A Commander-in-Chief of Decay and Degradation - The Whig Response

My Christmastide has been typically pleasant.  Cool to coldish (thanks AlGore) and a bit wet.  The grandchildren are on their way down, even as Santa Clause has returned to the North Pole.  He has fed and brushed down the reindeer and put them in their stalls to rest up.   In a few days they will be out frolicking and playing, including Rudolph in their form of Reindeer soccer.

 

   Now, however, we are greeted with the news that no religious singing in VA hospitals will be presented or allowed.  Only anthems dedicated to Father Ohamaham, mmmmm, mmmmm, mmmmm,  no more dirty old Christian Religious Songs that offend people.   No! No! No!   Only good songs about chestnuts, and solstice trees, and Jenny-Frost.   And only shows that somehow equate the word Christmas with the process of providing 243 useless toys and baubles to each child, aged 34 or under or thereabouts (depending upon the level the child's  of gender-determination stress and his/her internal conflicts resolution counselling sessions per week).

 

     When your ever-so-humble commentator was invited to join the United States Army back in the late 1960s, on the first Sunday after the beginning of basic training, we were ordered to go to chapel....Protestants over there and Catholics over here.   There were four Episcopalians in the cluster of 303 basic combat training company trainees,  and we were at a loss which way to go....we wound up going over to the Roman Catholic chapel.   But, now we have arrived at the point where some bull-cow can come and tell a group of soldiers who are planning a Christmas Horse Show for the base, that they must change the name of the event to "Holiday Horse Show".   At a VA hospital, carolling is prohibited unless it is confined to a recitation of the San Francisco Telephone Yellow Pages.

 
     Folks, we need to wake up to the fact that the military is being rotted out from the inside. It is one of Obama's signal achievements. Like grinding his jack-boot into the face of Netanyahu, making the Dahli Lama leave through the trash bin exit so as not to disconcert his communist cousins in Red China, and leaving the Pakistani doctor to rot, and siding with the Muslim Brotherhood against Mubarak and Al Qaeda against Assad, the policy of Obama and his minders is to weaken, confuse, besmirch, ridicule, and degrade the military specifically and the United States of America, generally.
Next?   Selfies with Lady GagGag and Molly?

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AMERICA'S EMBARRASSMENT

 A TOTALLY LOW-CLASS PRESIDENT

 

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   The American Military?   The mission of the United States Coast Guard? The Marines? the Army?  the Air Force?  The Navy?   The entire military is now the foremost social engineering agency of the National Socialist central government. The elevation of sodomy and sodomites, the induction of females into the centre of combat and into close combat support, and the steady abolition of services pertinent to traditionalist Jews and Christians are now the norm and the degradation of military objectives, all present a wall of shame, constructed wholly by the president and his minders.   The Manchurian Candidate has become the face of the eunichisation of the American military.
     Please ask any recently returned soldier, especially those who have decided not to re-enlist recently. The simple change of the rules of engagement was enough for some, but most will say that the good General Officers are being set-up and blackmailed out of command, and at times out of the service. Check on your multiple-rockered Sergeants....especially combat unit and squad leaders...in mobile artillery and infantry.  Deck crew-chiefs and advanced mechanics on the flattops. 
          The military is steadily being castrated and disarmed and degraded. It has become another social experiment for the purpose of entertaining leftists, progressives, and other anti-American marxist-type elitists.

     They know that the low information and low intelligence people don't care the least whit about anything pertaining to the military.  And, they know that the American core populace has an abiding affection and respect for the military.  If we, the rightwing crazies jump on the Obamoids for driving the military into the ground, the White House Zombie Attack Group can issue press releases framing the issue of our complaints around something called 'Republicans, conservatives condemn Military".   That way, the low-lows can be told that the old, white men and the millionaires and billionaires hate the Army.   That is what the low-lows hear in their MTV 1/30th of a second impression bytes.   And of course, (Sir Edmund)Hillary can cackle and shriek about how much she and her fellow marxists dislike being told that they are not patriotic when the Republicans and Conservatives are badmouthing the "improvements" being made in the American military.

    No more!   We need to draw the line....and draw it back about 25 years.  We need to remember that the word soldier is a French word that pretty much  means "....to be welded..." as in solder (SOW - dehr).   In the Spanish the word is 'soldado"...which is a word that has several meanings...among them are 'welded'....and.....'soldier'.   Lots of folks do not want to be welded to a homosexual or a female in a combat situation.   We know that there will be hundred, nay...thousands who will say immediately that "I served with homosexuals and women and I'm here to tell you that you are bigotted and just plain wrong."   

     Sorry big fellow, but that's a big 10 - 10 (or 10 - 74 in some jurisdictions).  When a person talks to 10 consecutive people who have recently left the service under honourable conditions, and they all say very close variations of what El Gringo Viejo has described above....disagreement with what is being stated by El Gringo Viejo is statistically unsupportable.

 

This is not El Zorro's Seal Point.  It is an unreasonable
facsimile, because each Seal Point is absolutely
certain that he/she is the only perfectly
beautiful Seal Point in the entire
Universe. 

     Read what comfortable words are spoken by El Zorro who takes time from a busy Christmas social and family period...and who is recovering from wandering around in the dark for two hours looking for his housecat who bolted into the cold darkness of a North Texas Winter's night.   (not just any cat, but a prized Seal Point who became huffy because the house was full of friends and family, and children, and who was disgusted by the fact that he was (1) no longer in control of Mr. and Mrs.  El Zorro  and (2) he was no longer the absolute centre of the universe)

Now, the words of a combat veteran with two tours in beautiful downtown South Viet Nam, direct from El Gringo Viejo's facebook to your computer:

 

      "This is painful. Even the most hardened, dedicated, experienced troops we have cannot defend the country or the Constitution against this conspiracy that is desecrating and decomposing the military. The Obama regime is making it impossible for the Armed Forces to obey their oath to protect and defend. The dichotomy is that, by oath, they are to obey the orders of the President but to obey his orders they have to disobey their oath to support and defend the Constitution. Only we, the people, can defend the country and Constitution if there is the collective will. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? I prefer to believe it is the Constitution to which the armed forces pledge their allegiance. The Constitution established the Presidency and therefore by logic, that would be the first allegiance of the soldier. The military is in a very difficult situation."   -    El Zorro

 

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AND NOW FOR THE WHIGs  -  We remember the Whigs....who were a powerful, dominate conservative-leaning group of folks who led us up through the Ante Bellum period and all the way to end of the Union, as we knew it.   They managed to preside over a situation where the fool Abolitionists and high-tariff industrialists could howl and holler about doing away with Slavery once and for all, no matter what the cost.  They would grab their chests, and point to the very throne of the Creator and declare, "This Nation cannot suffer the shame of this contamination!  It is unnatural for one man to be owned by another.  We see no contradiction in the need to kill one man in order to free another.  It makes little difference that the broad mass of Southerners are not slavers, they are still complicit!"

    Then the fool Southerners, many of them Whigs, others who are Democrats who had more Whig in them than they ever had Democrat who would puff up and do one of two things or a combination of both....imagine the rooster with his collar puffed up, and demanding that the Abolitionists cease their dangerous demands, (1)  "If the slave is freed, to what is he freed if such is done by force?   Does this not advise both white man and black that an all powerful government can take any possession from anyone no matter how ill advised such an act might be.   Would it not be possible that at some later time, it might be decided that a man could not plough with ox nor mule, and remove from a Negro those possessions?   or his gun?  or a share of his crop without due process and compensation?   And further, are not these issues  better settled among those who know the parties, which man is fit for manumission, and which man cannot be yet or ever manumitted to full citizenship. And....(2) Is this not a matter of local prerogatives and States' Rights?   Are we to tell the industrial men in the North that their wages in their factories are penurious and their employees have none of the protections of the black man, who while a slave, is a valued property and a friend.   Must we fight a war a kill our neighbours so as to show him how to love the folks who labour for him?"  

 

     What fools we are and were.   I am and will forever be disposed to the Southern position, even knowing the stupid long-term uselessness of slavery. But, we were hung with it.   El Gringo Viejo sincerely and  actually believes things would have been better served had we been allowed to disassemble the institution calmly, especially with the on-set, already underway, of industrialisation.    There was no need for  a campaign for social justice or social democracy, but rather another path, that being  a move to common and natural law with what Robert Edward Lee called for...."the mellowing influences of Christianity" and the preparing of the Black man and the White man to live in friendship, side by side.   It was still the hope of Booker Tecumseh Washington well into the 20th Century.

 

     But the Whigs....useless...like the RINOs....The Whigs and the RINOs are the same, stumbling towards a centre position that simply exacerbates the conditions  from which they further hide.  The Whigs presided over compromise after reasonable compromise.  The Whigs argued against arguing, and they wrote long speeches.  The did not understand that the abolitionists were conceited fools who did not care about to-morrow.  The Abolitionists, like all elitist progressives, demanded the establishment of Heaven on Earth to-day and that that Heaven would be a place of their own description.   Further, if someone had a different description of Heaven on Earth, that person was wrong and needed to be killed sooner rather than later, or we could die trying to kill those people. No philosophy beyond abolition could be tolerated (something like the abortion issue to-day), save for the establishment of a common class...each equal unto the other....but to which class the Abolitionists and Social Reformers themselves would not pertain because of their obviously higher level of cultural worth and their better understanding of the nature of things.

 

     Where were the men among the Whigs?  Nowhere.     What was the greater vision of the Massachusetts and other New Englander Abolitionists?  Nothing   What good would come from fighting a "woe-wah"  to defend State's prerogatives and an untenable Peculiar Institution when both would be lost along with that War.   Almost certainly the losers would be the White Southerners of all social positions, and the Black Southerner, free and slave, of all conditions and positions.

 

     Whigs and RINOs.  Marxists and Progressives.  What a bunch of lumps of coal.  Southerners, what a bunch of Dumboes.  And I among them. Pray for Constitutional Restoration.  Pray for the Republic of Texas.  Pray for the Good of America.

     We turn the pages of the new calendars, while hoping to live at least long enough to see the end of this horrid quagmire of conundrum, mendacity, and duplicity.  We find this entire episode to be so very sad....and humiliating.
   Finally, is it not strange that the one person to die in another inconvenient plane crash, such as in Hawai'i, is the State's chief Vital Statistics officer?  What are the odds?   Where are Steve L0rd and Tom Selleck when we need them?

 

El Gringo Viejo

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All the news that makes you sick!

EXTRA!!  EXTRA!!

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READ ALL ABOUT IT!!

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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