Author: Dick

Republican U.S. Sen. George Allen of Virginia finds a black man he has not yet offended in a barber shop.

Some interesting tidbits can be found in the new report released today by watchdog group Texans for Public Justice: “Keeping Texas Weird: Bankrolling the 2006 Gubernatorial Race.” The report analyzes the $43 million raised by the four Texas goober-natorial candidates with a listing of top donors and to which special interest groups they represent.

Now a lot of the donors don’t really surprise me a whole hell of a lot.

Bob and Doylene Perry of Houston are the biggest “special friends” of Rick Perry during the period January 2003 through June 2006. The Houston Perrys, if memory serves me, are not related to the Paint Creek (now Austin) Perrys. Bob Perry was the money man behind the Swift Boat Veterans who helped torpedo John Kerry’s run for president. Rick also has AT & T, East Texas chicken magnate Bo Pilgrim, Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton and tons of other people you would expect as generous donors.

Democratic candidate Chris Bell has oil and lawyers giving to his campaign, not a bad combination when it comes to money. Some names familiar in Democratic circles, not surprisingly, show up on his top donor list such as former U.S. Ambassador to Sweden Lyndon Olson Jr. of Waco and Beaumont attorney Gilbert T. Adams III.

Of course, independent candidate Carole Keeton McClellan Rylander Strayhorn Epsilon Sigma Alpha, has been in Texas politics for awhile so it isn’t too shocking to see some of the moneyed names on her list of big givers nor the industries to which they belong. For example, there is Beaumont King of Torts Walter Umprhey Jr. at No. 3. Harlan Crow of the Dallas real estate Crows comes in at No. 10. The so-called “tough grandma” as well has assorted other lawyers, oil bidness folks, and Chicken Dude Pilgrim hedging his bets with a $50,000 nest egg.

Perhaps the most baffling among donors are on the list belonging to otra indepdent Kinky Friedman. Why it would be no surprise that his honor roll of contributors would be unusual is obvious as the Kinkster is, well, the Kinkster. But the one business sector I would not peg Friedman as having a lot of ties to is that of the hair care industry. After all, have you ever seen Kinky’s hair? All I’ve ever seen is that big, black goofy-looking cowboy hat.

But lo and beholden, “shampoo magnate” (to quote the TPJ report) John H. McCall of the Armstrong McCalls is Kinky’s largest donor having given a hair-raising $851,000. Farouk Shami of Farouk Hair Systems is No. 9 on the Kinky roll of dough. And Brenda Gray is listed by the TPJ as affiliated with Peri Haircare Salon of Louisville, Ky.

So the hair care lobby’s prominence in the Texas governor’s race clearly creates a big WTF? at the very least. I certainly have no idea why the hair people are backing Kinky and I have heard no explanation as of yet as to why the hair force is among those who have something Kinky under their dryers.

If I were to speculate, and this is only rank speculation of the highest rank, I would guess that perhaps Friedman really does have some grand strategy up his well-worn black coat sleeve. Just maybe if Friedman gets all the hair care people on his side, then Rick Perry may have difficulty getting his signature “do” done down the line. The incumbent governor would then look like any other Austin pol with a cheap haircut and a pair of boots thus, like Sampson, losing his power because his hair no longer works politically.

It certainly could be the reason behind the Kinkster’s support by the hair potentates. Of course, it certainly could not be the reason as well. More likely it’s the latter.

Hurricane Rita was knocking on my door in this satellite picture on Sept. 22, 2005.

One year ago today I was in my apartment in Beaumont, Texas, trying to decide where I was going to stay when Hurricane Rita made landfall. After hearing forecasts the day before that Rita would 1) Hit the middle Texas coast. 2) Land around the Surfside/Galveston area. 3) Strike the Bolivar Peninsula, I awoke that morning to find out Rita was headed straight for us on the extreme upper Texas coast. A mandatory evacuation for Jefferson County had been called that morning.

I had touched base with the publication for which I had been doing some freelancing and I had no specific assignment. Instead, if I was going to be in the Beaumont area during the storm then the publication would be able to use me. But I just couldn’t work out the logistics for it without a specific job, so I evacuated about 8 that evening to Newton, about 60 miles northeast of Beaumont. I stayed that evening and through the storm at my brother’s home, which was the house in which I was raised. While I had heard all sorts of horror stories that day about evacuations taking place both in the Beaumont and Houston areas, I fortunately had only a two-hour drive in travelling that 60 miles. Make no mistake, it was bumper-to-bumper on first Texas 12 from I-10 in Vidor to Texas 87 in Dewyville and then on to Newton. But it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. That was a refrain I would say quite often over the next month or so.

In the early morning hours of Saturday, the 24th of September, Rita made her presence known all over Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana. That included the house on the Old Bon Wier Highway in which I was staying. I actually slept a few hours before some loud booming from exploding electrical transformers woke me up sometime around 2 a.m. Outside, the continuous roar of the wind could be heard and it didn’t stop at that pace until almost daybreak. The noise was fortunate in one respect. It prevented us from hearing the huge pine trees being uprooted around the place.

When the roaring stopped and it was safe to go out, I saw more trees and downed power lines than I had ever seen before. While there were some homes damaged and even destroyed where I was up in the woods, I would see damage that seemed almost unimaginable in the months to come in places such as Sabine Pass, Texas, and Cameron, La.

After a brief trip to Allen, Texas, where I am currently residing, I returned to Beaumont one week after the storm to see the damaged heaped upon that city. In terms of wind damage, Newton had been struck with about the same wind velocity as Beaumont. Gusts had probably been in the 90-100 mph range. But Beaumont, with a population of about 112,000, had many more structures to provide targets for the storm than my small hometown.

I was lucky upon returning in not only being damage-free but also by having electricity restored the second day I was back. It took a month for my brother’s power to be operable. It would be weeks before most stores and restaurants were back to normal. It would be months for still other businesses. Like many others in Rita’s aftermath, I profited to some extent from the storm. If it wasn’t for freelance stories for a certain publication about the post-Rita world, I may have starved to death.

Rita was unlike anything I have ever been through and I’m sure that goes for many other friends and relatives who also experienced the hurricane. I guess in some respects, going through a hurricane is kind of like going through other earth-altering and life-changing experiences. Everybody has their stories. Even those who fled the storm.

I hate that Rita blew the hell out of places such as Cameron, Holly Beach and Johnson’s Bayou in Louisiana and Sabine Pass in Texas. I’m sorry for the loss that people suffered from Rita from the Gulf of Mexico to more than 100 miles inland. While the numbers of those killed and injured were thankfully few, I regret that anyone had to suffer through and after the storm. But regrets aside, I was exceedingly lucky as was my family and my friends who went through Rita.

And without a doubt, Rita was one hell of a thrill ride with admission that was free.

MISSING: Jeanette Watson, 77, of Newton, Texas. Last seen at 8:45 p.m., Aug. 28, 2006, outside a truck stop in Logansport, La. She is 5-feet 4-inches, weight about 160 lbs., with blue eyes. If you have information contact the Newton County Sheriff’s Office at (409)379-3636 or the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Normally I don’t use this blog space for something both worthwhile and serious, but I would like to call attention to the disappearance of a woman from my hometown of Newton, Texas. Newton County is the state’s easternmost county and thus borders Louisiana.

Watson left her home in Newton County to visit friends in Tenaha, Texas. News reports indicate she was last seen leaving a truck stop in Logansport, La., where she had supposedly won $1,000 playing video poker. Her automobile was later found burning off Louisiana Hwy. 191, in Sabine Parish. To read more about this just click this right here.

I don’t know this woman and I’m not sure if I know any of her family back in the area where I was raised. Also, the prospects of a good outcome on this case are poor. Nonetheless, if someone happens to read this who may know something helpful give the FBI or Sheriff Joe Walker in Newton County a call.

I found myself Wednesday in the uncomfortable position of siding with the Bush administration over the speech by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to the UN General Assembly.

It isn’t the fact that Chavez, a real punk, called Bush “El Diablo.” Sometimes I harbor such thoughts myself. And in the larger sense Chavez and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad both have some legitimate gripes about Ugly American foreign policy of which Gee Dubya and company have made even more horrific.

No, what galls me is Chavez goes on stage in a place that should bring the world together through diplomacy and trashes the U.S. president and by extension its citizens.

Now you might be asking: Isn’t that what this nation is all about? Free speech? Apparently not. Even though the Bush administration says we are free to speak they would rather we not speak ill of their administration or their ill-advised war in Iraq. But Chavez didn’t speak in the U.S. per se. He spoke on international ground at the U.N. and he made the faux pas of insulting our nation’s institutions (regardless of the fact that our president may belong in some type of an institution).

I’ve said it here before by using the example of Lyndon B. Johnson. Some Texans could get mighty pissed when outsiders started insulting their fellow homeboy LBJ. The saying we had back then for LBJ applies today to Gee Dubya(less in a provincial sense though because Gee Dubya is a transplanted Yankee): He may be a bastard, but he’s our bastard.

Pulling a rickshaw through some Third World city could be considered an optimum workout for the new mommy.

This morning on my walk on the hike-bike trail along the creek I was suddenly and unexpectedly descended upon by The Baby Runners. These are the relatively new, in-the-zone mommies who zip by with their babies firmly planted in what is known as a “jogging stroller.”

I saw the first one, then another, then another, then another one right after the other. I thought maybe they all got together in the wooded loop for a quick cigarette or joint, then off they go!

It probably is great exercise pushing a baby around in a stroller while jogging. The babies didn’t seem to mind although I swear one had this godawful expression on its face as if it was concerned that Mommy might accidentally veer off, crashing through the underbrush and plunging into the creek.

Personally, I think pulling an old-fashioned rickshaw around would be a good workout for anyone (but me) and especially new mommies wanting to trim down just a skosh. I mean, screw the rubber buggy baby bumper. A rickshaw would be the H2 Hummer of the jogging strollers. Not only could Mommy get her exercise and take the small fry for a stroll at a good clip, she could could run to the store, the dry cleaners, the post office, all the while zipping in and out of traffic.

Maybe the baby rickshaw SUV will be the wave of the future in the Gordian knot of balancing new motherhood, physical fitness and low emission transportation.