Month: November 2007

The old, red brick streets of downtown Nacogdoches, a.k.a., “The Oldest Town in Texas.”

It all seemed so familiar. Big pine trees, Mound Street, my old apartment on Price Street and the red brick pavement of Main in downtown Nacogdoches.

The Spainards established in 1716 the mission Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe de los Nacogdoches at a Caddo Indian settlement that would ultimately become Nacogdoches, Texas. I worked my way through college there as a firefighter from the late 1970s to the middle 1980s. I left after graduating from college. I came back for several years for what turned out to be a relatively “slacker” period of my life. Then I came back a third time as a journalist during the early 1990s.

Of course, a lot happened in between the time the Father Margil, head honcho of the missions, supposedly ended a drought by whacking two holes in the ground with a stick to create twin springs known as “Los Ojos de Padre Margil” (The Eyes of Father Margil)and the time I first came to Nacogdoches. That is just as much took place between the time I left in 1996 and visited during the past two days. What I am getting at is Nacogdoches, Texas, has oodles of history and I have quite a history with Nacogdoches as well.

I lived in this sometimes rustic, often-times entertaining town during most of my 20s, my early 30s and early 40s. My college friends always joked about the subversive nickname for the town that the local tourist bureau wouldn’t have touched with a 10-foot Pole: “Nacogdoches — Home of Virgin Pines and Tall Women.”

All three periods of time that I lived in Nac, of course, are pretty much the ages which form your very being for the rest of your life which, I suppose, means that Nacogdoches left me a very warped individual.

My Thanksgiving was spent with another warped individual, my friend Rick, whom I don’t believe I have seen in about 20 years. We caught up on who all was still around, who remained there as burn-outs and various and sundry other commonalities that resulted in our spending time together in the first place.

On my way out of Nacogdoches this morning I drove past Stephen F. Austin State University, where I graduated and which was generally the glue for my connections with most of the acquaintances I made there. That is similarly true whether these people actually went to school or not. College was why I ended up there in the first place. But the people and the charm of the town was what kept pulling me back.

Past SFA I drove down Mound Street and its old Victorian homes, to the short Price Street where I had my first apartment, before literally hitting the bricks downtown and making an exit once more with the local classic rock station playing Z.Z. Top’s “Jesus Just Left Chicago” as the closing theme.

I told a friend there once, several years ago, that I would never move back to Nac. The friend, Melanie, who moved back there after spending her post-college years in Austin, told me one should “never say never.” That is good advice I suppose. The truth is, however, I doubt I will ever return for good there.

In a fit of clear thinking this morning, I finally figured out that Nacogdoches is like that one great love you had and lost, or you lost it. Do what you will to get it out of your head, but that love will always be there and your thoughts will remain wistful about just how wonderful that relation was. That is, of course, with the tendency to forget any of the bad or the painful.

Well, it’s good to know that I suppose. Perhaps the thought will bring some clarity during my next visit. I doubt it though and really don’t care. Clarity is vastly overrated.

Which one is the real turkey?

Packing for a Thanksgiving trip to my old stomping grounds — Nacogdoches. Ah, it’s a good thing walls don’t talk because if they did in some of the places I lived in there, the Nac folks might not let me come back. It seems while I am up there our first real cold front will blow through. So here I am in 80-degree weather trying to imagine just how cold it might feel in order to pack the most comfortable clothes. Layering is, I suppose, in order. I just don’t like feeling too cold and then too hot. I have become such a creature of the indoors it seems. It used to not bother me all that much going into freezing-ass weather. Well, I do admit when I first started fighting fires it could get pretty freaking cold riding on the tailboard of a pumper. I quickly invested in some thermals. Oh well, my bag is not getting packed sitting here reminiscing.

During the week I watched a report on CNN about a young Marine who was badly wounded and his face disfigured from a suicide bomb in Iraq. In the process, he also received brain damage, had his left arm blown off as well as some fingers on his right hand.

This report was centered on how the Department of Veterans Affairs had been ridiculous in their responding to his request for disability. That’s kind of a sterile explanation but when I think about how often and how seriously that the VA screws over former soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, Coast Guard that it kind of makes me somewhat mad.

Despite the title of this rant, I bear no ill will toward CNN and the fact that they had such a large response that they had to stop receiving comments on the story. No, I actually praise CNN for their work on exposing the kind of crap that befalls the nation’s veterans who have the misfortune of having for financial or other reasons to resort to care by the VA.

As I have said in this space before one’s care within the VA system depends on where one goes. But some of their problems at a specific facility or regional office or hospital points to the larger problem that the VA needs to be torn down and rebuilt.

Were I to rank my medical care overall in the VA over the past 16 or so years I have mostly used it as my primary health providers, I would have to give them a weak “C” for their medical abilities. This is only my point of view. The VA did save my brother’s life by providing a routine check-up which found through X-ray that he had lung cancer. Part of one of his lungs were removed several years ago and his follow-ups have thankfully been free of malignancy.

But as we know, a medical system is not merely doctors and what they do or cannot do. It also includes the administrative aspect which can sometimes be more painful than some of the dealings with the health care itself. My contention includes the long waits for specialists, when one sees a specialist it will likely be an intern or physician’s assistant and the most maddening of all to me, their incompetent financial administration.

Recent investigative reports by both CNN and CBS are not really news to those who have felt the overwhelming frustration of those veterans who have had to deal with a VA medical system that often makes one feel they are in a house of insanity. But I nonetheless am glad to see some of the media exposing just how bad the VA is. Perhaps it might someday lead to improvements. Of course, being an original founder of the Pessimist Club (motto: We would meet but we are afraid no one would show up) I don’t see any hope in immediate sight. But one can hope, wish, write letters to their elected officials and organize big protests outside our nation’s VA hospitals DEMANDING that better care be given the nation’s veterans. I know, needless to say although I will, that the VA will spin any answers they have to give to those who attempt to make them accountable. But I think most of the public can see through their snake oil sales. That is, except this one guy I know. I mean, he would buy beans from you if he thought it might grow a vine shooting into the sky and leading to …

There’s hope yet for those of us who have reached their fifth decade. That hope is Mike Flynt, who at 59 is playing linebacker for Sul Ross State University in Alpine, Texas.

Flynt, who has to be in some kind of incredible shape, was kicked off his college team 37 years ago and after talking with a friend at a class reunion figured out that he still had a year of eligibility.

His 82-year-old mother got to see him play recently. She plays forward for a minor-league hockey team in Omaha. No, not really. Can’t you tell when I am kidding? What’s the matter with you? Anyhow?