Accepting That What is....Is...

     Made it back in yesterday.    McAllen had 103 F. for a record-setting high of 94 set back in 1955.     Brownsville made it up to 101 F. but did not break a record.    One-hundred degree days in March and early April are not common, but they are also not un-heard of.    I remember Frank Blair....who was the news and weather reader on the old Today show for NBC....when he had to report that McAllen had reached 101 F.  degrees on February 3rd...I think in 1959 or so....but Jack Lescouli and Dave Garroway would not believe it,

     The winds kicked in during the mid-afternoon as well.....dry, hot, and dusty.     We had various reporting stations with 50 mile-per-hour sustained winds (sustained velocity enduring one minute or longer).    The front went through....dry....and then the evening cooled off quickly and briskly.    Many places in South Texas were in the 50's this morning at the dawning.

       This high temperature phenomena is not caused so much by the hot sun beating down, or by Al Gore throwing pieces of broken dinosaur bones out in exactly the right direction and at the correct stage of the moon.   Here in South Texas, as well as at our little place in front of the mountains, this heating is caused by the descent of dry, continental air coming from the due west....falling off of the Mexican highlands.....and then coming down sharply in elevation until reaching at or near sea level.     Places near the coast lose their "sea-breeze advantage" because their winds are coming from the "wrong direction".    The air compresses as it falls....heats up that way as well as by travelling over already warmer terrain.....and the air-temperature shoots up...sharply.

      Sorry Al, but it has been going on for centuries....and although George Bush did not stop it from happening....you haven't done anything about it either.....so we might as well become accustomed to it all.

AND THEN:

      The 1st of April marked my father's 100th birthday.    He was born in Gwinner, Sargent County, North Dakota on that date in 1911.    Five years later he moved to South Texas with his mother (Esther Lee Christian) and his father (Norman Newton) where they would join up with the already in-place Peter Bonesteel Christian (Esther's father) who lived in the newly founded frontier town of Donna, Texas.       Those were hairy, scary, wild, and interesting days on the border with Mexico....with the Revolucion still pretty much underway and the opening of large tracts of previously undeveloped land being opened up to plow agriculture by the thousands of acres per month.

      During my father's life he went through being a late-in-life, pampered, only child born into very comfortable, monied circumstances....to being suddenly abandoned by his parents by death coupled with the calamity of the Great Depression.    During the earliest days of the collapse, his father essentially lost everything, primarily due to certain illegal acts and manipulations of banking interests both on the Border and back in North Dakota.   My father went into the Army, training in the mounted cavalry at Fort Sam Houston, and then serving back on the border as a cavalry soldier and officer....He married in 1933 and established himself in civilian life as a grove-care operator and farmer in area around Edinburg, Texas.    Grove care was an important, profitable, and gruelling business in the Lower Rio Grande Valley during those years....much of the profit coming during World War  II when citrus operators were pretty much under orders from the War Department to "Produce, Baby, Produce"....

      For almost a quarter-century, Milton Birchard Newton provided his grove care service and farmed cotton, vegetables, and corn, both on land he owned and land he would lease or use in return for payment on debts owed to him.  He became a school teacher during the early 1950's and finished his first degree.....gradually moving into a calling that had appealed to him....possibly because of the influence of his parents who were both studied and educated people.

      He became a full-time teacher at the secondary level, establishing a presence of positive effect at the Mission High School in Mission, Texas where he taught geography, history, economics, and civics for many years.   During this time he also finish a master's degree in psychology and began to consider administration in education....and perhaps even a move to Central Texas, around Austin.    It was a favourite area for both him and his wife, Nola Frances Neal.   By 1966 they had established themselves in Austin, and my father continued his studies at the University of Texas, completing an Ll.d. in psychology.....working as a guidance counselor at Del Valle, Texas...and then finally ending up as Superintendent of the Austin State School for the Mentally Retarded a position where he served for about seven years.

      There are hundreds...nay, thousands of antedotes....about my father's life that would interest folks...I shall continue to invest them in our widening audience as the days go by.    But, right now....

       We also celebrate my Compadre's birthday....my granddaughter's and her great-grandmother's birthday and mine all during these days.   It seems a shame that we no longer can really state our dates of birth on line...but I will allow that the three latter named individuals all have the same birthdate.   The first one is but a few short days earlier.    Quite a cluster.

FINALLY:

    And briefly, it will be next to impossible for my prized flamboyan trees to make a significant comeback this year.    After investing much useless optimism and hope, they are just not doing what is necessary to engendered further hope.   They have recovered to survive, but not to prosper....perhaps next year will be the charm.

More Later

The Old Gringo

Buying Things

     We have spent the morning spending money....one of my least favourite sports....ranking down around soccer and roller-derby.     The Old Gringo happens to live in Texas, along with about 25,000,000 friends, relatives, and neighbours.    The rest of the world lives either in Purgatory or Hell and wishes they could be here.   The Congress of the Republic of Texas is about to approve a bill requiring every voter to present a photographic identification that would be derived from a document that would prove his citizenship.

      Interestingly....the Anglos, Teutonics, Slavs, Nords, and other stripes, types, and mixes of these Texans approved of this overwhelmingly whether or not they have Indian blood or any other mixture.    Interestingly, the overwhelming majority of people of Mexican or Spanish or Latin descent, whether completely White or of mixed ancestry approve of the measure as evidenced by the Mexican-American Republican Caucus's endorsement.    Also, the overwhelming majority of people of Black African ancestry have also indicated approval, although their representatives have yet to go on record on the floor of the Congress of the Republic of Texas.

      The Republicans have over a 2/3's majority in the Congress and a seated Governor.   They are almost certain to move this bill to passage and signing  tomorrow.     Another bill is being presented that will require all candidates requesting votes in favour of the electors for a specific candidate for the Presidency of the United States of America, to present proof positive and with certification that the candidate under consideration is a natural born American Citizen.

       Another thing about Texas is the availability of access to the Grocery Stores known as H.E.B.      Established by H.E.Butt back in the late 1940's, they gradually came to be the final, high standard of what such stores should be.   Anyway, the Old Gringo was shopping for necessaries to take back down with me.    We might have to say grace over a meal, because, oddly enough,  we seem to have more visitors all of a sudden.     McAllen, Texas was said to have been the second of the modern era HEB stores to have been opened, I believe in 1952.....perhaps a year earlier.    You can imagine me entering a store with pneumatic, automatically opening doors.....and an interior where a person could actually (almost) see his breath....it was so cold.   It was the first fully air-conditioned business I had ever been in.
     My understanding is that Mr. Butt's mother had a grocery in Kerrville, up west of San Antonio.....that was the Anglo (Confederate) town, and a bit north of there is Fredericksburg, the German (Union) community....home of Admiral Nimitz.    Anyway, it is said that when Herbert came home from the Ist War he designed to expand, and went to Del Rio which was primarily Anglo & Mexican in background....because he ".....had had his fill of Germans"..
      That venture did not do so well....but learning processes are learning processes.   Before long he had successfully opened in Corpus Christi, Austin, San Antonio, and down on the Frontier in McAllen, Harlingen, and Brownsville.     For many years the Butts did not choose to sell beer and/or wine, even as cooking ingredients. (Some people in South Texas literally cannot make beans without putting a bottle of Pearl or Lone Star in the mix)
This was due to the fact that they were very staunch Southern Baptists, and lived by that prescription. 
     "Old Man Butt" was a very demanding taskmaster....quick to scold and have what amounted to red-faced tantrums when he encountered sloth, uncleanliness, or lack of dedication to duty.     Almost always the employee on the receiving end would say, "I deserved it.   He warned me, and he gave it to me just like he said."    But, he was generous, like a lot of cantankerous coots, and he played an even hand with the Mexican-American population.   Before long assistant store-managers and then full local operation managers had names like Hernandez and Garza and so forth.   (Before quotas & affirmative action, Mrs. Pelosi).
      Old Man Butt never knew this, but when I was very little...about four...we were waiting for the HEB to open in McAllen.   It was about 4 or 5 minutes after opening time.   An old Anglo man strode up to the automatic doors, step on the rubber entrance matting about 20 times...then did a two-footed stamping shuffle on the matting....and then commenced to clack-click-clack on the door with his money-clip.    I thought the glass was going to break.
      Finally a man came running to the door and flicked the necessary switches....and began to received the wrath..."I don't give a hoot about me being out there in the wind and sun!  But you have women and children out there...you have people who have places to go, things to do....you think they're supposed to be out there waiting on you to decide when you want to open this store.    I put that schedule on the door out there last month when we opened.....It wasn't a suggestion to you about when you should open more or less....It was my word to the customer that he would find the store open and ready for business at that time!!"
      My brother Milton turned to me...(we were sitting in the Willy's Jeep box-wagon)....and said, "That's a good lesson.   Make sure you do what the boss tells you to do, when he told you to do it".     I logged that into my computer forever.
      There are many HEB stores now in Mexico....and they are very popular.   The entry of HEB caused some good stores in Mexico...like Soriana....to become better, and counter intuitively, more profitable.   The competition has "lifted all boats on the same high tide"....but HEB remains the best among equals.  

This is the Headquarter areas of HEB's main offices in San Antonio, Texas

      One of my favourite ways to start the evening meal is with this Gaelic/English petition to the Lord....

 Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some would eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
Sae let the Lord be thankit!
 
      This is fairly easy to translate, but for those who would like to put it into a bit more modern English...it would read.   There are those who have food but cannot eat, and there are some who will to eat who cannot.    But....we have food and we can chew, so let the Lord be thanked!


AND THEN:
     The Old Gringo will be out for about three weeks.   You all need to write in and communicate with Diana concerning fine tuning of arrangements or making reservations...etc.     Things are calming down a bit....as each day goes by things seem a little better.    It  will never go back to 1957, but we are moving in that direction.   Our little corner still beckons any and all to take advantage of that peculiar tranquility that rests at the face of the Sierra Madre Oriental.....to see the sunset on those massive nearby ranges....and to count the billions of stars that seem to hover ten feet over your head in the early morning hours before sunrise.

We might make one more entry before departure.   Or not....Thanks for tuning in.....and Remember fellow OROG....the price you paid to read this blog is worth every cent of it.
EL GRINGO VIEJO
 

Heading South....

     "The time has come", said the spider, "to fly."     So it's off to the south again to check on my charges and re-establish the presence of a pleasantly deranged Gringo in his enjoyable self-made asylum where he can hurt no one.   At least he will be able to feed his animals and count hummingbirds.  Of course, the Comision Federal de Electricidad will appreciate my paying the bill....which will be a little higher this time.    I am anticipating something around 800 pesos which will be around 64 dollars for two months' service.   it would have been 56 dollars back in September, but the firm of Bernacke,  Obama, Geitner, Frank, and Dodd - Economics Experts Extraordinaire have managed to devalue the American dollar by 12.5% against the Mexican peso in that length of time.

      Still-in-all, 32 dollars a month amounts to about one dollar per day to have cold milk,  Fox News,  indoor plumbing with water under pressure, a bit of home-made ice, and other such necessary luxuries.     While last year's gross income for the CFE  was a bit in excess of 20 billion dollars (bumped up a bit with the take-over of the Mexico City albatross Luz y Fuerza de Mexico), I am certain that they are anxiously awaiting my critical capital infusion.

      In reviewing my ranting and raving about Japan, methinks that my observations were pretty much 'right on'.    As an American, I am glad and dismayed simultaneously.    Glad, because there is still a group of people under one flag who can calmly "do the next thing" even when everything has been destroyed.     In Nashville, Tennessee where the hicks and hillbillies live it seems that they do well without FEMA intervention or visits from Obama or even a mention that said city had been completely inundated by the worst floods in its history a few months ago.
    But in much of the rest of America, politicians seem to hope for a disaster....earthquake, flood, fire, or whatever...so that they can unleash the next disaster, a disaster which consists of a cascade of money, empty, lost, and or un-accounted-for double-wide trailers, officials with briefcases & laptops, and forms to fill out.   The politicians' disaster is complemented by slothful, stupid slugs trundling out to begin the "Queen for a Day" show and to complain about how badly FEMA has treated them.    WHAT DID WE DO BEFORE THERE WAS FEMA?

      Japan is a bit different....of perhaps substantially different.    They prosper from their lack of "diversity".    They are wonderfully communitarian.   First they take care of their own problems, then they move on to their neighbours.  This self-reliance spills over into a pride of self-sufficiency.

      Conversely, they really do not like to have too many heads sticking up above the rest of the group.   When somebody says "We are all on this ship together".....judging by the size of the country and the number of people on the limited number of square miles that they have....everybody had better use the oar that they were given to either row or beat tuna over the head and haul them aboard.
      The mostly ceremonial Emperor spoke to his people.    The rail line on the western side of Honshu Island was restored within 7 days.     The press reports have been alarmist....authoritative....and frequently either wrong in part or wrong in parcel.    It was all totally predictable.    At this writing we are hearing finally some what less alarmist, yellow "journalists" mumbling about the possibility of "re-starting" the entire nuclear operation at Fukushira     and I cite this link....                                                                                                           http://www.voanews.com/english/news/asia/Pressure-Stabilizes-in-Japan-Reactor-2-Survivors-Found-118322559.html     

        Please, everyone ...you all....view all press reports about anything with suspicion.    And....I really do not think that any of my readers or my family need to run out and buy iodide tablets.....unless you like the taste of iodide.

IN ANOTHER VEIN:
      We continue to take advantage of damaged trees and shrubs to begin a new discipline and "look" for the upper and middle parts of the property.   More will be done in the future to make geometric topiary presentations, and to provide better views of the mountains.   We might even be considering a "portal" (a free standing open structure designed exclusively for providing shade).    This  will be helpful for our summertime visitors and might even have a bit of additional daytime cooling effect for the Quinta itself. 

       Finally, several questions and observations have come forward.   They are all appreciated.    Hopefully, my responses and answers were helpful.   The gist of my answers was ..... "There are many places where a person can travel in Mexico without intense concern.    It is like the U.S.A. in that sense.   There are places where even I would not go....specific locales and certain general areas....once again, like the U.S.A.      You will not see me practicing for a 25 K - Marathon at night in downtown Detroit or New Orleans or Baltimore......You will also not find me drinking beer at any saloon within 500 yards of the far outer-perimeter loop thoroughfare on the edge of Acapulco.     Be reasonable."
     If you send me specific destinations in Mexico, I will research them for you....going beyond my previous knowledge of the place....and attempt to gain a "real-time" status report......and either publish my impressions here, or send you a personal, private note.    In  no case will your name/address/ or personal data be divulged.


Thanks for your time and patience.   Another fresh entry tomorrow!
(The Lord willing and the Devil not objecting.)
El Gringo Viejo      

     

     

Jury Duty Done...Heading North, then South

     It seems like my exposure to jury duty is solved by the defendants and litigants all taking pleas and settling out of court.    Tomorrow (Wednesday, the 16th of March) will find us riding the southerly winds to Central Texas to meet up briefly with Christian, and then come back on Thursday with Priscilla and our granddaughters.....so that the girls can visit with their great-grandparents.

     Christian agreed to put us up, but we are only going to charge him 250 dollars for that service.     We are going to ask him for another 100 dollars or so for our trip to Whataburger.....and if he complains at all....we have our attorney on speed dial.    After all, we didn't ask to be born.

All who are reading this now are officially members of the Orbit of Readers of the Old Gringo....OROG...a secret society dedicated fervently to nothing in particular.

    

Japan

       These are special times.   The hysteria involving the cement dust seen blowing out from the explosion of hydrogen gas in the outer shell areas of the reactors has given great joy to the anti-American intellectuals who oppose any energy source required by the Great American Economic Engine.

     These are the people who oppose any type of exploration for oil and gas, who oppose the use of coal no matter how cleanly it can be burned, and who even oppose "wind farms" because the birds will be struck, hit, and disturbed, or solar power because it is unsightly and uses strange materials for the storage batteries.

      These same people, however, want us all to buy electric autos, because we know that the stork brings the electricity overnight and feeds it to our little cars that make us feel good about ourselves because we are better than "other people".....the "little, stupid people".....the people who are not "progressive" and who do not care about important things.

      The press people and talking heads are giddy about this new opportunity to assault America and to attempt to drive this great Nation into some kind of 5th World, pre-historic living condition.    After all, everyone knows that all the problems in the world are caused by America.....America is a horrible place....that's why everyone wants to come here....leaving behind the wonderful places where everyone can drink out of an open sewer.     And Cuba....where everyone has free medical care.....that would be closed down in America because the standards do not measure up to a veterinarian clinic standard in almost all cases (party officials have different facilities....or free transportation to Mexico or Canada or Europe for treatment).

      But to my point.    The Japanese people are a clean people.    My father used to joke thusly...."Do you know what a mentally-retarded Japanese person is called?"   The listener would say "No."   To which my father would respond ".....A genius."

       They are a communitarian people, they are clean, they are summarily intelligent, they are dedicated to the idea that they are one with their ancestors, they play baseball, they are industrious and generally honest.

        In a year's time, the Japanese will be nearing completion with the public works and restoration projects and they will be cutting ribbons all over their tiny productive empire.    We, on the other hand,  shall be debating specifics about how to rebuild the World Trade Center because of issues brought up by intentionally hateful anti-American Americans who desire the obliteration of America and the American example of community.     Those Americans will be helped along, of course, by anti-American immigrants who come to this country with the intent of installing the worst characteristics of their old country in order to hasten the ultimate decline of the American Experiment. 

      The word "immigrant", I know, is used incorrectly here, because many of these new "immigrants" are actually colonists and saboteurs.....who arrive here with no intention of becoming that peculiar and particular thing that is an American.   They are "Obama's Aunt".

      The Old Gringo is certain that the Emperor of Japan will speak, the people will listen, the politicians in Japan will become less useless for a while, and they will restore their great nation....relatively quickly.     They play baseball.    It will take a bit, but it will happen.

Batter up!

El Gringo Viejo    

Ramblings, significant and otherwise (proofed & amended)

      There have been a couple of moments when the Old Gringo thought that you all might be thinking that he was thinking about not thinking about the disorders we face daily on this continent due to the traffic in illegal drugs.   Not so.  It is just that the topic becomes burdensome and it is left to me and few others to try to explain that Americans in America are probably more exposed to drug violence in America than Mexicans or Americans are exposed to it in Mexico.

       The first point is that it is all bad.   There is no positive face that can be put upon an issue which involves criminals with no souls.

        The second point is that there are continuing positive things that occur, about which nobody hears.    Remember that, at best, we are looking at eighteen months to three years more of this messy business.   But, please consider these brief points:

               (a)     About three days ago several main thoroughfares in the Monterrey metroplex were blocked again by miscreants commandeering busses and tractor-trailer rigs and parking them perpendicular to the running lanes.   This would usually be followed by a gun battle by cartel integrates who wanted to make sure that Military and police units could not gain access to the zone of disorder.     This time, however, the bus drivers and truck drivers informed the police and Military that the perpetrators were juveniles, aged 12 to 15 or so....who acted as if they had guns concealed on them....or knives....as they boarded and began the offense of taking control of the vehicle.

                         Once in control, they parked the vehicles in a manner that would cause the greatest consternation among the driving public,  and then ran off giggling like girls.   Nobody picked them up...no waiting Escalade full of thugs with automatic weaponry...nothing.   Police stool-pigeons informed befuddled officers that there was a new game called "bloqueo", being played primarily by three or four secondary schools in an area where Monterrey, San Nicolas de los Garza, and Guadalupe city boundaries come together.      Some of the city busses and almost all of the long-distance inter-city busses have security cameras with memory, so the cops have a good idea of which specific individuals are involved and where they can be picked up.    Some of the idiots were good enough to demonstrate their stupidity by posting their own live action pictures on "social networking sites" so that by now 80%  of Mexico knows who they are.....and nobody is smiling.

               (b)     Then, yesterday a gaggle of thugs decided to fire on a Military patrol in the southern part of Monterrey proper.   The soldiers returned fire, chased the vehicle a short distance where it crashed into some curbing and a business's concrete wall.   Three of the thugs, all wounded and bleeding ran into traffic and escaped, more or less.  The soldiers reached the fourth thug who was also wounded, but too severely to be able to run.   Inside the SUV the soldiers found the guns and ammunition that had fed their bravado, plus quite a bit of beer and a kilo or so of marijuana.

                         What was of interest is that the driver was 14 years old.  The other three were ferreted out at a hospital emergency receiving room.   None had made it to the age of 17...two were from Central America.

               (c)       Once again, acting on a tip, the Army searched out a "campamento" in the deep brush and low mesquite forest of central Tamaulipas State.    They encountered, as was advised by the tipster, a corral not of horses but late model SUV's and pick-ups....being poorly guarded by eight thugs.     All were known thugs of the ZETA group, very much wanted by every level of authority in the area....including five or six of them being wanted in Texas.....for trafficking, murder, extortion, etc.     There was also one man who was essentially hog-tied to a mesquite tree.

                           Within two minutes there were no more active " detain and arrest" warrants in force against  the eight.     They were dead.    The hog-tied man was released to his family.   The Army took possession of varous armaments and fourteen vehicles. 

                           Two key things here;    anonymous tips that are accurate and......if a person chooses to fight the Mexican Army or the Naval Infantry...chances are strong he will lose.

               (d)     There were four other incidents with significant casualties for the Cartel people in Tamaulipas State and Nuevo Leon State.





(L -  R)  The Old Gringo, Brother Milton, and Brother Norman

 

NOW, ON ANOTHER TOPIC;      I was rooting around in some old material, working on the genealogy of the family when a photograph turned up from 20 December 1963....showing the Old Gringo with his brothers.    This picture was taken in front of the front porch at the old farmstead in what is now north McAllen.   The rightmost individual is the middle brother Norman (1942), the center is the oldest brother Milton(1936), and the heroic looking individual on the left is the Old Gringo (1947).    We were dolled up for brother Norman's wedding rehearsal and after-event supper.
    The wedding took place two days later....30 days after the assassination of President Kennedy....It was quite an event for McAllen.   It was, to that date, the biggest non-Roman Catholic wedding in the history of McAllen.   Norman played the role of groom, and has been married to the same woman for almost 50 years now.   Milton was given the chief supporting actor's role, as the elder brother, and served as Best Man, while El Gringo Viejo was the Acolyte in attendance of the Priest Officiate, the Reverend Father Henry Clay Tompkins Puckett.   That priest read a good mass but he was a pinko.   He is the problem of Saint Peter now.
        Our housekeeper attended with a seat of honor on the groom's side (Gospel).  She had been with the family for 30 years and had gone all out to dress-to-impress.    She was escorted to her second pew, aisle seat, directly behind my parents, by the Old Gringo, vested en acalyto.    She was to observe later that in all her years it had never occurred to her that we were Roman Catholic.    I did not have the heart to tell her about the simililarities and differences between the Anglican and Roman branches of Christiandom, but she spared me that by observing that Latin "sounds a lot different in America than in Mexico."

      As some of you all know, Guadalupe (Lupe) Gonzalez was essentially the Housekeeper and my Governess from my birth until we left McAllen in 1966.    She was a descendant of the Otomi' Indian nation  who still dominate in the area around Puebla, Puebla to the east of Mexico City.    It was they, along with the Tlaxcalans, and a few Huastecs and Totonac warriors, numbering around 80,000 who assisted Hernan Cortez's meagre forces in the defeat, destruction, and subjugation of one of the worst civilizations ever to infest Planet Earth....the Aztecs.   Lupe came from good blood.
      Thank you for hanging in there with me.

More Later,
El Gringo Viejo