The Ships of Fools and Jesters Sails On

     Gallup declares that Obama and (Sir Edmund)Hillary are the two most admired.   El Gringo Viejo declares that the fearsome twosome are the two most mired.  What is of interest is that neither of the most mired and/or admired individuals could muster more than 16% as the response to "Whom do you most admire?"  But, the winners give  us a chance to castremembering gazes into the past of the old Soviet-era joke, told by the Russian victims of Bolshevik "safety-netting".
     The Russians invited the Americans to a race between a USSR horse and a USA horse.  The race was held on neutral ground, in the Ukraine.  It was a standard-style 1.25 mile elongate oval track, and it was fully filmed as well as broadcast live on Soviet television.    Mid-way into the race, the screen shifted into a newscast setting, and a bulletin was read about some brigadier general who had served in the Battle of Berlin being given another medal for his heroism during the battle from 20 years past.
    When the bulletin had concluded, programming continued with a three hour review of the modifications pertaining to the new rationing formulas for food and domestic products.   In the morning PRAVA and IZVESTIA both had banner headlines on their front pages, "STUNNING VICTORY FOR SOVIET EQUESTRIANS!   IN RACE OF HISTORY, SOVIET HORSE COMES IN SECOND PLACE, AMERICAN HORSE FINISHES NEXT-TO-LAST!!!

     The scorpion stings the Lion, marxists and progressives lie through every pore of the body, and with every wag of the tongue.  My parents named me after Sir Edmund Hillary, Benghazi was due to an anti-muslim video generally unseen by anyone, and globalwarmingcoolingclimatechange is going to kill everyone, especially minorities, women, children, and the otherwise capacitated.

     And (Sir Edmund)Hillary and Barry Soetoro are the most admired persons by the American public.  Neither had more than 16% of a Gallup poll sample.  Both had fallen off sharply from the year before, when a plurality of dolts gave them better than double their present showing of 16% or a little less.   That their dull and drooling zombotronic pool of followers has diminished so much is both encouraging and troubling.   One would think that anyone so stupid and incapable of rational and reasonable thought processes would have held-in better in the making of a choice about whom it is that might be most admired.  But nay.....true love be for naught.  The dull, they jumpeth ship.  They cleave unto others equally unqualified.   Why hang with (Sir Edmund) Hillary when there is Oprah and Michelle....just think about the good they have done for women, children, Palestinians, and all the Mongolian Amazonians with psoriasis?!
     As for Barry, it seems that when the Hawai'i Registrar of Vital Statistics died in a plane crash, Barry's popularity fell to new lows.  Perhaps there is or is not any correlation. Perhaps it is a bit of the glow that still colours the socio-political scene in Washington, D.C. since the peculiar event of Vince Foster blowing his brains out without any bloodstains winding up on this neatly starched and ironed white shirt.   Perhaps there is a stench about these two horrid personalities that never leaves the nostrils, any finally causes even  the stupid to jump into the hopeful bottomless canyon of lottery ticket Wonderland in the search for other Beibers and Cyruses.

     We also note with humour and with sadness the unfolding of the story of the Russian "scientific research ship", also styled in various news service releases as a "French tourist cruise", and an "environmental analysis expedition" and even a Soviet-era type of intelligence gathering  operation by Russian intelligence operatives.  It seems as if all of the above cover-stories might have been somewhat accurate, judging by the large quantity of photos and even video that has come from the Russian craft and at least three "relief ships" that have failed in their rescue to this point.
      Academik Schokaliskie   (as good a name as any for a recon ship) and its crew and gaggle of French, American, and World Citizen global warming witnesses lost one chance of rescue by a Red Chinese "ice breaker" (as good a name as any for a weak martini) by the official name of Snow Dragon, then another from an Australian ice-breaker named Borealis Australis....romantic but no gold ring...it hung up on the ice as well.   At this writing another ship, the Wazhiristani Ill Fated has come on-scene to help extract the Russian ship or to evacuate the  crew and passengers of the "scientific research and touristic cruise ship".   To remove yourself from the snide remarks by this writer, we include a pair of linkages that will lead to other linkages that are connected to the New York Times and probably the National Security Agency and or the Geheime Staatspolizei.  ( On Twitter, Documenting an Antarctic Journey and a Countdown to a Rescue ) and (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2531159/Antarctic-crew-build-ice-helipad-help-rescuers.html).   A real scream if  the OROG reads the lines as well as between them
     The cruise - voyage - expedition is clearly closely co-ordinated with the real, live, meaningful media, AKA the Obsolete Press.   It was designed to carry real, live, meaningful and authoritative voices to the Antarctic Continent in order to reveal the cliffs of ice breaking away from the continental mass and splashing into the ocean.   This, of course, could provide the Wise Ones with that very necessary video proof that the Jews enslaving the Palestinians to perpetual status of  bondage by vivindi refugus and Ted Cruz are exacerbating Global Warming.   We could see a film narrated by Barrack Sorotero and AlBore with the very rare Antarctic Polar Bears and Antarctic albinos crocodile being squashed by tonnes of translucent million year old slabs of ice.   Homeless Confederate Eskimoes were to be filmed drifting into the treacherous Straights of  Palin at the tip of Argentina and  Chile where they will perish long before reaching land because of the near-boiling sub-Antarctic water melting their icebergs, long used in the attempt to gain the Argentinian Dream like so many before them.  And all because the Tea Party and Ted Cruz would not let them.
     It is almost certainly true that this mission, by the Russian "research vessel, tourism cruise ship" had as its objective the depiction of the normal deep Summer's melt of the coastal waters of the Antarctic in order to try to leave the impression that it was something out of the ordinary.   Climate liars have long used the common impression that people who have real lives have that the Antarctic and the Artic are zones of perpetual, unchanging, and total frigid ice-lock and snow.  Such is not the case, and each of the Polar areas undergo the long, six-months of Summer so to speak, and produce mosquitos the size of B-52s in numbers no computer can calculate.   Still cold, more or less, but surprisingly warm in terms of the popular image carried in even reasonable peoples' minds.

More Later!
El Gringo Viejo

Christmas in those Days - III

     For all the years we lived there, with me included in we, there would be a couple of pick-up trucks that would pull into our elongated semi-circular driveway (gravel, like our feeder street), right around sun-down on those days just before Christmas.   Perhaps there were a couple of occasions when they came on Christmas Day, but normally is was a day or two earlier.

 

    It was the Latin folks who were intertwined in the construction company owned by my Godfather and Godmother.   Two of the boys were construction workers, and their mother was the maid of the house of those godparents of mine.  She was also the person who generally kept my godmother on some kind of even keel, given her schedule and responsibilities.  Both of the boys were integral to the actual practise of constructing things.

     By things, we might mean the better part of a large school complex including the parking lots, the buildings, the gymnasium, the football stadium, and so forth.  Or it might mean just coming over one Saturday morning and replacing our staircase and landing to the upper floor of the back building on the patio of our domestic compound.   My godfather, called Uncle Harold by all three of us brothers, also famously built several Post Offices in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, as in Monterey, California style, as per the GSA design number such-and-such, which included a very un-necessary basement.   They might have made good wine cellars in a different setting.

    Andrea was the woman who cared for the essentials of the hearth and home of my godparents.  Her name for me in Spanish and English was Pumpkinhead.  She was a traditional woman, found by my godmother's father on a main canal bank south of Mission, Texas.  She was there with several younger brothers, sisters, and cousins and an older woman who was also a relative.   The older woman and Andrea informed the gentleman that they had come from the battle.....and that all their men were dead.   Very little was asked beyond that, and the American man (a Southerner) rounded up the females and found carriage for them to make it to a trusted Mexican family in Mission.   The females had scant beyond the clothes on their backs, although they did carry a good amount of Mexican silver coinage which was valuable as currency.
     Places to stay and various jobs were found for these persons who had been thrust into an ill-defined journey, I never really heard or if I did, it did not stick in my pumpkin head, exactly how many people were involved in the group.  The only thing was that they all became self-supporting people and married well or well-enough.   Andrea's husband was probably the worst of the lot...lazy and a bit arrogant.   Andrea, however, was a dynamo, learning the domestic arts and sciences rapidly, and then connecting with a newlywed, well-t0-do girl who had recently married a contractor/ construction man.  The newlywed girl was the daughter of the man who had found them in the mud on the canal bank, shortly after the Battle of Reynosa in 1914, during the worst period of the Mexican Revolution of 1910  -  1917.  And, of course, the newlywed girl would come to be my godmother.
     In any regard, Andrea Vasquez de Herrera dominated the activity of the house, and became that person upon whom everyone was dependent.   There was the death of one baby of the newlywed girl, a boy, and the two daughters  were born and lived.     The first was born into the Depression and the other into the time right at the beginning of the Second Great War.   Andrea had her own brood of fine boys and a couple of girls.  Her husband went to St. Louis during the War and worked in a war materiel plant of some kind.  It was the only time that he made any real money.   My godfather was ordered into some kind of service that required building facilities for pilot-training fields in the San Antonio area.

     But, back to the semi-circular driveway.   The two pickups came in on that Christmas Eve, while we were in the middle of "dressing up" for the midnight mass.  The trucks stopped at a convenient place and several younger boys began pulling foil wrapped bundles out of shiny garbage cans.   My mother called for us to bring some big bowls, which we did, and as we came up to the pickups, Andrea directed the boys to mete out 6 dozen packets of tamales...our Christmas gift from the Herrera Family.   Andrea and her friends and nieces were famous throughout the McAllen area for their excellent traditional renderings of common to gourmet Mexican cuisine items.   The tamale was a staple and, for Anglo-type country people, as close to gourmet, comfort, and soul food as the living could produce for the living.

 

     "How many dozens have you made, Andrea?   Goodness gracious, how many garbage cans do you have here?"

    "Only twelve.  We made about 500 dozens, and we're giving our best friends six each."  she rendered the sly complement.

     My father handed Andrea's niece an envelope, somewhat surreptitiously, and it struck me odd that he had come out with his shirttail untucked although he already had his tie on and knotted perfectly, as usual.  But, it was simply that he did not want to delay the little convoy.   They had driven "way out north" and would work their way back to little clusters and then some slightly out of the way places in the city, hoping to get back in time to avoid disturbing Santa Clause. Andrea knew what my father had passed to her niece, and she scolded my father a bit...."No hay necessidad, Sen~or...por favor...."

    To which my father replied, "Si, yo lo se."   Which cut off any other debate.   The envelope contained some twenty dollars in one dollar bills that Andrea could use as favours to the children of her clan during this night and the next morning.   Before much time had passed, civilities were exchanged, various Merry Christmases and Feliz Navidades and we were back at our task of making ourselves presentable.   I seem to recall that this particular pass by the Herreras was the Christmas Eve Mass that was the first for the "middle brother'' to serve as an acolyte, but the image is not coming through.   Perhaps it is because we vested for service at the Church, and not at home.

 

    Mesquites with their leaves still on, and the hackberries, still with leaves, but losing quite a few as the Winter progressed.   Darkness was very dark in the country, the sounds in the night almost always very clear.   We could hear the two vehicles take off from the stop sign, crunching gravel and then mounting the concrete paved State 336 which formed 10th Street as it entered McAllen a couple of miles to the south.

 

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     This is what a 1952 Buick convertible looked like, and it was a wondrous and frightening thing to a farm boy.   We had a really nice Studebaker, the one with the three headlights, and we had eleven tractors.  We also had several pickups at any given time, as well as a couple of trailers.   But a Buick like the one pictured?  No.   A Willy Jeep Box-station wagon, yes....but nothing like the Buick pictured above.

     It was during that same Christmastide, about a three week hiatus from school, that the following events occurred.   It was afternoon.  We could hear the sound of a vehicle turning off of Tenth Street and  coming onto the gravel road that passed by our place.   It was moving slowly however....almost as if the driver were lost or shy.   We could hear a gaggle of post-adolescent female voices, speaking in a jumble of correct English and correct Spanish, and giggling...even outright laughing...as they come closer to the entrance to our "semi-circular driveway" that passed through the north edge of our front yard.

Miss Irene Garza
 a true princess of
McAllen, Texas

    The vehicle came to a stop before entering into the drive-way, and....and this is the sad, funny, and silly part....we three boys and our mother were all within line of sight of stopped vehicle and the six occupants.   There was that pregnant pause....and I, being the youngest and least important, went running towards the car, screeching,  "Momma...you have to get us one of these!"   It looked like the one above, except in pale blue.   It was  also a convertible, all but brand new.  Our mother recognised the girl driving and a couple of others.   Although she came from a well-established family, it was her wealthy cousin, also in the front seat whose family owned the auto.  But as best friends, and I think cousins, it was not at all unusual that the Contreras girl would allow the Garza girl to drive the impressive vehicle.  All the girls were colonials, as it was common to call such families  who had been Spanish and Mexican royal land grant people in the area.
   El Gringo Viejo's mother  directed them in a maternally authoritative way to come on in, "Don't park out there on the road, you might have Old Man Schroeder run into you.  He's as blind as a bat."   The girls all giggled...something between nervously and relieved that the Anglo lady hadn't called their parents and pleased that they had been accepted without invitation.  It was a different time.   Unmarried girls did not drive around, landing at the home of young unmarried (or married) boys without several layers of chaperonage.  Nor did they ever initiate a telephone conversation to a boy, barring some severe emergency.

     "How are you, Mrs. Newton..?   These are my friends..." and the driverette methodically introduced the girls, one by one, identifying each girl's parents and each girl's grade in school, and some interesting point about each girl...played in the band, was on the debate team, is the president of the Y-teens, etc.   It was all very impressive, almost formal, friendly, and ....nice.

     The middle brother was standing almost motionless, over by the canal.  The problem was that he was doing some tree trimming and had no shirt, so he was slinking on towards the housing compound.  I was standing there about six feet from the Buick, gazing at the Spanish faery princesses and their carriage sans cheval.

     "We were wondering if Chico were available.   We needed to talk to him about the play."  the girl driving really was one of the stars of the high school.  She was referring to the my oldest brother, who was nick-named Chico, because the workers from Mexico had so dubbed him as the younger man with the same name as his father....a junior, in other words.  Chic0 was my brother's name, and still to this day, when what few of his classmates or chums are still encountered, they will refer to Milton as "Chico".   And yes, he did had chief supporting role in the annual school play.

     "He's probably doing something in the house, let me see if I can get him out here." and my mom disappeared back into the house.  My excellent long-distance memory fails me here, but I am sure that El Gringo Viejo was a dazzling conversationalist, probably talking about pigs and cows, and snakes of course.   The girls spied a rabbit, a cottontail, and squealed in delight.   Two of our cats ran off at the noise, and that made the girls squeal even better.   "Hay, que hermoso lugar!   It's like a park"   They all seemed taken by the nice formal front yard, that still had it's elegance in spite of the assaults by the weather during the past two years.

     Milton finally came out, doing his best to act like a shy country boy.   His slicked down, wet hair bespoke of the fact that he had been trying to put on an appearance a least a little better than that of a semi-feral gorilla.  I was wearing shorts and a shirt, all made by my grandmother from flour sack fabric on her treadle.   And, of course, I was wearing my special footskin shoes.

     They talked for a long time, which for a five year old might have been seven minutes.  It was easy to see, however, that there were many agendas being served.   The girl driving was the famous Miss Irene Garza.  The next September she would take over as Drum Major of the Varsity Band of McAllen High School.   She was first-chair piccolo, and had also been first chair French horn.  She was in various clubs, and was known to have a scholastic average in excess of 95, making her a cinch for top ten, and perhaps even having a chance to be Valedictorian or salutatorian.   She was very active in her Church, The Church of the Holy Rosary, in downtown McAllen.

     As the years would pass, she would graduate from college, become a teacher, and then be murdered and her body thrown into the 2nd Street Main Canal that ran from south to north on the east side of McAllen.   In 1960, when she went missing during the Holy Week period, and was missing for several days....McAllen held its breathe...hoping against hope...

Fr. John Fiet
as he appeared in
the period 1960 - 1961
in McAllen, Texas

     This little story began late in 1952, and ended in the Spring of 1960, when one of the prettiest and most intelligent girls to have graced the City of McAllen was gone from us.   It was the worst episode in the history of McAllen simply because of the magnitude of the impact.   Totally senseless.

     A Roman Catholic priest was  implicated in the tragedy, as being the murderer, but fogs of covering and manoeuvring by the Diocese and higher removed the priest under suspicion.   His name is Father John Fiet, never charged, never convicted, but totally suspected by many police, Texas Rangers, and others.   There were a couple of other possible suspects but no real tangible evidence against either.   The only evidence, some flimsy and some circumstantial and not substantial pointed to the Roman Catholic priest who was assisting in the officiation of services the night Irene went missing from confession and mass at the Church of the Holy Rosary.  Do a search-up of Irene Garza - McAllen - 1960 and it will break the small parts of your heart.

    My brother had two really serious flames in High School, and when he learned of this matter he almost passed out.  My mother, father, the ladies of McAllen, Anglo and Latin, everyone was bereft.  Normalcy was destroyed during those hours.

We'll talk more about events during interesting times...perhaps happier times in the Magic Lower Rio Grande Valley in later posts.

El Gringo Viejo

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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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