All of this begins with the idea that my great grandfather, Peter Bonesteel Christian b. 1850, was an engineering genius and a cantankerous old goat, and a brilliant agriculturalist, and a magnificent manufacturing mind. He was also a spy of the industrial, not military, order. We ran across two references to his travels to France to review the French part of what would later be integrated indirectly into the American Allis-Chalmers tractor and farm machinery factories and products.
We know that he was a wayward child of Edward Chistian who was the son of David Christian and Esther Webster who were English people who lived in Ireland and whose parents were involved in liquor, spirits, beers, and such…especially for export.
Their ancestry dealt for several hundred years in the northern swath of England itself, East Anglia-Nottingham-Stratford on Avon included. And yes, your humble servant is not a ''pure Anglo"…there is a lot of Belgian, western French, Saxony, and Prussian, and Bremen blood in those veins...about 5 / 64's of El Gringo Viejo's genealogy…and yes, Maria, he is directly related to Johann Michael Limbaugh and became the 1st cousin, three times removed of Rush because of the Limbaugh's Saxony, Prussian, and Bremen background.
A fellow named Asa Grant married a girl named Amelia (Meli) Limbaugh, and she bore a son, among others, named William Grant in 1842 who would become one of my great-grandfathers.
But we diverge:
We submit the words of a writer who visited at one time…not so long ago…and wrote an article for his magazine (of which we were not aware until picking it up on "the web" on this, the 1st day of November, 2019) :
It has been said that beauty is where you see it and genius is all around, waiting to be identified.
Beauty — Quinta Tesoro de la Sierra Madre is an adobe house and a little wildlife refuge on the banks of Rio Corona, at the end of the road, 25 or 30 miles from Ciudad Victoria, capital of Tamaulipas, in the middle of a truly majestic geographical and cultural setting.
It could be the backdrop for a really good, very old movie.
Genius — David Christian Newton, a tall Tex-Mex retired from citrus farming and tour operations, picked this place to build a home and unique business — a guest house with just one guest room, two beds and breakfasts, three-day minimum, available with three week's advance notice.
David Christian Newton relaxes at the Quinta Tesoro in Tamaulipas with his
dogs and cats
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He "sells" a form of relaxation that can be slowed down to and by tranquility.
One guest said "This must be where God comes to gather His thoughts and lower His blood pressure."
Another said the modest fee "beats the heck out of paying a therapist."
David Christian Newton would disclaim any traces of genius. In real life, he is a hard-shell conservative who still thinks the wrong side won the Civil War and that Texas really should secede from the aggravating United States. (It should be noted he is vehemently anti-Klan, and his people were always of that anti-Klan disposition in those days after the War.)
What makes him a genial host is that he kind of likes Mexico, loves living on the outer edge of civilization and realizes he has a treasure to share. He has just enough visitors to keep the lights on. He has the rare ability to keep quiet or share delightful stories of long, long ago.
He says, through the years, he has housed people from afar, even France and Japan, and quite a few Americans and Canadians. Some are academics doing research. Some are serious bird-watchers. Some are history enthusiasts.
"We have had photographers, artists, horse trainers, ghost hunters, even reporters.
"This is a place where you can be pleasantly bored," said Newton. "You can drink beer or not drink beer, feast or fast, or do almost anything that is tolerated by the somewhat antiquated social standards of our peculiar little rural community. He keeps a small reserve of high-mediocre and top-shelf wines, just in case."
And what a setting! — foothills, a spring-fed river lined with towering cypress, a green zone with no connection to Al Gore or tree-huggers, just the result of property owners agreeing to keep things as they were to ensure reasonable habitat for wildlife.
Next door are the remnants of La Hacienda de Santa Engracia, a legendary place established in the early 1700s, originally a half-million acres, self-contained, self-supporting, self-defending enterprise.
Newton's excursion company was the first to bring in visitors after the rehabilitation of Santa Engracia in the late 1970s.
"We introduced four or five thousand folks over the years to the Hacienda."
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The Beautiful Rio Corona with 1,000 year old
cypress trees…"the Rio that never runs dry"
It has springs that originate from the Sierra
Madre Occidental on the western side of
Mexico, and surface on the Sierra Madre
on the eastern side of the Sierra Madre
Oriental.
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There was a time when touring Mexico was big business. David Christian Newton made it work at a high level for more than 20 years.
"We had very good clients — well-to-do people of some refinement, intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals, and Lawrence Welk-HeeHaw types who could all get on the same touring coach and really enjoy and learn about Mexico."
Newton guesses he hauled 40,000 people here and there, to nearly every state inn Mexico. He recalls Mazatlan, Copper Canyon, train trips from Merida to Mexico City.
He remembers adventures in Oaxaca, Palenque, Veracruz at Mardi Gras, Xilitla with Los Pozos and the tales of Sir Edward James, Merida, Catemaco, and on and on.
He says his favorite place among truly hundreds was
Monterrey. It was a magic mix, rough and tumble, more than a little sophisticated and even arrogant, but very blue-collar in that every third man was some kind of master, glass-blower, machinist, mechanic or watch-repairman.
Monterrey people made things for sale to the rest of Mexico and to the world.
Elections in Real de Catorce
Real, once a thriving silver-mining center, turned into a ghost town in the high and dry hills of San Luis Potosà state. It came back as a pilgrimage site for Catholics and Huichol shamanists. International tourists appreciated the desert ambience. Some thought they felt spiritual energy.
Newton took a group to visit in the summer of 1981. Higinio Gomez and his wife Estella had just opened the newly rehabilitated Meson de Abundancia hotel and restaurant. The actual building is over 150 years old.
Gomez, a big-city fellow properly aligned politically with the Partido de la Revolucion Institutional (PRI - the government party), decided to run for president municipal (county executive). Because he was PRI, that meant he was essentially elected.
As Newton tells it, Gomez had the support of everybody that mattered, from the governor to the President of the Republic. The campaign theme had been about the federal government providing many pesos for public works to make Real de Catorce into another San Miguel de Allende.
Opposition was a labor-union organizer who doubled as an extortionist.
Newton and 24 gringo tourists showed up on election day. He observed, "When the polls closed at 7:00 pm, Gomez and his son took the ballot box to the Secretary of State of San Luis Potosi. We found it strange that a candidate would deliver the newly voted ballots, but, hey, who were we to say."
The tourists had a nice dinner. Miners provided entertainment. They had formed a medieval Spanish choral group with stringed accompaniment. Not bad, not bad at all…triple-A minor league.
While songs were being sung, a young hotel/restaurant staffer came to Newton with a whispered warning: "Estella says the boy Roberto has a revolver in his waistband and that his brother and the ruffians are by the cathedral and they are all drunk."
It sounded as if they were sore about losing the election.
Newton and his tour assistant, Rudy, confronted Roberto in the bathroom, quietly disarmed him and tied wrists to ankles. He was deposited in the kitchen pantry.
Estella and her daughter, Estella Jr., emerged with four pistols and a gallon of ammunition. There was a .45 automatic, two .38 S&W and a nine-shot revolver that fired .22 hollow points.
Estella Jr. had the big gun. She caught Newton's curious look and exclaimed, "What? I know how to shoot better than you. I've qualified as an expert with rifle and pistol."
What Newton said was where are the police or someone with the authority to detain these people?
"I was reassured that the driver of the Coca-Cola truck had promised to stop at the military garrison on the other side of the tunnel and tell the commander that there was an insurrection in Real de Catorce because of the election."
The tourists had no idea what was going on as the hotel firing squad left for the church. Estella Jr. and Rudy led the charge, guns aloft. Newton was smart enough to maintain a secondary position.
Not a shot was fired but there was a clatter of rocks, machetes and even a pair of old (inoperable) pistols on the cobblestones. The gaggle of ruffians essentially evaporated.
"The next morning, a very young Mexican Army lieutenant arrived with orders for the tour group: 'Retire from this community at once. That will be without delay.'"
In a matter of minutes, two little, tunnel-sized busses were in front of the hotel, taking on luggage and gringos who wondered why departure was rushed.
There was a command Jeep and a large troop transport with an escort of fully armed soldiers.
"We were soon 5000 feet down the mountain, and our fancy tour bus was there, with the same driver, and we were soon on our way to Saltillo."
Roots
David Christian Newton is also a story. He says he has an Anglo-Southerner/Latin - Spanish colonial Texas marriage.
He says his wife (Diana) is an urban sort, privileged to have had a private Roman Catholic education in the Rio Grande Valley and was almost entirely English-speaking from birth. He was born to a mix of real Yankee bluebloods and East Tennessee people who were substantial farmers.
David grew up on a farm and spoke mostly Spanish as a youth. His parents operated a citrus grove-care operation with Mexican "braceros" to help.
"For the first eight years of my life, I was pretty much surrounded by people from Mexico, working in my parent's business. From 1934 through 1966, we had in and out of our house Mexicans of Indian, mestizo and white ethnic and racial backgrounds.
"As an aside, we had no locks on our doors and had there been locks, we had no keys."
Roots?
"Oddly, from my mother's Tennessee line, I am a second cousin to Rush Limbaugh" (He is actually a first cousin three-times removed).
David's great-grandfather, Peter Bonesteel Christian, was involved in the establishment and modernization of the various grain milling operations in Minneapolis. The business, Washburn-Christian Mills, gradually became what is known today as General Mills.
David went to school in McAllen, Texas and graduated from Southwest Texas State University. His brother Milton earned a doctorate at Louisiana State University and headed up the college of earth sciences, geology and geography for a time at that same institution.
Quinta Tesoro de la Sierra Madre "official State sign"
David's mother and brother sometimes served as Mexico tour guides. They couldn't resist. It was an interesting business, travel by busses, trains, horses & donkeys, hiking, and even a few flights.
They took some groups to Acapulco, Zihuatanejo and Huatulco but eventually concluded their people weren't really beachcombers. They did numerous combination
Copper Canyon-Mazatlan-Guadalajara trip and a few return from Merida to Mexico City to Monterrey after the Yucatan Excursion for train-addicts (such as himself) and those who wanted to say that they "had done did it". (The return was an option, mainly for well-travelled folks. We charged the cost only, because we were trying to return the touring coach to normal touristic service from Mexico City.)
They never lost a client or a peso to a drug gang. They did get stranded in a rare snowstorm and spent a few hours in traffic stalled by a protest featuring a million rocks painted white and strategically placed over hundreds of yards of highway pavement.
Mexico City? Ah yes.
"Mexico City still remains fascinating if only because it works, somehow or another, in spite of itself. It has many beauty marks, but people see the scars, scabs, lesions and defects.
"The brooding Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl mountain peaks to Mexico City's eastern rim, with smoke and snow, and Chapultepec, The Basilica, the great public buildings and, of course, the incredible engineering — it strikes me as a terminal patient who never really dies.
"But the food, almost always, is really good, frequently excellent."
There is a rumor that the food is also good at Quinta Tesoro de la Sierra Madre, even better if Diana is there.
Do remember to provide three weeks advance notice of intended arrival and probable appetite.
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Popocatapetl is the higher and most active
volcano. The Sleeping Virgin or whatever is
Ixtaccihuatl, the ridge closest to the viewer.
Both are currently volcanic,both emitting
steam and other gasses that Ralph Nader
would condemn.
They are almost totally snow-covered during
the entire year, from 17,000 to the peaks to
nearly 19,000 feet or a little less. They are
very, very active volcanoes. They are only
about 28 miles from Mexico City's centre.
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We regret boring the folks with these observations, although they are not mine…they are from a discerning…not suspicious, but a reasonable "I've been on these venues before…" type of writer. That I recall, he was not a Mexico analyst, although he was (is) a savvy reporter and an honest, dutiful fact vacuum-cleaner.
My calculation is that he gave us an A- for the entire event, although I also don't believe that he had come to the Quinta with the intent to write a penetrating article about it.
I would prefer to continue with the pointless facts and such other remembrances. It was surprising to have seen this article that comes from the not-so-distant past, although we have many various and sundry such commentaries. Those commentaries are issued more like thank-you notes, while almost all of the material posted above is a published article in a formal magazine.
Almost all notes, articles, and newspaper inclusions, etc. have been very complementary. About 2% are contemptuous. What we are trying to point out and postulate is that there is not a First World nation to-day that is not dealing with the inundation like what is coming into America (and the Republic of Texas) of such slugs and dullards.
Daily, now, we read or witness on some news broadcast, about those who slay and wound children like the Mara SalvaTrucha 13 and the Callejon 18 types from Central America. It is as if their only mission in life is to make it into Gringoland and kill, rape, destroy, and steal whatever they can.
Lamentably, these types…such as the psychic offspring of Ben Laden and a hundred other nutters are doing the same in Europe, Asia, and other places in the world. The number of these individuals is approximating three to four hundred thousand at this point, and we can only take solace in the fact that many if not most are killing their own kind.
The good thing, as expressed above, for the foreign traveller...and the common American…is that the gang groupings seem to normally prefer to kill and rape and destroy other gang members and their sisters and relatives. Therefore, while the reader might think…"Why do I even care about this…it is madness"…please understand that at the Great Pyramids of Teotihuican out to the near northeastern reaches of Mexico City, about 100,000 people per day visit…90% are foreigners.
Every day the Grand Zocalo (main central and governmental and ecclesiastical Hallmark of Mexico), almost 1,000,000 people pass through without a problem. Many gather for the raising and striking of the colours. All are welcomed. The average Mexican of the lower and/or upper-middle class enjoy the presence of foreigners…especially, interestingly enough…Gringos.
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THEREFORE:
It does not matter where one might find him/her self. If one slips in the bathtub and cracks his/her brain…it is lamentable. HOWEVER, WE HAVE ARRIVED AT ANOTHER POINT:
This is something that El Gringo Viejo has never encountered…and I mean after well over fifty years in Mexico. A Mexican four-star General of the regular Army…semi-retired…and very successfully accounting for his properties…by inheritance…and by purchase…of small but very nice precincts.
Although retired, he speaks to the point that ANTONIO MANUEL LOPEZ OBRADOR (AMLO) has essentially broken the supposed understanding that the true criminals and traffickers (firearms, drugs, and humans) will be punished to fullest extent.
LOPEZ-OBRADOR frankly told the Mexican Army to stand-down. AMLO declared that probably about 90% of the people in the aforemention trade would understand that the kinder and gentler and more understanding Mexican central government would embrace them as a brother, travelling a broken trail…etc. etc. He assured the Mexican public, the world observers, and especially the criminal cartels that he would grant them safe harbour as they readapted and made passage to normal social and cultural standards. They would learn that by a loving AMLO, by giving them money, legalisation papers, whatever they wanted…they would "SEE THE LIGHT" and become humans instead of jackals.
It was a disaster. Morale amongst the troops at almost all levels and ranks has wilted. The "Iron Line" in the south of Mexico, is still attempting, with considerable success, to force Central Americans without entrance permits and appropriate papers as well as others who have been trundling through those precincts to be returned to the southern frontier.
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Interestingly enough…all the people who arrived illegally on the edge of the Rio Grande were aware that the people who had swum, crossed, or been delivered by human smugglers because they could live for free in the United States, had been assured that everything is free, especially for exploited and downtrodden immigrants. For Free.
All of these people have been foisted upon the United States of America and Texas by a fairly well organised and implemented invasion. Nicaraguan communists, Venezuelan marxist apparatchiks, especially pseudo Roman Catholic priests, bishops, and nuns and pseudo-members of the diaconate…and yes, other false-flag orthodox and protestant operatives are "helping the poor" at every corner, alley, and "respite centre".
This is not a joke, folks!!!!!!!!!! This is not a joke, folks!!!!! There are so many babies…there are so many children of single digit ages….and the "refugees'' say that "she" is my daughter, or she is my "mother", or I am the mother of that boy; but it turns out not to be so. In almost 40% of the cases a child did not biologically pertain in any way to the mother and the mother did not in any way pertain, especially biologically, to the child or children.
The purpose of Soros and the marxists and the other operatives is to break what little is left of the government bank…to put America into receivership. We have to understand that the people who hate us, hate us because they think that they deserve something that they have not earned….they do not care. The dedicated commies and socialists pretty much believe the bilge they spill, and they pour the venom from Satan's challis all over the "poor".
They themselves make sad movies and provide sad scenarios about how "we" (the oppressed poor) are abused, discriminated against, denied just because we are filthy and have venereal crabs and rashes, crawling all over themselves. They think that it is some fault of the Republicans and the stupid people who still believe in the Bible. The "popular culture" spends over 200% of their time in hedonism and sodomy and drugs and flying (via private Lear Jet) to Ixtupwidlblat in the Kepahwuppun outback to attend a 12 year-old girl's pronunciamentos about "Climate Change". I forgot that these people drank the last drops of Napoleon's private cache of 200 year old brandy and wine, that had rested another 200 years before the "Climate Change" warning prophesy and warning.
(As an aside, how can these people prophesy? How can a twelve year old girl prophesy and know, and stand to deliver to adults…all there is to know about geographic climate processes? How is it that last year, long articles came out talking about the glaciers impeding all nature of sea transport around the tip of South America.)
To the left is how the Straights of Magellan appear during these moments. Last year the little girl's people assured us and all of the acolytes of the dolt Al Gore (the one who plowed behind mules on the rocky and steep hillsides of Tennessee while tending his daddy's tobacco farms)...that the shipping lanes at the Straights of Magellan were closing due to the number of glaciers
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There are three people in this photograph.
Only one is a lying dolt. |
breaking off and clogging everything. Before long, according to them and the little girl, there would be an ice-bridge connecting the Antarctic Continent with the Continent of South Africa.
Interesting, is it not, how during the 1970s and 1980s, we were sadly advised that the world would end soon because of Global Warming. There were only 12 years left to us to try to save at least a remnant of what had been the "Green Planet"? We were repeatedly reminded that this disaster was due entirely to American Greed, Avarice, and Conspicuous Consumption. It should be instructive how, when Gore was dumped in the 2000 election by George Bush (also a mullet, but a somewhat good mullet), he dumped his frumpy wife and took took up with a lithe and wondrous honey. They bought a love-nest on the ocean side of the State of California.
Only one problem. The place AlGore bought was well below the point where he declared flatly that the force of Global Warming, all of that area would be inundated within the next few months with Antarctic and North Polar melt caused by the Republicans and people who had guns.
To reveal a fact not allowed on the "correct media", AlGore's love-nest…(and according to various women who were masseuses, AlGore was a walking love-nest)…the place he bought for his love-nester-in-sequence…never had its "feet" wet. The level of the impending melt of the Antarctic did not seem to menace AlBore's love nest, especially when it is noted that the actual sea level there receded by a two or three millimetres. Sorry, East Anglia University School of Climate Change and Republican Disasters.
It is almost spooky how Saint Peter and his choir of Angels keeping watch over Earth, have frequentlychanged the micro-climatic conditions to purposefully contradict all of Al Gore's Army forecasts upon hearing his/their pronouncements and the pronouncements of groups such as the East Anglia University's openly and obviously corrupt, mendacious, surreptitious, and downright hippy, white-trash sneering contempt for "normal people". Those "normal people" and their minions are armed with much better intellect and much greater understanding of climate, weather, and geo-climatic conditions.
This latter group (normal and accurate students of the matter) are almost quarantined against commenting publicly about any such topics on any "real" communication system (read 'mainstream media' ABCCBSMSNBCPBSNYTWP.ETC).
You all must forgive me…but my brother was one of the pre-eminent professors of these matters, and I am somewhat…or slightly considerably familiar…with these matters…and ALL OF IT IS RANCID BOLOGNA. Please conserve your electricity and do not throw your litter out. But please do not believe that wind-farms and inverse-proportional infrared zomboistic chromossplats are going to replace natural gas, heating oil, gasoline, diesel, and such.
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We have laboured little, but with significance, with our little word-blurb site over the years. But as it is said by a some Yankee…"The world will little note, nor long remember"…these passages. We shall try to send them over to the two off-spring we have produced…but even they have more important views and more important affairs to address. So this will be "relegated to the dustbins of History" relatively soon I am sure. Such is the way of life and the structure of things. We thank one and all for having accompanied us through this portion of our times….
More later…
EL GRINGO VIEJO
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