Secrets and Medical Marvels

      Every now and then  we are asked how we manage to maintain such a high level of vitriol and angst without keeling over with a massive heart attack every three days.   One reason is because of the lucky rabbit's foot that came from an Old Indian whose grandfather had carried it during the Battle of Little Big Horn.     My father took it off his body after the poor Indian had been hit by lightning while installing a lightning rod on his wigwam.   He always felt guilty about it, and so he gave it to me shortly before he passed away.   (?)

      That takes care of about 90% of the Old Gringo's health issues.  The rest is broken out thusly:

          (1)     Every morning the Old Gringo takes one large fish oil capsule, 1 small vitamin D tablet, and 1 or 2 aspirin tablets depending upon how the knees feel.

          (2)      Every morning the Old Gringo takes one teaspoon of baking soda in solution with one half of a small glass of  Brita filtered water.

          (3)      The use of Crest toothpaste since before the time of "Look mom! No cavities!" advertisements in the late 1950s.    This is now coupled with the "magic blue sludge" with the Crest tradename of Crest Pro-Health.

          (4)      Ingestion, on a weekly basis, of 10 tomatoes...2 heads of garlic.....one large white onion.....10 serrano peppers and/or other hot peppers usually chili piquin and/or jalapen~o, considerable fresh or fresh-frozen broccoli, carrot, asparagus, beets, spinach, mushrooms, and such.    Peas of almost any kind are frequently found on or near the Old Gringo's plate.  Nuts, peanuts, crunchy peanut butter, preferably Central Market, even though it is not made by White People.    It comes from some place called Canada.      Any kind of tropical fruit juice and grapefruit juice is popular, especially if buffered correctly.

          (5)      Rices, pastas of almost any kind, and all types of beans in large amounts....perhaps a quart of each per week.

          (6)      Ice made from filtered water.   One large cup of very,very strong coffee every morning at around 05:00 or earlier, with half/half , brown sugar, dark wild honey, and sometimes a dash of cinnamon, if he is bored.     The Old Gringo never did and does not use anything that is labelled "lite" or "light" or "reduced..anything" or "fat free"  or "low....anything"...and he absolute avoids anything that says "healthy choice" ....or "healthy anything".  The Old Gringo uses freshly ground sea salt or freshly ground kosher salt.    Anything that is marked "low sodium" or "low salt" or "no salt" he will not buy.   He also buys nothing marked "diet", be it soda pop, coat hangars, or used socks....nothing with the word "diet" on the label.

       He also does not buy "elderly" dog or cat food.   If they are at that stage, they do not need it rubbed in that they are at that stage.   His magnificent little runt tortoise-shell ate normal catfood until the end at 21 years.

         (7)     The only meat that the Old Gringo eats is beef, fish, poultry/eggs, shellfish like shrimp bought on the side of the road in Mexico from vendors or elsewhere, raw oysters, eel (pickled or raw), anenome, roasted crickets, and spam.    He requires that these foods be cooked or raw in most cases.   He is the disgusting person eating the shrimp, head and all, and being completely unperturbed by plates with monkey brains, fish with head on, or maguey larvae(worm) with the mescal....His motto has always been...'If it's not moving...or if it's not moving around too much to stab with my fork...I'll make it disappear right under my nose."

       He also wonders about fearing "cross contamination" because everything will be "cross contaminated" in the stomach anyway.

The Old Gringo  takes advantage of the Hillary and Mao's Spa, which is an approved O'bamacare Public Bath Option, part of the Great Leap Forward
 in Cost Containment and Water Conservation.The recycled paper clothes
do take a bit of getting used to.

          (8)     During many, many years of operation of group tours in Mexico, it was of interest to the Old Gringo that the few people who ever came down with any digestive disorder while travelling were the ones who tried to be "very careful" or who were taking  "preventative" anti-biotic .   The ones who ate whatever gruel was served did alright 99.999% of the time.

      It was also of interest that people who drank small to moderate amounts of Mexican beer never became "discomfited"....although Baptists who decided to become Episcopalians while on excursion usually paid a goodly price during the early morning hours.     One preventative that seemed to be a good alternative was acidophiles bacticillus...or what is now called "pro-biotic", the "good" bacteria whose job it is to neutralize "bad bugs" among other assigned tasks.    This should be taken by anyone....it is not medicine...at least a week ahead of one's intention to be away from home anywhere for any length of time, say two days or more, since it also helps with chlorine and mineral variables in otherwise potable water.

          (9)      The Old Gringo does not have digestive problems in Mexico or anywhere else.....save for rare occasion when he might have over-eaten a bit.  He does not limit what he eats, always eats as much as he wishes.    He normally only eats one....rarely two....meals in any given day.     Late at night around 9:00 or so he will normally eat two or three large brownies coated triple doses of ultra frosting and maraschino cherries with cherry syrup, with the above-described peanut butter.    When Diana is not watching he will let the one-eyed female cat lick the plate clean of the peanut butter and oil that is found in this particular brand of peanut butter.    The cat's coat is really shiny, but she smells like peanut butter for some reason.  (Yes, the Old Gringo knows not to give gods dna stac yna rettub tunaep.)

           (10)     This is the way the Old Gringo's  great-grandfather and his grandmother ate.     That old fool was like the present one....the grandmother was like her father....tall, small boned, and scrawny.    Diets and dieting do not count for much...certainly not everything....The Old Gringo thinks a lot has to do with Ancestry.

That is my humble observation....Thanks for your time.   An update concerning our security situation is coming this afternoon.   A personal letter, translated from the Spanish at the scene....it is very interesting in a dull and boring sort of way.
El Gringo Viejo

Not an I Told You So, but....

     This is genuinely not an "I told you so moment"....but rather it is a question.

That question being,  If we are so stupid, and the Tea Party people are so stupid, and the rightwing economic nuts are so stupid, and it the Conservatives and non-bi-partisan people are so stupid so as to not wish to compromise, then  why is it that when the above-named people predict that such and such will happen...it almost always does.?

     Senator John Kerry, in his wisdom, says that the Standard and Poor's downgrade is effectively a "Tea Party Downgrade".   However, if the the entire Congress would have passed the proposal passed by the Lower House of Congress....cut,cap, and balance.... and if the President had signed said Act, there would have been no downgrade.

      The Old Gringo, who is certainly one of the racist, extremist,  stupid, unreasonable, dogmatic, uncompromising terrorists holding the American people hostage, is not the certain type of war hero that the Senator from Massachusetts senior senator is.    The Old Gringo is not married to a profane sow, earned his Honorable Discharge, and has earned every scar of failure and every slight bit of success on his own.

      The question genuinely is....If the Old Gringo and several million other Dumboes who own guns and think that 2 plus 2 is equal to 4....how is it that we get it right?   Why do the experts and the arrogant, socialist elitists always get it wrong?    They have more information of a more specific nature.   Hillary's daughter and Nancy Pelosi's granddaughter  worked in the Hedge Fund Teapot Dome....the latter girl scoffing at the people who were not prospering, because, as she pointed out, "I'm making big money and doing very little.  Making big money is easy."   She was saying this in reference to stories about how a lot of people were not benefitting from the "flip this house" and general financial bubble brought on by FHA and FmHA corruption.

        The granddaughter has since been trucked off someplace with a surgical mask glued to her face. 
   

         The question is answered, "This goes on because we are being manipulated by National Socialists, Statists, and disconnected Capitalists who will play the whore to any government subsidy, and make the productive class pay for it".    This is all theatre, and there is no intention to balance, pay down, or solve anything.   The Big Business people, save perhaps for Jack Welsh, like the idea of government contracts and underpinnings.   The "consumers" like the idea of "free obamamoney" and the slobs making 20,000 to 2,000,000 dollars a year on their own get to pay for it.

       There can be no compromise, really, if we want the Republic to survive.   The Riots in London...the riots everywhere...Greece,  all over Europe,Red China, Israel, Arabia, Philadelphia, Allis/Milwaukee....everywhere   come from the 666 people who have been born on the dole.   They see themselves as perpetual victims and entitled to other people's wealth and possessions.   If they cannot expropriate other people's money and things by legal means (taxation) they will steal said possessions and money.   It they cannot steal said money and possessions they will destroy same.   Once a person receives and/or is born into the dole, he almost always winds up hating himself and then he comes to hate those whom he sees as being capable of putting him (as he sees it) in the position of being beholding "to them that has when he has naught".

From each according to his ability
and to each according to his need

     It is not we, the unwashed extremist dumboes, who are the racists.   It is the "progressives" who have purposefully and cold-bloodedly destroyed most of one entire race of people in the United States by appealing to and accommodating their lesser proclivities.    Doing this has guaranteed a body of eternal votes, as do all socialist "welfare" programs.     Do me one favour in weighing the validity of our words...those of us who are stupid and backwards thinking"..."against the minorities"...."against the poor"...  Who is the better person or condition?    Booker T. Washington or Al Sharpton?   George Washington Irving or  Jesse Jackson?    Nat King Cole or Puke Puppy N***** Killah?   Heck, even Ray Charles..... or Ho Bangah and the Baby Muthahs?

      Have you all ever studied images of the Blacks during the 1950s and early to mid-1960s?    Real performers...sometimes showy, sometimes sedate.  But God Save Us please.....we were not saints....but those people compared to now? There is no way to compare....it is a different Universe.

http://www.the60sofficialsite.com/jukebox/1960-Memories.html

These are audio clips from a different Universe.   The Old Gringo
realizes this is a bit primitive....but imagine the extreme normalcy.

     And now the Old Gringo returns to close and then to retire to make a bit of lunch.    Since we are upper-income people, we cannot take an Air Force jet to Oregon with mother-in-law and daughter in tow to enjoy a bit of a well-earned vacation....to rest up from our exhausting vacation in South Africa....and our vacation in Spain.....I mean .... being proud of your country for the first time in your adult life is really tiring.

      The Old Gringo reminds....if he can figure out these developments  both on a very long-term basis and on a very short-term basis...then who is fooling whom?   If the mean old conservative, non-compromising Republicans can figure it out....why can't the people who "really care" about women's issues, and minority issues, and polar bear issues figure it out?   And the correct answer is because the ones who act like they care don't, and the ones who seem not to care, are the ones who actually sincerely do.

      The ones who act like they care are the ones who survive upon the programs and the votes that perpetuate this Road to Serfdom.

Off to more important things.   Thanks for your kind attention and investment of time.   Your bill is in the mail.

El Gringo Viejo

We'll Squeeze It This Way, and Then We'll Squeeze It That Way

     The poor Old Gringo is just 'bout squozen out.  Yesterday, the President of all 57 States talks and a bad market becomes worse.   Then to-day, a dumbo who heads the Fed, speaks.  He is the one who, while testifying before some forum not so long ago, said that he really did not understand the reason for the stagnation of economic activity in America.    For that unique accomplishment he was probably earmarked for a pay raise in the near future.

      A couple of fairly disturbing developments come out the Federal Reserve Chairman's talk with the investing class, to-day.  One is that he is going to commit to essentially a zero interest rate and he is determined to try to hold at that level for two years into the future.    The stock market fell sharply for awhile after the Fed Chairman's talk, and then it made a run-up when traders figured out that the Federal Reserve Chairman had essentially created a new form of "quantitative easing".   That is the procedure that essentially prints free money without using ink.

     This did cause a run-up, essentially ending the day with about two-thirds recovery of the 630 point loss by the DOW Industrials yesterday.   This is good, save for the fact that tomorrow, news about the messes in China and Europe, coupled with the realization that this assurance of a low Fed Rate will ensure a return to 100 - 120 dollar per barrel oil, and essentially a badly devalued dollar.

      When the market went into almost full collapse yesterday, the dollar gained considerable strength in the world market.   It gained almost 90 centavos against the Mexican Peso, and the price of a barrel of oil had fallen all the way down to 78.50 dollars.   All of those tendencies went into a sharp turnabout late in the trading day.

       While it looked for a moment like there might be even the slightest effort to address the profligacy of the Washington D.C. establishment, the dollar had been gaining strength in world markets, while the Euro and the European economies are literally teetering over the abyss.   So the dollar strengthened, as usual, as a "safe harbour" for world investors.   For a bit, even gold and silver were under selling pressure.    Everything happened very quickly and left analysts leaning up against the wall, breathing heavily, and looking disheveled.    The O'bama-to-the-Rescue Teleprompter Reading that resulted in exacerbating the sell-off yesterday did not occur to-day, so things behaved irrationally to the up-side.

      It is the Old Gringo's opinion...which is sold for a very fair price....that tomorrow, early in the morning, the traders and even the more long-term investors, will say "But wait, with the return of easy money, we're still in the same mess.   Four dollar gasoline, stagnation, risk of inflation, and since the dollar will be no refuge, we're back into the 20,000 dollar/ounce gold madness.   Couple that with a mess in Europe that defies explanation as to cause, and development of a plan for extrication, and we may be looking at the perfect storm.    That will be the Perfect Storm of Fabian Socialists and Keynesian Socialists being in charge of everything for the last 50 years in Europe, and more or less in charge here for the last 90 years.

      Europe had to suffer through National Socialism for a while, along with various manifestations of the Progressive movement until allowing the real Reds, Pinkoes, and other people who really care about taking care of the poor to have the reins to the horses.    Now, even  the strongest horse in the stable, Germany, is going to crack under the weight of trying to pull every other country in the European Economic Community.   France, number two, is wobbling.    Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland are essentially ready to be annexed by Libya and colonized by pioneers from Zimbabwe.  (not quite)

       All of this is prelude to tomorrow's opening which will be presided over by a bunch of people who are exhausted from irrational exuberance from to-day and fear, phobia, and anxiety from yesterday, and receiving fresh information about Euro-wobble in the morning.

        More information will be dribbling out during the next few months about the labour disorders in Red China along with "peculiar" accounting practices and great projects falling apart before the ribbon-cuttings.   This will have some good, but mainly bad effect oddly enough, upon the United States.

     Enough of my grumblings.   The pesos went...in one week, from 11.35/1 to 12.50/1 mid-day to-day, to the present hour's 12.20/1 exchange rate.    That is the greatest loss for the peso in three years, and the fastest recuperation ever.   So, until the morning.   Thanks for the time and interest.

El Gringo Viejo

The Standard and Poor's stock market index fell 6.66%, Timmy

Don't worry, little people who don't really matter, We have
everything under control.   We will take care of you.  We
know best.   It's all the Tea Baggers' fault, and we're having
Mr. Holder, Miss Napolitano, and the IRS take care of them
right now.

     There are a broad body of social security recipients who are not afraid of you, Timmy.  Your sly, side-wise glint at the interviewer looked like some kind of bad imitation of a bad imitation actor, acting in a bad imitation gangster film.   When you were asked about "Granny's" social security check, and whether or not you could guarantee that "Granny" would be able to count on her check after the 2nd of August,  the Old Gringo will never forget, in the few years he has left, your sneaky little half-smile....and your heart-rending confession that there was no way you could guarantee such a thing....if the Republicans put their political interests over the necessities of "Granny". 

     Timmy, you were so heroic.   Just hours later, your boss, Barry, would equal the thuggery you put into play by sending out his inspiring and dedicated spokespeople to make sure that if the Tea Party would not okay tax increases on those who make too much money...who don't need that extra money...then Kwanzaa would be a very sad holiday for a lot of coloured children.    The White House heavyweights had to make sure that the "American People" knew that the Tea Party was going to take Kwanzaa away from the children.

      Then, the defenders of good and polar bears, all the minions of enlightenment trundled out to tell the press that rich, white Republicans prefer gridlock to Government Inspection of ground turkey meat.    And these same Republicans also want cities to do away with police protection and fire departments so that Granny will die, starving to death, being beaten by a thug, during a fire, while her grandchildren have to eat from old cans of dog food for Kwanzaa Eve supper.    All Republicans are rich, white people who want to take the poor people's money and benefits, and let them starve to death in the dark, in pain, and misery, and that goes double for poor people who are old, children, and minorities: we are this told by the Barry and MSM, on a daily basis.

        There are still a small minority of people in parts of the country that do not matter to important people like you and Barry, Timmy.   The geezers among them frequently do not see their social security check as a favour deigned by an omnipotent, beneficent entity to be given as a crumb for which we must grovel and be grateful.    There are those of us who see the program as the Ponzi scheme that it is...along with Medicare, which was sold to geezers as "free medical care", paid for by "the government".    There are those of us who use it, because we paid into it.   If it all goes away tomorrow, there are those of us who will say, "Thank all the Saints in Heaven", because we know that our children and grandchildren and all their descendants will be freed from the bondage of government largess....of "free money" from Washington.

        There are those of us who know that obesity is caused by  diets and artificial sugar.   There are those of us who know that a helping crutch always leads to weakened muscles.   There are those of us who know that when there is "free money" to be had, prices rise and hucksters arrive.   There are those of us who know that paying for children who are born without support will lead to the production of children who are born without support.

          There are those of us who know that one-third of all social security monies are spent at the casinos and in the purchase of lottery tickets.   There are those of us who know that 1/1oth of all social security monies are sold at a discount for the purpose of buying things that need to be bought with cash.

        You see, Timmy, we know that you are a slimy little thug.   We know that you are unqualified for almost any position of trust.   We know that by your own admission you are either incompetent at basic bookkeeping, a liar, or a thief....or all three.     We know that you cannot answer basic questions about the United States Constitution during Congressional hearings.

   You know that you are above rules that apply to "other people" ...because you are important.....and superior.   You must be important because you hang around with other incompetent, lying, arrogant thugs on Wall Street, in the White House, you can curse in mixed company in the grossest way,  and you hate Jews, believe in "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need" like important people do.   And, to repeat, you are also an incompetent, lying, arrogant, thief like the rest of the people around you who are vieing to be the new Himmler or Goebbels or Goering or Hess to this newest occupant of the Throne of the Maximum Great Eternal Beloved Leader of the Socialist Utopia of  Enat Hager.

      The market fell again, to-day, Timmy.   Standard and Poor's index fell by the odd amount of 6.66% .   Time for me to go, Timmy.  Granny might find my cat-food tin, and she can't have any.   It's mine...I like seafood delight and she can't have any.

Your humble and grovelling servant....

El Gringo Viejo

Open Letter to Conservatives

Welcome and hello;

 (1)    The present President of the United States is and has been dedicated to the total destruction of America as a viable entity.
          Stop buying or believing the notion that the President must "learn" this or that....or that the President "needs to see"....or that the President "has to change" or that the President "must create jobs".

     The present occupant of the office is dedicated to the "fundamental transformation of the United States."   He sees everything from a marxist point of view....always has....always will.   His high school in Hawai'i, his training at university, his dedications after university..ACORN attorney....Jeramiah Wright "church" attendance, his friends and associates at every turn have brought him to where is is and has chosen to be.   He has been and continues to be a marxist, nihilist, Jew-hater, anti-free enterprise, and a believer in absolute revolution from the left....expropriations, executions and imprisonment of enemies of the Revolution, nationalisation of business, industry, labour unions.  Co-opting of churches, institutions, and the arts are all goals ofthis president and his minions.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/07/what_barack_obama_learned_from.html  
   He and they are building upon a thirty year preparatory "softening up" period we have been going through, courtesy of and by the popular culture and the mainstream media.

     Everything the president has done to this point has been directed by his credo....hate America....destroy America....incite the poor, the blacks, the slack-jawed mentally dull, violence-prone labour union thugs....while saying things every now and then that are written in a dim room of Disneyland's Fantasyland world.   "We need to come together" ..."We need to tone down the rhetoric".."We need to seek compromise"...."We need to all stop thinking in partisan terms"....   BUT, those of us with an attention span of longer than 14 seconds know it is the president who says "The Cambridge police behaved stupidly"....It is the president who immediately violates his own admonitions about civility at each intersection of the public discourse.   He always accuses his opponents of doing what he actually does himself.

(2)     It is not the job of the president to create jobs.
         When somebody says "Governor Perry created 100,000 jobs"...."O'bama created 1,000.000 jobs" ..."Reagan created 20,000.000 jobs"....PLEASE, Give Me A Break!!!!     Jobs...employment, aka wage-slavery...can only be created by risks taken by private sector employers.  These jobs an be derived from existing or newly established businesses.    Reagan himself said that his job was to get the government and he, himself, out of the way, and let the Amerian people do what they do best....make America the most prosperous place on Earth.

     The word "jobs" is a word used by people of limited intelligence who participate in focus groups.  The Democrats and the president's people know that the vast majority of their potential voters are of limited intellectual ability.   They also know that these potential voters are full of vitriol and hatred for anyone who has anything more, bigger, better, or newer.   They live mainly in a pyschological zone of entitlement, bitterness, sloth, and envy compounded with the problem that they have little or no ability to think critically.

      Yes, I mean it.   They are led around by the nose by poofy elites, by Oprah and Imitation Oprahs, by politicians who know the tax, tax, spend, spend, elect, elect process.   Nancy Pelosi does not give a floomdoofle about the "urbans".  She only wants them to vote for more "income transfer" so that she can live by her vineyard and keep up with her monthly face-lift schedule.

       POLITICIANS DO NOT CREATE JOBS.   THEY SUCK UP DOLLARS FROM DUMBOES WHO PAY TAXES.   PUBLIC WORKERS DO NOT CREATE JOBS, THEY LIVE OFF THE TAXES PAID BY DUMBOES.   THERE IS NO SUCH CONCEPT SUCH AS 'PUMP PRIMING' OR 'INVESTING IN INFRASTRUCTURE' THAT ACTUALLY WORKS AS IT IS SOLD.   FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT DID NOT SAVE AMERICA FROM THE GREAT DEPRESSION.   HE and his marxist engineers protracted the Depression with the brilliant schemes like calf-slaughtering and milk-can emptying in the streets, projects brought to America by people like Harold Ickes, Sr. that were actually in force during the murderous rampage of Stalin against the Georgian farmers.  Only World War II cured the Great Depression.

(3)    Please let us realise that this president is not "wrong".
        He is right on path.  He is intentionally doing that which is intended to destroy America.   There can be no compromise with him and/or his allies.   They will not compromise with us....they intend to enslave our children and steal our assets. It is that simple.    Remember that we have a "ranking senator" who was nominated to be the Democrat candidate for the presidency by a child pornographer who lied about the information leading to his being awarded a Silver Star for Gallantry under fire....and who also recommended that same award for that same senator.   This is the value these people have for America.
        And the very important, ranking Democrat Senator, who speaks French, and served in Viet Nam,  calls the Tea Party dumboes "terrorists" and "suicide bombers"?
     There is one thing for certain, Mr. Important Senator.   If two rallys were held side by side, one with Republicans and Tea Party Dumboes, and the other with Democrats, Union members, and ACORN people, there would only be one that would need to be repaired and/or cleaned up of litter, pampers, filth, garbage, graffiti, and narcotic paraphernalia.    You choose which one.


Finally, this racial thing.   Old Gringo will assure the Earth....and all you extraterrestrials out there...(and all others concerned) that if O'bama's peoples' racist elements were removed from his coming vote total and the rightwing, Republicanoids were to have their racist elements removed, and neither side's racist elements could vote, then the outcome would be 70 - 30 in favour of the Republicanoids.   
     By the way....the Republicans added two Latino seats and two African American seats to the Lower House and one Latino seat to the Upper House during the 2010 Congressional elections.....THE  DEMOCRAT PARTY ADDED NONE.  Tick-tock, tick-tock.
More Later
El Gringo Viejo

Spill Over??

     You all are aware that the Old Gringo grumbles about the  press's inability to get anything right....almost, it seems, purposefully choosing to mis-report events and facts.   When terms are used repeatedly incorrectly, and when facts are repeatedly misstated, one can chalk it up to lying, ignorance, or stupidity, almost always, or to a combination of the three.

      The new "for instance" is telling.   The McAllen Monitor, very much a border-based newspaper, being published about eight miles from the international border with Mexico, has long warned that "someday" we are going to see "spill-over" violence coming out of Mexico and into the Lower Rio Grande Valley.   Any time now,  some time soon, any moment, it's bound to happen in the near future.

     The Old Gringo has written how such matters have always been with us, since the establishment of the Rio Grande as the international boundary.  He has also demonstrated how, in its new encarnation, the drug/cartel wars being conducted on Texas soil has been going on since the mid-to-latter 1960s.

This is not an estimate or a surmision, or a guess.   It is just the facts.

      The same McAllen Monitor that runs articles very frequently forecasting this coming "spill-over" ran an article in this Sunday's paper, section A, page 1, above the fold...."ICE detains convicted Mexican national.....the 45 year-old who served time in a U.S.  (sic) prison for murder, faces illegal re-entry charges".

     The article goes to to explain that Juan Gilbert Hinojosa Gonzalez was convicted 21 years ago and sentenced to prison for involvement and participation in the murders of four men.   Juan, who is a really nice fellow, decided to clean up the area where the encounter took place by piling hay bales on top of the four dead men.    To make certain that no litter would befoul the sacred soil of Texas, Juan was good enough to saturate the area with diesel fuel and set everything on fire.    The fire was so intense that it melted the metal of the 1976 Ford pick-up, and completely immolated the four previous associates of Juan and his accomplices.
     It is not that the Old Gringo is pegging things to that date....this event was so common by that time that everyone knew that the whole of South Texas was awash with....was tsunami'd by....drug trafficking and its associated violence.
As early as 1981, the Old Gringo was present at a get-together where certain grand poobahs of the Lower Rio Grande Valley's financial sector were gloating that the "Carter Recession" had not been so bad for the Valley as for the rest of the country because we had everyone on food stamps and the drug trade was bringing a lot of money into the  Valley that it otherwise would not have.    By that time it had been in full swing for a decade and a half.
      Back then it was two or three bodies of being dragged out of orchards and canals every week.   Now it's five or ten in the four county area.   In the beginning there were no complex gang organizations, but that ended by the mid 1970s  with the establishment of the Triple City Bombers (TRCs) and the Los 13s, advanced glue sniffers who went about killing each other in drive-bys and the like.   Great Society graduates.   Majored in AFDC and all suffering from terminal food stamp poisoning.
     In any regard....because the Old Gringo really could bore everyone to tears with several thousand examples of spill-over violence and explanation of the sources...spill-over violence has been pronouncedly occurring in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, as defined in present day terms, for forty years.   Please note that the Sheriff of Starr County who arrested the perpetrators of these murders went to stay with the Texas Department of Corrections for a good long while shortly after this crime went down.      http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1108/a06.html

     That's okay though, because his chief deputy was appointed to serve, and was later elected to the position in his own right, and then re-elected.....but, alas and alack....he did not quite make it to the end of his second term due to massive corruption charges and, like his predecessor, connections to organized crime.   His story that he can point to with pride with his grandchildren is found at this link  http://www.themonitor.com/articles/starr-30026-county-years.html ,

     The Old Gringo could go on with this cut and paste for the next millennium.  It is twice a week now, a policeman, a border patrolman, a customs inspector, a Sheriff or deputy.....for instance, Hidalgo County, BEFORE these above mentioned incidents lost a Sheriff for taking gifts and  favours, and other matters....he went to prison for a good long while....and you all need to remember that Hidalgo County is the 6th largest of Texas's 254 counties.   The District Attorney....an arrogant old fool to begin with...managed to....Well, that's a messy story for some other time.     http://www.texnews.com/texas97/corrupt092597.html

     Finally, the good news is that Juan the Body Torcher was sentenced to 35 years in Texas, but was released with good time after about 20 years.   He was then deported, but snuck back into the United States where he was hiding in a rural area around Rio Grande City, perhaps the epicenter of drug trafficking in the world.   He was captured and turned over to the ICE people, who will in turn probably turn him over to the State of Texas Department of Corrections on a parole violation charge.   Juan's three accomplices are still serving life sentences.   Their four drug trafficking competitors are still dead.

Thanks for your time.    Beware of Spill-over...so as to not get any on your new white shirt.
El Gringo Viejo