Ruminations over an assassination

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     We have gone over and over, and back and forth about this shooting of the officer in the Promised Land of the Sanctuary Cities and the Sanctuary State of California.   We had to endure the sadness brought on by the deaths of two children, who had obviously died of some form of influenza, possibly coupled by a strain of meningitis, and brought on by the uncaring, unconcerned acts by supposed relatives.

     One knows that the world has turned totally upside down when the blame for the deaths of these two children is assigned to America, Donald Trump, the Border Patrol, and the Secretary of Homeland Security and to the collective American "us".  
     However, we have a more accurate analysis, and it follows below:

     For those who think that the people in the "caravans" are all mommies pushing strollers, and just trying to find a better life than what is provided by totally corrupt, horribly violent, garbage dump country under the control of degenerate, depraved,  murderous, mentally defective and / or retarded criminals…it is necessary to finally accept the facts that are true.   The governments, in truth, are not as corrupt or stupid as some might think…it is simply a matter of a socio-cultural tidal wave that built up, especially during the late 1960s and 1970s…involving drug addictions, very active marxist social penetration, and the mushrooming of volunteers for the Cartels and their South America to North America trafficking of cocaine and other "estupificantes".
     The Roman Catholic Church during those days latched onto the "liberation theology" theme, literally teaching the younger people that socialism is the purest form of Christianity according to the Scriptures.  This message was massaged by very adept Jesuits, who long ago had determined to remake Jesus of Nazareth into an early image of to-day's Che' Guevara…"fighting for the poor".   It is something known as "Liberation Theology"as all OROGs  know.  But instead of something like "Nearer, My God, to Thee", their message has turned into something more akin to "Oh! How We Love Chains and Gulags".    

     The vast majority of the members of the "caravans" is not composed of Barbara Billingsly - type ladies who involve themselves with the nurturing and care for the "angelitos lindos" (pretty little angels).   It is well-established that about 20 per cent of the participants, for instance, are convicted felons who have served time in prison or for whom there are active wants and warrants.

     It is known that a sizeable number of the "migrants" have been deported from the United States and/or Mexico…sometimes ten or twelve times. It is known that the vast majority have no marketable skills, and the majority have not completed elementary (primary) education of six grades.   Most of the ones who failed to complete primary-level education did so willingly, actively avoiding attendance and embracing truancy, frequently for a life in the criminal lane.

     It is common for the people in the "caravans"will rent, buy, or trade for a child or children from another family to be used as sham "dependent children" of the "caravan" participant…male or female.   It would be reasonable to estimate that 15 to 20 per cent of the children in tow are not legally or biologically related to the persons purporting to be the mother and/or the father.  These adult invaders use the children, declaring them first to be offspring of a biological or adoptive nature, and then quickly changing their stories when DNA testing proves that there is no relation, or a child, under separate inquiry, declares that his mother and father are still in Guatemala or Honduras or El Salvador.

     Several hundred males with Mara Salvatrucha XIII or Callejon XVIII tattoos and / or markings have been segregated out of the trundling, "huddled masses".   Many took flight as they crossed Mexico when they were recognised by some authority or another.   Rare is the day that we do not learn that one or two or more MS-13 or similar has been captured at the border.

     Next big problem?  Numerous of the "migrants" who came up and are now despairing and dispersing from where their handlers abandoned them in downtown Tijuana, Baja California.   Others have been crossing into New Mexico, between Douglas, New Mexico and El Paso, Texas into what is essentially an unforgiving desert-scape where few Border Patrol officers must cope with surrounding, detaining, arresting, and transporting scores of people to a detention facility many miles away.
     The nice thing about these people?  Most of them have some kind of dreaded plague, illness, or condition.  Measles, tuberculosis, HIV, Asian flu, meningitis, as well as those who are physically compromised.   And guess what?   The Obsolete Press drones on and on about how "The child died in the custody of the Border Patrol!!! Can you imagine.  They didn't care enough about a little baby child to seek medical care for an innocent little child.   When are we ever going to get rid of Trump?"

     The Obsolete Press and the Democrat politicians are lying through their teeth on the one hand, and then purposefully obfuscating the facts on the other hand.  To people who have studied the Maya, it is commonly known that Mayan people are terribly susceptible to the various types of flu.  They themselves know that.  The Obsolute Press does not know that,  and could care less…they really need and want dead, foreign, illegal alien children because they think they can cloud the issue of illegal immigration with such tragedies and distractions.

Officer Singh and his K9 partner, a girl named "Sam"
Singh was a foreigner who made the mistake of taking
American citizenship…paying the fees…doing the studies
and research…filing a tonne of documents and certificates
verifying his studies and life history.

Singh was, is, and forever shall be a true and great
American who died for his country.

He was murdered by a subhuman piece of debris with a
 criminal record and who was a member of one of the
 most useless, degenerate gangs of illegal aliens and
 other criminal human refuse on the North American
Continent.
Now,   tell me more about Sanctuary Cities, please.
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     Remember the willing involvement of the Obsolete Press in publishing a picture of a child, apparently chained inside of a chicken wire and board kennel box.   The Obsolete Press howled at the moon for hour on end…and continue to do so.  Little did it matter to them that the date of that picture had to be traced back to Obama's term…deep back into 2014.

     One can notice, in the case of the officer who was killed on Christmas day by an illegal alien, that not one word was mentioned by Nancy Pelosi, neither the previous nor present governor of California, not Schemer, no one among the Democrat mass would mention the event.  Maxine Waters was in the Bahamas vacationing while Nancy Pelosi was taking in the rays somewhere in darkest Hawaii. 

     It is difficult for me to continue with this due to the anger that wells up within me.   When one considers that we deal, time after time with these vipers who have come here only for the purpose of committing violence and rendering havoc.
     Some talking heads in the political programming  that is available on television a quick to point out that "undocumented migrants" actually have a better social compliance record than do legal aliens and native born Americans.   When they are "illegally here", they have to mind their "p's" and "q's".  When statements such as that are made at a table of Obsolete Media people, they all smile and nod solemnly…nodding each to the other in recognition their superior understanding of social and cultural matters.
    The only problem?   They have lost their minds.  Illegal aliens have an atrocious record in terms of adhering to any social compact with the greater community.   Furthermore, the "moderate" and more liberal Republicans even suggest that it is good to have some tolerance to the residency of illegal aliens because the police can rely upon them when there is a need to pick-up a "bad illegal alien".   Such thought is madness.

Gustavo Perez Arriaga
Murderer and professional illegal alien

     The individual pictured to the left would not think twice about going over to the illegal alien haven where 12 people are staying in an efficiency public housing apartment and then spraying the premises with gunfire…especially if he were to have three or four of his buddies with him.
     And if two or three are killed during the fusillade, that's the price that meddlers must pay for co-operating with the police.   Gustavo (picture on left) over on the left has been very active in the Suren~o (Southerner, as in someone from El Salvador which is south of Mexico) group which takes its orders from the Mexican Mafia…a control group that operates inside the prison system of various entities, especially California and Texas.

     So, the idea that having a nice, kinder, and gentler illegal alien community or neighbourhood or whatever, is bogus to the core.  There are neighbourhoods in central, downtown Houston where primarily Salvadoren~os live, and they will probably be the last ones who would "turn-in" a "Suren~o"…it is simply not "healthy".

     

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(The following submission is a reprint from several months ago.  It is a bit spooky because of the weight of the truth that can be discerned from it.   Study this article carefully.  It portends little that is good…for anyone.)

    For 15 years, the girls lived parallel lives. Left behind in El Salvador by mothers bound for America, they grew up a few miles apart in San Vicente, entering adolescence just as the city sank into gang violence.  They fled within weeks of one another, traveling north in 2014 along the same smuggling route, before ending up in the Washington suburbs.

     It was there that Venus Iraheta and Damaris Reyes Rivas finally met, after becoming entangled in the same violent street gang, MS-13. And it was there, in a wooded park in Springfield, Virginia, that Venus stabbed Damaris 13 times.

Even amid a nationwide surge in MS-13 slayings, the 2017 killing stood out. Female victims are nothing new for MS-13, which is infamous in Central America for making young women choose between rape and execution. But in a gang as chauvinistic as it is fearsome, female killers are almost unheard of.   Teen girl confesses to stabbing victim 13 times in MS-13 related murder during interrogation,  (FOX 5's Cori Coffin reports.)

RELATED: 'I'm not going anywhere,' rapped a defiant MS-13 gang member. Days later, he was dead

     As Iraheta, now 18, awaits sentencing for murder later this month, authorities say the killing may be a sign of growing female involvement in MS-13 in the United States.  Unlike their counterparts in Central America, some MS-13 cliques in the United States now allow female members, said Michael Prado, assistant special agent in charge of the Washington office of Homeland Security Investigations, a branch of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

     "In that regard they are somewhat progressive," he said. "The [cliques] here are a little bit more, for lack of a better term, Americanized."  In response, ICE has begun instructing its agents to scrutinize girls and young women as closely as males for MS-13 involvement, Prado said, "There are female MS-13 members engaged in some extremely heinous and violent activity," he added.

     Some turn to MS-13 to escape poverty, homelessness or sexual abuse, only to be prostituted by the gang, immigration advocates say. Others are attracted to its reputation - often invoked by President Donald Trump - as the most dangerous gang in the world.   "MS-13 is the new bad boy in girls' lives," said Carlos Salvado, a defense attorney who has represented young women accused of gang connections. "By the time [parents] understand what their teenage daughter is doing, it's when they are called by the police."

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RELATED: 'People here live in fear': MS-13 menaces a community seven miles from the White House

     

     In a series of jailhouse interviews, Iraheta told The Washington Post she had been introduced to MS-13 as a child. She denied being a member, but defended the gang.  "They aren't the monsters people think they are," she said. "You don't know their stories. You don't know what's happened to them to make them this way."   (stunningly absurd statement that reflects the moral, social, personal depravity and hatred of the value of human life...welcome to between 8% and 16% of the "migrants just searching for a better life")

     

    In the summer of 2003, an angler working the dark waters of the Shenandoah River in Virginia made a startling discovery. Lying on the bank under a bridge was the tattoo-covered body of a 17-year-old girl.  Brenda Paz had been a "homegirl," or full female member, of MS-13. But "Smiley," as she was known, had wanted out and had begun helping federal authorities.

     She was four months pregnant when MS-13 members slit her throat.  Her defection, and others like it, convinced gang leaders in El Salvador that women couldn't be trusted and led to a ban on new female members.  Becoming a homegirl once provided some protection, said Tom Ward, an anthropologist who spent much of the 1990s hanging out with MS-13 in Los Angeles, where the gang was founded, for his book, "Gangsters Without Borders."

     "There was an unwritten rule that you can't rape a homegirl," he said. "Homegirls weren't running things, but some had a lot of respect."  The ban fell hardest on females in El Salvador, where women are still forced to serve the gang by cooking or cleaning, smuggling contraband into prison or collecting extortion payments, according to Salvadoran journalist Óscar Martínez.

     "We're seeing more and more girls pulled into the gangs for the purpose of sexual slavery," said Silvia Juárez, a researcher at the Salvadoran Women's Organization for Peace in San Salvador. "Now we're seeing girls as young as 9 years old being harassed."  Those who resist gang rape or prostitution are often killed. Thousands have fled. Girls make up nearly one-third of the 200,000 Central American unaccompanied minors detained at the U.S.-Mexico border since late 2012.

     A small percentage of these girls have joined MS-13 after being placed with relatives in the United States. Their recruitment has boosted the gang here, but has also begun to change it, authorities say.   Washington area prosecutors say they've seen an increase in female involvement in MS-13 in recent years - a sign that new cliques in the United States may not be adhering to the ban on homegirls. "They are including women in their activities more than they have in the past," said Paul Ebert, commonwealth's attorney for Prince William County. In most cases, he said, they remain "around the edges of the crime" as getaway drivers or bait to lure men into ambushes.

     "We see all that continuing," said Patrick Lechleitner, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations' Washington office, "but we also see a rise in their violent activity."

     When a homeless man was stabbed to death behind a liquor store in Suitland, Maryland, in 2014, one of the six arrested was a 17-year-old homegirl.  Katherine Lopez had joined MS-XIII in Las Vegas after she was sexually abused by a family friend, her mother told The Washington Post. A few months before the murder, she ran away from home. MS-13 pimped her out, her mother said.

    When the homeless man said something to Lopez outside the store, she grabbed his arm as the others stabbed him. She pleaded guilty in 2015 and was sentenced to 10 years.   Girls in the United States are not forced into MS-13 like they are in Central America, but they are often driven toward it by trauma, poverty or loneliness, advocates say. Unaccompanied minors are especially vulnerable, yet girls raised in the United States aren't immune. Lopez, a legal resident, moved to the U.S. from El Salvador when she was 3 years old.

     Vanesa Alvarado was born in Maryland. In the summer of 2016, the then-19-year-old used a promise of sex to lure a man into the woods in Gaithersburg, where male MS-13 members stabbed him 153 times as she shouted encouragement and laughed, according to prosecutors. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 40 years.

     Alvarado had dropped out of school in ninth grade after getting pregnant, later using cocaine and marijuana "to a significant extent," according to court filings. Her attorney, Tim Clarke, said she dated several MS-13 members.   "She was offered the opportunity to be part of a group, and that's what sounded good to her," he said.

      The gang's bad-boy allure can cross cultural lines.

    Long before she was known as "Flaca," or Skinny, Shannon Sanchez was born Shannon Marie Spicer. She befriended MS-13 members at her Northern Virginia high school, learning Spanish, according to her attorney, Tom Walsh. Later, after her husband was sent to prison in 2015 for molesting a child, she reconnected with the gang, which began hanging out at her house in Leesburg.

     Sanchez, 36, wasn't a gang member but occasionally helped them, like the time she drove one to the hospital after his fingers had been chopped off by a machete, Walsh said. But she also convinced two young men to leave MS-13, angering leaders in El Salvador, he said.

(RELATED: Details emerge in alleged MS-XIII 'satanic' killing of teen girl in Texas)

     In 2016, gang members borrowed her car to drive a suspected rival to a remote quarry, where they killed the teen. Afterward, Sanchez helped burn their bloody clothes in her fireplace and clean the vehicle, according to federal prosecutors. She pleaded guilty to being an accomplice after the fact and was sentenced April 27 to almost six years in prison.

"The feds are going to say, 'You should have come to the police,' " Walsh said. "Yeah, right. And on her way, she'd get killed. (El Gringo Viejo asks, "What is the loss?)

In the evenings, as kids played soccer or finished their homework, the sun would sink behind the San Vicente volcano, casting the city of 50,000 in shadow.

That's when the shootings would start.

     For Damaris, the deepening gang problem was evident at school, where MS-13 members coveted her delicate features and eager smile.

"They walked behind her in the streets, saying things to her, following her everywhere she went," recalled her mother, Maria Reyes.

Iraheta, who spoke to The Post from jail on the condition that she not discuss the charges against her, credited MS-XIII with keeping her San Vicente neighborhood peaceful.
     Her father, a taxi driver, was sometimes paid to chauffeur the gang. One night when she was 12, he didn't come home. He'd been jailed alongside members of MS-13 and its rival, the 18th Street gang.

"He said he didn't want us to come to see him because he was scared that something might happen to us," Iraheta recalled.

(We are forced here, in the voice of El Gringo Viejo, to be sure the OROG, and the visiting reader, understand how the rot affecting the taxi-daddy somehow learns to follow the lead of ''invasive" MS-XIII cancer.   They have ruined entire neighbourhoods in central Houston.  Mexican ancestried people do not want them around.  Panama, Costa Rica, Colombia people of the organised classes do not want to be around anything that starts with an MS.   The cancer will kill and/or destroy everything...Latin, Angloid, African, Extraterrestrial, etc.  The sins of the fathers will, most certainly, be visited upon the third, yea! even unto the fourth generation.)

    Iraheta dated an MS-13 member who sold drugs for the gang inside their school, she said. One day, worried he'd be caught, he put marijuana in her backpack. She was caught and suspended.  When her older brother joined 18th Street, Iraheta decided to flee north before she was caught in the crossfire.

   "I came because I had to," she said. "They knew my brother was in the opposing gang, and he knew what type of guy my boyfriend was."  Her family paid a coyote $7,500 to take the 14-year-old to the United States, she said. She crossed the Rio Grande on a dinghy near McAllen, Tex., and was arrested in the desert days later by Border Patrol.   (Where did people who make 4,000 dollars per annum per family come up with 7,500 American dollars?)

     Without a parent, she was turned over to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a federal program that places unaccompanied minors with relatives while they are in immigration proceedings. She lived with an aunt in Riverside, California, before joining her mother in Alexandria, Virginia.

     Iraheta hardly recognized the woman who'd left her behind when she was 7.   "She was almost like a stranger to me," Iraheta said. "One day she asked me what my favorite color was, because she didn't know."  Iraheta re-connected with MS-13 in Virginia. She declined to tell The Post how, but at least one of her co-defendants also attended Annandale High School.

    At one point, when her grades began to suffer, she said she tried to distance herself from the gang. But then she met Christian Sosa Rivas.   Iraheta would later tell police she didn't know Sosa Rivas was in MS-13 until she overheard him using gang slang on the phone. But the 21-year-old boasted in rap videos about being the "leader of the Harrison clique," and Facebook photos showed him throwing MS-13 hand signs.

     After dating him for a month, Iraheta found Sosa Rivas hanging out in his room with another girl. Suspicious, Iraheta asked her where she was from. San Vicente, the 15-year-old said.  Damaris had come to the United States weeks after Iraheta. But instead of being caught at the border, she'd been smuggled all the way to Maryland. She, too, felt isolated in America. And she, too, met MS-13 members - at her Montgomery County, Maryland, high school. She'd once fled gang members. Now she ran away from home with them.

     Damaris bounced from one gang apartment to another with nothing but a backpack. But the clique soon tired of her, and when Sosa Rivas told her to stop coming around, Damaris was upset, Iraheta later told police.  But Damaris was not done with Sosa Rivas.

     Members of another MS-13 clique in Maryland suspected him of being a poser. On New Year's Eve, they apparently used two other young women to lure Sosa Rivas to the woods in Dumfries, Virginia, where they attacked him with machetes and dumped his body in the Potomac River. Hours later, Damaris allegedly sent his friend a text saying: "I told you Christian was going to pay."

     On Jan. 8, 2017, Iraheta and nine others surrounded Damaris in the woods of Lake Accotink park.   Iraheta led the attack, grabbing Damaris by the hair and hitting her in the face so hard she fell to the ground. Iraheta then interrogated Damaris at knifepoint as Jose Torres Cerrato, one of Sosa Rivas's closest friends, recorded a video on Iraheta's phone.

     "I'm telling you, these videos are going down there," Torres said in one of the videos, which he hoped to send to gang leaders in El Salvador and earn a promotion, authorities say. In the videos, Torres and others can be heard egging Iraheta on.

     "What the ----!" someone shouts at one point. "Just stick the steel in her."

She did, stabbing Damaris after the 15-year-old admitted to sleeping with Sosa Rivas and helping set him up, Iraheta later told police. The others then joined in the attack. Damaris's body was found a month later under an overpass.

     When police arrested Iraheta and the others, they traced the videos to her iCloud account. Emerson Fugon Lopez told Fairfax County detectives that Iraheta had taken charge of the clique after Sosa Rivas' death - an extraordinary claim, if true. She had warned him not to talk about their crime or she would "rip my head off," he said. She had contacts everywhere.

     But when Fugon falsely claimed that Iraheta had been the only one to attack Damaris, the detective scoffed. "You're a man," the detective said. "There's no way that a gang is going to allow Iraheta to be the only one that hits the girl."

     The thing is that we're just starting out," he replied. "We don't know real well how the Mara thing works."

     But Iraheta did. During her interrogation, she showed detectives Mara Salvatrucha hand signs, boasting that she'd grown up around MS-13, "I know how things work," she said.

     From jail, Iraheta claimed that others involved in killing Damaris may have done it to move up in MS-13 but that she was motivated by love - and hate.   "They keep saying I'm a gang member when I'm not," she said. "If you really, really investigate, women are not allowed in the gang. They are not trusted."

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   Here begins the commentary of El Gringo Viejo.

    All of their DOAs and Emergency Room transport and treatment is paid for by the taxpayer.   All of their illegitimate babies...many of whom are sacrificed to "Santo Muerte", are supported by public funding through AFDC, Food Stamps, Section 8, Medicaid...etc.
   Catholic Charities, the Mexican American Legal Defence and Education Fund, the Southern Poverty Law Centre, all associated Soros "ACORN" descendants such as Occupy Wall Street and movements such as Black Lives Matter, Planned Parenthood, and the entire "Progressive" movement are all involved in the task to destroy America as the last free-standing common-law democratic, republican nation.
    The Mara Salvatrucha were sent by Satan to speed up the process.

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This is the image of the Virgin de Guadalupe, so named by orders of the Virgin herself

to the Indian man...some say Aztec, but he was in all probability of the Otomi' nation .

   This image appeared on his 'tamil' (blouse made of cotton and maguey strand reinforment)

 when he unfolded the gift of roses to the Bishop of Mexico from his tamil.  He did not know

until openning the gift that the Image would be there.

This depiction of 'Santo Muerte is
actually a desecration  of the classic
image of Saint Mary of Tepayac, also
known as The Virgin of Guadalupe,
Patron Saint of Mexico and all the
Americas...there is no greater
desecration of a religious emblem
in the opinion of this writer.
Skepticism is understandable. One
should have at least a healthy dose
of skepticism when dealing with
"religious relicry".   The true image
of the Virgin is confounding, the one
above is simply a vain and profane
piece of work inspired by Satan.

The Basilica where millions pay
homage to the apparition of the
Holy Virgin and the tilma
(blouse) of the Indian, Juan
Diego.  The "new" Basilica is the
 ugliest religious structure in the 
world, but it houses the 
most beautiful "painted
blouse" in all religious art. 

     With all due deference, El Gringo Viejo wants to point out  this Mara  thing and all such groups, really does not discriminate on the basis of race, ethnicity, sex, and such things.   They care only about making an illegal living; worshipping  "El  Santo Muerte, extorting...stealing...shaking down and "taxing" the "huddled masses, AND the wealthy by kidnapping, killing by means of extreme torture, raping, destroying, and all the while directly or indirectly being supported by some or several forms of governmental subsidy in the United States.  The reason they come here is because there are so many people who are not accustomed to this type of incomprehensible violence.  They can strut upon a stage of incredulity.

     While not a fan of Hemingway in any way, I am moved to remember the words that inspired the term..."For Whom the Bell Tolls" in the popular culture.  It reads:

   John Donne (1572-1631), Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation    Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris:

   "Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have caused it to toll for me, and I know not that.''

     Hemingway was not capable of such eloquence.  Perhaps I am not so blessed , either.  But I do know the difference between pewter and silver.

       It is not too terribly over-expressive to suggest that the violence we read and hear about in Mexico is not a distant thing.  Each minute, hour, day, and week that goes by, the rot...the cancer...in a sociological and anthropological sense, is not "over there".
       It is now within, and has been for several years.  And when the ignorant and arrogant chant, "There are no 'illegal' people!!!  There are no borders!!!"  Please remember, the Mara Salvatrucha did laugh to hear such sport, and await the chance to tear apart one of their own...or one of your own.

The tamil of Juan Diego spoke for itself, and still speaks.  Thankfully, the Bishop of Mexico at the time decided to take the words of a well-spoken Indian, subject of the new religious and royal order,  seriously.

Pray for the ordering of the Affairs of Earth.
El Gringo Viejo.

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Pilgrims, Refugees, and Taxpayers (with corrections made necessary because of the "phantom editor" who changes and/or drops letters and words from our original text during the nighttime hours)

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    We are caught up by obligations and guilt about having left undone those things we ought to have done, and we also have to go to midnight mass to-night, over in McAllen.   Years ago it was a matter of great pomp and circumstance, all nature of music, processions, recessions, traditions, and so forth.  We always had to squeeze 500 people into a sanctuary that was built to hold 250, and the people enjoyed it immensely, it seems.

     I served as an acolyte for 10 years, the last three as an "elder acolyte", so therefore the last three of those Midnight Masses…having worked my way up from candle tender and flag bearer, to crucifer and priest's server.  It was a fun show…even the non-high celebration services.   But Midnight Mass was something special.

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     We come to the point of exasperation about the commentators commentating with such profound banality about Joseph and Mary and her impending delivery.   It is especially juicy coming from the Roman Catholic clerical class, especially including the Bishop of the Diocese of Brownsville.  It is all but certain that every Roman Catholic Church in the Nation is making the same sad pitch and slinging guilt-trips out with haughty abandon to the commoners.

    The notion that somehow there is any equivalency between Joseph and Mary going to Bethlehem (House of Bread) to be registered and to pay their taxes to the Romans and the clamouring masses coming up from Central America is especially repugnant.   To begin, the oft-repeated observation that Joseph and Mary were poor people does not stack up with sociological probabilities at the time.

     It is known that Joseph of Arimathea was the namesake of Mary's husband and was quite possibly (or probably) his uncle.  There is lore that Jesus accompanied his Earthly father to the British Isles, along with Joseph of Arimathea who was deep into the tin mining and smelting industry that was centre'd in that area.  We should remember that Joseph of Arimathea was wealthy enough, certainly, to provide a rich man's grave to Jesus of Nazareth when that event occurred and so required.   There are some who think he might have been among the 10 richest men in the world at that time.

     That the couple had to stay in a stable for their first nights in Bethlehem, and deliver their baby there, had more to do with the crowds that would have been there, not so much the size or weight of Joseph's purse.  Please remember that both Joseph and Mary were members of the House of David, and the Jews were directed by Roman authority to return to the City that pertained to the ancient assignment of the twelve tribes.    Bethlehem, of course, to  this day is known as "The City of David".

     There were probably two or three score thousands of people coming into Bethlehem, pretty much at the same time, and accommodations would have had to have been in scarce supply.  The probability is that the couple managed to obtain some space in a stable that was partially open and also somewhat cave-like, providing them, thankfully, at least a roof over their heads.   These erosive "carve outs" in the low hills had been done by leaching and wind erosion and are fairly common in the area, and were frequently used for stabling.

     The image of the Three Wise Men from the Orient is not well served when they are presented as attendees in the stable of the Nativity.   As an aside, the image of them trodding through the deserts alone on camels is a fond notion, perhaps, but it is very, very far from likely.  Such personalities would have had massive train, with security, foods and spices, a money cache, and probably 300 or so servants and technical people.   After all, it must be considered that they gained an audience with Herod with little trouble.   Even the Roman authority, apparently, had a "hands off" demeanour towards them.

   According to Matthew 2:11, 12 - it is stated…"And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell down, and worshipped him: and when they had opened their treasures, they presented unto him gifts; gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

     "And being warned of God in a dream that they should not return to Herod, they departed into their own country another way."
     It should be noted that the word "house" indicates that Jesus was "long gone" from the stable by the time the Wise Men came and went from His presence.

     Furthermore, another dream interceded in the plans of men as the story unfolds in Matthew 2:13 - 15  -  "And when they were departed, behold, the Angel of the Lord appeareth unto Joseph in a dream, saying "Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word:  for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.

    "When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night, and departed into Egypt: and was there until the death of Herod:  that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying Out of Egypt I have called my son."   

     These things indicate that Joseph and Mary and Jesus were well enough off, certainly, to find a decent abode to begin a nurturing style of life for the new addition.   Did Joseph of Arimathea put in a good word for his nephew?  Did he have some spare rental properties around for a rest-and-recovery period for the new mother? Did he finance the flight to Egypt?   

    And, revisiting the beginning of all this trouble, we need to rememember that Luke 2:1-4 - it is clearly stated in the King James Unabridged, "…And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.   (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was Governor of Syria). and all went to be taxed, every one into his own own city.   And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the City of Nazareth, into Judea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem;  because he was of the house and lineage of David:"

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      These scriptures from the King James, Unabridged make beautiful, Shakespearean-like

Flavius Josephus
37 a.d.  -  100 a.d.
 He was one of those rare birds who
was both a Jew and a Roman.  He was
also a brilliant philosopher and historian
 as well as a military leader of the grade of
general.  He wrote the definitive history of
the Holy Land,  early on, having been born
shortly after the Death of Jesus.  His Jewish
name was Joseph ben Matityhu, and he was
essentially of the Sadducee Jewish class, an
aristocrat…very accomplished.

reading, and at times the words also tend to step on toes of analysts and students of things like time-lines, etc.   True enough, King Herod the Great died four years before Jesus of Nazareth was born…according to the experts and scientific minds.  But for all I know, Jesus of Nazareth might have been born five years before He, Himself was born, and perhaps the Historian Josephus got it all wrong…??

     Perhaps a bunch of people got it all wrong, or maybe just partially wrong…but one thing is for dead certain.   There is absolutely nothing of any similarity between the onslaught of illegal aliens pouring into the Republic of Texas and the United States and the perils faced by Joseph and Mary, their Baby and thousands of others during those times at and around the Nativity.

     To begin with, Joseph and Mary went to Bethlehem to pay taxes and register their names in the Roman census.  The people pouring up from Central America and elsewhere are being driven and herded by political operatives to invade an area of sovereignty with the expressed intent to take taxes in the form of public assistance in massive amounts.

    The people who went, "each unto his own city" were in almost all cases compliant subjects of the Roman government, whether they liked it or not.   They had to hang around for a good while, away from their crops, trades, animals, etc. to take care of all that "government stuff" and then return to their abodes and pick up where they had left off, and try to make things run again.

     In dealing with the authorities, please be certain that the Jews, save for a very, very few were scorned by the Romans and considered to be only slightly better than cattle.  Treatment of the Jews and other similar people in the area was capricious and brutal. and insurrection of any kind was met almost always with horrid imprisonments or crucifixion or worse.
     It was slight solace, perhaps, to realise that the Romans were possibly a bit less brutal than the satrap King of the Jews, Herod the Great.  The Romans gave considerable latitude to the leaders of the Jewish Sanhedrin (governing body) and the recognised leaders like the King,   in terms of ruling over issues that pertained primarily to Jews of the various sects…such as the Essenes, "Baptists", Sicarii, Sadducees / Karaites, and Zealots for instance.

    Reading the works of Flavius Josephus and others who wrote during and just after the Crucifixion underscore these points quite clearly.  So the notion that there is some kind of equivalency between the Holy Family and the "caravans" is silly at best and outlandish to the point of purposeful mendacity.  It is demonstrable that the "caravan" matter was a faux movement designed to shame the American people and those desirous of having a strong international boundary, north and south.

     It is somewhat rewarding to note that our diagnosis has been dead on during this entire episodeof guilt-gifting by the marxists and "human rights" organisations.  It has become apparent, for instance, that the "caravan"people have been essentially abandoned by the original "organisers". Those "leaders" of the movement who pointed the way north for the "oppressed", and shepherded"just nice young mothers pushing strollers with babies" into danger did not give a bucket of warm spit for or about the "migrants".   Their objective was, is, and shall forever be the destruction of America and Texas by any and every means possible.

     Returning to the Holy Family, when the time was accomplished that the angel advised the return to Nazareth, the Family went back…they did not uselessly languish on the dole in Egypt and implement a system of living off of public assistance while hating their hosts.  They did not strive to implement a system of chain migration, and I sincerely doubt that they demanded printed matter be provided in Hebrew.     

      Imagine please, that we are looking at Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba involved in free-fall economic disaster, complete with blatant strong-arm oppression of their people.   Daniel Ortega has just recently ordered the off-again, on-again harassment game against the last remaining independent television station in Nicaragua, along with the on-again, off-again jailing of the "President's enemies".

     Brazil is in the position of pouring regular Army units into the frontier area with Venezuela because the people fleeing Venezuela are causing mayhem in Brazil now.  Venezuelans have also befouled the situation in Colombia, adjacent to the West of Venezuela, having now inundated with impoverished and destitute people fleeing the Wonderland created by Chavez and Maduro.

Miguel Diaz Canel
Dictator - President of Cuba

     New crackdowns by Miguel Diaz Canel, the first non-Castro surnamed President of Cuba in fifty-five years has recently reinstated strict social and "revolutionary" standards, maintaining the dictatorial posture of the central Cuban government.   The arts and entertainment sector has been particularly sanctioned as of late, and certain of the Castro period's minuscule "reforms" have been foregone, returning things to the old Castro-ite standards.

     We are playing a game with cads and vermin.  When the Obsolete American Press can show a picture of a detained child, in chains, locked in a kennel box in a situation dating back to 2014, and somehow blame those of us who vote Republican for said event…and then pat themselves on the back for that great stroke of "standing up for the oppressed", we must recognise that we are dealing with people who consider mendacity to be a reasonable weapon when truth is inconvenient.

     It is the same with all of them, Rigoberta Menchu' tim,  the nice, Mayan Indian woman who has worked so hard for the poor and for women's issues….?   And it turns out that her "story" about her village being shot up by "government" soldiers, and it turned out to be all but a total fabrication…it was perhaps the inspiration that Pocahontas Warren needed to remember that she, too had suffered from being a Indian…and just think about that most profound statement by any member of the Obama Choir of Sycophants, like good ole' Dr. Gruber, the brilliant economist. when Jonathan Gruber tried to explain and justify the absurd Obamacare programme;  ...he suggested that many lawmakers and voters didn't know what was in the law or how its financing worked, and that this helped it win approval. 
     "Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage,” Gruber said. "And basically, call it the stupidity of the American voter or whatever, but basically that was really, really critical for the thing to pass."

     This, in fact, is how the left sees us.  They pray for the day when the United States looks like Haiti and when the entirety of the nation's people  is wearing grey Mao outfits and looking like North Korean peasants…93 pounds, eating grass, waiting to die.  The leftist leaders are certain, like Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Schumer, that they will be safe behind their walls and security-coded entry gates with private, armed security personnel totally available…how does one say it?   Oh, right!! "24 / 7".   

     We leave this topic about comparatives and honesty.   Almost every statement made during this "caravana" thing has been false or purposefully misleading if it proceeded from the pen, mouth, or computer of the Obsolete Media workers and personalities.   The correct information was available and could have been used to better effect, but it was not, save for some reporting being done by newsletters, radio, and a few blogs.  FOXNews had some minimal positive impact, but never really understood what was going on "down there".

____________________________

     We are going to chuck it in for the night.  Children are coming down to-morrow, so I guess it will be necessary to take a bath.   Please understand that we are not going to walk away from this "migrant" , "immigrant", and caravan thing.  The phenomena is nothing like what would be a correct definition of any of those three words or concept.   It is truly an assault on the Republic, and we have correctly identified several of the major players involved in this deceptive game.

More later,

EL GRINGO VIEJO

___________________________

A peculiar Christmas present of sorts…very late in arriving

__________________

     This is a relatively simple story.  It is something with which I lived but did not realise until very, very recently.  Many folks and followers of this somewhat helter-skelter account of my life and my understandings, interpretations, and experiences know that we are apt to paint in broad strokes at one moment and then suddenly revert to fine brush detail, figuratively speaking.  Only my mother was a painter…my oldest brother was a pen and ink artist extraordinaire.  I am a dilettante of a sort.

     Most of the OROGs (Order of Readers of the Old Gringo) who follow this screed are aware that my father was born in Gwinner, Sargent County, North Dakota because he had to be close to his mother at a time such as that.   That blessed event occurred 117 years ago.  The family then consisted of a successful wheat farmer aged 50, his new wife aged 40, and a boy-baby less than a year old.

     The wife had a father who was associated with the Washburn - Christian Mills in Minneapolis, Minnesota who was an industrialist tinkerer, somewhat under the auspices of that concern.  He was an experimenter, a kind of industrial spy and negotiator, and a student of modernity, progress, and improvement.   He had travelled to Europe, studying their techniques of farming and their industrial implements and their elaboration as well as maintenance.  He also studied the processes of processing, refining, distilling, preserving, and transporting farm products, both perishable and storable.

     This nouveaux Renaissance Man was, like his great-grandson, something of a cross between  a spontaneous, impulsive actor and a deliberating, calculating thinker.   Not quite manic-depressive to be sure, but one who could lead his fellows into exasperation, I am sure.  His next to last folly and success was the purchase of a relatively large hacienda (plantation) in a rural place in Vera Cruz State in easternmost Mexico.  He, along with his daughter (my grandmother) cared for this plantation in the tropical forests in the highlands west of Tuxpan, about 40 miles from the Gulf of Mexico.

     All went well save for one thing.  From 1893 through 1900 inclusive, there were three devastating freezes and snow episodes, something unheard of, nor written about, from the time of the arrival of the white man on said soil.  The Totonac Indians and the Huastec Indians of the area had no word in their language for snow, for instance.  The climate quite normally always gave each year eleven months of steamy days, cool nights with mountain breezes, and two heavy rainy periods, the Spring and the Autumn.  Like clockwork and calendar pages.

     

     After the third round of freezes and snows, my great-grandfather had to leave the effort he had begun in the 1880s (somewhere in this mass of papers in my command post, I have abstract and Mexican title, with the date and dimensions).  The orchards and plantings of mangos, avocados, citrus, and the like were all destroyed.  Money was set aside by the Christian family to pay for several years more to the people such as those very noble servants, workers, and tradesmen who had attended the plantation for the better part of 15 years…according to my father.

     This father of mine, who was less than one year old, 117 years ago, spoke only infrequently about his grandfather…or even his father…or his mother.   He had no distaste for them, and in fact, seemed to revere them as people a little beyond human.  He, as a late and only progeny, was terribly, terribly spoiled.  For instance, at the age of 10 he had a 60 pound pet male racoon that he had raised from a pup…and who slept in his room in the fancy house on the edge of Ed Couch, Texas.  His toys, were we to have them to-day, would bring a Duke's ransom.

     The family had moved down to the very frontier of Texas, adjacent to the Rio Grande and the northeastern-most part of Mexico during the mid-19teens.  There they established a farm with row cropping and citrus orchards and irrigation.   All of this was done in concert with the presence of Peter Bonesteel Christian who had moved into that area some ten or twelve years before.  He had, by hook and telegraph, managed to coax his daughter and son-in-law to come down to the violent, crazy, hell-hole, combat zone of Hidalgo County, Texas during those years of social and military upheaval of the Mexican Revolution,  to grow 300 pound cantaloupe and 10 - pound oranges while baling 15 bales / acre of Egypt-grade cotton.   To be sure, Peter Bonesteel Christian could spin a good tale even in his dotage…and frequently the tales were accurate.

     For several years, the Newton family did well, prospering and suffering a major setback when their first home burned to the ground in 1918, only a couple of years after its construction.  Thankfully, much was salvaged because much of their "stuff"  was still stored in the train warehouse in Weslaco, 8 miles to the South.  The house was rebuilt, and life began and ended during a pleasant 10 year sojourn, terminated by a fairly sudden set of reversals.
    First was the Crash of 1929, when thousands of banks throughout the nation, large and small, collapsed.   My grandfather had been taking rental payments from people using the North Dakota property to plant wheat.  Then suddenly they stopped paying…my grandfather had trouble scraping up anything due to crop prices collapsing and his "trust account" having been evaporated.  As it turned out, corrupt personalities in North Dakota played a trick, common to thieves, of having the property declared in arrears for tax reasons, and then having a "quick call" Sheriff's auction.
    In this procedure, some dolt is selected from the community, and that dolt will be given a relatively large sum of money to bid on the auction.  Then, by previous arrangement, the dolt will win the auction and the title transferred to him.  After a respectable period (30 days or so), the dolt will sell the property for some token price, and then the shysters will make off with their property and "legal title".

The 1925 Hidalgo County Courthouse
Edinburg, Texas
_________________________________

     From 2,000 miles away, in 1929 or so, my grandfather already in declining health, could not fend for himself truly…and they simply lost everything.  My grandmother was also in ill health, and her condition was declining.  It was a tale that was repeated throughout much of the United States, starting in 1928 and proceeding through 1936 or so.  Things did not improve much, oddly enough, until World War II began.

     My father noticed this reversal of family prosperity during his last year in high school in   Edinburg, Texas…and this is where the story begins to end…although there are many stories in the future that will fill in the before this and many other tales are told.
    In those years, a student ended his high school at the 11th grade.  My father, as I, finished the six grades of primary in five years, and he graduated from secondary a little early, and began studies at the new Pan American Junior College, in Edinburg, Texas…the County Seat of Hidalgo County by that time.
     One of the last small luxuries the family had was that my father could drive and they still had a fairly new motorcar.  Since Ed Couch was about 15 miles (a considerable distance in those years) from Edinburg, this allowed my father to pick up a few hours of collegiate study at the new school, not far from where he had attended high school (2 blocks).
      So, early in 1929, with a high school diploma and a few college hours under his belt, he decided to "save

A Locomotive of the Period - served from
1909 until 1936
______________________________________

his family" and he took the Southern Pacific daily to San Antonio and reported to the induction centre next to Fort Sam Houston and volunteered to serve in the Army. 
     This was a prize for the recruiter because in those years very few candidates had a high school diploma and a bit of college.  His scores were good and he was fit according to the military saw-bones.  An ominous question ended the analysis of the applicant's qualification to join the service, and that was, "Are you allergic to horses or farm animals?"
  He answered "No." and thought nothing more of it.  He then had to hang around in a San Antonio for three or four days, for swearing in, date of induction instructions, and some paperwork.  He had the opportunity in the "Big City" to stop in at an "Abraham Lincoln Brigade" organising rally…and so he received a good dose of what a real, live Bolshevik / Communist recruiting operation looked like.  Little did he know that he would be having more active involvement in a more direct way with such people in a few months.
     After the processing work, he was given a War Department voucher and taken back to the nearby train station, and he returned to Edinburg's train station.  He returned to his home, informed his parents that he was in the Army now, and would be returning in 30 days to formalise everything and receive training.

_______________________________

 

Above, as stated, is the first passenger train to make it from
Brownsville to Rio Grande City.  My father rode it once, late
in his service, in the "Command Car" with the General and
his staff.  My father was the lowest ranking officer on board
that car…but at least he was there!!
The engine depicted in the next image up was more like what
took him to San Antonio to join the Army as well as the one
that he took "with the General".  

   It should suffice to say that my father did well enough in the service.  The only problem was that it was in the mounted cavalry.  And, to add insult to injury, he was returned to his home area, because he was a sharp kid, and because he could speak, read, and write Spanish.  He was assigned to the Headquarters Squadron of the 1st Cavalry Division (Mounted), 12th Regiment.  His position was something akin to what is now known as OCS (Officers' Training School), which back then was very much akin to OJT (On the Job Training) in civilian life. 

     He served from sometime during mid - 1929 through the mid - 1934, essentially doing frontier patrol on the Rio Grande, mainly between San Ygancio, Texas, and Fort Ringgold - Rio Grande City, and Fort Brown - Brownsville.  He had various encounters, similar to to-day's ups and downs, but those are stories for another time.

     What becomes important is that he marries around the time of his enlistment finishing up.  He has lost his grandfather, father, and mother, and is preparing to go out into the real world, out of uniform, and into the Depression, into civilian life, with nothing to serve him but his wits and his life experience.  He had some understanding of agricultural processes and agri-mechanics and so forth, and he had a wad of money from his time in the Army, because he had spent little or nothing while serving.  He is 23 years old.

     He did a little "field supervision" for large growers who knew him and his family and his wife's family at first, and then noticed that almost all the draft animals were gone and mechanisation was now almost universal.  He begins to…how is it said?…network with the various farm and ranch personalities, all of whom learn fairly quickly that my father is deft and adept in dealing with what is perhaps the most valuable element standing on all these properties, and that is the semi-legal, and legal Mexican citizen who is looking for work in Texas.

     While these folks were a long way from home, they adapted to conditions well, learned quickly, and thought that a workday was from sun-up until sun-down, or "whatever it took". My father and mother also delivered mail, mailers, and newspapers, they also began thinking about a future involving their own agricultural business.   The year 1936 came and the stork was in flight, arriving in early May at the Edinburg Hospital…which was fortunate there because it was a fairly regular SRS (Stork Resting Station) for some reason.  In this case, he brought my eldest brother Milton Birchard, Jr.

     My father began including a wider and wider network in his activity, both social and professional.  He happened to make an impression finally on a gaggle of men who were involved in a contest with various other investors, growers, and processors.  He began to be given social responsibility such as forming up and guiding the local Boy Scouts of America Troop in Edinburg, and helping, while being paid, with the Pan American Tennis Team, which had developed quite a nationwide impression almost overnight.
     My mother felt as though my father was burning the candle at all six ends, and puffed up a bit about it…but in the main she knew something positive was in the future and continued to help on all fronts.   Although shy, my mother was also very active in church matters, along with various service clubs.  She employed a maid who became essentially the Directora General of the domestic situation…although my mother excelled in cooking, sewing, painting, and gardening.  She and Guadalupe Gonzales Gonzales never had a cross word in 30 years of interaction.  Guadalupe (Lupe) worked four days on and three days off the entire time.

     In any regard, one day a man came from on high and asked my father if had ever thought about going into the citrus business in a serious way.  My father had been doing some grove care work and supervision, and although it was hard work, it was rewarding, to his way of thinking.  This man decided to "domesticate" my father and offered him a set of alternatives, and suggested that it would be a good idea to talk it over with the wife and his crew of Mexicans (which my father said later that he had never seen those men as "his" crew).  He saw them as "associates" and friends, and to him it seemed that they were all "Keepers" (excellent workers)".

    So,  my father went and talked to my mother.  She said she was tired of him going out to take rich kids on hikes with their cute little uniforms when there were bigger fish to fry (…or something to that effect).  So my father went back to this possible benefactor and said that he would like to take plan "A".

This is a picture of the type of tractor for which my father
 jumped off the cliff.  It is a 1935 model B John Deere, of
 which four were purchased, all used, reconditioned, and
 guaranteed by the seller.

     Plan "A" meant accepting a loan for the purchase of a tract of land north of McAllen, Texas of some 20 acres, with the mineral rights and legal work.  That act would cost a little more than 5,000 dollars (remember, that was in 1939).  It would also require about 5,000 dollars for the purchase of four late model, used John Deere tractors.   They were jewels., and each served until the end of the time that we were in  the business.
     There were many other things to be bought, like a house and pickups and trailers, and equipment, and attachments for the tractors, lodging for the Mexican workers, and on and on.  In all, the financing would come up to around 55,000 dollars which was a preposterously huge sum.
     The experience with my grandfather caused pause, so to speak, with both my father and my mother…as well as my other grandfather and  grandmother, who were adamant about the ills of doing business with Yankee bankers.  They pointed out what had happened to "everyone in the South after the War" and they knew what had happened when my other grandfather could not pay off a bank note with a  minuscule remainder (2 payments of 60), and was foreclosed of all his property in Ed Couch, due to a Bully Banker with deep political connections.
  But my father was willing to take charge and, as stated above, jump off the cliff, assuming massive debt but knowing inside that he had the mettle to rise to the peak of the mountain.  Supposedly my mother said one time to her mother, "Mom, if he can ride a warhorse at full gallop and hit a target with a Krag and Jorgensen carbine at 50 yards, he might can do anything." That, of course, was in reference to his service in the Mounted Cavalry just a few short years before.

    To make a very long tale just a short as possible, and to save a whole lot of stuff for a later time, we shall move on to the climax.  During the earlier times just after the beginning of this article we pointed out that my grandparents had moved down to the Lower Rio Grande Valley and bought property for a farming operation.  It was a considerable purchase, perhaps 320 acres. All the while, a just slightly before, another individual came down to the Lower Rio Grande Valley and bought a bit of land…about 130 acres…near the newly founded town of Mission, Texas…about 35 miles from the town of Ed Couch, which is east of Mission.

It would probably dismay Ted Cruz to
 see how similar at the same age, he
 and William Jennings Bryan appear,
 at roughly the same age.
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    This other arrival was also active in the citrus and nut production business and was disposed to begin a retirement regimen where snow and cold would not hold sway for large portions of any given year.   This was, of course, the Great Commoner, William Jennings Bryan, the populist Democrat speaker, politician, and philosophical guide to the saner part of the Progressive movement. 
     In three runs for the Presidency of the United States, William carried almost every Southern State each time…and in the case of Texas, oddly enough, he carried it all three times.

     In any regard, in 1909 he established a home just north of Mission by about two miles and began to become active in the burgeoning agricultural industry. The main movers and shakers were mainly into the infrastructure, such as the business of putting irrigation systems into place, levelling farmland, developing regimens of planting this, that, and the other crops.   These fellows were actually glad to have Bryan in the area because even people who did not vote for him liked him anyway, and he was a good draw to attract land buyer and investors.
    So, William Jennings actually intended to finally settle down and make money passively, while engaging in political debates by editorials and exchanges of letters.  But, alas for him, such was not to be.  A man nowhere near his moral or intellectual equal, Woodrow Wilson, called upon Bryan to serve as his Secretary of State, and Bryan somewhat reluctantly, but with aplomb and resolution picked up and moved, selling his really nice, new home and rendering up his orchards and groves of fruits and nuts to the market.   It is said that he always regretted the act of leaving the "Magic Lower Rio Grande Valley".

     Bryan, in my opinion, served Wilson well, but Wilson did not serve Bryan well…and clashes with the really spooky "Colonel House", Wilson's closest advisor had a steady negative effect on on Bryan.  You all know I am telling the truth, because Bryan was certainly not my philosophical or political cup of tea, to say the least.  But he was, like your humble servant, a person with considerable Confederate appeal, and unlike Wilson, was also a believer in the future of the Negro as a fully integrated, accomplished member of the American civilisation.  Wilson was a bigoted nut-case liberal Progressive who still had notions of shipping all Negroes back to Africa…or worse.

This is apparently a wedding,  taking place in April of  1919 in the home and obviously on the
 grounds of the Bryan House  a short time after Owen Councils and his family had purchased it.
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    In any regard, now you will know the rest of the story.   For several years our family lived just off Bryan Road by one lot, a principal street in near-downtown Mission, Texas.  My male child spent a year or two at the elementary school named for Bryan, which is of course on Bryan Road about 8 blocks from where my son lived…(along with his sister, mother, and El Gringo Viejo). 

A relatively recent photograph of the Bryan House
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     So, for all these years of my life I did not know until yesterday that the man who bought the Bryan house when Bryan was called to serve President Wilson was the very same Owen Councils, the banker who backed my father in the establishment of the business of his life.

    So, the song, "Shall the Circle, Be Unbroken" keeps going around in circles.   You all should also know, my father paid off everything ahead of schedule in spite of terrible climate problems in the late 1940s and early 1950s (droughts and freezes). He began a career in teaching at the secondary level.  He also taught at the school where he took his first college hours, but by that time it had become a "university".   He also completed a curriculum that led to a kind of doctorate in administration of facilities for the mentally disabled.
    He ended his professional career as the Superintendent of the Texas State School for the Mentally Retarded.   He brought many low-keyed reforms to that facility, which remains the largest of many such facilities in the Republic of Texas.  The staff literally wept both when he retired and when the died in 1983.

Now you know what a long-winded Texian can do when it's too cold to bait a hook.  More later, and we certainly appreciate your time and attention.
EL GRINGO VIEJO

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