Wednesday, 26 October 2011

Eye Candy


During the 1950s it was great fun to go to Faulkner's Rexall Drug Store and do the fountain thing.   They made up even the Coca Cola's, with the girl shooting one of those pull down levers of carbnated water into a 5cent or a 10cent official Coca Cola glass, mixing up a real, live Coca Cola.  She would put the ice in and slide it down the counter, like in an old cowboy movie saloon scene.
     But Even Better....and the girls would use Real Mugs....was the House Specialty, another super concoction.   It was so good we had to say our General Confession twice at Episcopal Mass.    The beer mug was a standard sized beer mug type beer mug.    They were kept in freezing compartment there in the service area behind the counter.   The girls dressed like nurses, almost...just no little winged cap.   A lot of children were wary of them because they looked like they might be hiding hypodermics somewhere.
      The mug would first be injected with a couple of generous squirts of "real live chocolate syrup" before receiving a huge scoop of really globby gooey vanilla ice cream...Golden Jersey label...something like a Cadillac in terms of quality.    Then the girl would slowly fill the mug with really great root beer, also made up from scratch.   A little carbonated water, then a little base, then a little carbonated water, then a little more base.  The base was sypplied by A&W Root Beer.   The whole thing would become a huge magnificent frothy mess that required an easy-draft straw and an iced-tea spoon in order to enjoy it all.    For that the mean old people wanted 25 cents.   But the reason for this silly post is finally here.   That drink was called a ''Black Cow".  Sometimes these drinks were so good that we left a whole dime as a gratuity.
                                                 A soda jerk passing an ice cream soda between
                                                   the dispensing faucets.  Pull for regular flow
                                                           push for high pressure skinny stream.
                                                              One had base for Coke, the other
                                                                  carbonated water....
It was more fun back then, I guess.   When we did something stupid, Mrs. Tomlin would come and scold us.   Then our parents would find out and we'd catch it at home as well.   I was only called down once.    They had the best hamburgers, BLTs, and Club Sandwiches.  On cold days they always had ground up fresh Mexican chocolate, and the girls would put whipped cream on top and a teeny squirt of the carbonated water. 
Just thinking.   Maybe the Old Gringo is waiting for the Cold Front.    Thanks for your time and patience.
El Gringo Viejo.... 

Carrying a Point Forward

Free Trade agreements do not have anything...or at most, very little...to do with jobs being transferred overseas or beyond our borders.    Those transfers had begun long, long before any free trade agreements had been inked or ratified.   By using lib-think, the media has managed to tie "job losses" to "free trade" in the minds of a somewhat inattentive American public .   Job losses come from two sources:    labour unions collectively bargaining themselves out of the labour market, and business manuevers designed to avoid over-taxation and to defend the company's bottom line.

     The first duty of any business is to its ownership, whether that be a body of stockholders, a family, an oligarchy, a single person, other companies, a reverse, retransgendered, Lesbian Eskimoe space alien, or any combination of such entities.    Employees are not "entitled'' to a position.    Companies are not "entitled" to a profit.    Nobody ain't entitled to nuthin' nohow.

       Sometimes, even when everything is done correctly and there is no avarice, sloth, fraud, or malfeasance, an earthquake comes along, or some cow kicks over a lantern, and there goes the whole thing.    Sometimes, people are so dumboe that they might even like the sound of a term like "Hope and Change" and vote for the Great Wizard who comes out from behind the Magic
Cloud and says he will take everyone to the promised land of free medical services and free access to the money and property of an undefined group referred to as the "Rich".   And horrors or horrors!    The people actually are stupid enough to vote for such a person.

        It's like voting for Dolly Parton and getting Janet Reno.   Its like going to the beach and all the girls look like Helen Thomas.   It's like going on a bird watching expedition to a place where the guide says there are a lot of birds, and you drive up to an place with 30,000,000 hens in a egg factory....rowed out in twenty long coops that look like Army Barracks.

But, going back to drawing a connection between "free trade" and "outsourcing jobs", the "twin plant" concept was drawn in between the United States and Mexico the year was 1968.  It was long before any "free trade" agressments between Mexico, Canada, and the United States.    Right now, with a combined population of 450,000,000  the North American Free Trade Zone has a combined GNP of almost 20,000,000,000,000 dollars (2o trillion) . 
     The Great Numero Uno Saviour of the World, Red China can barely eke out 5,000,000,000,000 dollars (5 trillion) dollars, with a population of 1,300,000,000  (1.3 billion) people.   That is three times the population, producing one-fourth the goods and services......OR, IN OTHER WORDS, AN ECONOMIC DENOMINATOR WHICH PLACES RED CHINA AT A  1/12TH LEVEL OF WEALTH PER CAPITA as North America.     That assumes that the data published by the Red Chinese is accurate.   It almost never is.   It also fails to take into consideration that what they build and show off as examples of the Great Improvement over the "consumer economies" of the degenerate Occidentals.    Those things that they show off to the world to-day have a bad habit of falling apart to-morrow.
      And that is with the Dumboes like us buying the crud the Red Chinese ship over here hand over fist.

B U Y E R' s    A L E R T !!!

   El Gringo Viejo has found a fairly good supply of incandescent light bulbs.   They are Sylvania, and generally can be found at HEB and other normal places.   Sometimes a person will have to look through the displays for just a bit.  These bulbs and made in Thailand, Mexico, and some place called AMERICA.  !!   They work wonderfully.   Of particular importance is that we have one of those bathrooms with a vanity light over the mirror that takes four bulbs.   The Old Gringo found some 40 watt Sylvanias to replace the two pig-tail 100 watt "euivalent" (Ha!...Hahahaha!).   And now we can see in the bathroom.    That is pretty frightening in and of itself.   Anyway...Sylvania has non-Red Chinese lightbulbs...at least for a bit longer. 


Hard and fast facts are inescapable:
     The more impediment there is to the accumulation of wealth or comfort of hearth, the more the citizenry will practice sloth and evasion.
Rules of Life as put down by the Great Guru Gringo Viejo.

Tuesday, 25 October 2011

Tips, and Toes, and Tulipanes

      Louisiana racist Republicans re-elected the sitting governor of Louisiana.   The funny-looking, smallish, and brownish, foreign-looking governor  has never denied that he has Indian ancestry, but it is known by the New York Times that he is  not like the  real Indians like the ones who ride around in circles in the real movies when they find wagons that have been circled.   He comes from those funny-looking Indians who all play flutes for cobras all the time.    He won re-election while facing 9 opponents, and like Cristina below, avoided a run-off by winning a majority in the first balloting.   The difference is that his majority was 67%, while Cristina's was 54%.   G0vernor Jindal won by using his own campaign funds, Cristina won by using public money to buy favours for the "poor",

<><><>
Cristina Kirschner de Fernandez
the New Evita, equally marxist
but mean.   She is the Queen of
the Southern Universe, where
water circulates the wrong
way going down the drain 
   Cristina Fernandez, who is proud of the fact that she is drawn into politics from her bomb throwing marxist days, also attempts to assure the people of Argentina that she will solve all the problems permanently again, like she did during her first term.   The Argentine people love her to death.   They think she is the re-incarnation of Evita who was a saloon girl taken in by an multiple-personality disordered demagog named Juan Peron, President of Argentina who was the most ruthless, kinder and gentler, socialist, conservative, unionizer, pro-Axis, pro-Communist, pro-American, pro-business, anti-capitalist,Nazi-hider,Israel-backing,anti-intellectual, schoolhouse building, enigmatic democratic dictator in Latin American History.

 King George VI
      So that all OROGs will know what kind of a monarchist the Old Gringo is, he ranks Princess Diana fairly high, although she receives a "Golden Dumboe Statue" for never learning that a Princess, even in these days or perhaps especially in these days, never has privacy, never has any duty save to her Queen and to her public.   Being Royalty in these days is a blessed curse, the same as having Royalty.   She was high-bred enough to have understood that and to have understood as well that her husband was going to be much more like his  dumboe great uncle Edward and nothing like his "common hero" grandfather, King George VI .   But like my wife says, she was just a country girl.  Yes, but Elizabeth was also "just a girl" and began well and ends now well, acquitting a glorious, if thankless job.
Evita
      Argentina contradicts the Gringo Viejo's lack of belief in multiple personality disorder.  Argentina stands as a living monument to the stupidity of intelligence.   To the intransigence of change.   To the transitory nature of permanence.    Of course, the Argentines loved  Evita and still love  her.  Conservative Argentines say that "Cristina rides her broom on the winds of Evita's breath" or that Cristina is "Evita Heavy".
       During Cristina's previous term, she forced laws through parliament to "nationalize" private pension funds.   The Argentine Peso has fallen like a shot bird. Please click onto the linkage below to have an idea of O'bama's plans for the greenback Yankee dollar.   Be aware, Obama will do the same expropriation of Americans' private pensions...calling them..."tesoros muertos''....or dead treasures.   He will propose to bring them to life, in order to spread the wealth....    Cristina did not just propose...she actually did it.  Check this graph to see if you can determine when Cristina succeeded in accessing the pension f

_onebox&ct=currency_onebox_chart&resnum=1&ved=0CCUQ5QYwAA#
     The Argentine exchequer has been buffetted by her first term largesse, "giving to the poor", and menacing of the productive sector a la Hugo Chavez.   She has frightened businesses and even labour unions in Brazil,  which is Argentina's largest trading partner.    She goes out of her way to remind any audience that she is anti-American....although she cannot describe precisely what it is about America that she is so anti about.   In the graph that we have linked to above, let it set up and then look on the top area of the graph background for the time-frame
checking on the 5 year graph.   That will give the OROG an idea of Cristina's past four years, and the four years before of her husband's Presidency.


    There is a picture gallery, published by the venerable Washington Post, which will certainly qualify for the "puke a buzzard off a gut-wagon" Hall of Fame.   There are a few innocuous pictures about the solitude of defeat of Cristina's opponents, some of her and her son, followed by pictures of a woman who for some reason does not look like the official campaign picture of Cristina.  She looks like an old, beat up saloon ......person....who has mastered the art of putting on 372,554 tons of facial makeup.   You all don't think that Cristina would have used a "newer girl in an older picture" trick, do you?   The "older picture" is the one on the left at the top of this submission.   You can be the judge if a woman would stoop so low as to try to look younger than she really is.   Why cna't she just go ahead and look like Helen Thomas?   After all Helen is beautiful....in her own way.
        The OROG can access the photo gallery at the above linkage.   Be aware, please, that this gush is so patently the fluff of a demogogette, that The Queen of the Universe (Sir Edmund) Hillary will be taking notes on how to " Be no ways tired...." while corkscrewing down in her flak jacket to swoop up her daughter from danger inside the burning twin towers,     They are two peas in a pod.  False, self-serving, marxists elitists shovelling government and private bribe money into their own accounts, living in gated preserves, surrounded by armed guards, while condemning the "rich".    Neither Cristina nor (Sir Edmund)Hillary could fit their their little toes into Diana's or Evita's crystal slippers.    Or Sarah Palin's crystal hunting boots.


CONFIDENCE OF THE STUPID AND DEVIOUS IN SPREADING THE WEALTH
as a method of forming a prosperous nation.;
    To think, Fidel Castro and his brother Raul are known to have in the neighbourhood of 5 billion dollars stashed in Spain, Switzerland, France, and other "away from Cuba" places.Can the OROGs imagine?   Cuba, after 50 years of communist revolution, and fending off invasions by the dreaded and horrid Gringos, has an incredible Gross National Product of a little less than 12,000,000,000 dollars with a population of a little less than 11,000,000 people.   Since neither nation allows the other to trade with it....the United States still manages to be Cuba's fourth most important trading partner, after Red China,  Spain, and Venezuela.  Mexico and Canada are far down the list.   Almost all the countries who condemn the "American Blockade"....of course are liars....Cuba's problem is that they have nothing to sell and they cannot buy anything.    Oh!....and by the way....even with the  food stamp slobs that we have to support in such a dufus county as this, Hidalgo County in Texas, with a population of right around 800,000, Hidalgo County produces over 13,000,000,000 dollars in economic activity.    Put in a comparative chart....


            800,000 people - Hidalgo County, Texas         13,000,000,000 gross economic activity
                                                                                                                           16,250 per person


            850,000 people - Municipio de Reynosa            7,000,000,000 gross economic activity
                                                                                                                            8,235 per person


      11,000,000 people - Peoples' DR of Cuba               12,000,000,000 gross economic activity
                                                                                                                            1, 099 per person


     It should be noted that when the Old Gringo was a pre-delinquent, in the early 1950s say, the income per person average throughout Cuba would have been something in the order of 10 times the income average of places like Reynosa in Mexico.    Quite a revolution.   The only difference is that Cuba moved from free enterprise and clunky predictable corruption to communism and total corruption, while Mexico moved from socialism and clunky, predictable corruption  to increasingly free enterprise and free market activity alternatives and less clunky corruption.

     Free trade agreements do not have anything to do with jobs being transferred oversees or beyond our borders.   Those transfers had begun long, long, long before any free trade agreements.   By using lib-think, the media has managed to tie "job losses" to "free trade".   Job losses came from labour unions in the United States bargaining themselves out of the market.
Job losses also came from something as simple as shutting down deep water oil and gas activity after an accident in the Gulf of Mexico.    By the hundreds upon thousands.   With illogical, counter-productive regulations.   MORE OIL SEEPS INTO THE GULF FROM THE SEA-FLOOR IN A DAY THAN EVER HAS BEEN SPILLED BY DRILLING, EXTRACTION, AND TRANSFER.   Beware of the enviro-psychomendacious berserk syndrome....commonly known as the ALGore EastAnglia University- Complex Missing Chromozome Condition.
      Trading with the Red Chinese is not equitable.    The countries with whom we have free trade agreements have increased their economic activity and their imports from the United States.    We do well with Korea, Japan, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and other  such countries.   We only do poorly with Red China....and they still steal everything they can in terms of intellectual property and industrial espionage.

     Remember that our numbers one, two, and three leading suppliers of foreign oil, depending on the month, are Canada, Venezuela, and Mexico depending on the month.    EXXON, out of Houston, supplies Mexico's PEMEX stations with almost 75% of their high-test 93 octane gasoline sold as Supreme at the Red Pump.   It is essentially EXXON Extra with two variations based on the elevation of the destination.   Mexico City's 7,300 fasl is a bit daunting and much of the rest goes to places below 4,000 feet.


The Old Gringo is late for a meeting with Rosie, Michelle, and (Sir Edmund) to learn the lyrics of the new song, "If I had a hammer, this land would be your land, the trouble I've seen."   Is that how it goes?


El Gringo Viejo....

Friday, 21 October 2011

Update for Michelle the Model and Fashion Advisor Bulletin

http://thestir.cafemom.com/beauty_style/127602/5_style_tips_from_michelle
The below posted article is taken from, and credit rendered to the website above posted.

5 Style Tips From Michelle Obama That Will Make You Feel & Look Good


Posted by Lindsay Mannering
on October 19, 2011 at 3:20 PM

michelle obamaThe Stir's Tracy Odell spent an afternoon at the White House with Michelle Obama and discussed everything from raising tween girls to staying balanced to changing the world. They also talked about beauty and style and how the First Lady, as a busy mom, finds time to always look her best.
Mrs. Obama is a real style icon, but the very real and practical strategies she uses to look good as First Lady are the same tips all moms can use. She has the same insecurities and concerns about how she looks as we do, but if we follow her five solid tips for looking good and feeling good, we too can shine in our own skin.
Here's her advice:
  1. Mix it up. Michelle says she likes to support all kinds of designers -- we've seen her wear dresses from Target one day, then a designer frock the next. We like the variety!
  2. Wear what you love. This is an easy one!
  3. Be practical about what you wear. Mrs. O says she checks the weather and her schedule before deciding on an outfit. If she's playing in the grass with kids, she's probably not going to choose a skirt or a revealing top.
  4. The perfect shirt is critical. Make sure you can move and feel good in one investment blouse.
  5. Don’t obsess about your clothes, be practical about them, and make the people around you your focus. This was what Michelle harped on the most. Seems like being comfortable is the most important part about being stylish. A great outfit allows us to be ourselves and to focus on the important things; a terrible one makes us worry if our stomach rolls are showing, or if a nip might slip, or if our butt looks OK.
The First Lady is a busy mom with an overflowing plate, so it makes sense that her fashion choices have more to do with feeling good than necessarily looking good. Her advice is sensible and more or less easy to follow -- sounds like we should keep things simple and not stress too much.
What's your motto when choosing an outfit in the morning?

Official White House photo courtesy of Chuck Kennedy

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It was of interest to the Old Gringo that, although the women's magazine is obviously a far-left, kool-aid dispenser, the "likes"  and "comments"  ratio were running about 9 to 1 against this marvelous woman who is so proud of America.  UPDATE:  The pro-Michelle forces fought back and posted 5 "likes" and the racist, hate-mongers posted over 300 comments, scorning and ridiculing both the article and the wife of the present occupant of the White House.  It seems unfair that she should be judged so harshly, especially after all she has done for the minority children and the Transgendered Eskimo Save the Seals Stimulus Program.   We understand that she and Claracau Jackson Lee are going to establish a "Recover the American Flag from Mars to Forestall Imperialist Slaveholder White Stingy Millionaires and Billionaires from Colonizing Outer Space Program" .
 Sheila (Claracau to her friends) Jackson Lee
 Explainingto a Rapt Congress about how many
 tires her new electric television has.

C - 5 Galaxy attempting shake Joe Biden out of
the rear loading door over shark infested waters near
 Haiti.    White House sources denied that the 
Vice-President's trip was "political" in any way.



Joe, don't take it so hard.   Al Gore
was the smartest Vice-President and , and he is
even stupider than you.   And yes, rape and murder
stats are down, lamentably perhaps, because we have
more and more rapists and murderers in Prison.   And
because our population is increasingly choosing to be
 self-armed and self-protected.    Not because of temporary
 Police and Fire Labour Union funding programs like
 you propose.  But Joe, don't dispair.   With them in
 prison, ACORNand the Muslim Brotherhood Prison
 Ministry will have an easier time registering them to vote.
Imagine?

El Gringo Viejo leaves your esteemed company, shaking his head in wonder.     If Laura Bush, or Dick Cheney or George Bush or Sarah Palin or Herman Cain or anyone on that side of the solar system were ever to say...and emphatically say....the things these people say continuously, they would all be drug out and guillotined or dumped off on the nearest Obamacare  Medical Experimentation Center for the Mentally Retarded and/or Deranged.  Read what comfortable words our beloved First Lady says, when inspired,
      "They're born into a different way of thinking that I think is good. They're more open. They're more curious. The world is different. And each generation, just by the sheer fact that they come on this Earth, is creating change."
   Wow, those are some powerful words. Who's ready to change the world with me?    Are we leaving out "Hope" altogether now?     No, Madame First Lady, the children are not "born into a different way of thinking"....Children now are born into an onslaught of marxist elitist control-freak maniacs, who want to undermine responsible parenting at every turn.    At each stop along the child's route to adulthood, public institutions now flood the child's mind with lies about climate, economics, civil rights, the American condition of exceptionalism, about dependency as opposed to self-sufficiency, distorted (if any) history, and an all-out assault against Jews and the Christian Religion.    And, Madame First Lady, you really are no different from a Pantheon of Madmen especially from the early 1700's to the present who demand that we abide by their notion of how to contstruct the perfect society or be imprisoned or put to death.
     There is only one country that essentially tried to establish an environment where the government would say..."You take care of yourself, and we'll stay out of your way"....with each deviation from that general intent our nation has become more socialist and perverse and broke and aimless and dependent upon those willing to enslave the masses into the ant hill of "order" and "security" instead of the gleaming city on the hill, known as liberty.

A bit of academic stuff about Mexico in the next post.   Mainly historical...very interesting...with pertinence to to-day's and to-morrow's world.
El Gringo Viejo.

Wednesday, 19 October 2011

Study in Contrasts

The Old Gringo recommends this original "Get Well Soon, America" card for mailing this Kwanzaa to any number of right-brain thinkers, children, elitist socialists, etc.



Herman Cain's idea about how to tack a wagon



Barry O'bamaham's idea of how to tack a wagon!
After all, that mule should pull his fair share.  

     My trip to the grocery store always fuels my inner sense of dispair.    Where the Old Gringo picks up a very few necessities for our larder, to-day, it was 17 vacuum cleaner, two-legged digestive-tract, pamper-throwing, grocery-cart-abandoning slob troglodytes,  and 2 human beings paying their own way.    Michelle O'bamaham must certainly be proud of America by now.

Tuesday, 18 October 2011

Trudged through Snow 7 feet deep, and the temperature was 108 degrees, (w/ additions)

Show your children if you wish.

      The Old Gringo...very spoiled...last born....very self-absorbed,  arrogant, lazy, and generally disgusting....is stuck in neutral with 31 college hours and a 2.10 GPA that went along with a 1490 SAT score.   At 17 years of age and feeling pretty worthless, the young Old Gringo received a letter (by mail) from his old high school baseball coach.   The letter stated  that the University of Texas Head Coach of the baseball program, Bib Falk, wanted to take a look at me.   The high school baseball coach included a carbon copy of his communication with Falk which indicated that he felt that I was the best pitcher he had  coached in all his 15 years on the diamond.
     A couple of days later, another letter came to our house in Austin.  It was from Bib Falk.  He mentioned his communication with my old coach from High School and urged that I make my way to tryouts, not as a walk-on, but, if my talent was somewhat equal to his friend's tale, as an invited athlete and for consideration for scholarship assistance.   The much younger Old Gringo went to the athletic department, with his transcripts and SAT scores.   He played a little catch, did a little fielding, and threw a few pitches.   He filled out a form, and was not totally forthcoming about not having played professional or semi-professional baseball, paid or unpaid, and did not mention a few nights of pitching with the Reynosa Broncos AAA Mexican League team between his junior and senior year in high school, and a very brief dabble with the old New Orleans Pelicans....mainly batting practice, but in a Pelican uniform which was an NCAA no-no as well.

      One of the Old Gringo's personality defects is to just walk away from something if it offended him, if it was overly inconvenient, and in those days, if it did not come from a worshipful sense that the Old Gringo was terribly important to the Old Gringo and that everyone else just needed to wait until such time when ( or if  ) he would return to their lesser issues and concerns.
     The visit on the next morning at the University of Texas seemed to be positive.   An assistant coach briefed me, saying that I would have to go in with the tutors....not for academic help, but in order to mature to the point that the semester grades would be all passing, and with at least a couple of "A's and/or "B's" in the mix.   Sco Beta Pro was not to be carried on the team for more than one semester.    A UIL report that the Old Gringo had "talked back" to a coach on the field of play, during a district game was also pointed out."We want our boys to have a little hot streak in them,...but if you talk back to any coach, our black janitor, an umpire, or a fan in the stands you will be wet in 3 minutes".   (Their way of saying ..."Shower out, get dressed, and leave").
     With course assignments in hand, the Old Gringo hopped into his Kharmann Ghia and drove back to the house....29 blocks away, also in mid-town Austin....all fired up.   My mother was somewhat stunned and my father was seemingly un-surprized.    The extra scholarship would take him off the hook for having his son at the "best University" in Texas.   He himself was finishing his doctorate at UT, while my oldest brother was finishing a doctorate at LSU in Baton Rouge.
     The next day, the Old Gringo found a parking place some distance from the building where he had to register for 3 of his basic, academic foundations classes required by the State of Texas at that time.   He was mulling over which other two courses he might choose in order to break up the monotony.    But first, English 1301 was over there, with a poster-board sign and an arrow pointing to a door.   The problem was that there was a line of unimportant people standing from that door to an extent exceeding two blocks distance back the way the younger Old Gringo had come.
      Everyone in line advised him that they had waited all day yesterday, had their numbers, but the line had only moved about 50 feet during the previous day.    "But I have this scholarship form" and that met with, "We are all on one scholarship or another in this line here.   You haven't gotten the pink card from Student Affairs yet.  You need to go to the Library Building first".
     Library Building, same thing.    Except for the woman who said, "I don't care a whit about Bib Falk.  All scholarship arrangements for this semester were finalized three months ago.  Take it up with the Dean, and you have a lot of legal forms to fill out and a lot of other things.  Do you have a complete medical and your medical records from your family doctor?   You'll need it all and whole bunch more, son."
      There was no one to bluff out, no shuck and jive to practice on a manipulable nice old lady, or a friend or relative upon whom to impose.   The young Old Gringo even thought, "Maybe I can go over to the music department.   I am such a great pianist that they could not resist me."
And heading in that direction, the Lord sent a message in the form of the Longhorn Marching Band.  Even in Levi's and white T-shirts, sweating in the sun, four hundred strong, playing WAY, WAY, WAY beyond the very excellent McAllen High School band that had put 17 people on the All-State AAAA (biggest) Band during my last year.    After watching for a few minutes, it dawned on the younger Old Gringo that the music department had better things to do than to babysit a self-centered nobody from nowhere.

It was all very humiliating.   It was   a teachable MOMENT.
 Believe it or not, that is the younger Old Gringo
with the uplifted mug.
     Lugging my millstones and anchors back to my crummy pseudo-sports car Volkswagen, my intent was to drive down to the induction center in San Antonio and throw myself on the mercy of the United States Army.   This, even though the Old Gringo was a total coward and an absolute eschewer of any kind of discipline, especially military.   But, being a Republican, it seemed like the right way to go.   Driving along the then new Interstate 35, blank-minded, the scene of the Old Main Building at Southwest Texas State College came into view on the right.  The Victorian era castle-like structure had a view of the community of San Marcos and the campus.   The enchanting Aguarena Springs  were so beautiful and the whole community's atmosphere so enchanting that it induced Johnny Wiesmuller to move there.    He bought or leased an old mansion and restored it to ante-bellum splendor  (it wasn't that old, but the Yankee tourists liked to hear that it was) just a couple of blocks from the Courthouse and main square.
A view of Old Main, shot from the 7th floor
of the Albert B. Alkek Library at Texas State
University
     The younger Old Gringo, on a whim, turned off and went into the middle of town, and suddenly found himself walking up towards the Old Main Building.   His brother had attended there when, four years before, it had been Southwest Texas State Teachers' College.   By this point, the school of business, the school of agriculture, the school of fine arts, the school of liberal arts, and the school of industrial arts had all become larger than the Education Department, so the word Teacher' had been dropped from the official name.   "Why, there were over 10,000 expected to enroll this semester,"  someone was heard to say.   There was a set of folding tables in front of the Evan's Academic Center with some pleasant enough dolts who looked more or less like the younger Old Gringo.
      "Registration is here, " some girl called out.
       The younger Old Gringo went over and asked what was going on.   He was told that this was registration week and "everyone has to register with punch cards.   We are all computerized this semester".    No punch cards?  "No problem, we have blanks right here.   The course availabilities are posted on that wall over there."
   The San Marcos Springs are the Head of the
San Marcos River.   This Hotel, built by Johnny
Weismuller and his wife Dot in 1950 is now the
TSU - Texas River Systems Institute

        So the younger Old Gringo reviewed what he had taken, what he needed to take, and filled out the punch cards.   The people went inside...."Come on in.   This is really neat."   They fed the cards into this whirring monster which then printed out other cards and a wide piece of paper with all the courses that had been chosen, times of class meetings, name of professors, their degree origins, and other calendar information about the semester to come.    "We'll see you here Monday after next.  You must have a charmed life, all your profs are really good.    Remember to bring a check for the 155 dollars for tuition and another check for 10 dollars for building use fees.  You'll have to turn that in that morning and get a receipt
 ."
      "Can I do that right now with cash?"
     "Sure, just go up to the Old Main.   The first door on the left as you go in is the Registrar's Office".
     So the younger Old Gringo walked up the 100 feet to the Old Main Building and paid his way in.  "Don't lose your receipts, because the profs will make you show them before each class."
      "Duh...okay...."
 Image by Larry D. Moore, used under a
 Creative Commons ShareAlike License
This was the Wiesmuller home.
       And that was the was the Old Gringo wound up at Southwest Texas State College.   A year and a half later it had become Southwest Texas State University.    My son-in-law and my daughter made it out under that moniker.   But my son graduated from what is now Texas State University and now attends graduate school there. Great traditions grow from mighty Tarzan yodels....or something.    The above house is the old Johnson House...(not associated with Lyndon Baines Johnson)....that was called the Tarzan House, due to Johnny Weismuller's use of the home during a two-year residency in San Marcos.

BUT HERE IS THE REASON FOR ALL OF THIS.    THIS WAS THE PERIOD THAT A PERSON WHO WAS ALWAYS DESTINED TO BE A DREAMER, A SADDLE-TRAMP OF SORTS HAD TO REALISE AND RESPOND TO THE FACT THAT EVEN A DREAMER HAS TO KEEP ONE FOOT ROOTED IN SOMETHING AKIN TO REALITY.    The younger Old Gringo took over the Kharmann.  "The Ghia is mine.   I am going to pay for all the repairs, insurance, upkeep, and everything."   he announced to his parents.   He went over to the restaurant where he hung around with his buddies, and told the General Manager, "I need to work here.   I can do a better job than anybody, and I will do as I am told".
        Jose Cuellar, the general manager of El Chico's #10....one of the greatest de luxe Mexican restaurant chains ever....hired the younger Old Gringo and he worked there as host, maitre d', cashier, and slow-time general manager for a good while.     During the Summer (1966), the younger Old Gringo worked full time as a Park Leader at West Austin Park ($1.75/hour - 37 hours - 4 days per week).   This was the year of the Tower Shooter on the campus of the University of Texas.   Charles Whitman managed to tie down the Old Gringo, his older brother, and his father, and none of the three knew the other two were on campus at the time.   
      He then continued the Fall semester, working at El Chico's,  including shut-down at El Chico's for three nights a week.   Full load, full time work, making almost $2.00/hour and actually making some decent grades.
     The next Summer (1967), there was a full three-month job working as a research assistant for the Institute of Texian Cultures.  This work involved collecting and compiling original data and information to fill an ethno-historical museum on the grounds of the HemisFair 68 in San Antonio.   The Old Gringo flew and drove over 20,000 miles and conducted over 300 contacts throughout the State during those days.   He even had the honor of being called back to do some more intensive primary and secondary research later.   The Institute's huge museum is still in service between the Spurs basketball stadium and the Alamo.   It is quite an impressive historical and anthropological museum....one of the best.  
    As the Fall semester reconvened, and with the drive back and forth to San Marcos becoming a bit old, and more library time in San Marcos increasingly necessary, the younger Old Gringo went to his hang-out in San Marcos, at a place that had been operated by a nice old man named Mr. Manske.   It was a Mayberry-type diner named "Manske's".
     That nice old man had just sold out to a younger Czech boy name Rainocek,  who changed the diner into a high-end hamburger shack.     We got along and the younger Old Gringo would help him out, pro bono, of logistical jams every now and again.   The next thing was, I was staying in the dorm, and making hamburgers, running the fountain and then finally working as the night manager of the best hamburger shop that Texas had ever experienced.   My efforts had about 9% to do with its excellence.   There were two other Czechs, one named David and another named Larry and a Mexican fellow named Santiago who were as good or better at the nuts and bolts of the business.   All three were on-again, off-again full-time, part-time students at SWTSU.   The Old Gringo was always full-time.
        Gil's Broiler was (and still is) only a half-block from the main campus of the University, and adjacent to downtown, central San Marcos.   While there, the younger Old Gringo worked from 25 to 60 hours a week and carried a full load at the University.

      AS LAZY AND SPOILED AS HE WAS AND AS HE CONTINUES TO BE.....IT MUST BE SAID.
      If I could do it, anybody can do it, and not whine.     My daughter paid and worked her way through the whole thing.   My son-in-law paid and worked his way through the whole thing...both at Southwest Texas.  Both are well-placed in central command at DELL Computer in Round Rock, Texas.   My son went to school and then made a stop along the way with the United States Coast Guard.   Made good rank.....picked up big benefits for selling a large chunk of his life to his country.   He's working now, essentially full time and heavily committed to finishing his Master's Degree at Texas State in record time.
      So....for the 99 bottles of Occupiers on the Wall street....either admit and confess that you are communists and anarchists whose only reason for doing whatever it is that you are doing is to tear down the American system and America....or go back to your mother's basement...or go do some honest work and work yourselves up the ladder.   Set up your own tiddly-wink polishing machine manufacturing plant....do something.   BUT DON'T LECTURE ME ABOUT HOW YOU ARE BESET UPON BY AMERICA or GEORGE BUSH or whatever.
May All the Saints Weep to see so much sloth and filth.
 This baby sloth will be more self-reliant and whine
 less than the 99% Bottles of Occupiers on the Wall Street.

Thanks as usual for your time and patience,
El Gringo Viejo