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Political theater on Cedar Creek Lake

You go to the lake house for a week and do the normal lake house routine. You fix things. You have a beer. Then you have another. It’s good that you fixed things.

In the morning, you get the boat all ready and  you take off for a round of fishing. You come home, your luck was worse than poor. You take a nap. You get up. The wife has the ribeyes all thawed and you are ready to fire up the old grill. You eat. You sit out on the porch and enjoy the lake sounds, the loud outboard motors, the drunks next door, the loud music from across the lake. It’s time for bed. So much for the first full day. But what about tomorrow?

Well, if the lake where your home is located is Cedar Creek Lake, some 60 miles southeast of Dallas, then you might think of going to catch a performance of the Seven Points City Council. It seems there are always fireworks there, perhaps you might see someone get arrested there or even shot.

Seven Points is a town of 1,334, according to the 2009 U.S. Census estimate. It’s grown somewhat over the years with Cedar Creek, a reservoir built on the Trinity River, being a fishing and recreation haven for both East Texans and those from the Dallas-Fort Worth area. It also seems to have a history of the worst that comes out of small town politics.

A political donnybrook of epic proportions, proportionally speaking, erupted in 1997 when then-Mayor Marian Hill was removed from office by the city council for a number of zoning law violations and some matters over purchasing a pager and copying machine. Hill had divorced earlier that year. Keep that in the back of your mind.

Not long after she was removed from office, Hill was prosecuted for a number of the zoning law violations, something that had never or rarely had been done in that town.  Hill later claimed in a lawsuit that her ex-husband, the town’s police chief, zoning official and some other city council members had cooked up a scheme to “run her out of town,” according to an ultimate ruling by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Read it and good luck following it.

I remember reading about all of this and my thoughts returned to Cedar Creek Lake this weekend. A group of my college friends and I got together at some friends’ place near Fort Worth. One of this group of friends had access to a lake house when we were in college, as his parents owned the very pleasant getaway. When one or more of this group of friends or I were there we would generally be the ones making noise, fueled usually by keg beers or playing “quarters” with what kind of “bear in a bottle” that was handy.

This afternoon I decided to look at some newspaper Web sites of towns in the Cedar Creek area and I came across a story in the Cedar Creek Pilot that made me think I was just reading a continuation of the Marian Hill story in some form or fashion.

The extremely thorough and often hilarious news story written by the Pilot’s Art Lawler told of the hijinks of the now former mayor in which the ex official engaged in a tirade in the city council chambers after a quorum for their meeting failed. The failing quorum, caused by three members missing, seems to be a serial occurance there since this made the fourth-straight failed meeting since a new mayor was elected.

Now, just as it takes a program to know the players in the Marian Hill story, one likewise needs to be “read into” this affair before trying to figure just who hates whom and why. The so-called “shouting match” at the council was allegedly at the behest of former mayor Gerald Taylor, after his reported political enemy Mayor Joe Dobbs canceled the meeting.

Taylor was arrested in December 2009 on charges he cashed personal checks using municipal court funds. The city judge, Monica Corker,  had been arrested the month before on charges she helped Taylor cash the checks.

As for the source of animosity between Taylor and Dobbs, I’m not sure. Dobbs is openly gay and he says that Taylor and others have a vendetta against him. Dobbs was also fire chief and demoted Taylor from assistant fire chief to firefighter after ethical concerns, he said in an article on the Dallas Voice Web site, the DF-W area’s leading gay-lesbian newspaper. Taylor reportedly responded to  Dobbs with a rather colorful homophobic epithet.

Dobbs say some in Seven Points are “playing games with him,” the article, written by David Webb, said. While that remains a distinct possibility just because of the way certain people are wired, it also is possible that Dobbs is just a player himself in what seems to be continual political theater at Seven Points. It seems a little bit like old time soap opera fare. Watch and then tune back in sometime 20 years later and you catch up but everything seems pretty much the same. That is a lot like the way it is in Seven Points. The more things change, the more they the remain the same old thing.

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Hotter than Dallas

Do you see the little graphic to the left? It is what the National Weather Service uses to illustrate the forecast for tomorrow in Arlington, Texas. There are also more of these symbols. One  is for this afternoon, another for Sunday and still another for Monday.

It means that the temp is going to be hotter ‘n hell. Hotter than a $2 pistol. Hot enough to fry a construction worker on the sidewalk holding an egg in one hand and Jimmy Dean Pure Pork Sausage in the other.

I mention this for Arlington is where I am going this weekend. Why? Is it not hot enough where I live 45 miles north of Sabine Pass, Texas? Well, it will be hot in Beaumont. This is, after all, mid-July. But there will be a slight chance of thunderstorms and not nearly as hot as in North Central Texas.

My mind usually equates North Central Texas with heat and big thunderstorms and hail. I once saw a storm rain down baseball-sized hail and left the ground in April look as if a blizzard had come through. Oh, the winters are cold there too. I’ve lived in several places in Central and North Central Texas for various periods of time and found the weather is most disagreeable with me.

But I am going to visit some old college friends. These friends were educated, as I  was at the “School of Steve” or “Steve  U.” a.k.a. Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, By God, Texas. So I know my friends are smart enough to have plenty of air conditioning. Thank goodness. Because it’s going to get hot I tell you.

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How to heal a broken oil company? A little congressional a** kissing

Boy howdy, talk about kicking an oil company when they’re down, or up, or down.

BP may have finally stopped their well from spewing oil all over the Gulf Coast after a test of a containment cap that had previously leaked. At least, things look rosy for the moment. Of course, that is how BP has managed this environmental disaster for the last three months after the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig went boom, killing 11 crew members.

“BP will fix it and make it all better. I know that because I am from the Coast and I met a man named Scratch at the Crossroads down by Clarksdale who said he’d make me rich and play the guitar like Robert Johnson if I made a TV commercial for BP.”

So it would truly be some good news finally if the cap continues to hold back the old oil. We won’t mention just yet the clean up that will continue and will hopefully intensify once the oil is finally pronounced stop-ped (like, really stopped, man.) Let’s just keep looking for all the bright spots so that the massive Republican congressional ass-kissing of BP doesn’t seem so out of whack with the American sentiment that, actually, believes the BP oil leak is really a bad thing.

And there is this. Some members of Congress want an inquiry into whether BP helped grease the wheels to release the man convicted of bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. Let’s see that incident killed 270, including 11 on the ground. Bodies everywhere you go. Um, pile it on like fire wood.

I wonder which U.S. Members of Congress, of the conservative Republican ilk one might assume, will bow down to their masters at BP and cry out: “We’re sorry. So sorry. That I could be such a fool … ” Or “that we could be such fools.” Yeah, something like that. Then, “Smack!” The next sound you hear will the collective loud lips of the Caucus of House Conservatives puckering up for BP. Good for what ails every suffering oil company that might just like to cut corners and might just help let terrorists go free if it gives them free reign in a nation’s oil fields. That’s not say BP is a suffering oil company such as that. Oh no. Uh uh. Nope.

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I don't really know, but I told you so about Robert Gibbs

See! I told you so. I told you that White House Press Secretary Robert “I’m A Loser” Gibbs was making a terrible mistake when he said it looked as if the Democrats would lose the House during the November mid-term elections. It was a gaffe! Just as I told you so. Actually, that is not what I told you at all.

Just as one shouldn’t write under the influence of alcohol or drugs, although Edgar Allen Poe sure gave it the old Baltimore try, one shouldn’t write under the influence of pain. Unfortunately, I do that sometime. What is even worse, I write under the influence of pain, mostly without telling anyone. All kinds profundities appear and why would that happen?

There are times that I may write something  such as “much to my chagrin” and I write it just because it is easier to write a cliche than it is to think and explain what one is actually trying to say. I have no idea what “much to my chagrin” means. It don’t mean much to me, but it means much to my chagrin. My little pet chagrin that I keep in a cage with its tiny little wheel.

No. I am lying. I know what “much to my chagrin” means. I was just trying to fool the reader into thinking I was coming clean after years of writing like I know what I am doing. But I really know what I am doing. I just don’t want the reader to know that all the time so I can lure that person into my web of comfort. To let them feel, for just one moment, like they are much more superior to this person writing this garbage. Why would I do that? I haven’t the clue.Well, yes, I actually do. You see, I am a habitual liar. No I’m not. I just lied about being a liar so I could confuse the reader. And why in the world would I want to confuse the reader, the person who reads my words?

Beats me. Much to my chagrin.

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Calling Doctor Howard, Doctor Fine, Doctor Howard

“Ouch, damn back.”

I say stronger words than those when I complain of a back pain, so why not have a formal conversation with my back?

Uh, perhaps because it cannot talk back. My back don’t give me no back talk. That sounds as if it could have been a great 50s R & B song. Which is a perfect segue because I was thinking about something from almost that long ago related to my aching back.

If there was one thing my brothers and I could agree upon, it was our devotion for “The Three Stooges” and their memorable bits. Now even 50 years later if one of my brothers mentions a backache — other than heart problems back disorders are legendary among the five of us brothers — it immediately turns into a Stooges’ bit.

“Oh, you got a weak back?”

“Yeah.”

“How long have you had it?”

“Oh, about a week back.”

When your back gives you loads of misery it seems humor is a good potion to try when you don’t have something stronger on hand, like Valium or Morphine. However, a good “adjustment” sometimes helps too.

I don’t get my back adjusted anymore because I am afraid my spine would snap like a drought-stricken corn stalk. But when I was younger and would get muscle spasms in my back, a trip to my doctor or the old retired chiropractor would seem pretty helpful.

Even in my mid-20s I would get back spasms. Some probably had to do with my line of work as a firefighter. Or perhaps they came from other activities — like well, going to ice cream socials, right. My doctor was an osteopath, which is a doctor trained in medicine but takes a more holistic approach to treatment. One such approach is giving adjustments like chiropractors do. These adjustments were quite helpful. I kept getting them for quite awhile until my doctor started having his own back problems. Too bad the physician couldn’t heal himself.

I also used to go see the old retired chiropractor who lived just up the street from me. He wouldn’t practice unless someone would come by and ask, and then he only charged a $10 bill for his service.

This is one of these days I have an aching back. From what, I don’t know. I have just had these back spasms since I was a young adult. Maybe these spasms originated 30 years ago we loaded ammunition on our ship for our 3-inch cannons. The ammo weighed about 50 pounds apiece. Once, when we were leaving drydock we stopped at Seal Beach and picked up all of our ammo. I was part of a human chain loading those suckers all afternoon and into the night. Another time we loaded from a “Vert-rep,” for “vertical replenishment.” This meant unloading shells from a huge helicopter and stowing them about three decks below. I don’t know if either loading caused any permanent damage. I doubt it did. It sure made me respect the hell out of having smaller weapons to fire, if you get my drift.

I guess I will try treating myself the old-fashioned way — with an Old Fashioned! No, just kidding. I will take my medicine as prescribed and then jump in bed and pull the covers over my head if that doesn’t work. I will also try to laugh by thinking of the Three Stooges and their ridiculous bits. At least Doctors Curly, Larry and Moe don’t charge you outrageous rates and send you back for test after test after test, with seemingly no result in sight. Of course, they have no malpractice insurance either. Nyuck, Nyuck, Nyuck.