A Glimpse Into the Inner Sanctum

A question came in from a long time family friend....fixture more like it.   This woman is a PH.d. and has a daughter (an MD) who is the same age as our daughter.   The two girls grew up together and are still close....in the way that urban life allows closeness.

           The family friend is an educator extraordinaire and has always been a positive bleep on our radar.   She is also a strange form of liberal....Democratish.   Why she doesn't beat me over the head....and my wife over the head....I do not know.  She is up to lecturing me at times, and for some strange reason I will just take the mental torture and abuse.    She might be the bucket of cold water that is needed when I really am wound up into a knot.    She is an OROG, and must just shake her head and shudder at what must seem to her to  be my barely functional psychotic episodes.

            In any regard, from her comes a set of good questions.  What about the drought of the 1950s?   In Texas?  In the Valley?   What are the significant hurricane events for South Texas?   What about the heat records?     She says a great deal more than I, and does it in many fewer words, and the Old Gringo thinks that her questions would be of more than a little interest to other OROGs.   So, a segment of a private email is included here....with a few amendments for the sake of clarity:

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     (In response to your questions...)    It was a strange time....from 1949 through 1954. Remember that I was born in 1947, but I am one of those rare birds who has vivid memories from infancy. What a useless clot in the brain, no? The freeze of 1949 was a doozy and I remember being "swaddled up" in our back room....the "fireplace room" ....and throwing a fit because the big people would not let me go out and help chop and bring in wood with my brother Milton. He was actually like one of the big people to me, since he was eleven years older.

About thirty percent of the citrus was destroyed by this freeze that came in during the late days of January and receded on the 5th of February. From that point, things were okay, weatherwise, although water for irrigating was always a concern and it was expensive. My parents operated a very much "hands-on" grove care business which took about 30 hours a day, 9 days a week. Irrigation was a word heard in every sentence. If not irrigation, the word would be "water" .

Things steadily became drier. Then exactly two years, almost to the day and hour, the Freeze of 1951 hit. Although there had been a bit of recovery for the citrus since the 1949 damage, this time would be the real doozy. This time the Winter had been warmish, so the trees were setting blossoms and had a lot of very new growth....entering into South Texas Spring. The freeze of 1951 essentially destroyed about 70 percent of all citrus and 90 percent of ornamentals in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Recovery via cotton and vegetables would depend upon water, irrigation, and good luck. There was little of any of those commodities available at that time.

In the meantime, although there was no water in the Rio Grande to speak of, construction began on Falcon International Reservoir. It was finished and openned for business in 1953, being dedicated by the simultaneous presences of Adolfo Ruiz Cortinez and Dwight David Eisenhower on a very hot, windy October day about a year after Eisenhower's election as President, and entering the third year of Ruiz-Cortinez's election.

Seven months later, what would now be considered a category I hurricane formed up late in the Gulf....(but early for the season....being born in June)....and moved slowly onshore, just barely south of the mouth of the Rio Grande. The storm moved very slowly up the entire length of the Rio Grande up to Del Rio,   finally coming to rest over the Pecos River watershed. Rainfall totals went as high as 25 inches at various points. Perhaps as many as 70 people were swept away in flash floods in Piedras Negras, Coahuila and Pecos, Texas, along with a few other places. But, it did, in a matter of days, fill what was then the largest lake in Texas...Falcon Reservoir. People could not believe it.

We were surprized to note the vast numbers of people who had driven up to see the Lake after the hurricane. None of us had ever seen such an extension of water, save for the ocean....like at Padre Island. We were visiting where my Godfather, Harold Hendricks was finishing up on his project building the new Zapata High School and ISD re-location. Zapata had been translocated, like Guerrero, in anticipation of the Lake filling some day. Uncle Harold had also built all of the private housing for the "Dam Workers" at what is called Falcon Village, on the grounds of the Government Offices about a half-mile from Falcon Dam. I think it was 20 houses with 2, 3, and 4 bedroom configurations. They are nice houses and still in use to this day.

From that time on through to those particular problems the latter 1990s and the early part of this Century, there were never any significant water shortage issues. A few floods affected the Valley, like Hurrican Beulah's run-off in 1967, but those waters came into the Rio Grande at the Rio Alamo and the Rio San Juan, which enter the Rio Grande on the Mexican side and below Falcon Dam. Other floods were the result of heavy localized rains in most cases.

Long answer to the question....but when communication is infrequent, details are precious. I really appreciate having that chance to see you all in Austin. It was good to see Xxxxx and Xxxxxxxx....things change but stay the same at the same time sometimes....said Yogi.

XXX

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     It should be noted that during the 1890s, the Old Gringo's great-grandfather and his daughter (the Old Gringo's grandmother) lived and ranched in Tuxpan, Vera Cruz, midway between Tampico and Vera Cruz City.  They had a nice ranch up in the mountains.   They suffered three successive freezes in those years which essentially sapped my great grandfather's willingness to continue his project.

        We could have done with a bit of Global Climate Rizbafutubchip back then.    Rizbafutubchip is the new word I made up to try to keep ahead of the Global weather catastrophe de jour.   In my lifetime it has swung back and forth between Ozone holes, Ice Age a'comin, nuclear winter, iceberg melting, asteroid punishment by extraterrestrials because we don't share the wealth, etc.    So I just made up a word that makes about as much sense.   It's all George Bush's fault anyway.   And women and minorities and children and the poor will be the ones who suffer most when the world ends anyway.

Back to work to-morrow, you all!   Armageddon beckons!    I hope Father Obamaham and Father Bernakeham and Father Geitnerham send me my check.   Not your check....my check first.   I'm me.  Don't give no flip about no stinkin' grandchildren or America or any of that slop....only me!   And I mean ME!      Me first.

El Gringo Viejo

(only joking, folks.   Spare the commentary line on this one)

           

     

Update and Obituary for Tropical Storm Don

     The first point does not have anything to do with anything, per se.  It is just necessary that we all whine and complain to FOX News.   They should desist with their dumboe insistence on announcing a "FOX News Alert" with all the fanfare and graphic....and then announcing "Charles Lindbergh says that he is planning a trans-Atlantic solo flight!"     So many of their alerts are "old cow" that sometimes I wonder if Rip Van Winkle was left in the FOX News Alert control room.    FAUX NEWS Alert! "Gen. Grant allows Confederates to retain side-arms, and horses fit for travel and plowing, in terms of surrender agreement at Appomattox!    More after these announcements."

      Now, after that perambulation, the Storm, Don, came up to Boca Chica like a tired, drunk sailor.   The voyage over the Yucatan, the upper reaches of the Bay of Campeche, and the southwestern Gulf of Mexico ended, partially over land and partially over water.    Please be aware that the "official" readings of the storm's track did not match the facts.   It tracked about 50 miles to the south of what was being cited by the Hurricane Center.   The circulation center was ill-defined, but it was readily detectable by anyone following the storm on a home computer, linked to Weather Underground's sources.   Oddly, the circulation center's strongest moments were its last, when it almost formed a complete rain shield of 360 degrees.    Areas just to the east of Boca Chica had up to 13 inches of rain...all over water....McAllen had a trace
      Of particular note was the forecasting of the path after landing.   It had no path.   It literally evaporated and died on the beach at Boca Chica, the mouth of the Rio Grande during the twi-light and early nighttime hours of 29 July 2011.   The weather service followed a dry, spin-off vortex across South Texas, saying that it was the "post land-fall depression".
       Normally the Weather Service and the private services do an adequate to excellent job in their dealings with tropical weather.   This time was wierd.  The Old Gringo does not understand why there was such a breakdown and an unwillingness to just say, "We are having a hard time fixing a center of circulation due to the lack of organization on the part of Don".     The probability is that the area to be affected, deep South Texas and northeastern Mexico is really of no importance or significance.

       Finally, if the word "compromise" is used again, the Old Gringo will puke some more.   Compromise in the issue of the debt limit....in terms of the issues like the national government's budget deficits....is what has gotten us into this quagmire.    The word 'compromise' infers that each party has a valid position, from which a new and stronger weld can made of two fine metals.
      Compromise to a marxist and or most Democrats and to too many Republicans means...."Let the Party continue, more champagne and caviar , Jeeves....let the little people have Lone Star Cards....make sure the gate is locked at the subdivision entrance....are Rosie and Whoopee here yet?"

     Anything that is recommended that will really cure the problems is immediately met with, "What will we do about the firemen and policemen and teachers and people who need help to not starve and Social Security Checks and veterans' benefits?"    Geitner pulled that one off the other day like a six year old threatening his mother with burning the barn down...after the six-year old was caught with his hand in the cookie jar.   He even glowered slyly at the reporter...almost like, "Bet you hadn't thought of that answer, had you? Bet you don't really believe that we'd pull that off and blame it on the Republicans, do you?"     What a disgusting, marxist thug.

       Geitner and Bernacke are a pair of slugs who were purposely put into their positions to continue the destruction of America.    Imagine a head of the the Federal Reserve actually saying, "I really don't understand why" when asked about the unresponsiveness of the TARP and StimuPork programs.    Imagine the Secretary of the Treasury actually suggesting a THIRD StimuPork program to build upon the successes of the first two labour union funding projects.

      Special announcement:    The Old Gringo has found a good supply of well made Sylvania light bulbs for various applications.   They are long life, incandescents and they are made in the United States.    There are some made in Mexico and Canada.  None that I have found recently have been made in Red China.   These are being carried by the normally Red Chinese friendly HEB company.

Thanks for helping me leave Grumpyland this morning.
El Gringo Viejo

Under the Gun

     My poor wife will back me up I'm sure, but she is probably tired of it all.   About three days ago, the Old Gringo decided that there was a good probability that a bit of a hurricane would be forming in the northwestern Caribbean.  It happened, of course.

     Now it is ambling through the southwestern Gulf of Mexico.   It is a small, somewhat non-descript tropical storm named Don....the kind of a storm you might meet in a run down bar with warm beer and dirty rest-rooms.   But on a night like this, you have to dance with the only storm in the room.

       We have determined that three different fixings of the co-ordinates were not correct.    We have also noted that the stated course and projected paths did not follow any guidance factors with which I am familiar.   It is probable that the Old Gringo has been left out of the loop since Global Warming was created by George Bush and Cristobal Colon.    They no longer send me the new guidance factors for tropical disturbances. 

       The Old Gringo's guidance factors range from the "tongue of surface low pressure"....(an old system)....to the "middle-level steering  winds" notion (relatively new...50 years old)....with a little bit of the idea of the "blocking high pressure system"....(which is probably related to #2).    There are five or six other things but to explain them would be even more boring for me than for the normal OROG, who really does have better things to do than to read about Old Indian Chants from the Tennessee Cherokees which either attract or repel hurricanes depending what is needed at the moment.

      The deal is that the storm has had movement more to the west than has been anticipated by the NWS and even by private weather analysis services.   That means it will make landfall further to the south on the extreme South Texas coast......or somewhere within 40 miles south of the Rio Grande's mouth to the Gulf to 30 miles to the north.   The landfall can be...at this writing...anytime between 20:00 hours Friday to 06:00 hours on Saturday.    It is hard to determine the forward speed, in that the hurricane hunter plane has estimated it to-day to be ranging from 9 miles per hour to as high as 17 miles per hour as of an hour ago. 

     In any regard, to make a long, long story mercifully short, we might be away from the computer for a bit.   The first thing to do is to secure the persons and effects of my mother and father-in-law.    That will be a wonderland, because my mother-in-law will only believe what she hears or sees on the television news.   The television is usually wrong, of course, and is always about 2 to 5 hours behind in terms of the developments that can be readily gleaned from the computer.   So...it will be fun for a little while.

Thanks for your time and interest.   We shall advise if things are exceptionally boring or exciting....either way.

El Gringo Viejo

      

       

If the Old Gringo Won't Do It, Who Will?

This is not one of my reverse-logic melt-downs.   Nor is it one of my sardonic, sarcastic stabs at humour.   It is something that must be done on all screeds major and minor, in order to make certain this news is made commonly available. 

Wade Sanders

This man recently had his Silver Star removed from his person and record.   The silver star for gallantry and conduct above and beyond,etc. was taken due to the fact that it was awarded due to fallacious information, purposefully and willfully contructed by the person pictured above.     It is also true that information gathered for the awarding of the Silver Star was corroborated by other individuals who also were found to be giving deliberately false and misleading information concerning the events in question.

      The individual pictured above and his collaborators were found to be guilty of false swearing and perjurious testimony.   In short, the events described never occurred and were wholly invented.    The events were supposed to have taken place in the Republic of South Viet Nam during the American defence of that country.     The Silver Star was stripped from this individual sometime before other un-related proceedings were taking place.  

       The un-related proceedings were the investigation, findings, indictment, conviction, and sentencing to prison for approximately four years of the individual pictured above.   He was sent to prison for collecting, having in possession, marketting, and otherwise participating in the commercialization of the worst form of child pornography that can be imagined by a reasonable person.  Video material involving females from the ages of eight to thirteen who are being brutally subjected to forced situations is about as far as this writer cares to go.   The Federal Court documents are much more explicit and it is worse than it sounds here.

       This person needs to be known to all who cherish the Republic.

       Why?

       This is the kind of person who can walk into a nationally televised, national political party convention of nomination, and make an introduction of the soon to be nominated candidate of that party.    He made the introduction by referring to the Swift Boat for Truth group as Nazi-like members of a smear machine who were besmirching the good reputation of the soon to be nominee of said political party for the Presidency of the United States of America.   Even as he spoke from the podium, he knew that he would have a new delivery for his "collection" upon returning home.

        We have no information concerning whether or not that nominee was one of the corroborative agents to the testimony leading to the awarding of a Silver Star which later had to be stripped from the receiver due to falsification under oath.   We pray not.    We pray not because that same nominee supposedly threw his own Silver Star over the fence surrounding the grounds of the White House in 1972 or thereabouts.


addendum:
(This was found on another reliable blog that follows military and veterans' issues.)

John Kerry Ally Loses Silver Star

When John Kerry was being “swiftboated” (which is another way of putting, when the truth was being told about him) in 2004, Wade Sanders rose up to defend him. Will John Kerry, who by the way served in Vietnam, return the favor?

“Had the subsequently determined facts and evidence surrounding both the incident for which the award was made and the processing of the award itself been known to the Secretary of the Navy in 1992, those facts would have prevented the award of the Silver Star,” [Mabus spokeswoman Pamela] Kunze said.    ("Mabus" is the surname of the Secretary of the Navy at the time of this statement)

Sanders was Kerry’s superior officer in Vietnam. Sanders is currently in jail, on child pornography charges. Not sure how that relates to 1992, but the back story must be interesting.

Still nothing, but at least there is something

With reference to some questions that might be remaining about the three or four busses that went missing and their subsequent rescue by the Armed Forces, the following can be said.

     My best recovery of information is that the incident did occur.   The people who were rescued were advised that it would be best that they not "go public" for a time.    The people also asked the authorities involved to do equally, so as not to engender some kind of  "humiliation revenge" on the part of any of the parties responsible for the provocation of the incident.

      One of my respondents believes it to be true that the provocateurs were, in fact, deserters from the Zeta group.   This was based on a few comments by some of the passengers who were interviewed in Tampico.   Perhaps the deserters had found Jesus or had some other awakening.

Therefore, until there is new or contradictory information, the Old Gringo will also let the matter rest, respecting the wishes of those involved more directly.

Just a Bit of Focus

     The recent spate of advertisements by somebody who is very proud of the Red Chinese because they have better and faster passenger trains than the Japanese and French.....brought me a bit more headscratching recently.

Looks like home, but it's not!   Everyone here is humming
"Oh! How I love to carry dung to the dung heap for
Chairman Mao", while they browse in a ChApple.

Red Chinese shoppers have been dealt a neat deal.    They can look around in an Apple Store (and many other American  and European retail outlets) and buy the same defective junk they ship over here that doesn't work.   The advantage with this stay-at-home tour of American and foreign capitalist-pig consumerism is that all the money stays at home.   The stores are not what they seem.   THE ENTIRE STORE IS A KNOCK-OFF!!!

      Various American, European, Japanese, Korean, and other types of human-beings began to notice that not only did the faulty junk on the shelves have Mao's fingerprints, but that the "something's funny here" feeling kept being reinforced by the filthy restrooms with no plumbing, shabby construction, computers that were only shells, set out for display purposes only....(shades of Russian consumer initiatives from the 1950s).

     Turns out....sure 'nuff....THE WHOLE STORE IS A KNOCK-OFF, just like the stories of the Roaring Dragon and Red Chinese superiority in all matters of humanity.     Turns out that Sir Edmund Hillary Rodham Clinton (named after Sir Edmund Hillary after he scaled Mount Everest, three years after the birth of Sir Edmund Hillary Rodham, according to her), and her much vaunted announcement of agreements concerning copyrights and intellectual property and patent rules between the Americans and the Red Chinese, pertained to everyone but the Red Chinese.

      It also turns out that there are several thousand of these knock off businesses in Red China at this writing....many different businesses, many different types of products.  The Red Chinese Government has announced immediate measures to deal with the problem.  

      One of my biggest gripes about George Bush....besides removing the Confederate Flag from the State Archives building in 1999 as he went into the Republican GOP Presidential primaries....was his use of the term "ally" when referring to a group of people who see us exclusively as a living organ-donor bank.

       Another set of  observations  fly in the face of the idea that Red China is something other than a huge Cuba.     One is that the per capita income for Red China is less than 1,000 American dollars per person.   The per capita income for Mexico, for instance, is nearly 5,100 American dollars.   For the United States, in spite of O'bama, nearly 30,000 American dollars per person.

           Taking two countries stumbling out of the shadows of socialism, slowly, while we dive headlong into it....Mexico and Canada, and the reader sees a total of "aboot" 140,000,000 people.    Their combined gross national product is about evenly split, and comes to about 6,500,000,000,000.

            This means that 140,000,000 people produce about the same amount as 1,300,000,000 (nine times more people).     Top that off with the fact, that when we consider what most Obamatron types concern themselves with...."social justice"....almost one/fifth of the wealth production for Red China came from Hong Kong....almost one/fifth.....of the wealth production  comes from one/ one thousandth of the population.   So,   0.001%  of the population produces 20% of the value of the economy.   Like the old Soviet Union, the Red Chinese are presently spending over 20% of that GNP of Red China on military outlays.

           And as an ally....the Old Gringo must assume that if Red China is an ally, then it is Belize or perhaps Gabon that is continuously hacking into the Pentagon computers and sending industrial spies and other types of spies to all corners of the United States.    The Red Chinese see the round eyes' children as organ donors for the children of the Communist Party's leadership.

         Finally, we watch the recovering of Japan, as the Old Gringo said they would do.....with their trains running and things coming back into focus.    The Red Chinese made a series of bragging announcements about how they have the great trains....not the French, not the Japanese, and not the Americans.   So far they have managed to have over 150 major wrecks, breakdowns, and system collapses on their vaunted Peking to Shanghai 900 mile - 5 hour train.   There have been 1,000 people killed so far in these incidents.    The last one made it out a bit into the international press....which they first reported to be a malfunction brought on by lightning.....and as having no casualties.   The casualties now total almost 100 dead.....and the cause is unknown with many people being "detained" for an investigation.    A recent scandal revealed that almost 1,000,000,000.00 American dollars worth of Yuan were embezzled, stolen, or "evaporated" during the construction of this hood ornament, low-rider burlesque of a "shovel ready" marxist project.    At least O'bama's favourite Ruhr Valley capitalist group, General Electric, has been managing to sell electric equipment to Peking. http://www.christianpost.com/news/china-train-crash-social-media-users-outraged-over-alleged-cover-up-52793/

           All the while, the Japanese continue to play baseball, visit their temples and ancestors,  run their trains without fanfair.....only at 180 miles per hour....not 250 miles per hour.   Of course, the Old Gringo would say that 180 mph is a lot faster when it is moving than 250 mph when it is not moving.    Right, Yogi?

http://youtu.be/t5E5GGEdfS0

(This is a clip from the sleeper compartment of a departing Hokkaido Express train, heading north)

And by the way....Japan, with 1/10th the population of Red China, produces  slightly more when measured the same way as Red China.   Japan, when confronted by the Russians in the early 1900's, outnumbered in the same way, and roughly equal in terms of GNP, destroyed the Russian Navy, pushed the Russians completely out of Manchuria, took back the Sakhalin archipelago, and generally humiliated the House of Romanoff.   Such is the nature of paper Bears.....and paper Tigers. 

Thanks again for the time and interest you all invest with this blog.

El Gringo Viejo