Legacy of a Hero - A brief story about the life of Henry Clay Reeves Davis

 Writer's explanation:

     This entry in the seemingly never ending roll-out of commentary by your humble writer is of particular importance.  What I considered to be a high honour and complement, an individual of high note, and deservedly so, gave me the charge to write a few notes concerning what would be good words or short phrases to describe one of the very most important figures in the establishment and impulse of progress in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas.   As a Texan, it was not only my pleasure but certainly my obligation to render opinion to this man who is a direct descendant of Henry Clay Reeves Davis -  Man of Adventure, Man of Noblesse Oblige, and  Man of Humility

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   Allow me to just point out a few views Henry Clay Davis gives my "inner understanding"  of that incredibly fascinating individual.

 I.   Adventurer

      The first notion I had was the title of Adventurer.  Any person who would have travelled from the refined and established place such as Kentucky, striking out for a wilderness such as Texas had to be a person who would have be willing to endure discomfort, adapt to different races and ethnicities never before encountered, eat strange concoctions, endure weather and climatic extremes, and so forth…to the extent that most people of that time preferred frankly to "stay home".   Much is said about those who pressed westward, it is true.  But the fact is that the huge majority of people in America at that time were satisfied where they were.

     Therefore, I would classify any person who travelled from Kentucky into the wilds of Texas, considering all of the challenges and changes to be confronted, and to stay in Texas successfully…would certainly qualify that person as an adventurous soul.

*     An "Adventurer" is the person who qualifies for the title, not so much
by wandering around and having personal fling.  The adventurer is a person who a  history of taking that chance, and striving for that goal that proves a man (or woman) worthy of being known as an "Adventurer" because of accomplishment of a positive goal.   It is not a task for one who relaxes upon his experiences of little import and less accrued success.

*     Henry Clay Reeves Davis went from Georgia to Kentucky...then into the
essentially unknown and unpredictable area little known or understood
during those times.    Texas was foreboding, marauding and fierce Indians of various nations, a foreign type of government was the source of law, and the certainty of information was largely shrouded in misty portraits.*
      Its description could have been styled as the old story about the four blind men trying to identify a camel by the touch of their fingers.  The truth of the conditions in Texas had to be experienced and not fantasied.

*     As one studied the nature of Henry Clay Davis, it was apparent his
"adventurous nature" always seemed to have purpose.  He was the kind of man who understood that adventure was a matter of gaining knowledge, and taking great risks with one's life and lucre.   And...in my opinion...a true adventurer values his / her life and lucre while conquering and adapting to different challenges of geography as well as the cultures*

       Henry Clay Davis certainly had positive impact upon his companions and associates as well as upon his possessions and upon the land wherein he dwelt.

   _______________*II.   Noblesse

   Equal to the title "Adventurer", my impression of Henry Clay Davis
is of a person who carried a streak of "Nobility"...of service and deference, even as he was striving to establish a significant presence in his new settings.   We do not include the pretentious presence that reveals only a shallow sense of formality by watching men with "flair" and "courtly manners".  

*     Henry Clay Davis found himself involved with people of his own
kind...people of a Southern culture which included non-Southern people who enry Clay Davis developed a comfortability with people of his own stripe as well as others of different ethnicities and races.   Many folks might have thought that Davis must have been a good student and learned Spanish from books and stern schoolmarms.   But such was not the case!

 *     His mother was actually a lady by the name of Catarina Regdon de Fuerte who married Amos Davis early in the 1800's.  Amos lamentably died at a very young age, but thankfully he had the opportunity to bring forth a son about whom we write at this time.   La Señora Catarina came to America as an indentured servant, although it was noted that she was obviously well-schooled and poised in the nature of civility and manners.   It was said that she came from a good family but had left home to avoid an arranged marriage she did not want.

*      When she married and subsequently bore this remarkable son, she taught him the elaborate and educated Spanish that she herself spoke as well-studied and exhibited the style of a person who was well cultured.   She taught her son the language of her native Spain and it is certain that she was also polylinguistic.

*      Therefore,  one might assume, and correctly so, that Henry Clay Davis took the choice of going to Texas at a time that many folks would have thought the area to be too dangerous.  While in Texas, Davis quickly learned the ropes and the best route to adventure  and prosperity. He joined the formal militia...an army so to speak, and was involved in engagements with the likes of the Comanche, Kiowa, Kickapoo, and Apache among others.

 *     His flexibility caused him a few problems as well as considerable solutions.   For instance, during the Winter of 1842, and during the Somerville expedition, chasing General Adrian Woll back to Laredo on the Rio Bravo (Grande), the Texians learned quickly that they had made an error in judgement.    The town was fairly active and it was heavily garrisoned with Mexican reserves.  It was also within one to three days of over 1,200 active infantry and cavalry, leaving the Somervelle's overall command structure grossly at the disadvantage.

 *      During the time there on the Rio Grande, Davis had occasion to become involved in a fight of sorts wherein he had called down some Texian
soldiers who were harassing Mexican soldiers and civilians while hanging
around uselessly, with no orders of any import, he determined to abandon the pointless hanging around in Laredo.  He struck out, heading downriver along the course of the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo del Norte to the Mexicans).   One thing led to another, and finally, after learning about the supposedly perpetually verdant farms downriver, he struck out, heading east. 
    
 *     He was actually moving, alone and once again, totally surrounded by literally thousands of regular and national guard type Mexican soldiers of mediocre to excellent order.  These soldiers were spread over six or seven Texas- sized counties.  Davis considered his "jaunt" just a self-guided tour of the Rio Grande downstream.   He was leaving and heading downriver to see what he could see.

*       Simultaneously, a ranking Texian officer, Col. Tom Green and a body of
some 300 effectives, began a drive down the Rio Grande, looking for some kind of worthwhile fight.   It was apparent that Henry Clay Davis had parted company with the Texian armed forces at a propitious moment…being two weeks removed from the Tom Green Folly.

*      Riding alone, and well outside of the military Zona de Trequa (temporary treaty zone), Davis was in jeopardy.   Somewhere between Camargo, Mier, and a place named San Felipe de Jesus de China (to-day known as China) our friend Henry Clay Davis was detained by a column of Mexican cavalry.  He was transferred to a town named San Fernando, centre'd in the very middle part of the State of Tamaulipas.  (All of this area had been part of Nuevo Santander Province the later stages of the Spanish Colonial times).

*     San Fernando had significant Mexican lancers, artillery, and infantry and Henry Clay Davis wound up there with his "escort".  It was the Mexican military's reconnaissance  that the Texian rump-group coming into Mier, back up on the Rio Grande (known as the Rio Bravo del Norte to the Mexicans), had assaulted various small towns as they went down the Rio Grande.
*    It wasn't long, however, before the Mexican military learned that the
Texians had engaged Mexican Army units in the city of Mier, about 80 miles downstream from Laredo.  During a bitterly cold Christmas battle, lasting about two days, the Texians, numbering 303 actives, were reduced by one third (depending on the counts).   It was a catastrophe caused by arrogance and,  frankly, by the Texian military leadership.

*      The remainder were made prisoners of war, and trekked to the dreaded Castillo Perote, deep into the distant mountainous precincts in Vera Cruz State. The location was not far from the precincts of the famously notorious Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the general and politician who famously tormented the Mexican condition for many years.  

 *     Luckily for Henry Clay Davis the Mexican military authority admonished the "wandering soul" and ordered him to return to where Camargo is to this day and to continue back to Texas.   As the days and months would go by, Henry Clay Davis did return, but in keeping with his nature, he took careful note of the people and *the settlers, their activities and crops and all such things that entertain a man with a lively eye and discerning ability of observation.  His capture had turned out to be, truly, a blessing in disguise.

*     This trek back to the north caused a series of events to be put in place.  Davis passed by the mouth of the San Juan River where it emptied into the Rio Grande.   Davis thought deeply about making a regional complex with river transport, large stretches of tillable, fertile land and great extensions of rangeland fit for both rough and fine cattle.  Manufacturing could be brought in due to the ready ability of the population to learn mechanics and such.  Almost all were literate in Spanish, and a significant number could speak, read, and write English as well.*

*      Incredibly enough, the War with Mexico beginning in 1846 and ending in 1848 crossed over the lands and peoples Henry Clay Davis had been considering forming into his great new Garden of Eden.  His idea included the development of a commercial centre tying together two nations and essentially forming a North American entity that would rival Europe's complexity.   Davis had also fortuitiously  married a woman with a considerable dowery, named Hilaria de la Garza Falcon.  She held several large "porciones" (extensive "long-lots" sometimes exceeding 10,000 acres or more).
 

 *    All the porciones fronted on the Rio Grande, mainly on the Texas side of the river.  The watercourse had an almost permanent flow, helped a bit by the tributary from Mexico named the Rio San Juan.   Davis began almost immediately building a family as well as changing the land known as Carnestolendas (Shrove Tuesday) into an urban and agricultural centre almost overnight.

*      Luckily, with the Mexican - American War underway, most of the
activity passed on through, with the American forces winding up marking time in Monterrey, having suffered a blunting by Mexican forces just beyond Saltillo.   

*       With the peace treaty in place by 1848, the bellicosity came to an official end, the area around Carnestolendas (Rio Grande City - Camargo complex) could worry about bandits and political "generals" like Juan Nepomuceno Cortina Gosencochea, ...or just "Cortina"(b. 1824 - d. 1894) in the vernacular of the locals.   He styled himself a "general" and at times was actually commissioned by proper Mexican authority, more or less.  Henry Clay Davis was integral in the effort to neutralise the volatile trouble-maker.

*       My oldest brother, and I, his helper, spent much time Starr County back in 1965 taking advantage of interviewing various of the old timers.   It is said that Cortina came to the home of Davis, and threatened his wife Hilaria, declaring that he was going to kidnap her.   Hilaria ran him off, some said with her pistol, and it is said, she did so lamenting ever having been known to be his second cousin.   Davis had a good laugh at that one.

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III.   Humble  (Humility)

       Finally, we employ the noble word "Humble" in the sense of putting good things first, of providing for his own and others.   My aforementioned brother Milton, who did his Master's Thesis titled "Certain Aspects of the Political History of Starr County", collected many old timers' remembrances concerning Henry Clay Davis's acts of generosity and service.
*       There was one little old lady who showed us pictures of Dona Hilaria and documents of Davis...as she droned on and on about how he helped this old lady here, and aided in rebuilding a damaged home of an old man there…etc.  Her collection and memories of her forbearers was fascinating, especially since she had so many pictures and letters.   Considering that she had never known Davis, who died in 1866, it was as if she were clairvoyant, or so it seemed to us.

*       I shall end, humbly, by not droning on pertaining to this very special characteristic that pertained to Henry Clay Davis.  His many acts speak for themselves.   My time is done, the issue is yours to do your pleasure or application to the topic.*

     Thanks for the opportunity to be involved a bit in the matters pertaining to a truly significant figure in the history of the Lower Rio Grande Valley, of Nuevo Santander, and of the Republic and State of Texas.

David Christian Newton

3 February 2021

Mission, Texas

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Where to Begin…and where to end?

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     We have to disregard appearances.   That guy laying over there in gutter clutching his whiskey bottle…wearing tattered clothes…bearded by the aid of nine unbathed days…is in all probability a fellow who is down and probably out of his luck.   But in these times, it is interesting how many folks fall under the "poverty line" or who have numerous children lacking adequate nourishment due to having been exploited by the wealthy.

     What has gone wrong when the richest nation on Planet Earth has this ever increasing crush of starvation and want?  Lady Gaga sings for the Democrats and a few foot-kissing Republicans while wearing an outfit that cost over one-hundred billion dollars so that the adoring chosen ones could adulate Lady Gaga and other such superlative representatives of the Human Race.

     My mother and her family were just like that…there is a bit of a place nearby her home in Tennessee that tried to keep up with what was expected of prosperous and/or respectable people:

This is a fairly typical multi-congregational Baptism down

 by the River…probably western North Carolina or eastern

 parts of southeast Tennessee…probably in the early 1950s.

   Before all these people are through they will have been

 full-immersed baptised, especially the folks wearing white

clothes.  Most of these events were held by individual

congregations, but there were Pan-congregational where

all races, denominations, and social positions could be

seen praising Jesus and conquering the Devil.

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     It was a different time obviously, and we are certain that there was plenty of ostentation and puffery there and elsewhere during those time.  However,  one can tire finally of a complex and traditional culture being steadily denigrated by the haughty who thrive upon being self-important .   On one hand our people might be doing the degrading on their own.  But on the other hand, the progressive and liberal folks might be falsely stereotyping the traditional group because they are "backwards" or "in-bred" or worse yet, "Republican".

     Of course we do not wish to denigrate "reasonable Republicans" who were poured into the mold of stalwarts such as Elizabeth Cheney, the third ranking person in the Republican portion of the House of Representatives in Washington D.C.    BUT, when said ranking member of such an august body does a double-cross, stabs fellow Republicans both in the front and back, it is somewhat inevitable that the lower unwashed elements within the Party of Lincoln would take exception to her actions.   This writer would be among those unwashed elements.

     As an aside, sometimes it is worth noting that even Father Abraham Lincoln stabbed the Republicans in front and back when he established a similar but independent party in 1864.  For the elections in the North during the event s of 1864, the Republicans had to stand in line behind moderates, independents, semi-documented aliens and Democrats (loyal to the Union) who formed the new Lincoln political organisation formally named "The National Union Party".

   The Vice-Presidential candidate that Lincoln preferred and selected was Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee who, as a matter of fact, was a Democrat.   Johnson had never removed himself from his position as Senator for Tennessee, and so carried forth as Tennessee's senatorial representative to Washington D.C. even during the depths of the War, in Tennessee as well as scores other pitiable places.

      Andrew Johnson was a true anachronism.  He was a poor man from rural  North Carolina who bounced around in various saloons, apprenticed at one time before "taking off", and finally landing in a remote part of Tennessee where he managed to make a living as a clothier, specialising in coats and trousers.

     He did not like Negroes, free or slave, all that much but he truly hated wealthy people.   He was a life-long Democrat in the Andrew Jackson mode which proved his proclivity to admire people of a lower order.  He considered himself to be "one of them".  He ran for a position as Senator from the State of Tennessee, some thought it to be a humorous folly, but peculiar voting rules caused him to be elected to the  American Union's Senate as a Democrat.

Lincoln at his 2nd Inauguration in 1864.

  To his left is the Vice-President elect,
 Andrew Johnson.
   Lincoln would shortly be dead by the hand
of John Wilkes Boothe, a famous  actor, who
 also had a burning hatred for Lincoln.
 Andrew Johnson spent the un-expired term
of President Lincoln avoiding impeachment
 attempts by the Radical  Republican elements
 during the post-war period.  
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     He was chosen by Abraham Lincoln to be his candidate for Vice-President in the 1864 Presidential elections.   It was thought that by unifying the two major parties, Lincoln could press for a somewhat more amiable re-entry for a defeated Confederacy to rejoin the Union.  The assassination in April of 1865 put all of that into a far pantry, whose door would never open again.

     Johnson's fame, more than anything, was that he was known to have been sober once or twice during all of his time as a United States Representative and as a Senator.   Because of the assassination by John Wilkes Booth and his little gaggle of losers, Lincoln was buried back in Illinois. Andrew Johnson would serve out Lincoln's second term, arguing with the  Radical Republican element and keeping them at bay with continuous political manoeuvring.

     All of the above is simply a preparation  for the reader to be aware that a cold wind cometh.  We find ourselves now guided by the hand of another Democrat nincompoop who somehow stumbled into the front door of the Presidential Palace.  Mr. Biden has been impaired for several score years in several score ways and seems to be on the verge of finishing his degree in non compos mentis at every public venue where he might appear.

  We were given to understand that Good Ol'
Joe was looking for his driver's license at
this moment.  
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     We do have to give Good Ol' Joe credit for taking advantage of every possible chance to grab and snuzzle women's (and girl's) hairdo's and give "shoulder rubs" for free. 

     It is something like a cross between Dracula and King-Kong meeting and "helping"  your 10-year old daughter cross the street when there are no cars anywhere.

   Joe's problem seems to be that he always seems to do these things when he is in front of an audience and 2o or so national and international television cameras.

     So, here we are, all over again.   Americans of the normal, patriotic, self-reliant nature…who have conservative inclinations and aspirations, seem to do fairly well in the "American structure" of economic participation.  Things were bumping along fairly well until the Red Chinese Plague came upon us.   It seems that matters became worse after the television networks got through with their explanations about how many masks a person has to wear while taking a shower, and how many years children must stay out of school before the next millennium runs out of calendar pages.

     The approach to an epidemic has fit well into the intrusive instincts of the "I know better than thou" control-freak socialists.  One must remember, if he ever knew, that we studied the Asian Flu contamination at the end of World War I.       As the United States crawled out of the World War mess of Mr. Wilson, the Asian Flu managed to kill 650,000 people, when the population of the United States was only slightly more than 100,000,000 souls.

 

Alarming
degenerate dancing!!
"The Charleston"
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     Without wishing to seem ghoulish we are now standing at 430,000 dead based on a universe of 330,000,000 souls now resident and/or citizens of the United States of America.   Our present per capita mortality statistics, as they relate to the issue of the Red Chinese Flu are still rather pale in terms of per capita deaths of the late nineteen-teens and early 192os.

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     We move on now to a bit of opining and wonder.  

     There are many adjunct observations that one might make concerning this Flu Rampage…like the Roaring Twenties that brought us The Charleston and other such risqué dancing steps and the proclivity to drink alcohol when Woodrow Wilson and Margaret Sanger had ordered the prohibition of the use of Demon Alcohol for the rest of perpetuity in 1919…by order of a Constitutional Amendment requiring what was then referred to as  "The Prohibition".

   A countermanding of said Amendment took place in 1933 by an act of Congress, pushed by the new President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.    America remained in a "Great Depression" from 1929 through 1941, in spite of all of FDR's best efforts to cure the "Great Depression".   Roosevelt managed to take advantage of a convenient war when the Japanese decided to attack Pearl Harbour on the 7th of December, 1941 bringing America into World War II.

     The re-establishment of the sale of alcohol did not salvage the American economy…it was, in fact, the brutal Second World War of  the late 1930s up to the mid-1940s.   The dismal effect of denying alcohol to the public guaranteed the development of "black market" for Demon Rum.  Bad liquor was distilled and brewed up that wound up killing many, many folks, and few were made to pay for it.

     We did wind up with a relatively efficient cadre of thugs who could terrorise and control large bodies of individual who either wanted alcohol or money…or both.  While there still is black marketting in the alcohol business, we know to-day that drugs…illicit, prescription, fake, legal, or howsoever they arrive at the doorstep…it is almost alway certain to avoid and/or deny the use of them.

     And yes…even as you read this, nodding your head…you know your Mary Jane or that man over there who knows his son will be a Major League pitcher some day…both of those children might be dealing with a drug pusher even as I type.

     PLEASE WATCH OVER YOUR FOLKS.

      Then finally, I turn to the final topic of this polyglot of opinion, knowledge, speculation, despair and hope.   It is a matter of considerable concern to me.  We briefly dealt with the issue of the man who escaped Impeachment and conviction by action of the Lower House of Congress and the Upper house, the Senate, when Andrew Johnson had essentially lost control of much of the administration business of the United States of America. 

    Johnson had also lost much of his mental ability due to copious consumption of combustible material such as Tennessee whisky.  But he was tenacious enough to hold off repeated assaults by the Radical Republicans who despised him…primarily because he was a Democrat chosen by Lincoln late in the War Between the States in order to attempt an opening to the Southern parties to finally lay down their arms and "come to reason" .   That entire period, from 1864 - 1868 befouled as it was by the assassination of Lincoln, left a cloudy period that Americans of to-day would find incredibly incredible.

      We like to compare Lincoln and Johnson to Jefferson Davis, who was the President of the Confederate States of America.   For instance Abraham Lincoln advocated for the general abolition of the condition of forced servitude (slavery) but he was also very much opposed to the idea that the manumitted and newly freed should not be automatically eligible for the voting franchise.

     Andrew Johnson, who was a strange creature who despised wealthy Southerners and who also was quite certain that Negroes were not quite human, and he did not like being around them either.   He and Lincoln were much more alike than different.

       For instance, during the War Between the States, an incident occurred wherein a gaggle of well-dressed women, including Caucasians, Negresses, and manumitted Coloured Ladies were tripping along the sidewalks in Richmond on their way to some matter that might concern women.  Suddenly they all came upon a horrible scene where they witnessed a Negro man beating a very young Negro boy with a cane or stick (accounts varied).  The gaggle of women, startled at first, then charged the Negro man, took the child under cover of their own protection, and began condemning the man in no uncertain terms.

     The constabulary was notified, and in the meantime Mrs. Davis, the wife of the President of the Confederate States of America took, in her mind, legal possession of the boy.  She lectured and warned the mean old man that he was not to ever be in the presence of the boy or any of the ladies present ever again!

     Within days, after consulting with authorities, she and the ladies learned that the child could not be extracted so easily.  There had to be grounds, procedures, and such messy matters.  Mrs. Davis declared then that she was moving to adopt the child as her own…and she declared him a "free man" and that he had quarter and family at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. Jefferson Davis,

and further, he would be quartered and cared for equally as the children of the President and his Wife. Besides, she declared, he will have mates of his age and we have learned that he reads and writes quite well for a child of eight years.

Jefferson Finis Davis
President, Confederate States of 
America…and much, much more. 
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     As the War tended to a final miserable end, the Davis family, along with a contingent of Confederate soldiers attempted to gain an exit from the pursuing  Yankee blue columns.  Interestingly enough, the Negro boy, whose name was Jim Limber (Davis), was travelling with the family…as a member of the family…and ostensibly managed an escape and according to the lore of the times made his way into the Bahamas.

   Davis himself was captured, treated rather badly, and remanded to a prison where he rotted for two years.  During the succeeding quarter-century Davis was almost continuously involved in the going and coming, to Europe and all points in the United States as well as southern Canada, striving to maintain his dignity as well as trying to make a living.   He was involved in many business ventures, some were somewhat successful, while others…not so much.

     Jefferson Davis died in December of 1889 of malaria and flu…and was finally buried in Richmond, Virginia…the place where he had attempted to serve as a vital and decisive President of the Southern Nation.   We would recommend that folks should review various tomes concerning the man Jefferson…a trying voyage through misery, service, accomplishment, and tribulation.

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Anarchy and Subterfuge, specialty of the Left

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     We have been distracted by distractions during the past two or three weeks.  One small to medium-large disaster or problem seems to erupt every few hours during this Life's trek, and during these days.

      The events of the past election left little or nothing about which to be pleased, much less elated.   My guy, spinning for a second term in the White House, managed to sling enough platitudes and veiled innuendo to have justified sandblasting Mount Rushmore and replacing the sculptures with his own image.

     The opposition, the Democrat Party, performed admirably, trotting out the same rotted, worm-infested meat of "gimme-gimme", "I want…", "I need…", "…and it will all be free".  And of course, the rich will have to pay their fair share, according to the Gospel of the Good Fairy.

     This participant, activist, and partisan has tired of it all to be sure.   The magnificent Soros and his minions, along with the backing of ten or twenty billionaires who know and love Soros, has pretty much decided the future for the American Republic.   There can be no doubt that Good Ole' Joe Biden will be hanging around the White House, with nothing particular to do.

THE LONGER AMERICANS CONFIDE IN THE WISDOM OF OUR FORM OF ELECTIONS AND ELECTORS…THE SHORTER OUR TERM AS A GREAT NATION WILL BE.

Thanks for your attention.

EL GRINGO VIEJO

11 JANUARY 2021

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I am old...it is time that my path must harden and the Truth be told...

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     All the thinking, believing, and understanding has pretty much been done by this boy who was born to two lines…each very similar…and each totally different.   The mix seems hopelessly one of oil vs. water, or dogs vs. cats.  But the two lines came into focus in 1911 when my father was born to a lady of upper-caste full of Massachusetts and New Yorker magnates and industrialists.  By the time the baby of 1911 was ready to quit the United States Army, 12th Cavalry (Mounted) in 1933 and get a real job, he made a play for a girl from Tennessee…eastern Tennessee…from a place named Winchester.

     Before long, this young ex-horse soldier had started up his own grove care operation in Hidalgo County, Texas on the Mexican border very near the Rio Grande.  His parents had moved into that area during the height of the Mexican Revolution of 1910 - 1917.  And, oh yes…he girl he married was the prettiest girl in Edinburg, Texas High School …and he establishing his business interests, a marriage, and a home in quick order.  That all began in 1934.

     For my father, there is the paternal line that came and dwelled in Massachusetts, coming directly out of London and close-by places in that vicinity.  Bishops and vicars, men of the Parliament, titled people who came to good position in the "colonies" far to the west of Mother England all were mixed into a proper society.  These were people who managed the people of the rough and tumble times of settling an immense stretch of geography that no true Englishman could have possibly considered in a single glance, or even a million glances.

     After four or five generations of the establishment of Anglo and similar settlement across the Atlantic Ocean these Brits had established a new sub-culture…one that dealt with Indians and industry and a new form of long-distance trade .   They pertained to those people commonly referred to as "New Englanders" or "Hudson River people" who had "made well" during the 1640 through 1800 period.  By establishing clans, social interrelationships, and business connections these folks landed themselves into a plush life and a new culture.

    Along with them, and about the same time, came yeomen, well to do and not so well to do people of southeastern England.   These folks were mixed with a not-insignificant number of lesser pretenders to title (those born after the first-born of an aristocratic English family).  They tended to prefer the warmer Southern areas of the "New World"…places that would soon sport names of both English, Scottish, and other Britannic types as well as the hallmarks of the natives of the "New World".   So, in the southern part of the newly discovered continent, parcels of great extension of lands (by English standard) had names like Carolina and Virginia and Louisiana.  Those formal names mixed together in that new wonderland parcels of huge dimension that came to be named Alabama, or Tennessee, or even Mississippi.

     To a large extent, those were the people of my mother's side.   Her family took to the waves in mainly after 1650 and before 1680.  They entered into Virginia and then North Carolina with the intention of obtaining property and farming lands.  They also could be found in the pursuit of merchandising…stores, saloons, way-stations for travellers going and coming by coach or stage and even breeding fine cows and horses.  In the process they found themselves balancing things like relations with different Indians nations and groupings.  They also had to deal with the reality of Black African slavery

     Both of these family groupings came into the eastern edge of the continent at almost the same time, leaving the dull security of England for the risk and chance of gaining lucre and position in a place soon to be known throughout the World as America.   Predictably, perhaps, these kindred people seemed to be compatible due to the similarity of the language, and of course the varied but similar forms of the Christian religion.

     This great similarity would also come to include cultural irritants that would create great difficulties for the generations ahead.

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     With the above very quick and very general overview of your humble writer's somewhat  distant beginnings we would like to move somewhat quickly, and somewhat clumsily down the road that will lead us to our purpose.   One can readily understand that the southern Brits were accustomed to warmer climate provided by the oceanic Gulf Stream warmth,  than those further north in the Kingdom.

  A small point, to be sure, and one very obvious has generally been overlooked when Americans think about the early settlement of "our home continent".    Southern Brits seemed to gravitate to the balmy "down South" territory.  Brits of the "northern persuasion" seemed to generally be willing accept the dull, grey, and very cold winters of those latitudes closer to the North Pole.

     These two bodies of Caucasian sorts had problems with the aboriginals of the new land.  There were elements of friction and violence as well as compatibility and even friendships and intermarriage.  When all was said and done, all the begetting and all the fretting,  the establishment of lifestyles, of establishing families and clans did certainly help in the conversion of North America into a driving force for the development of a civilisation, a set of adjacent sub-nations, and a dynamic caused by Negro persons being brought into a Caucasian and Aboriginal mix of affairs.

     There was so much diversity demanding conformity…so many colours of people, languages, accents,  and pursuits…that it had formed its own Universe-apart.  The cultural scene in the "New World" became at once a peculiar quirk within the human race, a possible danger due to the ever-present dangers presented by weather, and armed contention of and by tribes and settlers.  Conflicts, even those between overlapping Protestant and Roman Catholic and Anglican dogmas and traditions, provided more sociological edge and cultural tensions among the of the peoples of such a sundry ancestry.

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A common rural Anglican Church
circa 1350 AD
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      Demon alcohol formed one of the great bases of founding a bloodline into the future. A fellow by the name of David Christian had established an outpost of the Christian family in Eire (Ireland) in the outskirts of Dublin.   Other extended Christian Family folks could be found in southwestern Scotland and throughout the northwestern parts of England.   Large accumulations of Christians inhabited the Isle of Man, an island between western England and the Emerald Isle.

     Bunches could also be found in and around the fabled precincts of Nottingham.   And, another large batch…very large…inhabited East Anglia, on the other side of the Noble Island.   This all conflicted with my mother's side, who could be found more in abundance  in Sussex and Jute.   And, while there were real and imagined differences between the type of folks above described, it is true that they did have their quirks and peculiarities.

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     Suffice now to say that there is an inexhaustible amount of lore and legend that can be drawn from the English theatre, both in general and as it pertains to the Newton, Christian, etc. family lines.   But such dull revelations can quickly bore even the most enthusiastic genealogist.

      It should suffice to note that my parents married, and produced three male off-spring. Each was similar…and each was different…one from the other.   Before the Revolution, we know that Lord Admiral Howe contributed to our gene pool…and before the first efforts to populate what would become North America…we had various and sundry Bishops, counts, viscounts, and a Duke or two in our lineage.  This is not the place where I would choose to begin such a recitation.

     It would be necessary, however, to confess or reveal (as one might wish) that our purity of ethnicity is a bit clumsy to describe.  Such is the case due to the fact that some character by the name of George Frederick Limbaugh (1737 - 1815) came into America as a child and wound up being a soldier for the uppity colonials in their fight for Independence from King George III.

     George Frederick had settled as a child with his family in the northeastern part of Pennsylvania.   As fate would have it, he joined the forces of the American cause against the British Crown, and served as second in command of a largely Germanic artillery unit during the time of the Duress in Valley Forge.   He served heroically, and during his long life, finally managed to settle and forever remain in Cape Girardeau, Missouri (a wondrous clash of German and French and Indian names all crammed into one little space on a River known as the Mississippi).   And, yes Virginia, Mississippi is a real word, drawn from the Algonquin Indian language, "miss sippi",  mangled by the French, and finished off by the English.

    We shall attempt to finish this article in the coming hours and days, and then continue our life-commentary now that I am restored a bit and now that various of our family's little bumps-in-the-road have been fixed.   Thanks to all for your comments and following.

EL GRINGO VIEJO

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We waited on the decision by the Supremes

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     We have waited long and well.   And, truthfully, we bear no rancour against the decision by the Supremes.   Each member of the Court has his or her thought process, conditions, understanding, and sense of the meaning of the words of history and the law in the United States of America.

     There are four Justices who will almost invariably vote for what is known as "progressive interpretation", because they are disposed to support any line of reasoning that endorses socialism and absolute central government control.   Every now and then, one of these Justices slips up and votes as might a conservative member of the Court.  Rarely

     There are four other Justices who are common law thinkers and who believe that functioning jurisprudential deference to historical precedent and reasoning fair to the facts of a petition are the guideposts. These Justices can be thought of as "common law" interpreters of a case matter.

     Then we have one Justice of the Supreme Court…the Chief Justice…who is dedicated to that Great Legal Principal of 'what if?' and 'on the other hand' and 'the last time I voted to the left so this time I'll vote some other way, just to keep my posse guessing'.   But really, this time, the old ones and the new ones, the rightwing ones and the lefties all got in line and decided that Texas did not have the right to tell the other States how they must vote.

     The position of your humble servant wavered slightly in different directions.   On the one hand…as my grandfather Neal would say…El Gringo Viejo was disposed to the notion that Lieutenant Governor Paxton was meddling with matters that were entirely within the confines of the frontiers of each sovereign State being considered.

     On the other hand, there was the fact that six states in the past Nationwide election had fallen into a miserable morass of peculiar processing procedures.  As well, there was considerable possibility that the voting machines being used by various of those States were defective, were programmed purposefully to disregard votes for the Republican column or the two Republicans at the head of the ticket. And there were, as well, credible reports of large numbers of illegally registered or undocumented voters' registrations having been recently procured far afield from normal, legal processes.

      There were many reports of registrations (what we used to call poll taxes in Texas) that had been written in the same hand.   Others were credentials of people who had to be thought of as "Miracle Voters"…because they were dead.   There were many who had been born in the 1880's and 1890's…many.   There were, in all six states, well over 40,000 who were ineligible due to having been convicted felons.

     Of peculiar interest was the truck driver pulling out of New York State with his load, en route to Somewhere, Pennsylvania.  He arrived at the appointed place and time, and opened up while some nice fellows unloaded the parcels.  The driver took note that the packets were ballots for the election that had just been conducted two days before.           He had the opportunity to look at one of the ballots, and they were sure 'nuf, real live ballots that pertained to the issues of November 3, 2020 in Pennsylvania.   The good fellow receiving the cargo had mentioned that there were supposed to be 200,000 ballots, and according to the quick count, there were.

     Later the next night, your humble servant was splashed in the face by live television with the presentations by two attractive, very well spoken, and coherent Black women.   They were not together, in that the two presentations were aired some individually, in terms of distance and the hour. While they did not say the same  thing in the same order of words, they did convey a very similar message.   Each indicated that they had seen election personnel purposefully damaging ballots or dumping them, loosely thrown into a container. Each woman gave witness to various highly irregular voting administration errors.   One was Republican and the other Democrat.

     While trying to sew this up, because it is truly nothing that I witnessed, it was necessary to consider peculiarities.  For example:

     (1)    Your humble servant is a 73 year old person. He is a graduate of Southwest Texas State University, and he has held significant employment and he has been deeply involved in international business for many years as a sole proprietor (including his wife).   He has been deeply involved as well in the political experience, serving in various  capacities pertaining to the Republican Party.

     It is probable that this observer has seen almost everything possible in terms of voting fraud,  subterfuge, and treachery.  My parents actually saw even more during the times of Lyndon Johnson and earlier in the 1900's.  Texas was an interesting stage to watch when politics was in play in those times.

    (2)     For instance the fabled BOX 13, Jim Wells County of Texas where the Uncle Archer and Nephew  Parr click engineered the totally fraudulent nomination of Lyndon Baines Johnson to candidacy for United States Senator, back in 1948.   In that matter people were killed and honour was sacrificed.   My distaste for Lyndon Johnson and for the Parr Clan's corrupt lording over  the lives of several-score thousands of South Texans was well developed before I finished high school.  George Parr the father, and Archer (Archie) Parr the son, were born with no souls.  Many dead folks, and by to-day's standards, billions of bilked public funds.

        The second Parr (the nephew also based in San Diego in the County of Duval like his Daddy) engineered the great and famous Landslide Lyndon's come-from-behind victory over ex-Governor Coke Stevenson, where Lyndon carried a "suddenly found" batch of 200 ballots which were converted quickly to an 88 vote victory in a runoff race that racked up 1,000,000 votes across the whole of Texas.   That was five days after election day.

   One amazing characteristic of that batch of votes was the sign-in sheet for the Precinct 13 - Jim Wells County voters (principally from Alice, Texas)  showing that the last 202 voters signed in…but in alphabetical order!!!   AND, they signed-in in the same hand!!!The script, "in the same hand",  was very much like the perfect script of an august and very educated Mexican woman whose origins were in 

This would have been the County Clerk's
style of writing.   There were not large
numbers of folks in Alice at that time
who could write as such.

Monterrey, Nuevo Leon where she had attended very prestigious Roman Catholic  girls' schools through University.

   So, she happened to have the very elegant handwriting of the epoch, which she continued to use throughout her life.  She moved to Texas in during the Mexican Revolution of 1910 - 1917 with her parents, and continued her studies at advanced university level.  Some people felt that Archer Parr coerced her into providing that "registration service", as if it were a joke of some kind.   That list wound up electing Lyndon Baines Johnson to the United States Senate. 

(Please refer to the tome "A Texian Looks at Lyndon", by J. Evetts Haley.  Also, please review the massive "The Years of Lyndon Johnson…..a path to power".)

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     After reading about the above mickey-mouse type of wheeling and dealing in the 1940s, the kind of election stuff that Philadelphia and other hopelessly crooked places, honest Pennsylvanians must have been  affected to the roots of their noble souls.  The "big city" operators are the quintessential types of political crooks who care naught for honour and everything for squeezing the populace with charade and mendacity.   The bags of greenbacks and political favouritism come as a bonus for the crooked political engineers.

      It will be well preserved when we could consider the "Long Pause" of election night and as the Third of November turned into the Fourth of November, and there was no significant reportage of the ballot count by the mainstream telemedia to those living in the Central Time Zone.   That was one of my measures that closed the arguments about whether or not tabulation games were being played.  They were being played.

    The leftist television networks were playing us, the Democrat Party was playing us, and now they have saddled the United States with something that wobbles between being governed by a man whose strong  suit is incoherence, and his back-up plan which is a full-scale non compos mentis assault.    

President-to-be has been warming up so as
 to be prepared  for his difficult encounters
 during his administration. He is the first
 President to have had the nickname "of non
 compos mentis".

YOU GO, JOE!!!
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 Before the coming year is complete, the demure Ms. Kamala Harris will be President of the United States of America.   She roils with hatred of the Americans and America.   She is relatively famous for being able to speak for eighteen minutes without breathing nor saying any coherent message.   By the latter days of 2021, it will become apparent that Good Ol' Joe will have become a vegetative image of his distance self, retiring to his favourite basement.   

     Her campaign effort was defined as significant by the Lamestream Press, considering that the average attendance at her own appearances as a vice-presidential candidate without Good Ole Joe, was in neighbourhood of between 52 and 30.   Our figures might be a little off…but for sure, not by much.   After Joe is sent back to his basement of choice, Kamalalala will be in charge, in spite of the fact that she is a one-note dunce. Pretty soon it all runs together and makes less sense than no sense.

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The time has come to stand or forget about it.

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     The normal classes of Americans are now met by the mountain.  I begin by establishing a new nomenclature for the identity of Republican and / or Conservative  persons.  We are dismayed and troubled by the Hallowed Ones who "have it all" and still have a certain disdain against their fellow party members who might have oily grease under their fingernails.   Even though they at times talk as would an Elephant, act as would an Elephant, and participate as would a member of the herd, they are aloof and removed from those of us who are merely Elephants.   And they are  quick to concede to the leftists many wishes and demands for "reasonable compromise" when negotiating funding and taxing issues.

     One of the few exceptions about our royalty, perhaps, George Prescott Bush, the nephew of King George II, the grandson of King George the First.  George Prescott Bush served eight months in on the ground in Afghanistan as a Naval Officer.  He attended and graduated from Rice University and dirtied his hands and uniform as a member of Rice's baseball team.  He took a degree in law from the University of Texas.  He must be a purebred aristocratic Elephant because his mother's origins are in Mexico, in the State of Guanajuato and many of this grandfathers hail from Massachusetts over many generations.

  George Prescott Bush, however, unlike almost all the Bush's…was born on Sacred Soil…Texas.   And, as frequently happens, a person becomes a mix of all his / her biology, cultural experience, and such things.  Conscience is usually beneficial.  So, some might be surprised, this writer feels relatively comfortable with the presence of George Prescott Bush assuming high position.  Put more simply, it seems to me that his rightward bearing overbears his bearing to the leftward.

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 We shall sign off as of this moment.  Further matters concerning this topic will be forthcoming.

EL GRINGO VIEJO

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