Story told by an Old Man About Another Old Man's Story

      There was a noble old man, by the name of Agustin Salinas, who was my father's mayordomo in charge of the day to day issues of our citrus grove care business and general  farming activity back in the days when north of McAllen meant   "way out in the country".  Don Agustin would at times refer to certain roads in Mexico as "caminos burros". We thought he meant that they were crummy roads or that they had been used by arrierros in their deliveries or whatever. Later, he and my father explained that during the building of the new modern paved roads (starting in the 1930s), there were always big city engineers who would come out and plan and design and really work up a good attack at getting over this or that mountain range.

      Then the rustics would show up to request work on the highway, and ask about the overall plan and schedule. The smart Mexico City engineers would say, " In a couple of weeks we'll have all our plans drawn and then about a week after that we need to start excavating."

 An arrierro with his remuda de burros.   El Gringo Viejo
has seen this scene countless times in the mountainuos
parts of rural Mexico.   While the artist might be a slight
bit generous with the quality of the animals and the  fine
hat and attire....we add quickly...Not much.   The remudas
were frequently fine, and the men were, although rustic
quite highly regarded, usually preenish with well trimmed
mustachios, and very fine hats during market days.

      Then the rustics would say, "But why sen~or, do you plan with the papers? The Burros, they know the route that you want."

       After much laughing and hooting and howling, the engineers would say, "How is that possible? You are all just a bunch of dumb, rural, Mexican Indians. You know nothing about engineering such a difficult transit, and yet you confide in Burros. jajaaajjaaa jajaaajjaaaa"

      The the Indians said,"Sen~ores, do you want this road to go from here to Mitlalchitepec?"

     "Yes, of course, that is the only pass that can be used to build the paved highway through to San Lorenzo." responded the engineers.

     "But Sen~ores, if you want to have a highway for trucks to San Lorenzo, you have to use the Camino del Burro. Please take your trucks and load the Burros and us upon them, and take the Burros and us to San Benavides. Then you can follow us back to here and then you will know the route you must take to Mitlalchitepec."

     The Indians seemed sincere, and the distance wasn't that far, so they loaded up the eight or nine mares and two jacks and six Zapotec Indians and drove them about 16 miles to San Lorenzo on the old unserviceable road.    The Mexico City professionals and their Gringo sub-contractor smiled knowingly and thought they were being very accommodating to the rustics by entertaining their foolishness as though their idea had any merit.

      After an hour and a half they arrived and unloaded their living cargo. The Zapotec rustics set about organising the return, calling loudly and sharply,"Arre! Arre! Maria, Arre! Consuelo....Arre tu!! Napoleon. Arre!...and off they went. "Hasta la casa, sonsas! hasta la casa!!! Arre!  (getty-up! Maria!!  Getty-up Consuelo...getty-up!! Get thee up!!  Napoleon, getty-up!! "Until the home, silly girls!! Until the home!! getty-up!)

     The burros began to canter into the chapparral, weaving here and there, but cantering fairly slowly all the while, just fast enough to where the men had to walk a bit briskly to keep up. The engineers followed, having sent the truck back around.    They had been going for about an hour when the engineers said, "When does this end?  Are we going to camp out here overnight?"

      The Indians laughed, and pointed to the summit just ahead, about 300 yards away. "We have arrived. Just over the 'ceja' (crest).    And then we are there."

     "You Indians are either lost or lying, because we have only been walking for an hour, and we have only covered 2 miles at the most."

 

      But about that time three burro colts came running up to meet their returning mothers, a soon after that the entire party arrived and looked  down where they had left, by truck, about 3 hours ago.    It was, indeed, a two-mile walk back, and it was almost totally level ground except for one 400 yard stretch of a slight incline.

 

The new paved highway to San Lorenzo was built where the donkeys had told them to build it.

(and yes, there really is a Mitlalchitepec  [I believe it means "Corn field full of (weeds) (wild flowers) of the mountain" in Nahuatl/Zapotec...in Oaxaca.])

 

     And that was one of many, many stories from Agustin Salinas that kept me spell-bound from age 0 - 6....a long, long time ago in a never never land on the Mexican border.  His stories all turned out to be true, or at least reasonable understandings of what he knew to be the truth.

 

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

(Excerpted from email exchange with an OROG, who served multiple tours in Afghanistan in forward areas and who is something of a son/nephew/brother figure to El Gringo Viejo, and who was a chum  of EGV's daughter and a member of her graduating class in High School.  The original email was amended, editted, and smoothed out a bit, and made more accurate in some minor detail.

     We had been talking about things, and then the topic veered into horses [I think because he knows that my father was a "real live" horse cavalry trooper back in the late 1920s and early 1930s.]  So, I signed off this email to him with, " Thanks for your observations. Sometimes they bring back memories.")

HALL of HONOUR for ALL TIMES

It simply needs to be stated by someone, somewhere before this issue is buried into the muck by the Orwellian realities that we suffer in these times.  This recognition is made here and is made without reservation.   It is done to honour these three people, not at the expense or neglect of others as yet un-named who are equally...possibly even more...deserving of garlands and trophies.  But these three must be held before your children...your grandchildren, your nephews and nieces....as that best example of risking all for truth and the righteous defense of honour for this Republic.

Catherine Herridge
For coverage of the Benghazi Tragedy with
professional tenacity and dedication.

For disregarding the danger to self and her standing
in the profession where now large numbers of her
fellow journalists prefer the safety of approval
of a mendacious regime than the compliance
with seeking the answers to those famous
questions:
Who? What? When? Why? and Where?

Greg Palkot
(pictured with wounds)

(without wounds)

For coverage of the Benghazi Tragedy with
professional tenacity and dedication.

For disregarding the danger to self and to his standing
 in the profession where now large numbers of his
fellow journalists prefer the safety of approval
of a mendacious regime than to the compliance
with seeking the answers to those famous
questions:
Who? What? When? Why? and Where? 

 

 

Jennifer Griffin
For coverage of the Benghazi Tragedy with
professional tenacity and dedication.

For disregarding the danger to self and her standing
in the profession where now large numbers of her
fellow journalists prefer the safety of approval
of a mendacious regime than the compliance
with seeking the answers to those famous
questions:
Who? What? When? Why? and Where?

 



     Each of these people have had severe life-challenges beyond the matter of Benghazi.   They are ridiculed by the elite because of their affiliation with the FOX News I am sure...in fact I know.  I have followed the words on the leftist screeds where all manner of scorn is heaped upon FOX Reporters and anyone else who does not toe the Progressive line over and above the line of the Truth.

     They were chosen for this blog-entry by order determined by two flips of an Amerian Quarter.   This, because they are all three equal in valour.   This page is theirs for eternity, and we honour them for having conquered their other challenges.

El Gringo Viejo

VOTING IS THE BEST REVENGE?




Revenge for what, pray tell?
Cash for Clunkers?
Benghazi?
Socialised Medicine Initiative?



With no particular repect for a mendacious, cowardly deceiver,
El Gringo Viejo


FEMA: I knew you too well

Already, Congressmen are coming forth to call for an expansion of funding for FEMA.    One just finished speaking on FOX saying that he was submitting legislation to authorise a increase of 12,000,000,000 dollars in order to back up spending and to maintain a reserve for disasters that everybody know are coming.

     It is striking, of course, that FEMA demonstrates with each disaster that it is a useless, incompetent deterrent to recovery.  It was established by compulsive central government totalitarians to displace personal responsibility and the exercise of local control and response to a local emergency or disaster.

      Presently, in what little is functioning that is sponsored by the useless central government response force, the locals were pointing out to the Obsolete Press reporters that "Those 'n-words' over are making their third trip through the line, and in that other line over there, that 'n-word' crack-whore is the sister of the ones in the first line" .   It should be pointed out that the speaker in this case is a well-presented, otherwise well-spoken Negress who was apparently escorting two older ladies, perhaps relatives, also well-presented.   This was at an urgent relief centre on the east-most part of Brooklyn.

     It brought to mind similar stories that occurred at the AstroDome in Houston with the arrival of the "Katrina Refugees".   The "Katrina Refugees" immediately upon arrival, set about to gain the system.   We shan't delve into the hundreds of horror stories about their actions and general deportment.   Much of the problem caused by those people was compounded by FEMA.

 

 

    But we remember, therefore, and now point out that FEMA learns nothing because it does not have local familiarities.   The idea that, once again with five day's certain notice, that this illustrious, magnificent "Federal" agency composed of Angels and Supermen could not implement the simple, basic, PLAN I - A, that says, "Move 5,000 small and medium-sized spot generators to within 50 miles of (in this case) that point slightly to the right of the strike point of the centre of the storm.    Mobilise and direct 2,000 fuel delivery trucks to that same area, dividing them proportionately according to brand-name of receiving fuelling stations....and keep them "nimble'' so as to respond to changes in landfall target.   Also avoid allowing these first deployments to expose themselves to entrapment by quickly rising water.

      Stand back 100 miles from the strike point and urge that the Governor take control of the supply warehouses of WalMart, K-Mart, and other such great storehouses of "stuff" (diapers, formula, canned goods, water, etc.) and to deploy National Guard elements trained in logistics and supply management under combat conditions.

 

      If there are inordinate rainfall probabilities, move back to 200 miles and request that appropriate governors communicate with the fire departments of towns and cities that have serviceable fire engines with pumping capacity to immediately begin converging in ten medium sized towns within 50 miles of the strike points...towns with parking lots that can accommodate 50 - 100 pumpers, and that have available diesel fuel to refuel at least twice.

 

     Suggest strongly the governor(s) that executive orders requiring preference be given at the most adjacent refineries to the strike point to transporters involved in delivering fuel back into the nearest possible fuel retailers, and to the resupply of the fire engine/pumpers once they begin backing up the water removal activities of  the affected areas.

 

     Mobilise to the highest extent, National Guard fuel tanker-trucks  and the double-axle personnel and asset delivery trucks for delivery of medical personnel and consumer items such as food, water, personal necessities, baby things, etc.   An availability of 2,000 would be a minimum, and might require three to five States to "order-up".

 

Now, you all know that El Gringo Viejo is a fool for even thinking about such a pie in the sky scheme....but....this is essentially what the electric power and deliver companies do as a matter of course.   We have several hundred high-skilled linemen, installers, drivers, and other very highly trained personnel who have left the AEP service area here in South Texas and already arrived in the the disaster zone...sometime last Thursday.   Large contingencies have moved in from Alabama and Tennessee (and were denied permission to work in New Jersey because they are not "union members") and from the Province of Ottawa, Canada and I am sure from other entities quite distant from the strike point of this particular storm.

     The local press here beat the drum and sang the praises a couple of days ago, of the one and only greatest help agency in the world...the Red Cross... because there are two (2) people leaving this part of South Texas with about 1,400,000 population to go help out in New Jersey.   The local Salvation Army had already dispatched 30 volunteers and regular personnel two days earlier without any press coverage or fanfare.

 

     In short, FEMA only clouds the issue and strives to make the people think that it has powers and abilities that it doe not, and could never, have.   It is designed to train people to audition in try-outs for Queen for a Day, and to learn how to beg for adult pampers and a can of Wolf Brand Chili and a new house and a Porsche  from Father Abraham or Father Obamaham or whoever the Great White Father  is at the moment.    NO FEMA CAN EVER HOPE TO FIGHT THE LOGISTICAL SUPPLY WAR IN WHAT ARE COMBAT CONDITIONS AND DEAL WITH THE VAGARIES OF RECONSTRUCTION AS CAN LOCAL INSTITUTIONS, POLICE POWER HOLDERS, AND THE PEOPLE RELYING UPON THEIR SENSE OF OBLIGATION TO THEIR NEIGHBOURS.   FEMA is designed, purposefully, to degrade the Samaritan sense that is...or used to be...inborn in the great American Class.

      FEMA is designed to make people realise that only Chairman Mao can provide you with your grey Mao tunic and your two changes of underwear per year....and a toothbrush.

 

Finally, the Governors, even the crummy ones like Blanco and Sibilius, will perform their police powers knowing that they will be backed up by the other governors.  The businesses will yield to the police powers expressed by the governors and compliance with repayments to the impositions upon the various public and private assets can be reimbursed much more quickly and much more fairly in this matter.     And with less cost.    At times the less "efficient" path is the more effective path.

 

We resign with an expression of dismay that our electrical company workers....all paid, but all volunteers...went to the trouble to leave hearth and home to go forth and help during a time of need....then to be barraged by people throwing eggs and tomatoes at them, calling them scabs, along with anti-Southern and  ethnic slurs, even as they continued their work to re-establish electrical service.   We'll remember.

El Gringo Viejo

Tuesday is the Day of Damocles

The assembly of words that can be put as an epitaph on the tombstone of every great nation, kingdom, empire, or Republic:

“In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.”

― Edward Gibbon

A curse on Sam Donaldson's faux Angora Goat
Ranch that he used to generate excessive tax
write-off.   And, a curse on the government
that feels compelled to take money from
the citizenry by force of arms and threat
of imprisonment, in order to feed  the
children that do not belong to the
taxpayer, but rather to the
tax consumer.



 

    Every OROG knows that this is a crucible point.   The takers are going to be outnumbering the givers in this nation within moments.   From that point on, we shall go the way of Greece, Argentina, and every welfare state presently found on the globe or in the annals of history.  The nation will change from the "Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave" to the land of the safety net and the home of the participation trophy and baby mother.

 



Judgement

    Even with Mr. Romney there will be problems.   He is a "reasonable Republican" who wants to rescind and then improve the Hillary/Obama Socialised Medicine Initiative.   He would think that the idea of closing down FEMA, the Departments of Education, Health and Human Debris, Interior, Commerce, Energy, Homeland Security, the EEOC, the EPA, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Veterans' Affairs, FmHA, FHA, as a start....along with the complete and immediate privatisation of the Social Security Administration  and Medicare  Program with participants being given title to their own accounts.....might be a little radical.


     He might not like the Department of Defense being renamed the War Department, and he might resist re-establishing the United States Coast Guard as an independent free standing service.

     Please understand that my intent in closing the Veterans' Affairs Department is to reform the issue to internalise the care of Veterans within their Uniform group.   Army guys go to the Army Veterans, Navy and Marines to the Navy Veterans, etc.   Less efficient, more effective.

 

    If Romney can pull this off on Tuesday, and we sense that he will, we shall still need to wrestle with him.   We can take a little encouragement in the fact that he has a solid catechism and a keen intelligence and a good heart.  We notice that he has many rightwing crazies within his closest choirs and acolytes.....lots of poofy moderates, but lots of solid Adam Smith and Friedman types as well.

 

We commend the outcome to the Arbiter of the affairs of the human race and this Creation.

El Gringo Viejo

Two Faults

     One of the things about being a geezer is that a geezer can remember "When"...if he is not completely worn out...and so then he has another chance to have a grumpy curmudgeon moment when he hears people saying really stupid things that involve the past.   "When" is that time in the past that the broad mass of people did not experience, but about which they are expert.

 

    We must delve into the "Tale of Two Faults".   The word "When" pertains to those two faults.  One is the fault of thinking that the Central Government should be involved in disaster relief or to believe that such has always been the case, and the other is feeling as though one is entitled to help from FEMA.   Can we not ask, "What did people do before FEMA?   AND, "Does FEMA help everybody in all the disasters?"



Nashville, Tennessee suffered extensive flooding,
 especially in areas close to the Cumberland River,
 Mill Creek, and Harpeth River

     "When" is that time a Geezer has lived through, and knows that the people who are talking about "when" are speaking in horsefeathers.   The fact is that King George I did not have any fault when Hurricane Andrew chewed up a wide swath of southern Florida.   The press said that King George I did not "care" about the people and did not "respond" quickly enough due to his "insensitivity".  But he really had no fault, either for the hurricane or the pace of recovery.

      "When" is that time that King George II is blamed for all the ill-effects of Hurricane Katrina, because the "federal government" (central government) had not moved quickly enough to help the people.   Once again, the problem was the stuctural corruption of one of the top five most corrupt cities in the United States, that being New Orleans.   The other problem was the sloth practice by Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco.

 

      "When" is that time that Nashville, Tennessee was essentially totally inundated up to and beyond the third story throughout the city.   The Grand Ole Opry was destroyed.   The damage was in the billions, one pipe organ alone, pertaining to the Nashville Symphony Association, worth 2,330,000 dollars was destroyed.   Damage was too extensive and devastating to list in this publication.   It was a multi-State issue, affecting Tennessee, Kentucky, and Mississippi.  There were 60 people killed.
     "When" is that time that Tuscaloosa, Alabama and other nearby places in the South that had a tornado outbreak in April of 2011.   Several hundred people were killed in the episode, about 120 in the trans-Tuscaloosa - Birmingham area alone.   With one visit Obama declared that he had never seen such devastation, and further declared that he had declared the area a disaster zone.
     "When" is that time in Joplin, Missouri there were 160 people killed in May, 2011.  And then there was really no interest from the press or the White House, as there had been scant interest in the previous two.
     "When" is that time when there was an oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico.   The Obama Administration used the event to close down deep-water oil production, and to tell Bobby Jindahl that there's no problem with the loss of jobs, the people can get on unemployment and food stamps.   When Jindahl responded that the people wanted to go back to work, not welfare, the president was perturbed and confounded.   He found Jindahl's remarks disrespectful and offencive.   Nothing was done in any meaningful way by the government for months....aggravating even James Carville...!   Local action and State action, along with British Petroleum came on line first and better.   Obama and his government refused to obey various injunctions issued by Federal Judges, and is still fighting legal issues about this even to this day.  



     And, now we have the scene of New Jersey and New York City, with the odd polarity of affluence or lack thereof six blocks 'over there' compared to people eating out of Dempster Dumpsters and other geezers trapped on the 18th floor of the Soylent Green Waiting Rooms, trapped because there is no electricity to run the lifts.....and folks wondering if they are going to freeze in a couple of days because the union thugs do not want non-union electrical workers from the Texas and the South coming in to do repairs.   And then there is that inconvenient truth, that the  EPA would not  allowing Gulf oil tankers into closer refineries to New Jersey....because of environmental considerations.
     Then we have the  Episode of Good Feelings and Reaching-Across-the-Aisle between the liberal Republican Governor Christie and the marxist president Obama solved all the problems in New Jersey....and for a while Kumbaya became the national anthem....and we could forget about the meanies at Fox who are making a big deal about the killing of some old ambassador and his buddies in some place named Ben Gauzy.    And, still, in New York and New Jersey, there is little progress towards recovery.  And the Red Cross is doing its typical job of photo-op help, while the Salvation Army is actually getting blisters and doing the work outside of the view of the photo-op crews.

      "When" is remembering that at Katrina, the authorities and the people had over five days to make some kind of preparation.   They did nothing.   Like New York State and City, and the State of New Jersey....not a lot was done in terms of storing up gasoline and diesel fuel, power plants, sandbagging of tunnel and subway entrances, or any such things.  They also had about five days of warning.   The much worshipped FEMA also did nothing to anticipate any response.   All parties monitored developments, made preliminary plans, made initial preparations, etc.    They never thought about the extra 1.5 feet of additional storm surge that would accompany the simultaneous tidal surge, because of the full moon.

     "When" is to remember how hundreds of school busses were left to be inundated in their parking yard in New Orleans.  One enterprising young man rounded up family and friends and went down and essentially took a school bus out and on the road to Houston.   He was carrying about 30 people, and pulled up at the place that had been mentioned as the reception point in Houston for Katrina refugees.   For their efforts of taking matters into their own hands, paying for fuel and food with their own credit cards and cash, and reporting where they had been told to report...the driver was, of course, arrested.   It's against the law to defend yourself and yours while Mayor Nagin is returning from Dallas and Governor Blanco is wondering if "....these pants make my butt look too big"...while she prepared to address a press conference, where she explained that she had not made the necessary call to the President to request the intervention of the Central Government in the levee breach floods.

     But Obama is a hero because he stopped by to walk arm in arm with Christi for a moment and then pronounce, "Stop behaving like government normally does, and cut through the red tape and do something!  And that's an order!"   And then he flew off....as in the case of the Benghazi....to Las Vegas.  On Air Force One.  He's solved all the problems by giving a vague rhetorical order that would be totally unenforceable.

     And yes, Virginia, my father was in the horse cavalry when he and everyone in his regiment survived essentially 2 tropical storms, 1 tropical depression, and 1 huge hurricane inside of two months in 1933 in Brownsville, Texas....when the mouth of the Rio Grande ran 100 miles wide at the Gulf of Mexico.   And, before Bush caused Global Warming/Cooling/ Climate Change, the city of Galveston, Texas was totally destroyed in 1900 by a hurricane that killed between 6,000 and 13,000 people in three hours.  Somewhere between 6,ooo and 13,000 people of a population of 30,000. Dead...many were never found.

     So, Virginia, study your history well so that you cannot be fooled by fools.   And history is fun and interesting once you get into it.   I leave you at peace for a while.
El Gringo Viejo