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     This glowing article represents the left at its best and worst.   The Reportina writes glowingly about how Father Obamaham arbitrarily amends legislation, which was Nixon's first offense...the repatriation to the Treasury of unspent Tax Money, authorised to the Executive Branch by the Congress.   Nixon decided to send that money in question to the United States Treasury, and the press began immediately to point out that Nixon was beginning to treat black people like fools, dolts, and was disrespecting the intent of Congress, in violation of the Constitution.  The Democrats of that time, always bi-partisan and kinder and gentler, howled to high Hell that Nixon was committing "genocide" and "intentionally starving minority children" by not re-programming the money that had not been spent into the affected agencies' next budget.   For having done these things, Nixon was the Grinch, and a very evil person.

 

    And yes, Virginia, reporters for the then-Mainstream Media said things like that back in the 1970s, about presidents who had been elected a few months earlier with two-thirds of the popular vote and essentially all of the electoral college vote.

 

   Fast forward to the present, and we learn that Carla K. Johnson is fully capable of literally gushing about how the Obama Socialised Medicine Initiative (OSMI) is really hitting its stride.   "It's just non-stop now!  Everybody knows about it!  Everybody wants it" declares Madeleine Siegal.   Without much trepidation, El Gringo Viejo suspects that Miss Madeleine is a battle-hardened ACORN-type, totally adept at shouting meaningless socialist slogans and registering Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck to vote in the upcoming elections.

     Of course, this data being found in a dispatch dated the 24th of December 2013 was probably invented in a coffee shop on the 15th of December 2013, to be deployed in a news release at the later time.  Why?   So as to give the impression that finally Father Obamaham  had  parted the Waters and freed the slaves again.  Only this time, unlike stupid Moses with the speech impediment, Father Obamaham had given everyone free medical.

 

    Just imagine.  Good ole' Ronald Bellingeri went down and, in just 90 minutes, signed up and was given a health care plan by his health care counsellor.   And good ole' Ralph, a real live small business type had waited  'til the last minute' t'cause he jist didn't know where to go or what to do.   He was just like the rest of us dumbasses who jist cain't do nuthin' nohow on our'n own.  But Father Obamaham gave us a counsellor to find our way through the desert created by the Republicans and Global Warming so that Ralph could keep on a'contractin'.   And Father Obamaham gave Ralph a free medical programme.

 

    As we read this gall-bladder warming Winter Solsticetide story from the 3rd Chapter, 14th Verse of the Gospel according to Saint Lucifer, we also learn that Ralph's free medical will only cost Ralph a total of 156 USD in yankee greenbacks per month.   Ralph decided to choose the "Gold Plan" because he was too good for the frankincense and myrrh plan....because he has allergies to those things.    He also seemed to like the idea that El Gringo Viejo and his wife, and almost all the OROGs will have the pleasure in helping good ole' Ralph with his Gold Plan...to the tune of 472 USD in yankee greenbacks per month.   So, there we have it.  Obama lets Ralph keep our doctor and our hospital for free (just pay 156 USD for separate shipping and handling), and the millionaires and billionaires get to pay for the rest.   Ralph will go on disability in a little while when he finds out that he is going to have to fork over 9,000 dollars in cash on his deductible for the broken ankle he has set, after the drunk with no auto insurance rear ends him at the stop light next week.  His disability payments will be about 2,200/mo. USD,,,,,all free.

 

    Please remember axiom number 6 of the Socialist Golden Rule.  Anyone who receives an income tax refund that is less than the amount that has been withheld by the Internal Revenue Service is a billionaire and a millionaire.    Axiom number 9 is as follows:  Any free money paid by the central government to anyone will first be taken from the millionaires and billionaires.

 

You're welcome, Ralph.  Hope you choke on the  lottery tickets, and a happy Kwanza to all, especially Miss Flukie and Carla K. Johnson!

El Gringo Viejo

Christmas in Those Days - II

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     In those hours and days of Christmas of 1952, on the Border in deep South Texas, big changes were in the wind.    They were not changes that a five year old could fully comprehend.  But a child a that age can sense that there are changes in the offing.  Some of it was revealed by a little less attention being given to the yard.  It was still a showplace, but there were fewer of the Mexican workers arriving to do the citrus care.    That meant fewer Tarascan Indians from Guanajuato who were driven, addicted, and compulsive in terms of gardening....heavy duty gardening. It is what they did, and still do, when they are resting.
     There was little or no grapefruit or orange production.   There seemed to be considerable reluctance among the old growers to even plant new orchards after the double whammy of the 1949 and 1951 really hard freezes.   By really hard, we are talking about single digit temperatures in some places, and long, 60 hour freeze durations.


     There were fewer pick-up truck rides in to town to buy supplies, to buy irrigation water.    Of the Water, there was little or none to buy for the mandatory irrigation that was required in the Magic Valley.   The Rio Grande was essentially dry from the prolonged drought.  It was a bit of a rough patch. 

     Another change was the frequent absence of my father's mayordomo, an older man of about 73 - 75 years, and one of the colonials from Ciudad Mier, an isolated, very noble little place up the Rio Grande a ways, where Falcon Dam was being built, about 60 miles from McAllen.  Agustin Salinas was a "colonial". and his family was from the land-grant people of the Spanish colonial period.   He was tall, red-faced, sandy haired, and blue-eyed.  He was always grumpy, but he was always kind to me.


      El Gringo Viejo would later marry into another "colonial" family of the Spanish episode in what is now northernmost Mexico and southernmost Texas.   His wife's people are some of the few who were almost exclusively established in Texas long before the Anglo entry, and who had two distinct lines from two distinct and widely separated colonising episodes....one in the 1560s in Saltillo, Monclova,  and perhaps Cerralvo.  The other line , like Agustin's, arrived during the 1749 Rio Bravo colonisation.

    My mother's talking to people about actually taking a paid position at a place that paid a pay-check was something that did not compute.   It was a novel notion, because she had always run the books and managed much of the operation of the grove-care business.  It was something she did from home, and with a pick-up truck.
     She had worked actively in the Parents and Teachers Association (PTA) and had been awarded a lifetime membership due to her contributions.   She had also been elected to the position of President of the Hidalgo County PTA (about 20 school districts), where she continued to serve and then was re-elected even after taking the "paid position" with Central Power and Light (the regional electricity company).


El Gringo Viejo's mom
when she was 17.
Three years later she was
my oldest brother's mom.
And yes, her mom made the
prom dress, and on a Singer
 treadle machine. 

     She had also been asked to serve as Chairman the Hidalgo County March of Dimes fund raising efforts, a position she filled  for three successive years.  This was during the last great devastating polio epidemic (1947 - 1952).
  And, she had been named to the McAllen City Traffic Safety and Planning Committee.  The latter was an adjunct to the Planning and Zoning Committee and the Traffic people evaluated the need for school zone marking, speed limits, street repair monitoring, and evaluations of extensions including curbing and guttering and measurement compliance.   As well, they essentially managed issues such as new traffic light and other intersection control methods and police initiatives in terms of traffic patrol, collision investigation, and the dreaded electronic and radar speed assessment devices. This was all quite an honour for a girl who in actuality lived outside the city limits of McAllen.


     Putting all of that together with a very active presence as a conservative Democrat operative, a delegate to county and State conventions, and a general troublemaker against the Bentsen political establishment. She served as the precinct chairman of the largest voting precinct in Hidalgo County, and also went as a delegate to the State Democratic Convention on two occasions.   Even flew in an airplane, she did, all the way to Mineral Wells.
    As a certifiable beauty herself, she was called upon to be a beauty contest judge with some frequency, and always declared that the girl with the largest swimming suit would always win.

      She was a busy girl.


    In any regard, the lack of tractor noises in ever increasing lengths of contiguous time, and the sharp lessening of the "bracero" documented workers, and some of the other not-so-documented  workers, and the increased amount of time we spent "in town" and with me wearing shoes gave the impression that something was going on.
    We went to Edinburg, the county seat, one morning, and my father stopped at a bank.  He came back to the pickup-truck, put some documents in the money safe he had bolted into the cab of the truck, and then he took some other papers out and had me follow him across the main street to a land title and surety company.  There he put down two 100 dollar Yankee greenbacks, which a clerk took.   She returned about three minutes later, and said, "Here's your title, all sealed, signed, and now delivered and a few dollars change.   You make sure that if you want to buy any more property you come and see us."   She was thinking that with the losses to the citrus, my father might want to buy some suddenly cheap irrigated farming or orchard property, and she was making a reasonable offer to serve in the financing of such a purchase.  He was only 42 years old at the time.
    He answered my inquiry by saying, "No, as good as I feel right now, I think that I'll never want to be in debt for anything again." He had just paid off a 4,000 Yankee dollar purchase of 20 acres of land (with mineral rights) on the outer northern edge of McAllen, Texas.  Within 15 years, that property would sell for many, many times more than that, (with my father keeping the mineral rights), when we moved the entire family up to Central Texas.  To-day, of course, it is Gone With the Wind....an unidentifiable four city block area of commercial and townhouse development...now considered a "mature" development.   It fronts on the 2nd busiest non-highway boulevard in Hidalgo County of Texas, a block away from the busiest urban interior intersection south of San Antonio, Texas

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    Another norther had blown in, reminding one and all that nothing good comes from the north in Winter, and we drove back to the homestead.  Dust was everywhere, no rain, no citrus, just cold dryness.   From 1951 through 1953, McAllen registered about 12 inches of rain, down sharply from a three year normal total of 60 inches or so.  The crickets were so thick in downtown during the 1952 election campaign period that my mother and her co-workers had to spend a half-hour sweeping out crickets from the doorway and access...enough to fill a 55 gallon drum....just to clear a path to the front door of the Democrats for Eisenhower / Nixon campaign headquarters.  There was even more dust blown in on the October early northers.



     But, back to the Christmas thing.  The lady had locked the door of the titled office although it was still morning.  Things were shutting down early because it was "Christmas Eve'n" after all. This was going to be a long day.   Because?   Well, because we had to go home, line up the firewood, with everything turning colder, and then bathe, and then dress for mass. It was Wednesday,  the 24th of December, 1952.
    And...we needed to go to midnight Mass at St. John's Episcopal, about a mile south of our farmstead.  Services would begin with carolling at 11:00 pm, and then the "celebration of  Holy Communion", ending at around 12:45 am.  That was a long run for a 5 year old.  It also marked another change, because my father had finally decided to carry on with the Christian and Bonesteel part of his family's tradition, my mother acquiescing because she had been familiar with the Episcopal Church in Winchester, Tennessee, where her mother attended as a girl and preferred to attend.
   My mother's father was more of a fire and brimstone fellow, and he liked the camp and tent meetings.  He was about three steps up from a snake-handler or foot-washer.  Camp and/or Tent Meetings  also required less regular attendance.  His granddaddy had been, however, a duly ordained Methodist minister who said grace over two Methodist churches in Franklin County, Tennessee before and after the War, and had also served as a clergy resource (chaplain) to the Confederate Army for the duration.   Lots of funerals.



     In any regard, I remember being astounded by the fact that our little church was completely saturated.   Folding chairs were being brought out, every corner was filled, and we had almost 500 people at mass.  Sixty percent of them were not regulars, but they came because of the Episcopal "show" with fancy music, ancient English liturgy, the vestments, candles, carolling, the "coming in processional and going forth recessional".  and so forth combined to make a scene that :"looked like" a Christmas service.  Of course, it "looked like" a Christmas service because it was sincerely done as such by Father Rollo Rilling, a sainted vicar, and the acolytes, choir, organist, lay-reader, all bedecked in glorious vesture and the equally wonderfully bedecked congregation.  In those years all females wore wonderful mantillas or hats and "Sunday-go-to-meeting" duds.
   My parent went up to take communion, but not El Gringo Viejo and his middle brother.  The oldest went, because he had been confirmed already, and in those days unconfirmed children could receive a blessing at the communion rail, but no sacramental administration of the Eucharist.



    It had been a splendid event, and we left to drive back to the farm, about one mile away.   Although sleep was tugging at me, I kept spying all over the northern sky for Santa, his sleigh, and the reindeer.  My oldest brother asked my father, "Did you find those traps?"   to which my father said that he had found them and oiled them up and set them at the back door.
    "What are the traps for" asks a dumboe five-year old.
    "I'm going to put a couple of coyote traps in the ashes of the fireplace to see if we can catch Santa Clause," said my oldest brother, matter-of-factly.
     We continued driving.   Finally I said very emphatically, '' That is not good! Santa Clause won't leave us anything and if he can't leave, he won't be able to go to Mexico and the other places."
     To which, as we trundled on in our Jeep Wagoneer (box-style station wagon), Milton responed, "We'll be able to sell him to the circus for over a thousand dollars.  And we can make really good deer and possum sausage with the reindeer, and maybe we even sell the sleigh."
     My mother asked very seriously, "....But who could possibly want a sleigh down here?  It never snows."
     By that point I figured that the planning was done and the deed was going to be a fait accompli by sunrise.   Terribly dismayed, I could listen as Milton deployed the coyote traps inside the fireplace.  He washed up a bit, and joined his two younger brothers, in the low ceilinged Blue Room outback, cracking a window and a door and turning the gas stove on to the lowest possible safe setting.  Before many tick of the clock had happened, El Gringo Viejo was asleep to the world.   On really cold nights, the three boys would all sleep in the "oldest boy's" room, which was on the ground floor of a two story building, the second story being the quarters, (quite nice) of the farm's governess, Guadalupe.


     The next morning, before sunrise, I chased into the kitchen, where my father, as usual, was busy making his breakfast for everyone....oatmeal and butter and milk and brown sugar and scrambled eggs and bacon...a little molasses and tangerines, already sectioned.   Lupe our maid from Puebla and my mother were doing something in the living room, but my interest was in the fireplace.   "Did you and Milton catch Santa Clause?"  I asked cautiously.
     "Well son, the fireplace is right there.  Do you see Santa Clause?"
     "No, sir."
     Then my father suggested, "Maybe he was hung up in the chimney.  Milton is checking to see right now with the tall ladder.
     I immediately ran out and did in fact see my brother, on the ladder, peering into the chimney.   As soon as he saw me, he immediately began to descend, shaking his head.
    "Did Santa Clause get stuck?"  I inquired quickly.
    "No.   He's just too smart for us.  The traps snapped shut last night, but no Santa."
     So, running quickly back inside. I all but flew to the fireplace, where the Lincoln and Washington andirons faced each other perpetually (poor Washington) and peered into the scene of the crime. "Careful!  You're ruining the footprints" Milton admonished.
      I moved a bit to the side.  There, leading away from the fireplace were tiny bootprints, a bit smaller than the size of my shoes at that time.  And inside towards the backwall of the fireplace, two coyote traps, both closed, and between them two small bootprints deep into the ashes, neither four inches long.   It was a marvel.  The middle brother grogged in, yawning, came and looked at the crime scene, and declared, "That's weird."


      As we worked on our breakfasts, it was noted that Santa had drunk most but not all of his Coca-Cola, and had eaten most but not all of his pecan pie slice (almost a quarter) and oatmeal cookies.   I maintained a bit of a silence while the "older ones" speculated that Taffy and Tippy had been barking around 03:15 and that must have been when the reindeer were on the roof.

     That was the Christmas that Santa had brought the middle brother a beautiful J&R 410 single-shot shotgun.  It was a real beauty.   My gift was a real live drag-line and a dump-truck that had wheels, shovel-pulley, and everything.  Milton received a lot of really dumb, big-boy stuff because he was going to be something called a junior, in something called High School, next year.  I was to be going into the 1st grade at the new David Crockett Elementary.   But that would be months away, I still had to play and try to figure out why Milton wanted to sell Santa Clause to the Circus.



       It was a long Christmas Day, To-morrow, more scenes from the farm on the frontier, during the magical times of Christmas.   But for right now, my mother is lighting the Yule log.  All the Christmas lights are on, and the really showy, very traditional 9 foot tree is ablaze with different coloured lights, icicles, Angels' hair, and ornaments.   Andrea Herrera, the maid of my God-parents has come with her delivery of several dozen of the best tamales in the history of this Planet.  Several of her family are in the back of the pickup, with four or five huge washtubs full of covered, steaming tamales...some of chicken...some of shredded pork...even some of ground beef mixed with venison or javalina.   Her family would make this round every Christmas or Christmas Eve'n, delivering to friends, family, and to a selected batch of preferred Anglo families....It was an honour of the highest nature.


      Ah! There's my mother again.  She's put candles everywhere, people are coming over to play 42 and/or canasta.  The house smells like pine boughs, rum and eggnog, fireplace warmth, and Bing Crosby singing some thing called "White Christmas".  Maybe Mac Hobson, the magical 'good witch' who was a real horse whisperer and equestrian psychologist (for real) will come, but I shan't ask her age this time.

El Gringo Viejo

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Late Christmas Gifting Solutions

  We simply ran out of ideas for the discriminating woman who needed that "basic black patent heel" but who also was concerned that the rumour about
"Obamagators" would begin going door-to-door to sing their popular anthems of the season (Look for the Union Label and La Internacionale and This Land Is Our Land, This Land's Not Your Land, You Didn't Build It, Obama Will'd It).
It is known that after singing for what seems hours at the front door, they will begin banging on the doors and windows all around the house, demanding that the occupants sign up for "Free Medical Care", and they also try to shake down the occupants for the "Pensions for OWS & ACORN Martyrs" fund.   It is a form authorising a 19 USD bank draft each month made out to some people named  Reggie Love and Omar Onyango Obama and Auntie Zietuni.
We think that these shoes are the perfect fit for any such occasion.  Made in America, non-union labour, with a 1,000 - use warrantee against defects in damage-producing capability.

shipping and handling and shamwow blood-wiper cleaning towel included at no extra charge -  19.00 / one payment only.  Checks accepted.

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Merry Christ's Mass  -  God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen...and Ladies.




El Gringo Viejo y familia y El Zorro del Norte y familia les desea
un fuertamente Feliz Navidad y un verderamente prospero An~o Nuevo!

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Chistmas in those days...

     On the Border, deep into the southernmost part of Texas, life was generally pleasantly boring.   Weather and social events of a predictable nature seemed to be the important things that were at the centre of activity and conversation.   These seemed normal, for although the area was semi-arid in large part, irrigation provided the backstop for an agricultural industry that was as advanced as any in the world. 

     So, King Cotton and its diseases, advancements, marketing, ginning, and transport was terribly important.  Each calendar year meant that some grower in the Lower Rio Grande Valley would deliver the trailer-full of lint staple that would be the "This Year's First Bale of Cotton in America".   At times my father would grow cotton, planting in January or early February and awaiting the squares, then bolls, and then the popping  out of the bright white, tightly packed strands of fibre.  Bugs, too much rain, not enough rain, salty Rio Grande water when the flow was low, salty but clear well water when the Rio Grande had too little water to pump up into the intricate system of canals, falling prices for the "white gold" , lack of labour to do the hand-picked harvest and the hand hoed, plant by plant nurturing....enough to make any man's or woman's head truly spin.

     There was nothing more ridiculous, I think, that casting one's future into the hands of such a fate as what one encounters in farming.  Then there were few, if any subsidies.  Some people played the Soil Bank game, being paid money from the Central Government for not growing crops....the Bentsen Enterprise people did well at that kind of farming.

    Later there were declarations for drought relief and then other programs for flood relief, and then programs for falling commodity price relief, and other silly, counterproductive government meddling.   But, up until the mid-1950s, farming was pretty much a daily game of high-card draw.  If  the Devil drew a higher card than the farmer, the Devil won.

 

     We are in 1952, following two very hard freezes....1949 and 1951....that had frozen in the Turning Basin of the Shrimper Fleet (340 shrimp trawlers) down at Port Isabel on the coast.    The combination left-hook, right-cross had pretty much destroyed 9o per cent of the producing tree-stock in the Valley's citrus belt.  My parent's business in the grove care field changed from being a lucrative, if exhausting, adventure in the caring for hundreds of acres owned by absentee investors...to essentially a stump removal service.

.Above -  A group of Tarascans from Guanajusto.
These men were all from the village of Yurrira.
 Guanajuato,and had been involved in or relatives
 of the "Cristeros" fighters who defended the
 right of Roman Catholics t0 worship and
 maintain theirreligious practices in Mexico.
  It was a general uprising throughout the
 Nation commanded, symbolically from
 Guanajuato,the Centre of Mexico. The men
 were excellent workers, punctual, clean,
 honest, and expert in matters of irrigation
 and pest and plague control. 

Centre - A group of men from Nuevo Leon
 State emptying their long-sacks...each
 containing about 90 - 100 pounds
 of freshly picked bolls.

Lower -  One of our men who tended the
 3 draught horses and 4 Guernsey milk cows.
  The trees are on our home acreage just north
 of McAllen.   They are Valencia Orange about
 5 years old.  So, they would be placed right
 around my birth, Spring of 1947, as are
 the upper two photographs.
    

     That was the backdrop of our Christmas during the Christmastide that connected 1952 with 1953.  Everything was a disaster.   So everything was normal.  Eisenhower had won the Presidency, meaning Texas and Lousiana would retain their tidal mineral rights some distance off-shore, and that peace would be in the offing over in Korea.   My father had made a good harvest of cotton, in spite of the on-going drought.   And he had made a good crop and price on tomatoes.  My mother had been sought out and asked to take a new job as an outfacing company representative for the "big" region wide Central Power and Light Company, a subsidiary of Central and Southwest Power.   It would be a cheesy, high-paying position with a company auto and everything.   She would start in May, 1953.  And, of course, my mother's father was not speaking to her because she and my father had voted Republican in the presidentials.  After all they had done to us during the Reconstruction,  don't you know?

     But, although those pictures on the left seem almost tropical, it is Christmas.   Dull, 84 degrees, no television, only radio, black and white movies that we go to see four or five times a year, at most.   That was a bit strange, because we lived less than 300 yards and across the paved road  from a drive-in movie, where my oldest brother worked as an usher and cashier. He also worked down on the Main Street right in the Middle of McAllen, Texas at the Palace Theatre, a real top drawer place where my brother wore a uniform like a prince of a royal house of Europe might wear....and they gave him a special flashlight, too.

    This was a talented brother.   He played football and played tuba in the band, during the same games!  He was also a real master in the decoration of a Christmas Tree.   When people saw our tree, they actually offered to pay my brother Milton to come to their house the next year to "do us one the same.''  My mother was very much a Tennessee Anglo traditionalist, so we would have a selected log for Christmas Eve from our prunings of the past year (plenty then, due to the freezes), and a mantle full of long, boot-socks for the three boys and displays of religious, nativity related images, candles, and various cards from friends and family, far and near.   A few close friends would be there every night from the last week of advent until the Epiphany.  The socks stayed up until the 6th of January, and really good friends would drop by and put small goodies into each of the appropriate socks.  Everything smelled pretty smoky by that time.
     Although all were good friends, my favourite was Mac Hobson, deputy postmistress for the McAllen district.   She was also a neighbour, living behind the Palms Drive Inn Movie Theatre.  So, while the number of times my parents might have driven over to have a night at the movies were few, we did avail ourselves sometimes of eating Mac's popcorn and watching movies from her stoop, hearing everything on a slight delay from the 200 or so car-speakers, 200 yards away, and just across the gravel road.
      

     Our house had all the appropriate Saints, peering accusingly from the walls from their pr0fessionally framed and mounted  places.  It being Christmas, the nicer china became de rigueur.   A nice sterling service was also shined-up along with crystal, even for breakfast and no-visitor situations.   Nuts of all kinds, and smallish yellow apples, spicy fragrances, all such things were part of the mix.
     The décor was early farmstead, mixed with family heirlooms of the finest quality New England furniture traditions....a high-boy, low-boy and bed, all matching, brought from New York to Minneapolis, supposedly having been made in during the last quarter of the 1700s.  There were a lot of "family pieces", along with the knick - knackery that American families collect over a few hundred years on a new Continent.   We had closets, and storge attics, and attics of junk and stuff....if only any of it could have spoken of what it had presenced....goodness gracious.
    My father said that his father had told him that his father had told him that all the really fine stuff from England  that the first of our surnamed  forbearers had brought had pretty much been dispersed by Luther, the father of my father's father.   It had been dispersed to earlier uncles and cousins, as the family had moved from Massachusetts and Maine, then on to New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, and finally northeastern Pennsylvania.
    Our back room was the brick part of the house, and also was where the fireplace was placed.   It was the "family room" where we would eat and listen to the radio, and play table games.    Folks would come without announcement or invitation all during the last week of Advent, right after we had the tree up.   They would gather for eggnog and warmth (it there were any rare chill) by the fireplace, the room would fill with pipe and cigarette smoke. All the way through until the Epiphany, friends would slide a little something into the three boot sock, neatly labelled with the name of each brother, things like a really nice, keep-forever Old Timer pocket knife, an older brother scored a nice, tough  and useful Timex watch.

Miss Mac Hobson and right is Danny, the world's
nicest gentleman horse in history.  Atop Danny is
 El Gringo Viejo when he was still a somewhat
human bean.   In the background is
a third portion of the front porch
of our McAllen farm house.
c. - 1951

     One of my biggest childhood faux pas, of many, was hovering around our fairy Godmother, Mac Hobson.   She was one of those women who was always smiling.  She was also the deputy postmistress of the McAllen Post Office and the McAllen collection centre (the largest south of San Antonio).   She was a single woman who also raised and nursed sick and emotionally troubled and/or abused horses.  At one time she kept the stand-in horse that was used as a  substitute for Roy Rogers's Trigger when he needed spelling or was tuckered.   Trigger's sub had "psychological issues" and Mac would agree to take such animals for boarding, care, and counselling.  She might have been the original "horse whisperer".   She had a way with the four legged beasts, and her personal mount, Danny was also a patient horse who seemed to sense the ills another horse was suffering.   He got along with everyone, man or beast. 
    Our mother allowed that she was highly educated at some Ivy League university, had lost her brother to a disease, and her father to a heart attack. Although she had a number of men who expressed interest in her...for long-term arrangements like marriage, she seemed to be content as she was...perhaps to avoid further abandonment by men to whom she felt close.  She made up one of eight or nine single women in the county who were well-set to well-to-do, attractive, and settled in their way.  Mac seemed to like boys like my brothers and me, and horses.   There was never anything ever untoward in her association with us, so this is not some kind of a "tell-all" post. 
    My indiscretion at the age of five was to have sidled over while she was playing chess with my oldest brother, with about 15 family and friends in a well furnished but pretty tightly-fit  after supper crowd in the fireplace room.   Then, during a lull in the game, I blurted out the totally prohibited taboo of all taboos...."Aunt Mac, How old are you?"
    The room filled with the overwhelming noise of total, absolute, deafening silence.   The-world-just-ended silence.   In those years it was different, even for an indulged and spoilt child.   My mother made it over in three strides, and grabbed me up by the first arm she could pull loose from my shoulder.  After she had beat the blood out of that arm all over my head, she started in with the hammer....
     Okay...okay...maybe it wasn't quite that bad, and Mac did intervene.   "Nola, Nola goodness, you have three boys, you should know that they are almost human by now.  There's no meanness in this little King"  She played on the fact that the Mexicans who worked with my Father always called me Rey David  (King David), "Let me tell him about what he did wrong."   And she screwed my arm back on and made the hammer disappear.  Then she picked me up and we went to the fireplace where she whispered, "I'm three times older than your brother Norman and less than twice as old as your brother Milton.  Now, Saturday you have to tell me how old I am. Okay?"   Of course, being lugged around by the Faery Godmother and whispered secrets and having my arm screwed back on all on one night was bribe enough.
     "You're the luckiest child the Yankees left behind, pumpkin-head," my mother informed me as Mac and I warmed at the fireplace.   Never again did I ever ask any female of any kind how many moons had graced her presence on this Earth.  Being a bit precocious, El Gringo Viejo did figure out the age by the next Saturday, as was rewarded with an "all-by-myself-ride" back to Mac's house on Danny, while she rode one of her "patients" a good ways back.

     Perhaps we can fill in other parts of my childhood on the farm during this Christmastide.   These are the days for remembering.

El Gringo Viejo 

Immaculate Cuncussion Anniversary

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     Several months after the disasters of Egypt and Libya there were still no answers worthy of the name.   The Obama administration seems to think that the entire issue is a game of "tag", and that the game ends on 20 January 2015.  The disasters of Egypt and Libya have now degenerated further, including the thorough muddying of issues pertaining to Iran and Syria.   Another of the magnificent foreign policies accomplishments   he and (Sir Edmund) Corkscrew is the destruction of American - Israeli relations, which for Obama, is most probably a point of pride.   We now have an Israel whose best ally in matters pertaining to Iran is Saudi Arabia.

     And to-day?   Still no solid answers or explanations about any of the firings of General Officers from command posts, or the failure to respond to Benghazi-burning, or what side games were being played between Turkey and militant groups in north Africa, or why some Coptic Christian's relatively mild and pointless YouTube video with 4.000 hits (before the free advertising by {Sir Edmund} Corkscrew) had to be trotted out as something that had anything to do with anything.   The major questions, once the enumeration begins, could make a 198 page book of simple sentences in interrogative form.   And none of those questions have be addressed in any reasonable way.

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 This linkage should be reviewed at least once per week by all OROGs.    It shows that the entirety of Obama's "political maturation" was completely involved with crooks, lunatics, and marxists.

http://keywiki.org/index.php/Barack_Obama_-_Controversial_and_Radical_Associates

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Friday, 21 December 2012

Immaculate Concussion, indeed!

 

In the Complete Guide to the Commandments, Canons, and Orders of the Church of Be'elzebub (the original grandfather of Be'elzebubba bin Blythe), one is required as follows....."Being certain that no good lie be left untold, all confirmed must be dedicated to the mastery and practise of the Holy Whopperistical Mysteries."

     We have signed the White House Petition urging immediate re-canonisation, beatification, and embalming, and spraying of gobs of gold upon the person of Queen of the Universe (Sir Edmund) Hillaryabubba.

        To one lower order we give Susan Riceabubba dishonourable mention for her perfectly miserable holy grovelling,  transparent mendacity, race-baiting, and generally despicable deportment, which brought us much pride and pleasure.

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Que  intervengan los Santos!

The field was planted but there has been no harvest.   We need answers to the many questions left behind by this debacle.
El Gringo Viejo

Oooops! That Billy Goat knocked down the Million Kilowatt Dam

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    It has been about 200 years or so (1989) since this writer informed a highly  placed Republican operative that there was a loud-mouthed political commentator who was saying things that many thought had been banned on radio or television.  Further, he was saying such things on a live, three-hour nationally syndicated radio programme.   The highly placed political operative expressed some interest in this new conservative commentator.  I advised him that the fellow looked like a twin of my Uncle Billy, foolishly thinking that such information might further whet his interest in the issue.

     El Gringo Viejo and his boss, along with five other small businesses, gathered up 1,500 USD each, and paid local talk-radio station to engage the "Rush to Excellence Show" to come down in person to entertain the rubes in fly-over country.   Our area was then, and remains, the last area in Texas with the contamination of having a welfare-based, elected Democrat Corruption Factory totally in place.

     El Gringo Viejo was busy being a successful entrepreneur in those days, with several small businesses balanced on a razor blade.  Of course, he had his wife to do the unimportant stuff, like  most of the work and raising the children.

    The show, called "Rush to Excellence" came to town, filled the largest venue in town with well over 1,000 people...all paid, and was a great success.   The tickets my wife and I bought for the important Republican personage, who truly was a highly placed Republican activist, went for naught, because he did not appear.   My mother and my wife went to the private reception with the private tickets since we have been among the five sponsors.  Since the  important Republican personage chose not to attend, I decided to say to hell with it and remained at the helm of the businesses for the day and night. 

   

John G. Tower
Senator for Texas

     This lamentation is not so much, "Poor Me" as it is to remind folks that what is considered impossible, planetarily challenged,  or ridiculous by people who are convinced of their own infallibility...can frequently wind up being a force that cannot be resisted.   The important Republican personage who had much success in his political objectives, discounted the suggestion of a person he knew to be his inferior in all matters.   That highly placed operative was an enemy of Karl Rove, especially in those days,  but a good friend and cadre-member of Jimmy Baker and King George the Ist.  He was also a member of the inner circle of John G. Tower.   Odd combination, except that Karl in those days was very abrasive in his enforcement of the will of the Country Club element of the Texas Republican Party (King George I),  Jimmy Baker was a good boy and tried to at least act like he was listening to whatever rightwing crazy might have found his way accidentally to the chair on the other side of his desk.   Baker could look interested   even as he would look furtively at his Rolex.

    This same operative also declared in 1980, during the Republican primaries, that the nomination of Ronald Reagan would result in a re-run of the Goldwater / Johnson election of 1964....and, in a way, perhaps he was right.   Sociologically, the Republican Primaries of 1976 and 1980 did more to finally establish a viable Republican Party in Texas since Reconstruction than any other impulse or influence.    Reagan won both primaries overwhelmingly.
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    Another answer to, "What does this mean?   What are you trying to say?" is the following:

Official AmeriBolshie
Flag

     Tower, Baker, and King George the Ist were all highly respected and successful Republican State and national personalities.   Each conservative, each well plugged in to the "reasonable, able to reach across the aisle type Republicans".   Each was also kicked in the teeth by the Democrat National Socialist welfare-state elitists.
 

  We hope that it gave them pleasure to have served as useful floor-mats to the Ameribolshie cause.   Tower was denied an appointment as Secretary of defence because he drank too much???????   Because women chased him around the desk?   Sam Nunn was to judge John Tower....??????   What a bunch of slugs...when a Sam Nunn, a prissy, arrogant snip who could almost always vote left and then trundle back to South Carolina and extoll the wondrous goodness of the Conservative Philosophy.   Sam Nunn, who could  do more hand in glove games with crony capitalists looking for government subsidies than even the Chappaquiddick Kidd.   Gag.  And, please do not even get the Gringo Viejo started on all the filthy, unwashed, Occupy Wall Street Black Pots calling the shiny copper kettles of Baker and Bush names because they had a bit of tarnish.   Perhaps Jimmy and King George the Ist, being elitist progressives, prefer to be door mats to fellow elitists than to truly keep company with people who are the salt of the Earth.
 

    Great Ruler of the Cosmos, please close Washington, District of Columbia down and turn it into an outdoor museum of monuments and parks.   Give each man and woman who compose the  entire adult Washington, D.C, population 100,000 (USD or equivalent in lottery tickets).  This includes Miss Flukie, and the entire Congress, the bureaucracy both local and extended, and city administration.   They shall each be given family plan tickets for a plane, AMTRAK, or bus ticket to another Continent, or Detroit, New Orleans, or Chicago.   There, each might feel at home in a place where he/she can recover from his/her illness, injury, disability, or particular psychological damage from being hurt by meanie-poo words,  comfortably reposed back into a friendly natural environment.

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     The following entry is drawn from the "making the rounds" electronic mail that is sent every so often by the Texas Nationalist Movement.  The word continues to circulate.   It is no longer the 7 beers and 2 margaritas fuelling the fantasy.   Sometimes it doesn't even require one beer to draw reasonable "what if's" and "We can't keep on like they are doing in Washington."
 
     A particular Tea-Party United States Representative recently recanted his condemnation of the movement by coming back to the same group he condemned as traitors to the United  States to ask for their support in the up-coming re-election campaign.

     We are not traitors.   So long as the Republic of Texas remains within the self-imposed condition of allowing itself to be within the union of the several sovereign States composing the United States of America, we agree to abide by those laws and regulations that seem pertinent to us.  Various of the other laws and regulations are being contested formally within both the court system of the Republic of Texas as well as the United States of America.  In several cases, recently, the Cause of the Republic of Texas has found relief and redress in significant cases related to central government injury to the people of the Republic of Texas.

    So without further ado, and referencing that Billy Goats really do knock down million kilowatt dams we submit:
      

 

Radio Host: Texas Most Likely To Secede

Dave Mundy 

 

 

With high schools around the nation preparing to hold graduation ceremonies soon, the state of Texas has laid claim to a class honorific: "Most Likely to Secede."

Radio host Dennis Miller and columnist Mark Steyn gave a light-hearted nod to the idea of a breakup of the United States during a discussion on Miller's radio show Thursday, with Steyn acknowledging that the independence movement in Texas is no joke.

The two were discussing what might happen if the tide of socialism washing over the United States remains the prevailing political driving force in Washington, and Miller said getting away from socialism wouldn't necessarily involve moving to Australia. He suggested instead moving to Texas, which would be "the first place to push back against it."

"If I ever do flee, don't think fleeing has to involve you going over to Alice Springs or something," Miller said. "I'm going to Texas because that'll be the first place that pushes back. They're not going down the tubes with this country if this country decides to go down the tubes. I really think I'd head for Texas."

Steyn, a columnist for the conservative National Review, said that Texas could well turn out to be the leader of a Soviet Union-style breakup because the independence movement there is a "serious" one.

"I think you're right there," Steyn said. "The idea that all 50 states are going to be content to slide off the cliff in a kind of haze and a drone of sort of soporific princess fluffy-bunny socialism is completely false. I mean, there will be — you're going to have serious secession movements if some of this stuff isn't turned around, not just in Texas."

The Texas Nationalist Movement is the primary independence organization in the state and membership in the organization has exploded in recent months. County-level TNM groups are now active in more than 100 of the state's 254 counties, and leaders of the TNM are expecting even more new members once a series of broadcast and print media ads begin reaching the public. The TNM has already indicated they will again be fielding candidates for local, county and state offices in the coming election cycle.

The subject of secession often reminds many Americans of the Civil War, and many progressives who otherwise spend much of their time denigrating the armed forces threaten that a move toward independence by Texas or other states would prompt another civil war. The Texas Nationalists pointedly embrace the belief that their movement is wholly political and that independence can be accomplished at the ballot box, not on the battlefield.

Perhaps with that in mind, the comedian Miller offered a suggestion.

"It would appear at times when civil war might be inevitable," Miller replied. "Why don't we get together right now and agree to do it by paintball so nobody gets hurt. Why don't we just have a big liberal-conservative — meet at the Mississippi and have a big paintball game so we can get this figured out?"

Story at the Daily Caller: http://dailycaller.com/2013/05/16/steyn-warns-of-serious-secession-movements-video/

 

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This is not a fair warning for what is to come.   The is an observation of that which has already arrived.

El Gringo Viejo

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