s, it is certain that my father would have rattled my teeth if he had heard me singing a song in the shower with such lyrics included.  Were I to have said such things in mixed company and among adults and/or ladies  in those days, my father would have rattled my teeth right there and then.

    When I jumped on the assistant principal "in charge of disciplinary matters" for McAllen High School in October of 1963 for allowing seven ruffian bullies to beat up on two nerds in the bleacher row in front of them during a pep-rally in the gymnasium, I told him, "Those guys were beating up on those kids with their heavy rings, banging them on the head and face."
     When we (three or four 'preppies' seated nearby) tried to intervene, the assistant principal came over and "detained" us, the preppies, and directed me as the "ringleader" to meet him in his office in 15 minutes.

     After  90 minutes, the "assistant principal in charge of disciplinary matters" finally arrived and wanted to know why we were causing such a disturbance during a pep-rally, especially considering that this would be a district title football game coming up.   I returned the favour by suggesting that my buddies and I were intervening on behalf of two 75-pound nerds with pencil necks and slide-rules and pocket protectors.  The "assistant-principal for disciplinary matters" declared that the only thing he saw was a bunch of clowns trying to impress the girls and distract from Mr. Snavely's band's performance,  (He was directing the playing our fight songs, Dixie and La Bamba.  Both ditties were regarded by everyone at McHI including the preppies,  as something like Religious Anthems and Patriotic songs).

      My mistake was to say, "No, you chose to see that, because you are afraid physically and politically of those bums...two of whom are with the XXXXXXXXXX ownership and administration and the rest have violent crime arrests!  Your problem is that you don't give a damn about the victims, while you are protecting the bullies!!!

     Instantly the assistant principal stood up, and ordered me out, but only after declaring, "You are suspended due to lack of respect for an employee of the McAllen School District, and you have used inexcusable profanity in a school setting with ladies present.  I shall allow you to attend class on Monday, but only on the guarantee that you will have your mother or father here at 4:00 p.m. on Monday to understand the conditions of your re-entry without suspension, but with probation!"

     That was the nature of things in in 1963.  My mother came that Monday and said something about  insiped, over-paid potentates, and left.  I followed her and we rode in silence to the house.  Arriving, my mother declared, "I cannot figure you out. Sometimes I think you are a coward, and other times I think you are Don Quixote, afraid of nothing and willing to die for nothing.  Don't Change."  We got down, went inside, and went about our chores and duties. 

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     Continuing with this dismal feeling-our-way through the Dark Ages of the 1950s and early 1960s, it is necessary that we visit the Teenaged Republicans club of McAllen and their activities.  We wanted to attend the Campaign Rally for Jack Cox, Republican candidate for Governor of Texas in 1962.  We washed 2,330 autos in McAllen and Mission and Sharyland, at 5.00 Yankee dollars per vehicle over an eight-weekend period.   Some enterprising girls sold 300 dozen chocolate-chip cookies, homemade by their own skilled hands, and that brought another batch of shekels.   (The McAllen TAR group was the largest in the nation, of all things, with a membership of 300+, and your humble servant was the President of the McAllen Teenaged Republican Club.  El Zorro was, essentially, the Ramrod Plenipotentiary for this and other TAR activities during those times.)

      We came up with around 12,000 or so yankee dollars to lease 6 busses from Valley Transit Company to make an early morning and then a turnaround, and return late at night for the 650 mile round trip.  Each voyager had to pay for his/her snacks, meals, rest-stop refreshments, etc.   Our oldest "teenager" was 19 (a senior), and our youngest were four or five eleven-year olds with a "nanny" and four or five 12 year olds.    All were required to care each for him/her and all for one another.  Your humble servant and the real ramrod of the even, El Zorro, along with the drivers, ran up and down after rest-stops.
     We had Mr. Dave Horger (an attorney and brother of a Texas Ranger) and Mr. Ray Russell, who was a respected real estate attorney and accountant, our sponsors, as "escorts".  

     It was all done with "kids" who were 14 - 16 years of age, for the most part.  There were no law-suits, insurances beyond that which was provided by the common carriers, although we did require parental permission, especially after it was learned that Jayne Mansfield was going to grace the proceedings at the Coliseum in Austin...there in the downtown of the real, live capital, (little did I know that almost all the Newton family would be living in Austin in less than five years).

     Suffice to say the Coliseum was full...perhaps 12,000 shrieking junior elephants...having the chance to "go crazy" for a bald guy who, in fact, almost beat John Connelly, the hand-picked lackey for LBJ to run Texas while LBJ was running the country into the pig-stye.  Connelly changed parties shortly after LBJ declared that he would not be a candidate for re-election in 1968.

    To the right, one can appreciate the Capitol building of the Republic of Texas.  It should be enough to point out that the building is both heavier and higher than United States Capitol building.   One can note that the Christmas tree is standing in front of the Confederate Memorial.  Yankees, Black Folks, dumboes like me, dogs and cats, liberal Yankee professors at the University of Texas, Extraterrestrials, and people on Social Security visit there and in the incredible insides of the building, and none of them have ever fallen down and quivered as though in a seizure.
    Many of our 1962 Group visited the incredible building, went to Youngblood's Chicken Restaurant (near the Coliseum and Capitol) and scratched their heads about the sign that announced "White Only" over that door, and "Coloured Entrance" over another door, "over there".  In South Texas we were lucky because, essentially almost everyone in deepest South Texas was WHITE!!!!!.   Many of our campaign supporters had never experienced segregated facilities.

     To make an overly long story as short as possible, we did the two huge pep rallies and local high school bands playing for an obviously political event (it was legal back then if the contractors paid a 'reasonable' engagement to the school's band fund.)  The bands were very good, almost as good as McAllen's.  We loaded our busses and turned south at San Marcos and headed to the Rio Grande.  People (kids) were tired, happy, and tired.  Snacks...Fritos...ice-chests with bean dip...all nature of goodies, but no weed.  A few guys had to go to the back of the bus to smoke cigarettes, but, heck, James Dean said we had to do that in order to be "cool".  

   So, Gringo Viejo....so what?   Is there a point?   Yes...this picture below was not from a  Tea Party, Republican, Conservative, or right-wing event.   It was from the snowflake-snots who, 3,000 strong, ran from One single shooter, while 2 ROTC fellows, one in uniform I think, and a Coach tried to protect or interdict. They died trying.
   3,000 ran and quivered, against the assault by one.   Does anyone remember the three Gringos on the French rail car...even the French made some effort, but the three Gringos, of different stripes, but all militarily trained, without arms, subdued the Alahu akbar nutcase before he could do much damage.  Land of the Free...Home of the Brave...What Price the Sacrifice of Valour?

   In any regard, below, you can see what a leftist, snotty-nosed arrogant, immature even for a  bunch of teenies led by their commie and "progressive" puppeteers, leave behind for all the "little people" to clean up.  C-SPAN anyone?  Can you please tell the truth?

      This is the "real" capital of the Gringos...not some movie set or crummy Republic of Texas place where everybody is a racist all the time.  The Capital of the USA  deserves better respect.  Our rally in Austin in 1962 ended only after the Coliseum was cleaned up and ready for the next event.  The custodial crew, all Black men of very high degree, guided us in our clean up and expressed sincere gratitude with our civility.  Even the Hootsie-snootsie Republicans (who also considered themselves our betters, since they were from Houston and Dallas) got their hands dirty.

    A couple of the ranking members of the crew kept telling us, "You all need to leave a little, otherwise the management might think they don't need us anymore."   Laughter...but there came a point when it was obviously better to make way for the "pro's".  They took over with the new-fangled plastic bags and the sweeping / vacuuming under theatre seats, etc. and perfected the effort.

     We lost that election, 52 / 48 after all the votes were counted.  Such a close tally between a Democrat and a Republican had never been experienced for a governor's race since even before Reconstruction.   But such a close tally caused us to be ready to attack, attack, attack.

      After all we had elected, in a special by-election,  a 5'5" college history professor for Senator to the Yankees' Upper House back in 1961 to fill Lyndon's (LBJ) open seat.  A truly good man, Bill Blakeley (D), ran against John G. Tower (R), the Midwestern University, Texas history professor and 57 other candidates in the by-election.

     Tower and Blakely had to face off in a run-off...and to the surprise of everyone,  Tower, the Republican, had been selected by the Texians to be their United States Senator, by a somewhat light by-election vote, but by a very decisive margin.

     (It turned out that Kennedy's notion of keeping Lyndon on the Democrat ballot as Vice-President was to make certain that Texas would "go Democrat" in 1964.  It might have been the sealing of his demise, instead.)

       Many analysts figured that the close victory in Texas in the Presidential election of 1960 - 51.5 / 48.5 - was because Lyndon helped pull, by hook and crook, the narrow victory through the eye of the needle {40,000 vote difference with 2,100,000 votes cast}.

      The fact was that people who voted for the Democrat Kennedy, did so in spite of Lyndon, who trailed his Roman Catholic, Yankee, Massachusetts Kennedy running mate in approval ratings by fifteen to twenty per cent.)

This picture is the least of it.  Apparently the media sources have learned to not take street and gathering-place "portraits" after BLM and OWS and LGEBPyHHEXDMETWO Rallies and
pointless, meaningless demonstrations in favour of self-pity and obnoxiousness.  So, I waited
about three hours too long before searching for the pictures we wanted,
 but, by that time they had been expunged.
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     All of the above is prologue.  The main thing to remember is...The diagnosis of males at the age of 8 - 9 on up to 10 - 12, with some kind of "hyper-active disorder" became a drumbeat and a death-knell for many elementary school and pre-secondary school males during the latest 1960s and the 1970s.  Anti-male orientation by some, young psychologists trying to blend in to the trendy, and a notion that clear, horribly damaging liquids in a hypodermic or pills promising a "new-life" without manic / depressive episodes, etc. would solve all the problems of the interruptive, over-active males in the fifth grade.   Overly active females, gossipy, snippy, sneaky, and manipulative, was okay, until they became "bi-polar".    Bi-polar is another term for loading juveniles and young women and others up with "medicine".

     It is a reaonsble question to ask to the writer, "What right or justification do you have?   You only have one liberal arts degree from one university of little import."  To that accusation I yield.  But I do point out that my poor education is buttressed by a very, very deep set of experiences.  Those and the studies, and activity within the problem with "hyperactive boys" have reinforced my certainty that discipline with a gentle hand would be much better than finding out that Billy and Sam, who dropped out in their junior year, just shot up the RITZ THEATRE and killed a hundred people.   Billy and Sam, as were so many of their mates, were strung out on marihuana, "behavioural control medicine", and whatever street goodies were / are popular at the moment. 

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     The next of our Song of Lamentation Programme is the remarkable phenomena of cleaving unto any blurb issued by a Nature Lover or a Habitat Protector or an Ecological Balance Monitoring Agent, etc.   On the farm, when we lived on a real live farm, which also worked in tandem with a citrus-grove care business with many, many clients, mostly absentee Yankees, my two brothers and I learned lessons about respect for nature and the true and proper order of Christian stewardship by the age of four or five.

     These lessons were delivered by Agustin Salinas  (QEPD) my father's mayordomo, my mother and father, and my quirky Confederate maternal grandparents.  I never knew my paternal grandparents because they died long before my time.

    We learned about the care of animals, dirt, water, machinery, workers, clients, weather, markets, pneumatics, mechanical power transmission, wild and wilderness animals.   Without doubt, and it is with certain knowledge, we can state that our learning, training, and understanding has evolved and has maintained currency.   But, we also know that much of the understanding being employed by "experts" at this time seems to be something that almost has to be purposeful deception.

   At the Santa Ana Wildlife Refuge, situated between the Military Highway (old US281) and the Rio Grande south of Donna, Texas, we have seen the erection of a hyper-sacrosanct secular "Eco -Cathedral".   It  is a place of pilgrimmage, to which the trundling nuns and monks, many parading as bird-watchers, wish to "stop the Trump Wall!!!".   It is a psychotic tantrum, fuelled by ignorance, and re-enforced by arrogance.

     Quickly, we regress to the past.  In Salineno, Texas, some 80 miles upriver from the ancient 

Spanish-land grant cousin anciently recognised as Porcion de Santa Ana, there is a sleepy village on the Rio Grande.  It is a spin-off of the Jurisdiccion de Mier land assignment during the Spanish Colonial period.  Salineno apparently was the first, continually inhabited, white settlement, by law and legal process in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas.   There are various sandstone buildings (big then in 1763, but almost doll-house small now) still in use as nice, viable homes.  There still is a vibrant ranching and blue-collar business activity there.  Of the old families, the ancient families of Spain's various faces are instantly recognisable.

    About 20 years ago, the cartel people who lurked on both sides of the Rio Grande, implemented a rarely, but effectively used manoeuvre to confound and intimidate the local hicks (people like me).

    Old Man Gonzalez had the "general store" which was a veritable wonderland of memories fitted into the inside of an old Sears home.  In all probability it had come up the Rio Grande on a steamer in the years before 1906 (when river passages ended), and then been transported in sections by ox-teams, the 15 miles to Salinen~o.  Some of the smaller stuff could have been delivered by small row-boats, also used in that area at that time for such matters.   We are talking about 1885 or so.  Mr. Gonzalez was a sainted, generous man who would "...let us pay when we came back"...when we were wayward high school campers / fisherman in this beautiful stretch of Rio Grande.  (We always paid up, upon return)

     

Salineno is there in the extreme westernmost part of Starr
County, there below Falcon Dam.  We spent many, many
nights between there and Chapeno, on the Rio, three, even
 four nights, fishing, searching for Indian artifacts and dart
point, etc.  It was as close to Tom and Huck as a bunch of
Preppies could have ever approached.

The Gonzalez family owned and operated the store until 1999.  Then one very early morning, the large frame building on the main plaza (well-maintained, gravel and caliche, flat rectangle) area, across from the old Keralum Roman Catholic Mission church...the store "caught fire".  Well,  how could that happen?  As I encountered the mess, still smelling of recent burning, but about two weeks after the fact, a great-nephew came up and said. "You are the Gringo David?", to which I had to answer, "Yes. I am he.  Where is Don Fulgencio?".  The young man informed me that his great-Uncle had died about three days after the fire, just a few hours short of his 90th birthday.  There had been a party, even including a pinata, before the fire, but now....?

    Why did all this have to happen?   It was because the cucarachas then, as now, did not give a rat's tail about anything but getting their "stuff" over the border and on its way to Studio 54 for the hootsie-snootsies to do their snortsie-wortsies in their fancy "powder-rooms" and elsewhere.  After all, to the people whom Parade Magazine declare to be superior to laws and morality, they need their "stuff" man...so, move aside...or....

    And so there we were and here we are.  The Fire Department of Roma, Texas (fifteen miles away) which was barely a recognisable entity at that time (now is it Triple-A minor league, very professional operation, and improving), and other local volunteer units (one step above bucket-brigade), responded and did what they could, but with the Customs Patrol, the Border Patrol, the this/and/that INS and whatever personnel available with their attention turned towards the iconic Gonzalez Store, which was reduced to ashes, literally, there was nothing left to do.

     Over a tonne of marihuana and several heavy "bultos" of cocaine and such were passed at the Vado de Santa Margarita and the village up on the old freight road, (now US83) for transshipment to San Antonio and/or Houston.   The "fire-fighters" felt as though they were made "burros" and clowns, but such is not the case.  The constabulary and nexus did what was reasonable...and that was what the American authority did.   In these times, there is a bit better control between Mexican and American and Texian authority and response.   Still cumbersome, it is better.

     The people who essentially worship the thing that is Santa Ana Wildlife Refuge fall on the ground wailing and quivering, make senseless posters with epithets meaning nothing, and chant about how Reagan and Bush want more dead children and dead old people and ocelots.  They declare that Trump's wall will kill the "ecology" (I have never figured out what the "study of ecol" amounts to, but we keep trying).

     The people who come to our little place in the middle of Nowhere, Mexico, about 250 miles to the southwest of Santa Ana Refuge, and stay in order to relax, drink beer, talk and inquire, and look for birds frequently turn the conversation to the visit to Santa Ana Wildlife Refuge.   Almost to the person, they say that Santa Ana is something like an outdoors petting zoo.  It seems neglected in many ways and the paths feel like Interstate Highways with trundling hundreds of folks lugging camera with 3-foot long lenses and battery-packs mounted with solar panels.  (just joking, folks...don't become overly excited)

    The idea of the ecologically correct tree huggers is that if there is no direct control of the accesses and pathways...(for instance, no directing Wall or obstacle to impede the traffickers)...that there will come that inevitable time when the human smugglers and/or drug traffickers will set fire to the entire small refuge at a point near the flood-control levee on the south side, so as to facilitate a passing of the stuff over by Toluca Ranch on the Rio Grande to the east.  It is all so silly, shallow, and egotistical.  When the wind is strong from the southeast, sometime when it might be necessary to the traffickers, they will essentially burn down the Wildlife Preserve so as to pass a crummy ten million dollar drug run.

     It is a reasonable effort to keep and hold people in the Lower Rio Grande Valley for as many hours and days and weeks as possible.  But, the people who come to our Quinta on the Corona River, quite close to the Tropic of Cancer,  like the fact that there are no feeders, only community trails and pathways, and that there is a large degree of chance and accidental and spontaneous...essentially 100% unscripted...bird happenings.   Our annualised count is now over 500 different species.  We also have the 2nd heaviest Monarch Flyway between the North and the Wintering grounds to the South in Michoacan near Angangueo and visa versa during the return flight in March to the North.

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OKAY, THEN WHY ARE WE HERE?:

     The point is that the Mara Salvatrucha (MS - 13)...a name that means nothing...nonsense...and the Callejon 18 and all the variations of that group, and all the little wormy, less than single-A minor league nothings like their predecessors who adjunct to those "big-league" love death and destruction.

    I cannot write here what some of them must do in order to achieve true membership in the Mara Salvatrucha...it has to do with insertion, a blade, then dismemberment and burning or some similar degradation...of the mother of the initiate.

     Obama, Michelle, the Democrats, and the Catholic Charity people declare that we are racists because we do not want these and such people within our orbit.   (Sir Edmund) Hillary, Duchess of Corkscrew, declares that we are "deplorable" because we know the nature of the MS - 13 and their disciples.  She and the progressives who are so much wiser than us, need to be aware that we commoners would rather not be ruled by or terrorised by such vermin that she and her kind during the Reign of Barry Soetoro allowed to swarm over us.   Check the Central American "barrios" in Houston, Chicago,  St. Louis,  etc.   They account for all the increase in homicide stats since 2013.  

    Gun control, without doing much concerning the over-juicing of males between the ages of 12 and 20 with "kinder and gentler" behaviour-control drugs need to be examined VERY CAREFULLY in terms of the usefulness of those drugs.   The drugs are the main "floating variable" in all of this madness. 

I am done.

This may well be my last post, because there is really nothing that can be done against a 200 foot tidal wave of stupidity and false credo.     Remember, Global Warming is real...I know because it all turned out to be false.  That is our new reality.

El Gringo Viejo...

Illogical Arrogance Borne of Ignorance - French Revolution, Anyone?

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    Anything as dull as "Just the facts, Ma'am" might not seem to be a good motto for a police action television programme, but it worked for years for Jack Webb.   He co-ordinated with the Los Angeles Police Department and Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department during his production of a predictable, but creditable police process and action television show.  The various airings could have been, and were used for training.

     Two or three points concerning this well-orchestrated tissy-fit being produced and directed by the Democrat Party, Me-Too, Planned Parenthood (one of the most ghoulish institutions in American history), and the Soros - ACORN flotsam nihilists and marxists, need to be pointed out in direct and concrete terms.

     To begin, the demand that all children be made safe from any menace is a matter of near impossibility.  Whether at school, at home, in the public theatre, on a public conveyance, or at the public library it is impossible to guarantee the absolute safety of any child, student, person, man, woman, extraterrestrial, or mother-in-law.  It is impossible.

     Long-barrelled firearms are among the least frequently used weapons during the commission of murder or attempted murder crimes.  The inconvenient truth left behind by the snippy, arrogant, ignorant young marxist demagogues, while throwing out their false and inflammatory rhetoric, is that murders are most frequently committed by knives and hands.   By far the greatest numbers.

     In terms of violent mortality, over 96% of adolescent and child deaths are caused by vehicular involvements, via automobile or motorcycle. 

     Knives, as opposed to firearms, are involved in four times (4X) as many deaths and serious, intentional wounds that all firearms (ALL firearms).

     Perhaps the most responsible agency or entity that bears upon safety, order, and responsibility concerning firearms is the National Rifle Association.   It is logical, therefore, that the agents of the "progressivism, change, safety from guns, and advocacy for the disarming of the American populace" would fight against the existence of this American institution.

     We note that irresponsible government agencies, in the hands of corrupt and politically motivated marxist-progressive elites are the ones who, by plan, send un-chipped automatic and semi-automatic / ready to convert rifles into Mexico, specifically directed to cartel scum.  The reason originally, according to information derived from government sources, was to declare that the firearms were provided from various firearms dealers in the American Southwest.   It was a Trojan Horse deception designed to defame that firearms business in America, and then close down the dreaded "fountains of death".

     The Obama / Eric Holder episode, code-named Fast and Furious, was unlike the earlier Bush administration's delivery of semi-automatic rifles that could be fairly easily converted to automatic during the programme known as "Wide Receiver".   There were several differences between the two operations.   The Bush-era programme was co-ordinated with certain elements of the Mexican Army and Naval Infantry.  The effort was also assisted with "discovery-chips", purposefully put in to difficult to encounter places inside the rifles.  When found, the "gun-smith" would instinctively remove the chip thereby signalling the Army and Naval Infantry monitoring personnel that the rifle had been "found-out".  By that point, many cartel people and people of "doble-vida" (two lives, one public and the other on the dark side) were identified permanently.  Many were killed in confrontations with the Mexican military, many detained, imprisoned on both sides of the border.
     The Obama programme, Fast and Furious, was intentionally designed to cause civilian casualties.   It is estimated that slightly less than 2,000 civilians, military, women and children, honest to semi-honest cops, and the like were killed.  The military in Mexico was essentially un-aware and not consulted concerning this "off-shore"American domestic political offensive, using Mexicans as bullet catchers.   Some have declared that the Obama - Holder operation hoped that the American constabulary could catch a few bullets so as to further beat the drum about how American gun-dealers had armed the cartels to kill American police and government border personnel.  Problem was?   One day an American really was killed, but by that time the programme had already unravelled.   The masterminds of the Fast and Furious programme in the ATF and E were shipped to Washington, D.C. as a punishment, while also receiving posh new positions at higher pay and even less to do.
     Obama lied through his teeth during an episode on Spanish language network television during  the 2012 election campaign...declaring that Fast and Furious was a Bush programme that he (the annointed Obama) had closed down upon learning of the horrid project.  Jorge Ramos knew Obama was lying, as did the female beauty/balance on-set, but all three being effete, arrogant marxist elitists, their instinct to "circle the wagons" was infallible and was immediately employed.   There is no better lie than the truth that is left unsaid.

     In lieu of droning on with hundreds upon thousands of words, we would rather commend to the attention of the reader the words as spoken by the impudent loudmouth snowflake, who learned early to shout and threaten and throw tantrums instead of learning how to think critically.  He is ignorant enough to know that he is all-knowledgable.  Being programmed with buzz-words and phrases drawn from his thespian training and his Hollywood pedigree, his pride is in revelling in his abysmal ignorance and arrogance.  Please study his words carefully as he speaks...and one will be revealed the empty soul of a marxist demagogue.

    He frankly reminds me of the snooty female, obsolete press "reporter", who , while signing off, glared into the eye of the camera and declared, "Perhaps now something will be done about these fully semi-automatic weapons."

El Gringo Viejo
Pray for America

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The Ghost of General Lee - Waylon Jennings

WHY?

Why do we respect and allow the monument to stand Comfort, Texas when they were 

enemies?  Because the Germans believed upon what they believed and we did not 

molest their memories.  The Germans fought against the Southern Cause.

WE DID NOT DESECRATE NOR MOVE THIER MONUMENTS.

GOD BLESS ROBERT LEE...PLEASE FORGIVE Donald Trump,

the traitor against common law....

My Granddaughter...very wayward in the ways of chocolate...as is her grandfather

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ALL POINTS BULLETIN

Cake and icing addict.  Last seen looking cute somewhere in

the Central Part of the Republic of Texas.

Special warning:  Subject has a magical method of disarming the

constabulary and other adults with some kind of "cutsie-wootsie"

 appearance that makes old men and grannies think that she is totally

 innocent of numerous what she terms "misunderstandings".  All

 responses will be kept in the strictest confidence.

 The family's girl Doberman has not eaten or barked since this person

 has gone "dark"...no cell-phone, no ATM, or other communications

 are available.  Please post this BOLO  / APB as soon as possible.

(this is a total ruse and joke...The girl is my granddaughter who, lamentably is cursed with my face and general colour)

   Thank you all for tolerating my labourious humour.  We are actually totally awed by the child's comeliness and intelligence.

El Gringo Viejo

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Ignorance and Youth Speaks with Authority When Programmed by Marxists

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     This video really needs none of my embellishment.   We are being invaded - inserted with shallow-thinking zombie repeat-o-blabbers who are programmed to speak in unintelligible gibberish in terms that mean nothing or even less-than-nothing.

     El Gringo Viejo will allow the sophomoric snip make his best case, while he is violating rules of logic at every available opportunity.

Pray for the whole State of Christ's Church and for the salvation of the American experiment, and for the Republic of Texas.

El Gringo Viejo...

And, as usual, even when I forget, thank you for your time and interest...

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Manuel Lorenzo Justiniano de Zavala y Sáenz - Born October 3, 1788 – Died November 15, 1836 Hero of Texas

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     Lorenzo de Zavala, pictured above, quite bluntly and fairly was a fundamental hero to and for Texas. He was born as much a Mexican as one could be in that he was born upon what would become officially Mexican soil.  During his first span of 22 - 25 years, he would see rule by vice-regency, by a presidium of The Regency of combined Mexican political and Spanish Royal political interests, and Empire ruled by an unwilling Emperor of Mexico Iturbide I, who had been something of a hero in the fight for Mexican Independence.

     He had a turbulent, dangerous, exciting, rewarding first 25 years of his life.  Along with all of that,  he mastered with eloquence his own native tongue (Spanish), French, and English he was accomplished  as a student of the Latin and classical Greek languages.   He was a good student of Roman Catholic concepts of moral guidance, and he was also a 33rd Degree, York Rite Mason (liberal theistic, non-papal guided).  Further, he was a qualified and credentialled doctor of medicine and a qualified member of the fraternity of barristers during the 1820s through the end of his life on this Earth.

     He was an eloquent speaker, a florid writer, and generally a friend of all men of good will.   He was a good anti-Imperial politician, very pro-republican and followed Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna during those turbulent years from 1822 - 1825.  Lorenzo saw Guadalupe Victoria, an erstwhile republican and true hero of the Independence Revolution (1810 - 1821), turn into a pawn of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.

     That man whom we must name so often concerning any and every matter from 1822 through 1856 and who retarded Mexico from gaining a reasonable place in the Hall of Great Nations, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna came to distrust...fear...loath...be jealous of the more suave Yucatecan-born "provencial"...de Zavala.

    As a politician and despotic dictator in the making, Lopez de Santa Anna raged almost Herrod-like when he watched this upstart, with no military accolades, spin a defence of Epresario Sen~or Stephen Fuller Austin that would result in Austin's release from unjustifiable imprisonment by a Mexico City superior court.  That was in 1835.  Oddly, Austin thought there was some way Mexico could allow Texas an independent Statehood, and something of an Independent Mexico-related Commonwealth.   Coahuila State which was joined with Texas as a combined legal entity thought that they (the people of Coahuila) were being as shortchanged as Texas in terms of military allocations, public works, etc.   They were right, and relations between the two entities, (Texas and Coahuila) were actually quite good.

     Let us end this overly long preambulatory statement with the simple fact that the Texians won their contention against Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.   He was captured, and should have been assigned to the dust-bin of history.   But, at least he was peripheralised for a period long enough for the provisional Vice-President of the Republic of Texas (de Zavala) to write a reasonable Constitution, while his very close friend Stephen F. Austin served as provisional President of the Republic of Texas.   All of this was while the "smoke of battle still blurred the future".

     From 1836 and the expulsion of Mexican Centralist forces, by surrunder and  agreement, the Centralist forces retired to the south side of the Rio Bravo (Grande).
     But,  neither Lorenzo nor Stephen would serve to see 1837.   In December of 1836, as Austin lay dying of various conditions, especially pneumonia, he rose up briefly and declared in his feverous stupour, "The Independence of Texas is Recognised!!!".  Minutes later, he was gone.
   Talk about patriotism.   He had not been informed that his closest friend had gone to be with the Angels a month and a half earlier.  He had had the same ailments and pulmonary compromises.  It was a loss to the Republic which will never be measured adequately.

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Concerning Major General Manuel Fernandez Castrillon:

     Please consider from a warrior without qualifications (your humble servant), what warriors with scars and bloody wounds said of this enemy...and gentleman, major-general in the Regular Army, and the only person who could possibly reach Antonio de Santa Anna's soul...but alas...Antonio, by that time, had no soul.  Please review this reasonable capsule of the life of a good, loyal soldier.

    Castrillón was a major general in the Mexican army, originally from either Cuba or Spain (the reviewer tends to believe he was born in Spain and arrived  in Cuba with his military family as a child ) Like Santa Anna, he was a career soldier who fought alongside Spanish and loyalist forces near the Mexican state of Veracruz. It was there he met Santa Anna.

     Santa Anna's ally through much of their working relationship, Castrillón often took exception to Santa Anna's decisions especially during the Texas Revolution. He opposed the hurried assault on the Alamo. Yet when he received his orders to lead the battle's first column of troops, he did so with expert efficiency.

   As an humane and honourable soldier, Castrillón also pleaded clemency on behalf of the seven Texian fighters who survived the Alamo siege. Castrillón's arguments for mercy were ignored, and the men were brutally executed. Castrillón again stated his protest when Santa Anna ordered the execution of the Goliad prisoners.

     Castrillón's compassion was a sign of kindness, not weakness. When the Texians roused Mexican forces from their afternoon siesta on April 21, 1836, at the Battle of San Jacinto, he was one of the few Mexican officers who stood his ground.

     His bravery was recorded in the memoirs of Texian Second  Lieutenant Walter Paye Lane:

"As we charged into them the General commanding the Tampico Battalion (their best troops) tried to rally his men, but could not. He drew himself up, faced us, and said in Spanish: "He estado en cuarenta batallas!!  Nunca he dado mi espalda a ningun enemigo!!  Y ya estoy demasiado viejo para empezar horita!!"('I have been in forty battles and never showed my back; I am too old to do it now.')

     He continues: "Gen. Rusk hallooed to his men: 'don't shoot him,' and knocked up some to their guns; but others ran around and riddled him with balls. I was sorry for him. He was an old Castilian gentleman, Gen. Castrillo (sic)."

     Honoured on both sides of the Texas Revolution — except by Santa Anna, who blamed the loss at San Jacinto in part on Castrillón — he was even buried in the family graveyard of Lorenzo de Zavala, the vice-president of Texas, at the request and agreement of Austin and de Zavala.  No one objected. 

     

     Your humble servant is quick to point out that General Castrillon had nothing to do with the failures of tactics, preparation, nor strategy at San Jacinto.  There was only one fool large enough to sacrifice such a large and effective army to a bunch of militia.  I shall leave the three guesses up to the reader to name a possible candidate.  Castrillon was a brilliant warrior, a good Catholic, and a reasonable opponent.

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    And now finally we arrive at my sadness, melacholy, and concern.   Lorenzo de Zavala was awarded a fine piece of land in the bayou country.  There was a home of sorts which was fixed up to be a nice accommodation for someone with the title of the Vice-Presidency of the Republic of Texas - Author of the Constitution!!

    As an honour to Castrillon, both Austin and de Zavala offerred their home grounds as an august and dignified burial place for the noble enemy Castrillon.  He was known, and in positive terms, to both Austin and de Zavala.  Many others among the Texian politicians and soldiers knew of his magnanimous disposition.

     It was finally determined that the honour should go to the yards and gardens of the de Zavala home...and the 1,200 acres that surrounded the swampy, mystical, yet beautiful area.  And so there-in were interred the remains of a true hero of Mexico and an enemy who would guard him forever because of his nobility.  It is / was very near the San Jacinto Battlefield.

     Or so it seemed...because sometimes, forever can be defined in very strange ways...

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     We do not wish to ruin your day.   But, after the fiasco of the 1925 removal of Lorenzo's body and supposedly the remains of old General Castrillon, and various other pertinent interments, there was a form of sedimentary chaos.   The mud of the bayou's banks was steadily sliding into the muck.  Barge traffic was causing wakes that, with each pass, seemed to take down another 1 / 16th of an inch of mud and muck.

    During the Fiasco of 1925, Lorenzo's grandson...still bearing the surname "de Zavala"...invaded the proceeding and declared that all that was being done violated Roman Catholic canon (although some Roman prelate or another was presiding over the re-interment).  The de Zavala family was heavily intermarried into the highest levels of Harris County (Houston) correct society.   All were aghast...only the Lord God Yahweh knows how many times His name was invoked during this contention.   Smelling salts must have been du jour for that grand episode in Houstonian social history....there were an estimated 25, 000 attendants at the event.

     The "likely remains" were returned to from whence they had come.  And now...there really is no perfect scientific reasoning where the cemetery was or should have been; or where the first Lorenzo de Zavala home and its second, more elaborate home along with it, have gone.

A bayou at its best...and worst

At my age, and I at my selfish concern...and considering my affection for the efforts of Lorenzo as a Texian, I find it all a matter of the darkest contemplation. 

Finally, in as few words as is possible for your humble servant.  
Thanks for your attention.  Pray for the restoration of the de Zavala legacy, the re-veneration of old man Castrillon, and for the Glory of the Republic of Texas!!
El Gringo Viejo

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