A Gringo in Rural Mexico: Confusion, Contradiction, Disorder, and Disaster - We comment before departure to our place in NoWhere, Mexico...

Monday 4 March 2019

Confusion, Contradiction, Disorder, and Disaster - We comment before departure to our place in NoWhere, Mexico...

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Stephen Fuller Austin

Father of Texas by default. A Good
and Reasonable man who saved Texas.

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Yesterday we posted a Eulogy that was actually delivered by Col. Juan Sequin when he was essentially mayor and military commandant of San Antonio…almost one year after the fall of the Alamo to the forces of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. A few days less than a year before, something between 184 and 212 combatants…who all had a militarily possible chance to leave the fortress before all exits were blocked…decided incorrectly to stand up to the most powerful force on the North American Continent in combat at that time and on that date. It was, to be blunt, a fool's gambit…a "glorious fool", but a fool nonetheless.

James Bowie knew better…but he was in and out of delirium for his last month of life. James Bowie's closest friend in San Antonio de Valero was a fellow by the name of Gregorio Esparza, who literally snuck into the Alamo, well into the siege, to assist his friend who he knew to be near death due to consumption, and/or cumulative coronary problems, and/or prolonged episode of recurring pneumonia due to exhaustion. Bowie had lost his second wife and his two very young daughters by that wife (1833 - cholera). That woman was the daughter of a very ranking politician and businessman of the Verimunde family, which was held in high regard in what was then still known as the State of Coahuila y Tejas.
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These side trips into this alley-way and that path to the top of a hill can delay a person who wishes to read about the "Texian Revolution" for a millennium and a half. There are literally thousands upon thousands of Texas Tales…many of them true…that have a long record of enthralling the masses with tales, stories, recountings, and memories about this fabled State. But, to-day, I am here not to divulge stories and lead people around the graveyards and smouldering buildings and homes and explain the errors in the historical markers we encounter as we drive through a State larger than either France or Germany.

To-day's submission is a charge to the OROGs to lurch forth and learn, speculate, "try on" the times and smell the odour of burned sulphur that hangs over battles. We urge that the OROG tries to truly sense what was going on…this time during the withdrawal of Texas from the Mexican Republic…and why it was so pitifully and miserably a suffered time in this great region.

Then to think about it…Mexico and the United States would suffer even greater horror just a few tears of the calendar pages down the timeline. After all was said and done with the Texian Experiment…we entered into a ridiculous war, desired by both sides, that pitted the Republic of Mexico against the United States of America, 1846 - 1848.

Before long, a prophesy by Mexican General Mier y Teran, a lower level aristocrat, well studied, and cited for bravery in battle. He declared after speaking with some people who had been moving into Texas, taking advantage of the laws encouraging Anglo and American investment and legal residencies when Texas was still very much part of Mexico, "You Texans will someday seek to join the Nation which you left (the United States of Mexico) and upon doing so, you will soon wish to leave it. Beware of that for which you might wish."

And, certainly enough, Texas voted to leave the same nation it joined in 1846…fifteen years later. Certainly enough, Mexico lost Texas and great extensions of essentially unoccupied land in what would become the American Southwest after that stupid war. They thought they were going to take over everything up to and including the Missouri River.

And then, while the Texians went to fight in 1861 against the hated Yankees and northern industrialists…the French decided to take charge of a punitive war expedition against Mexico and its bad debt and dangerous travel conditions…by installing an Austrian monarch, Maximilian von Hapsburg in 1862…whose reign lasted less than five years. The Texians thought they were going to escape Washington D.C.'s high-handedness and capricious legal entanglement…but what we wound up with was 10 years of "Reconstruction" (Texas being the longest period of all Southern States) and we wound up with those 10 years and essentially a 50 year depression following "Reconstruction".

Spindletop - 1901

After its first 10 days of spewing mainly pure
East Texas oil, from about 600 feet below the
surface, it was calculated the spew-waste was
1,000,000 barrels.

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That's right, Mary Lou and you too, Jasper…Texas was something between the Promised Land, the Doorway to Heaven, and just above a "third world" situation for many, many years after "Reconstruction".
Pockets of wealth, such as certain oil-field strikes like Spindletop outside of Beaumont, Texas and a few other places had boom-times. Successful farming, some irrigated, cropped up here and there. Forestry and ranching, of course were always "going on", and there was a certain level of commercial activity that made Texas and its traditions seem pleasantly prosperous. As a child and growing up in a rural setting in Texas, I never felt hunger or deprivation of any kind.

We swam at the Country Club and at private homes and at the biggest and best public pool in the Southern half of Texas. Heck, we even had a television by 1957…although my parents (mainly mother) would not allow us more than 60 minutes per night…including the news. We liked the AM radio better anyway.

Allow, we pray, that we return to the mission of this posting. The time between the dawning of the 2nd day of March, 1836 and the setting of the Sun on the 6th day of March, 1836 is that period of pronounced lack of information…leading to numerous deep and wide bad decisions and overreactions and under-reactions. Most Texians have a hard time with determining which date pertains to which event…like which came first, the chicken or the egg or the clad de pollo? They…even the ones such as my boss…have to remember "When were they fighting the Mexicans? the Spanish? the Yankees? It all runs together. Who was in charge here?"

Captain Robert Edward Lee surveys the damaged
Fortress of Liberty…The Alamo in 1854

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That problem is a reasonable problem. We move quickly to challenge…are YOU sure that the Declaration of Independence of the Republic of Texas against the will of the Usurper Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna occurred on the 2nd of March or was it the 6th of March…both of the year 1836?

Or was it visa versa? Captain Robert Edward Lee was impressed with the lack of impressiveness of "The Alamo". He seemed to concur with the idea that the people inside, defending the Alamo, both Latinoid and Angloid, must have been…(one searches for the kind words)…overconfident (or perhaps deranged).

One must understand, once again, that the Army brought to bear upon that one point on the continent of North America, by a deranged, and brilliant, General of a powerful nation's commanding general who was obviously invincible by the analysts from the point of the defence. They should have left 10 days earlier, but they did not read their own tea-leaves…

General Jose de Urea
Brigadier, Mexican Army of Invasion

Under the Command of Gen. Antonio
Lopez de Santa Anna - 1836

We also recognise that this photo from
the 1840s reveals an image that is very
much the same as my 2nd Nephew.
They are very similar in that they are
both iron-willed, very intelligent, and
of very similar appearance (handsome).

My nephew's wife is actually more
intelligent, but that will be an
argument for another day.
She is also better-looking and.
an attorney of record,

Gen. Urea and my nephew are
both better looking than your
humble servant, but we pray thee
prayest naught to nary a person of
such confidence.

(Yes, Virginia, that is the way your people
and my people spoke 200 and 300 years
ago. It is fun to practice!")
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They had many Spanish / Mexican allies in their ranks. They had men who needed more training and instruction about what it means to be Texian. They, quite frankly, needed to retreat and join with another strong man…one to and with whom, I have no particular affection nor allegiance.
Samuel Houston…but whom else could weld together a reasonable defence and a reasonable channel towards the establishment of a land of liberty and a life of Liberty?

The destruction and murder of the Goliad Prisoners…a matter much more complicated and convoluted than even Texians to the Core have knowledge or understanding…raises its ugly head. It is my opinion for instance that General Urea was, as a lowly Brigadier, searching for some way to rid his beloved Mexico of this horrid, self-consumed, nut-case…Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, looking for some backing to dispatch said Maximum Commander to either Hell or into perpetual nothingness. He would have his chance not quite later than sooner. My affection moves to Urea…but reality had other intentions and motives.

It is lamentable…but much like the loss of Alexander Hamilton to a useless piece of garbage such as Aaron Burr, Vice-President of the United States…Mexico lost this man…Jose de Urea…when he foolishly failed to declare the "Presidente y Commandante de las Fuerzas Militares de la Republica Mexicana" a failed and flawed, immoral, and un-Mexican fraud, Antonio de Padua Maria Serverino Lopez de Santa Anna y Perez de Lebron…creature from Hell, enemy of Mexicans and Gringos alike painted the unfortunate portrait of Mexico and Mexican leaders for the world…and worse…for the Gringos before there was such a thing as a word that described "Gringos" at that time and at that place. Such a word became heard and recognised in the latter-most 1840 decade. If Jose de Urea had taken the reins of power and forged an agreement with the Royalists and later... the military and the forces of representative democracy in the various State Congresses…Mexico would have looked more like Texas. But he chose, "I say, old man, perhaps it is better not do so,"as the Brits would say.

But, once again…let us charge ahead to…what about Lorenzo de Zavala?…3,000,000 dollars Americanos of his personal money…invested in the War Against Lopez de Santa Anna. He and the son of Moses Austin…Stephen Fuller Austin…defeated the Powerful Nation of Mexico…not Houston…not Somerville…not American resources…It was a cloudy time.

Please dig into your own research. We tend to find something like 2,300,000 direct and indirect followers of our remarks about the time we publish about things that carry import to the history of those times in the formative period of Texas. There will be more, when we have time and effort stored up about the rest…incredible stuff…that does not favour Fess Parker swinging Old Betsey on the parapets or scenes of cowardly Mexican running away from the walls…at the beginning of the final attack…

Please remember:

There was only one devil in the matter of Texas establishing itself as a separate and equal State in the Mexican Republican Union…and his name was Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. We must…MUST…avoid referring to him as "President", or "General" or "Vice-President", or "Maximum Authority" because he sacrificed all those titles due to his avarice and lack of concern about those soldiers who died, advancing his orders, thinking that he had any idea what century it was or what planet he was on. (!!!)

More Later…

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

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Be sure you are right, then go ahead.

I bark at no man's bid. I will never come and go, fetch and carry, at the whistle of the Great Man in the White House, no matter who he is.

I told the people of my district that I would serve them as faithfully as I had done. But, if such was not to be, then you may all go to Hell, and I shall go to Texas!

David Crockett

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And on and on it goes. The more the Government gives away, the more it takes, and the less Americans do for themselves, until finally, like Europe, there is nobody left to do anything, and there is nobody left to pay for, the nothing that is not done.

And, yes, Virginia, there truly is a Santa Clause, and he and Mrs. Clause and their helpers care greatly for the good children of the Planet. So long as there is happiness, kindness, charity, generosity, and the Spirit of Fellowship, Santa Clause will be there, representing those noble things, and he will always move in a spiritual way so as to provoke humankind to goodness.

El Gringo Viejo

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“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.”

Booker Tallaferro Washington

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

Abraham Lincoln

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El Gringo Viejo: a fair description

Life for El Gringo Viejo began on the Texas-Mexico frontier, near McAllen, Texas literally on a real, live farm. The farmer, as one might imagine, was his father, who had moved with his parents from Gwinner, Sargent County, North Dakota in 1915 - 1916 period, down to the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas. (And yes, Virginia, that is the way Sargent County is spelled.)

His parents farmed in an area close to the new community named after its founder, called Ed Couch, in Hidalgo County of Texas. My grandfather is buried in the Weslaco Municipal Cemetery about 10 feet away from his friend, Ed Couch.

After studies, and a stint in the 1st Cavalry, 12th Regiment (mounted), Headquarters Squadron of the United States Army...riding warhorses back and forth along the Rio Grande from the late 1920s and early 1930s. He did not speak much about his service, but we determined that he apparently made rank of 1st Lieutenant.

El Gringo Viejo's Father established his farming and citrus grove-care operation just north of McAllen, Texas. Mother was a housewife and a professional woman....a learned, eloquent, well-read woman.

They were educated people, my father winding up as a Superintendent of a major school/facility of the Texas Department of Mental Health and Mental Retardation in Austin, Texas after a twenty year career in education at the secondary level. He had degrees in History, Psychology, and Education Administration.

El Gringo Viejo is the last of three children, all males. Number one was Milton Birchard, Jr. who was born in 1936 and died in a vehicular incident in 1988. He was narcoleptic. He held a doctorate in geography from Louisiana State University and was head of the Department there for a good while.

Number two is Norman Francis, who was born during the WWII situation in 1942 and became an important Republican political engineer and fundraiser. He served as Executive Director of the Republican Party of Texas during the late 1960s and early 1970s and as Senator John G. Tower's immediate Executive Assistant. The Senator is the Godfather of Norman's first son.

Norman died at age 77 in Austin, Texas and I was one of four eulogists who was chosen to speak at his en memoriam at the Austin Club in downtown most Austin…within sight of the State Capitol.

It was a personal duty and very rewarding

in every way.

My arrival was in 1947, and I was destined to confound my parents and all those around me. Educated entirely in public schools in McAllen, skipping the third grade, and stumbling out of my high school in the upper 90% of a class of 606. I

attended and graduated from Southwest Texas State University (now named Texas State University, unfortunately), being one of the few conservatives to graduate out of the School of Sociology, although my treatment at the hands of my tormentor-professors was not so unpleasant in those days. Emphasis of studies were social demography, and Latin American Affairs with a concentration on Mexico's history and current political evolution, with a minors in History, Geography, and Political Science.

El Gringo Viejo is one of the old, unreconstructed high-church Episcopalians. Politically, he is very fundamentally conservative. He prefers Baseball to football, and considers that baseball with a designated hitter for the pitcher should be called "poofy-ball". Favourite major league team of all times? The Brooklyn Dodgers of the 1950s. It will never be the same again.
El Gringo Viejo's father was born to a Hudson Valley-type girl and a man who had lost two older brothers who served in the Pennsylvania 96th Regiment of Volunteer Infantry during the War Between the States.

The surnamed line (Newton) originated from East Anglia, not far from a place called Washington in northeastern England. They came into Boston Harbour, Massachusetts in 1642 (the 1st voyage of the Mayflower had overbooked), and settled there and in Maine as well as spreading out to Vermont, New York, and Pennsylvania, over the generations for the first 220 years.
Another batch of folks, mainly Anglo, settled in the middle Hudson Valley. There was another group of Celto-Teutonics types from Saxony and Prussia, establishing and settling along the Hudson River from around what is Catskill County northward to Duchess and Rennselaer Counties around a place named Red Hook. The main group came in during the early 1650s.

My mother's people were another English line of long-term Southern and Tennessee people, from the Eastern part of that State, who originally came in during the 1660s through Virginia and North Carolina, and finally into Eastern Tennessee, settling in and around a county to be named Franklin, and helping to establish the city of Winchester. Almost all of these people originated from southwestern England, near the frontier with Wales.

Only recently did we verify that she had many people involved in the service of the Confederacy. One died in northern Mississippi, another Captain Asa Grant, 2nd Tennessee Volunteer Cavalry, was severely wounded and succumbed to his wounds finally in 1869, and another hung around in an Ohio POW camp (Camp Chase) for about 13 months, while three others were either wounded or died in action, including David Limbaugh, Lieutenant, 42 Tennessee Infantry. Another five made it through relatively unscathed.

Almost all were, oddly enough, related to the great-grand uncles and gggg-grandfathers down to gg-grandfathers of Rush Limbaugh. The gggg-grandfather came into the Colonies in the early 1740s from a Prussia and Saxony background, and served in both civilian and military capacities to the Continental government and Army. He was the XO of a Militia Battalion of 3,000 Pennsylvania effectives. They honed their military readiness under the supervision of Gen. von Steuben and someone named Washington at some place called Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

A grandson of his, Isaac, settled in Tennessee after the War for Independence against King George III. So Rush and I share grandfathers, four generations deep on the American Continent.

It should be stated here that were I to be called to declare, my allegiance would still be with the Southern Cause, although I bear no rancor against those who feel the same about their instinct to maintain the Union. Oddly enough, both my mother (a Southerner) and my father (a true Yankee by blood) believed that we would have remained closer if we had separated, and each side gone the ways of their own yearning, but amicably.

The last of the English (El Gringo Viejo's) line came during the time between the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. They left County Wicklow, where they had been involved, apparently, in that peculiar Anglo - Scots/Irish practice of making whiskey by the use of peat for fuel. They were also involved in the business of production and processing of various types of grains as well as the production of whiskey, gin, and beer. By their surnames one would know that, while coming out of Ireland, they were actually English, one with the surname of Christian and the wife, Webster. They had, in fact, married in Christ's Church Cathedral, Anglican, in downtown Dublin in 1796. They landed in New York, set up shop in the City among previously arrived relatives, and then in Albany. We have some record that this Christian who married the Webster had actually lived in the colonies, but travelled several times back and forth between the Spirits businesses in England and Ireland and the New World. They wound up as the generations progressed in and around Minneapolis (St. Anthony) & Saint Paul, Minnesota, and Racine, Wisconsin. My particular line went from New York to Alabama, then North Carolina, and then Wisconsin to join up with the rest of the extended family, finally in Minnesota, before the War Between the States.

The Time Line of entry of all lines of my children's blood ancestry on their mother's side in the New World begins in 1578, when Spaniards of mixed Hebraic and Iberian peoples, and others of ancestry from Portugal, Galicia, and southern Spain entered into what was to become Monclova and Saltillo, Coahuila. They are brought under the auspices of the Explorer, Conquistador, and Colonizer Jose Luis Carvajal y de la Cueva, with elements settling in Lampazos and Cerralvo (Nuevo Leon), in Palofox (Texas), and Revilla (Tamaulipas) on the Rio Bravo.
Also, the Count of the Sierra Gorda, Col. Jose de Escandon brought another group of mainly Spanish, Portuguese, and Azoreans in the early 175os, settling along the Rio Bravo (Grande), and then on the north (Texas) side, spreading up to what is now Yorktown, Texas (near and southeast of San Antonio de Bexar, more or less) before and during the Texas Republican period.

My children and theirs are qualified to join the Daughters of the American Revolution, the Sons of Liberty, The Sons of the Grand Army of the Union, The Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the Daughters of the Confederacy. By my side they are 16th generation English Colonial - American and 6th generation Texian. By my wife's side, my children are 23rd generation northernmost New Spain, Texian, and American. Isolating Texas alone, my grandchildren are 15th generation Texian.

LIKE?

Cats, and then dogs.

Fishing, even a bit of bird watching, now and then.

Really good music..antique, old, 1950s and early 1960s rock and roll, classical - Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven, both Strauses, and many others, African tribal sounds en chorus, Mexican bolero...mariachis when they play out-of-doors, some country and quite a bit of the old western (Sons of the Pioneers, the Texas Ploughboys, Marty Robbins "Gunfighter Ballads, for instance.), even some of my own piano works, bagpipes, Enya, marimba, Caribe.

The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess always seemed to me to have been, and remains, a true masterpiece of Americana.

Well maintained Firearms, smooth running small equipment, old autos that respond to repair and upkeep and keep going. Used to have BMWs and so forth, but being old helps tone things down a bit.

Antiques, and antiquities...Meso-American archeology...and religious history. Formal religious services among the Orthodox..as in Anglican, Roman, Orthodox and Conservative Jewish services and celebrations. Hard to find, now.

Overnight radio, rightwing talk radio until it becomes overly tedious and repetitive.

Weather and climate.

And strangely during the past few years,cooking. Not just barbequeing...but actually dishing up gourmet-type stuff...and gardening to a purpose.

We grow a lot of our own spices for our little bed and breakfast and we specialise in flowerng plants, bushes, and trees that attract bees and literally hundreds of species of common to extremely rare birds to our place.

Lifelong Republican, honourably discharged - United States Army (conscripted).

Now drifted into the position of favouring the amicable withdrawal of Texas from the American Union. My grandchildren are 15th generation Coahuila/Texas by my wife and 8th generation Texas by me and my will is to have them answer for the debt of Texas and not for the debts incurred by the National Socialists who have taken possession of the central government in Washington, D.C.

DISLIKES?
Any kind of socialism...bolshevik, national, marxist, social democratic, Trotskyite, progressive, ....and any kind of socialist.

The Ku Klux Klan and such types who figure that they have to hate somebody because of how he/she was born. They are just role players, resucitated by the Communist Party USA in the 1920s, whose members are fueled by a well deserved sense of inferiority.

And almost all social activism.

Almost all labour union officers and almost all labour unions. (There are some exceptions.)

Public assistance of any kind. All welfare and/or charity should and must be privately handled in order to avoid the trap wherein we have fallen, that being the multigenerational slide into the abyss of forlorn hopelessness that is government slavery and dependence. That slide is cheerfully supported by politicians who love to buy votes with other peoples' money.

Lotteries operated by governments.

Litter, filth, graffiti, gangs, and waiting in line for people using food stamps whil'st they argue with the cashier about how they "need" this or that to be covered...when they have three carts with 450 USD of snacks and things we cannot afford because we are in an 'upper income" category.

Church reformers who want to change my church instead of them going to another church and just leaving me alone.

Medications for boys who are over-active, and medications in general.

Lite beer, lite Coca Cola, fat-free, lo-cal, artificial sugars and sweeteners, anything marked "healthy" on food packages, sugar-free, margarine, and driving 23 miles to buy gasoline over there because it is 2 cents per gallon cheaper.

Any government programme designed to help anybody; 94% of the time the programme winds up morphing into some kind of monster. Then liberals and do-gooders will propose another programme, twice as costly, to cure the ills caused by the first cure-all.

Officiousness, and the term "non-profit", as if there is some kind of moral superiority in the failure to produce wealth.

Physical abuse of an animal, an extraterrestrial, a child, slave, woman, or anything like a tractor or power tool, firearm, sewing machine, or an auto, etc.
Loud and/or sharp noises, especially when such noises have no particular purpose.

Wasting anything, from paper towels to Clorox to cake and cookie batter...anything. And....waiting in a line.