Author: Dick

Okay, here is a stupid question. If you’re an attorney and you like Congresswoman Mary Bono, are you pro-Bono?

I took the day off and drove to Fred. Actually, I drove past Fred to Dam B.

A little about Dam B b-fore I damn well start talking about Fred. Dam B is the name of a dam on the Neches River. The folks who planned on building dams planned a Dam A and a Dam B. Who knows, maybe even a Dam C, D and E. But only Dam B got built. It also is called Town Bluff Dam, because it is located in a community known as Town Bluff. During the 1960s, the name of the lake was changed to B.A. Steinhagen Lake. I would say that all adds up to an identity crisis. But it’s still a pretty lake.

Back to Fred. Fred, Texas, population 299, has a store and a park and as you can see a fire truck. Brad Whittington , who grew up in Fred, used the town as a setting for his novel: “Welcome to Fred.” I’ve never read it and I never heard of Whittington until doing some research about Fred on the Internet. I have read no one is really sure how Fred was named Fred. One would assume it was named for someone named Fred, like Fred Mertz (you remember the neighbors on “I Love Lucy,” Fred and Ethel Mertz?)It could have been named for someone who was actually called Freddie, like Freddie Fender, whose real name is Baldemar Huerta. Or perhaps it was just assigned a name by some postmaster general somewhere. “Here. You be Galveston. You be Corpus Christi. And you … you be Fred!”

To be honest, I don’t know if anyone knows for sure the origins of Fred. I read a story some time ago about an old-timer who thought he knew the secret of how Fred became Fred, but as people age they tend to either forget things or pull your leg (or ask that you pull their finger!)

It’s a mystery to me and that is just fine. It was a nice trip to the country, all in all. I got to listen to some whispering pine trees once some breeze finally appeared. You want to know what they were whispering? “Freddie’s dead. That’s what I said.” Only kidding. It also wouldn’t be a decent summer day trip to the country (don’t pay any attention to what the calendar says — it’s summer here) without some homegrown tomatoes. I stopped off in Spurger, just south of Fred, and picked me up a pound or two along with some banana peppers.

Sometimes you just need to take a day off and go take a look at what’s really important. Like tomatoes. And, of course, Fred.

I’m going, I’m going where the water tastes like wine
Well I’m going where the water tastes like wine
We can jump in the water, stay drunk all the time — Alan (Blind Owl) Wilson, “Going Up the Country,” Canned Heat.

It’s been almost a month since I have moved here and I have yet to venture to the woods. There is no particular reason. I haven’t found the need to go to the woods. I’ve been to the beach. Now I hear it’s infested with seaweed from the Sargasso Sea. Bummer dude.

Somehow it just feels like the right time to go “up the country” to the woods. I say that because you can’t really go down to the country because you’ll end up in the Sargasso Sea. I don’t know where I’ll go. Perhaps I’ll go to the Big Thicket. Maybe I will visit Cow Creek. Most likely I will find a little dirt road on which I can pull down, park and listen to the soft song that the wind makes when it rustles through pine trees.

Maybe some of my friends question my decision to move here. But I like being nestled in between the Gulf of Mexico to my south and the East Texas pineywoods to my north. Those places have their own little charms, as does my neighborhood. So do I, when you get to know me.

Got to get going … sometime soon.

Film star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was acquitted after three trials in the rape and murder of a young actress in 1921

Michael Jackson was found innocent of all charges Monday by a jury of his peers. Wow. It would scare the living daylights out of me to think that Mikey was really judged by a jury of his peers. Just imagining he has peers gives me the willies. In different ages in our history, Jackson would have been a)burned at the stake b)put in a circus freak show, or c) put in a circus freak show where he would be burned at the stake.

But he is free of all charges. Go and sin no more child. And remember to keep little boys out of your bed.

Another “trial of the century” goes into the books. The first real entertainment celebrity trial was that of film star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle. He was accused of raping and murdering a young actress during a debauchery-fest in San Francisco in 1921. Arbuckle was the biggest movie star at the time. That combined with the details of the alleged crime being particularly hideous fed quite a buzz among newspapers of the day. Sensationalist newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst allegedly stirred the pot, making Arbuckle’s trials particularly juicy for consumption by readers. Hung juries ended the first two trials against Arbuckle and he walked on the third. But he never regained his stature in film again and died at age 45.

Many of us have already witnessed supposed “trials of the century” during recent times. O.J., of course, springs to mind. One has to wonder if 24-hour news cycles were around, would other trials have been hyped as the biggest ever? Take Jack Ruby’s trial, for instance. He was the only figure ever tried that had any connection with the Kennedy assassination. God, he allegedly killed a presidential assassin, who killed a Kennedy no less. Can you just imagine what a sensation that would bring these days?

By the way, do you remember what happened in the Ruby case? Well, Jack was found guilty and sentenced to death. But the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned his verdict, saying that he had not been able to obtain a fair trial because of the excessive publicity that surrounded his case. Ruby died while awaiting a new trial.

If you ask many Americans, I doubt that they would have been able to tell you what happened to Ruby. I had to brush up on that bit of history myself. It makes you wonder if everyone will remember the outcome of the O.J. Simpson trial or the Michael Jackson trial 40 years from now? I doubt it.

Meanwhile, I wonder what celeb is next up on the docket?

Hello down there!

This is where I live looks like from 111 nautical miles into space. It’s part of NASA’s Earth to Space database of photos taken during space shuttle missions. The above photo probably doesn’t have the best resolution, it’s actually enhanced a bit from the hazy image I got off the NASA Web site. But it gives a reasonable resemblance of Beaumont, Texas, which is dead center in the photo. Sabine Lake is at the bottom right, just before its rendezvous with the Gulf of Mexico.

I like such photos because objects look smaller than they appear. That is not to say objects don’t look small enough. But distances are nothing. People are all vacuum-packed like a bag of the locally-made Seaport Coffee, which I have come to adopt as my own coffee, by the way.

It’s a matter of perspective and you know I’m just mad about perspective. My cares and worries and frets and petty annoyances are nothing in this view from space. I’m just stuck somewhere inside and watching the sky as something from the sky watches me. No crime exists, no war, no traffic, no overdue bills.

Watching life from above is kind of a great equalizer. Sky-high equals peace.