But Aside from the Cartel Stuff, What About....?

     Then, there are the questions that come in or which are encountered in the great outdoors that can pretty well be phrased thusly:    "Are you received well by the people around you?   Do you feel comfortable in that rural environment, in that you are the only Gringo around?  "In a place where 3% of the people have everything and the rest have nothing,  doesn't the social vista depress you a bit?" and the question about "Why don't they ever progress?  No cars, no television, no cell phones, no computers....everybody living in cardboard boxes....why would anyone want to be surrounded by that?"

     One might like to visit this site, http://www.casitadelasflores.com/  in order to see that there are people in Mexico who are as deranged as the Old Gringo.    This place is in the perpetually charming city San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico.    The owner is a bit "eccentric" and totally dedicated to her own path through life.   This individual, and several scores of thousands of others, find life interesting and rewarding while operating some kind of a business and living some kind of a life in some favoured corner of Mexico.

     There are still almost 1,000.000 American citizens living full or part-time in Mexico, each in his own zone of comfortability and his own particular corner of choice.   The Old Gringo chose this particular site because the owner personally redesigned what was a very irregular space and converted the space into an attractive, functional, asylum for sane people.

     Most of our readers already know that almost everyone in Mexico over the age of 8 has twelve or more cellular telephones...almost.   There are, however, as many people per capita in Mexico with cellular as there are in the United States or Canada.    Another thing that might surprize folks is that the comment almost always made by someone returning to Mexico for the first time in....say....twenty year...is "Everything is changed.   The highways are so much better.   Wow, there have been a lot of improvements".

      The vast majority of the Americans who live and/or work, full and/or part-time are not hiding from anything in the United States, nor are they anti-American.   Some are pinkoes, some are rightwing crazies, some are wealthy, some are "independently poor", and some are trying to make one social security check stretch to cover everything (almost impossible).   There are surfers, fishermen, crafts people, artists, archeologists, aetheists, and even people who think that cats have souls.  
      Of people I have known, the youngest free-standing Gringo making his way actually lived in Mexico City and had a regular job at a technical lab working on computer apps.    He was about 21 years old.  The oldest is a geezer of some note who is a beach bum down in Oaxaca....who, oddly enough, is very well to do and has his personal airplane docked in Mexico and his small but very fancy two-master at harbour not far from his favourite beachfront saloon.   He was a very young 82 and made Hugh Hefner look like the  mummy that he is.   He also smoked cigarettes....although, according to him, not as much as he used to.

      The Old Gringo does not count among our number stoneheads, the mushroom hunters, the hostel/anarchist/666 people that can be found in a few places...I guess everywhere in the world by this point.     Most of these "I'll take a bath when I die" people are found around archeological sites and some out-of-the-way beach areas that are near not-to-far-out-of-the-way beach areas like Puerto Angel and Puerto Escondido and Huatulco's upper reaches.   They are easily avoided.

      When they come up with their story, "My squeeze and I were shaken down by a greaser cop and we need a little money to by a bus ticket back to the States...man... can you help a fellow American?...We're really desperate, man, we haven't eaten in a couple of days." You can usually tell them that you are a bounty hunter down looking for someone..."who looks a lot like you". Admittedly, the Old Gringo has done that, because he looks mean enough. He has also said, "I was going to ask you for little bread man. The same cop must have hit you too".

     In any regard, there are a lot of us still-functional crazy people down here who are comfortable with the vast and overwhelming majority of the people who surround us.   One last thing is that the Old Gringo is of the opinion that the people who purposefully put themselves in the middle of the locals have a better time and go of it than the folks who buy or build into the "Almost totally Gringos Only" gated developments one might find in Baja California.   To each his own, however.

More later.   We need to see if  Hope and Change have totally destroyed my portfolio or if we have been annexed by Burundi yet.   Thanks for your time and attention.

El Gringo Viejo

The Solution

      The Old Gringo almost weeps when John Stossel on FOX and Mr. Keenan on the Squawk Box, and Bill O'Reilly cannot stick to the free enterprize, non-government solutions that actually work.   Keenan say, "Everybody is for a safety net provided by progressive taxation..."   when he is folding a segment and entering into a commercial break.   O'Rielly says that Big Oil does not deserve to make this or that level of profits...and John Stossel agrees with O'Reilly that we need to make sure that the poor don't suffer.   GaG...!   Why cannot people with conservative inclinations just tell the government..."It's none of your business how much money I make."   "It's none of your business that I fly in a private jet or that I have a yacht." "The profits of the oil company or any company belong to the stockholders and other owners of the company.  What do you propose?  Giving the money to the government for their worthwhile projects?"   No, No, No to bondage.   Yes, Yes, Yes to self sufficiency.

       This is when I know that the war is nearly over.     Allow me to try one more time.   In America....because of our founding nature and guidance by a soul trained in a reasonable Hebrew, Protestant, Anglican, or Roman catechism, no one is going to be allowed to starve to death....or even to suffer hunger.   We are the people of the "barn raising".   When the rest of the world was thinking  "communism" we had already nearly perfected the sociology of communitarianism.

      Then, almost suddenly, we were told that what churches, synagogues, Rotarys, Masons/Shriners, Lions, Mooses, Kiwanises, Knights of Columbus, their women's adjuncts, and scores of thousands of other charitable organizations like the Salvation Army....thousands of small and large social service groups, were not enough.   America is a horrible place.   We did not have programs like the "advanced" countries in Europe that took care of people in a clinical and professional way with a government sponsored bureaucracy.

       We established welfare programs for the poor....and, like Europe, the more money that became available....geewhilikers....the more poor people we had.  I remember a "progressive" Republican college buddy telling me about how we GOPers had to "get out in front of the Democrats by proposing 'ElderCare'....a Republican program that would "give Geezers free medical care"....When I observed that there is no method by which "free medical care" can be given to anyone save by miracle, and that any program run by any government would immediately become a gold mine for agents of corruption, he scoffed and declared, "No one would ever steal a dime from a program meant to help the Geezers!"  This was in 1966.

        Then Planned Parenthood told me that children needed "neutral values" sex education.    When it was suggested that maybe sex should be a bit shrouded and scary, not clinical and veterinarian.....maybe emotions like love and values like responsibility were more important than knowing about the location of fallopian tubes....I was informed that my mentality had produced an illegitamacy rate of over 5% (the rate for Negroes at that time was 7%).....CHILDREN HAD THE RIGHT TO MANDATORY SEX EDUCATION...So There!!

      So, best estimates are that over 70,000,000,000 dollars were 'frauded out' of Medicare and Medicaid last year alone.    And, of course, Negro illegitimacy last year went down slightly to 76%.    Whites of all types are now around 19% in spite of PP's and Howlywould's best efforts to make the rate higher.

       Now the cant is "We have to address issues important to the Hispanic community....the African American community....".     We now frame issues of unwillingness to provide oneself with his own fodder....or to provide for one's own progeny's nutritional necessities....as "Hispanic" or "African-American" issues.    First, create the problem.   Then blame the rich, the white, the self-reliant, and especially ridicule conservative "minority" people as not being "real Hispanics" or "true to his Black".    There is no hope.   We have whelped out the people who will burn down the bakery.

      The the businesses and industries who line up like the capitalists of the Ruhr Valley in Germany during the 1930s to gain favour with the German National Socialist Workers' Party are the same as the welfare culture bums. They are part of the  crowd who want subsidies for ethanol powered solar panels that produce windmill generators!!!
       THOMAS EDISON, HENRY FORD,   ROBERT FULTON, ELI WHITNEY, ALEXANDER BELL, THE WRIGHT BROTHERS AND MICHAEL GATES AND A MILLION OTHER GEEKY WIERDOS DID NOT HAVE "GOVERNMENT INVESTMENT" IN THEIR IDEAS.    They flew into darkness, with an idea, a drive, a notion.
       Ten million small businesses, like barber and beauty shoppes, bars and restaurants, franchises, cleaning services, laundromats, Amway people, dance and music academies, fishing and hunting guides, etc.etc.etc.etc.etc.etc.,were set up without the kind and soft guiding hand of Father Abraham...Father Woodrow....Father Franklin.....Father Harry.....Father Lyndon....Father Jimmy....Father Billy..and now Father O'bama, the first Irish President of all 57 States.   Republican presidents usually served just as Brothers....except for Ronald, who was a President.

The real reason for the Democrats settling on the Debt Extension and getting out of town is seen below.

The green line is 'approve or strongly approve'.
The red line is 'disapprove or strongly disapprove.

Just a few thoughts.   More Later.    Thanks for your time as usual.    Non-political observations coming up during the early evening.
El Gringo Viejo

Reality Check

True Lies:

     (1)      We have to raise the debt limit in order to show how fiscally responsible we are.   This will allow us to spend money we do not have.  (?)

     (2)     If we raise the debt limit that will preserve our credit rating.   The rating agencies will see that we can practice prudent self-restraint.   (?)

     (3)     If we raise the debt limit, that will put an end to the deficit spending that causes the debt.  Just because the Congress is an indisciplinate Parliament of Whores does not mean that they would be so stupid so as to immediately begin spending money they do not have.   No one in his right mind would spend money he does not have.....right.   (?)

     (4)     It is a good thing that we raised the debt limit, because otherwise we Geezers would not have had any use for their sozialversicherungsnummer.  The German National Socialist Workers' Party  really did good...inspiring the New Dealer Democrats to imitate their brethren in the establishment of this fine program.    This fine program practiced privately is a major felony.   Social Security under a better name would be called Bernie's Friendly Retirement Fund....111 Hudson, Suite 3446, Riker's Island Building, New York, New York, or email us at  WEripUmadeOFF@gotchadummy.com

     (5)     Unless Father O'bamaham had intervened the Republicans would have taken Kwanzaa away from the children and the retransgendered.                              

    (6)     And the Un-reverse-re-trans-bi-anti-inverted-convoluted-gendered.

    (7)     And the children who did not have a White Kwanzaa the first time it was taken away by George Bush.

    (8)    It is good to realize that now that this debt limit has been increased, there will be no need for TARP XXXVI for shovel ready projects.   One of the first proposals is to mow the grass at Arlington Cemetery for the first time since Father O'Bamaham was re-elected for the 29th time....wake up!  wake up!  It's the Year 2207 ......!!!    All the people buried there have been unionized.   We burned down Arlington, Monticello, and Mount Vernon because they were owned by white slave owners.   We gave women the right to vote again.  The National Cathedral has been ceded over to The Universalist Cosmic Study Group.

     (9)     Millionaires, billionaires, private jet people, Oil Companies will be made to pay their fair share, jailed, outlawed, prohibited, and neutered and spayed.   Only movie stars will get to have gasoline and private planes.   Gangster Rap people too, and the historically underutilized.....and other people who have never been proud of America until to-day.    And Nancy Pelosi
    (10)      If we don't pass this debt ceiling increase...the stock market will collapse.    (?)
    (11)       These are the times when a person is comforted knowing that we have a fine press corp, a  cadre of geniuses as economic guides, and a president who was raised by his communist grandparents, who has a wife who was never proud of America until somehow or another her husband, who has never had a job in the private sector, never owned or operated a business, never heard a negative word at a ''church'' that based its theology upon the hope for the destruction of America....a wife who Luuuhhvvvvves to TRAVEL..(me and mom....and my closest 422 friends....)  was nominated by the Democrats for the office of the Presidency.  ??
    (12)      Fundamental Transformation and Hope and Change have really been good for America.   (?)

AAAAHHHHRRRRRGGG.

The Old Gringo is going back into his cave.   My favourite place in the world might be San Marcos, Texas.....but these events foreshadow the brilliance of my decision to have prepared a place at his other favourite place....the Quinta Tesoro de la Sierra Madre.    I fear there are not enough Americans capable of critical thinking to make us a path out of this morass.

Thanks for your time and patience.

El Gringo Viejo....

Dread the Mention, but...

     One dreads the mention, but days go by and the haunting melody of Allan Sherman's song, "Hello, muddah  -  Hello, faddah" when he makes it to the point where the complaining child observes, "Wait a second.....It's stopped raining" keeps circulating in my head.

      During all of the disorders, one might remember, that the Old Gringo went back and forth through...., stayed surrounded by...., saw reporting of....., saw true and glaring inaccuracies and lies by the press both national and foreign of....the unpleasantness brought on by the trade in vice and avarice.

      In truth, much of the violence reported has occurred, but also in truth, 99.99% of those affected have or had volunteered to be affected.    Much of the reporting has been either purposefully misleading or purposefully incomplete or wrong.

     In truth, the Old Gringo knows someone who knows someone who has been personally affected by all of this mess.   Everyone in Mexico has.   More Americans than we might imagine have.

      In truth, if we replace the Mexicanized term of Cartel with the Americanized words for such concepts, such as street gangs, criminal sindicates, organized criminal conspiracies, organized crime, the national organization of CRIPs, BLOODs, Aryan Nation, Mexican Mafia, MS13m, Hillbilly Mafia, the Cosa Nostra, Chicano Brotherhood, Nation of Islam-Muslim Brotherhood, and the 400 or 500 bands and gangs...White trash like Hell's Angels, the Breed, the Ku Klux Klan, little Latin and Black strut-abouts with their pants pulled down below their gang-coloured underwear, all of which infest our communities large and small....thanks to Godless schooling, public assistance, and AFDC......then perhaps we can understand the Old Gringo's point of view.

      AND, in truth, when the Old Gringo is at his little adobe hut off on the edge of the high, tropical Sierra Madres, it is 99.99999999% of the time dull and boring.   He has been slashed by the Bobcat, almost losing his left middle finger.   That was his fault for trying to intervene  in the affairs of a male Bobcat and his in-residence, alpha-male domestic cat.    Other injuries and inconvenience have mainly come due to his own clumsiness or attempts to do things that were a bit too precarious.   Stumped and broken toes, lost toenails, a cracked rib, etc.    All delights for a hypochondriac.

      The impressions left by the press about the violence in Mexico without comparing said violence on a per capita basis with the violence in the United States is a disservice to the American public.   It is really not the fault of the American public for being unaware of the facts of the issue.   They believe in the press's words even though they know....like in the issue of the "Balanced Budget...Debt Ceiling Increase Issue" that the press is lying, ignorant, arrogant, and/or stupid.

     My advice to people hoping to be my visitors is the same.   For those who write in or call or encounter me in my rare ventures outside the confines of my self-imposed cell, you know my advice and my notions about how to travel in Mexico during these days.

    You must also know that my wife and I are terribly concerned about the fact that our daughter is going up to a reunion of her High School Girlbuddies in a very large city somewhere outside of the Republic of Texas.   it is not New York City.    The place where they are getting together is very near an area where there have been numerous mob raves, and mob assaults of white people in very high end to extreme high end saloons, restaurants, and clubs.   It is in a Hotel District where the Negro taxi drivers have Masters Degrees.    Black workers and clients have been particularly badly beaten and treated by these mobs.   Our daughter and her buddies are all varying degrees of Anglo and Latin white people....all the organized people in this large district of a major American city have been targets of these disorganized, jungle-law black mobs.   The mobs "spontaneously" appear...by organizing through the "social media"   (re:  anti-social media), they range in number from 30 to 300 and they are composed of people aged 10 to 30, all of whom have criminal antecedents.

THE AMERICAN PRESS HAS GONE OUT OF ITS WAY TO ASSURE THAT THESE EVENTS ARE NOT REPORTED COMPLETELY, BEYOND LOCALLY, OR ACCURATELY.

     Finally, I will have to confess and admit that FOX News did have an article on whatever follows FOX and Friends, fairly lengthy, yesterday morning,  pointing out that President Calderon's efforts  by employment of the Mexican military and certain federal and local police, have been very effective in this war against the agents of Death.   Our particular area is steadily calming....incidents are becoming rarer...not rare, but rarer.   The Central American connections are becoming more apparent and being dealt with.....and there is even more of the gangs and cartel people turning in on themselves.   Sometime cannibalism can be a pretty cool hand.

      THERE IS STILL A LONG WAY TO GO.   This is not the Fall of Berlin...this is more like three weeks after the Invasion of Normandy.   A lot can go wrong still, a lot of improvements in Mexico's justice system need to continue, pressure must be maintained on all elements of organized crime.   This requires force, resolve, and grim patience.

Probably Mentioned Before, but...

Other things remembered  from the drought conditions of the 1950s in South Texas:

     My mother was co-chairman of the Democrats for Eisenhower, Hidalgo County, Texas during the 1952 elections.   My godmother, Lucille Hendricks, was also co-chairman.    The offices for the campaign was on South Broadway Street in downtown McAllen, Texas, where Broadway intersected with Dallas Street.  Broadway runs north and South, while Dallas runs east and west.    This was during the Summer run up to the elections....with the first televised National party conventions....and a lot of electricity about Robert Taft for the Republicans and the huge unpopularity of Harry Truman whose approval stats finished much lower than George W. Bush in spite of what the mainstream media says.
      Truman decided to retire from the run for re-election after decisively losing a primary vote in New Hampshire to Estes Kefauver, US Senator from Tennesee...but this was not the real issue in Texas.   Kefauver finally lost the Democrat nomination to Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson.
   Conservative Democrats in Texas finally decided after Taft's Republican convention defeat that they would go along with Eisenhower, even if he was backed up by Yankee "moderates".     Eisenhower was still better than the Democrat Stevenson, who would not side with Texas on the Tidelands Issue.

      Beuford Jester, Governor of Texas, had died in office, leaving the seat to Allan Shivers.    Shivers had begun a campaign during the Democrat Primary of 1952, outflanking the crook, Lyndon Johnson, by saying that he would fight for Texas's right to Supreme Authourity over "The Tidelands".   "Landslide Lyndon" Johnson stayed in the US Senate seat he had stolen in the primary of 1948, by beating Coke Stevenson by 83 votes...the last ones delivered about two weeks late.   Johnson and his lackey Lloyd Bentsen  had wanted kick-back money, favours, and other considerations from the oil companies, while Shivers just wanted the principal of "States Rights" to be enforced.   It was a cheap date for oil and gas interests big and small.    Shivers ran in the primary with little or no real opposition.     His opponent was a firebrand liberal named Ralph Yarborough.   Ralph would do better two years later, but still lose.  He finally won a US Senate seat in a 1957 special election for an un-expired term.

     The "Tidelands"  was the area (depending upon historical reference point and specific resource issue) from the coast out to 3 miles, and then 3 leagues (10.5 miles, plus or minus), to in some cases affecting Texas up to  60 miles, over which the Republic of Texas disputed authority against a foreign invader,  the government of the United States of America.   Texas had had an uneasy relation with the neighbouring country's government for many years, exacerbated by the fact that it had had to endure Reconstruction Occupation until 1876....the longest term of the post-Bellum period of the War Between the States.   Old scars, wounds, suspicions, and angers melt away slowly in Texas, even to this day.  It is truly a friendly and open place, but real Texans are apt to say, "Forgive and Remember".

       Texas had a claim by treaty and other agreements declaring exclusive rights to commercial assets pertaining to those off-shore waters known as the Tidelands and the regulation of the exploitation of those assets.   The Tidelands of Texas and Louisiana were, are, and forever will be stuffed full of good oil and sweet natural gas, not to mention shrimp, oysters, and fish. The Texian and Yankee oil people would prefer to deal with a Texas approach to recovery and processing of oil and gas by oil and gas people.   The common Texan in the street, sober or inebriate, also had more faith in their cads and cigar chewing politicians than in a bunch of people who had  managed to let communists into the State and War Departments of the neigbouring country.
       So, the Democrats had nominated Allan Shivers in the May Primaries to be their candidate for Governor.  The Republicans nominated him as well.  All issues of political office in Texas, local or statewide, were settled in the Democrat Primary from 1876 until the middle of the 1980s.    Now they are substantially settled in the Republican Primary, save for a narrow zone along the Rio Grande where the majority of the population lives on 8 different streams of welfare and public assistance.

Robert Allan Shivers
Governor of Texas
1951 - 1957

      The ratio of votes in the Democrat Primary to Republican Primary in the Republic of Texas in 1952 was 15,000 to 1.   Literally.    But, all 4,000 registered Republicans in Texas decided to nominate Allan Shivers based upon his reputation as a good conservative, anti-communist, and defender of the inaliency of Texas's Dominion over the Tidelands.
       All of this was what found the Old Gringo hanging around in the offices of Democrats for Eisenhower.....because in those days "child care" meant hanging around with your mother.   Across the street was the Republican Party's office supporting their candidates....Let's Clean House with Ike and Dick....buttons with brooms...all that .   But only three or four people would come and go there during the day.    Our offices would have a hundred or more.   We even had a Coke machine, telephones, and something called a "television".
       The Old Gringo remembers being called to perform....remember that he was five years old at the time....and his mother would yield to calls from various of the blue-haired old ladies, who smelled like heavy perfume and moth-balls,  to have him spell rewohnesiE frontwards (Eisenhower backwards), which always resulted in great applause and a nickle.    The meeting where this performance took place were normally short and well attended by 40 or more women...and a few old huffing and puffing old geezer men of high repute in the Conservative wing of the Democrat Party.   Colonel So and So, Judge Hack and Sploot, someday the Old Gringo will paint this canvas with a bit more detail.
       Also profoundly remembered was our coming into town in the morning during those late Summer, early Autumn days and crunching, squnching, and splattering millions and billions of dead and dieing black crickets.   They were all over, but especially in downtown....perhaps they were more noticable there.    They filled the streets, the gutters...sometimes overflowing deep onto the sidewalks.    The doorways would be blocked with a foot...and up to two feet of dead crickets piled against the doors and outer walls.    This would be in addition to the piles of drifting dust during windy periods....especially with early northers.      Something caused them to die by the quadzillions...it seemed to go on forever....and it was associated with the drought.   That is what the Old Gringo remembers.

This map shows in brown the counties carried by Stevenson,

and in blue, those carried by Eisenhower.   Texas, Florida,

Tennessee, and Virginia were the Confederate States

that voted for Eisenhower.  Please note that Hidalgo

County....at the tip of South Texas, voted for Eisenhower.

      Eisenhower kept his word concerning the tidelands.    Shivers and the conservative Democrats could reasonably strut around with the facts demonstrated that they could "...cipher a good Yankee from a bad one....or even a good Republican from a bad one."    Eisenhower would carry Texas and the United States for a second term by an even wider margin in 1956.   Shivers would be re-elected two more times, (two year terms back then), serving a total of over seven years as Governmor.   That, in terms of continuous service, was the longest stretch until the arrival of another Democrat...but one that became an official Republican...named Rick Perry.
     Folks might be surprized to see that the South voted Democrat, in the main, for a liberal Democrat, instead of for a War Hero.   Negroes in the South voted for Eisenhower, about 5 to 1, but , of course, there were very few who voted.  My grandfather....my mother's father....never really did quite get over the idea that his daughter could or would actively campaign for a Republican...of any stripe.    He did not speak to her directly, face to face, for three years afterwards.   He would direct his comments through my grandmother Mamie.
       My mother would grump about this saying, "How stupid is it to vote for a Yankee pinko who thinks he is smarter than all us hillbillies....that's how he sees us....instead of for a General who was born in Texas, who comes from a farm, and who beat Hitler?  Daddy just has to think about that."    The Old Gringo, even at that age, decided that it would be more effective and efficient both, to just be a Republican.    My other grandparents had been Republicans, although my grandmother on that side was more of a "progressive" type who even believed in public education.   Ghastly.  Women voting....???  That solved all the problems.   Prohibition!   That solved all the problems, forever....again.
     The Southern grandfather was a teetotaler, but did not support Prohibition, which he referred to as a "Yankee employment project, and a backdoor re-institution of The Reconstruction by way of an invasion of Revenuers."

       Allen Shivers married the Shary girl (Marialice, pronounced "Mary Alice) from Sharyland, princess of one of the most important families in the Lower Rio Grande Valley at the time.   He went on to be the most beloved and respected Governor in the lifetime of this Texan. He despised Lyndon Baines Johnson....so there is no way he could have been all bad.
    He did put me on the tail of his chartered airplane one time in 1954 and pronounce to my mother and godmother, that "This little man here will grow up to be a good Democrat" .....so I guess everyone has the right to be wrong every now and then....or perhaps being a good Democrat, then means being a good Republican, now.

THE DUST WAS SO BAD, during the first four years of the 1950s that we would waste water to dampen the gravel road that ran east and west in front of our house, to "keep the dust down".   It did little good against the dry "northers" that would blow in on 30 to 50 mile an hour winds.   At times the dust drifts from the plow fields would come up against our north wall, one to three feet high....like snow.    Our front porch, normally an elegant place to relax in the shade (a long rectangle of about 400 square feet), on at least one occasion that I remember, managed to yield a complete 55 gallon drum full of dust, swept up by the family during a long morning.     And that dust came in through a well and tightly-screened exterior!!!

There are scores of other weather and drought stories that are equally boring, and perhaps some of them might appear here in coming episodes.

That was one of the ways it was in the 1951 through 1955 period.
Thanks for wading through this addendum.
El Gringo Viejo.... 
          

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:

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     (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)