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A one-day to and from riding the ‘dog’

Top o’ the morning to you! That’s right, morning. Well, speaking of blowing it, I blew it in that I wrote my post on the bus from Beaumont to Houston this morning and forgot to publish it. My memory is shot. Speaking of shot, I am passing by Minute Maid Park in Houston as I write this. Shot being the word because the Houston Astros are about to play its last game as a National League team. Let’s hope the Lastros get a little better next year in its debut season as an American League product, like losses only in the double digits.

Incredible how I made it to this bus. I finished my appointment at the VA in time to take a jam-packed bus to a stop near the Houston Metro Rail line. Then I rode to the Downtown Transit Center, just a couple of blocks from Greyhound. My ticket was for a 6:05 p.m. bus that supposedly gets back to “Beaumont-Vidor” around 8 o’clock. More on Vidor in a moment. But I made it just as the gate locked on the 4 o’clock bus that allegedly arrives at 5:30 p.m. That’s not going to happen with all the stop-n-go with the bus heading toward I-10 at the beginning of rush hour. Hopefully, I will be back a bit earlier than I had planned.

My truck is parked in Rose City. That is a freeway truck stop spot on I-10 just across the Orange County line headed toward Louisiana. That is where the Beaumont Greyhound station is now located, having moved several months ago from its long-time stretch downtown on Magnolia Street. It is considered by Greyhound as the “Beaumont-Vidor” bus station now although its closer to downtown Beaumont than Vidor. I guess downtown “revitalization” is like the weather. People do a lot of talking about it but do nothing. The bus station is but one piece of downtown moved out into the nether lands. First Baptist Church, which takes up a whole city block between Calder and Broadway avenues, is being moved out to the West End. It makes me wonder if the great work the church does for our less fortunate brothers and sisters will be continued once it moves out into the land of milk and honey. I hope so, one never knows when one is going to need that help one day.

Traveling by bus isn’t quite the adventure it was during the days of my youth. I guess that’s a good thing, for me. Why the bus even has electrical outlets and WiFi. And the WiFi works.

Bus stations are certainly fewer and farther in between nowadays. Why I can remember in the old days — time to roll your eyes boys and girls — when every little mud hole and town that was big enough for a city limit sign had a bus station. Of course, there were more bus companies than just Greyhound back then as well. Let’s consider my trip today to the VA hospital in Houston.

The bus route from Beaumont to Houston — a straight shot west on Interstate 10 — now travels to Port Arthur on U.S. 69/96/287 where it stops at some Latino bodega on Gulfway Drive a.k.a. State Highway 87. The bus then picks up Texas 73 to Winnie, which is not named after Winnie the Pooh, or at least I don’t believe that is the case. The route jumps back on I-10 and makes another stop at a convenience store on the north side of the interstate in Baytown before heading downtown to the Houston bus station.

On the bus I’m now riding it is “an express” to Rose City as this puppy’s major destination is New Orleans and, perhaps even Miami, or Cuba.

We just now passed a traffic SNAFU that held us up for awhile. It looks as if three Army trucks were somehow involved. It looked more like a breakdown than an accident. One certainly hopes so. It is already 5:30 and we are at least 30 or so miles from Beaumont. If I make it back by the time I intended to depart Houston I will feel lucky indeed. I really better quit while I’m ahead now. Or as one of my old hippie friends used to say: “Better quit while I’m a head.”

 

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Of “cold fronts,” lovebugs and sanity

The hint of a declining summer — I hesitate in using the word “fall” for describing early September weather in Southeast Texan — has produced a bit of excitement. It is not the type of excitement that makes one go naked and running down the avenue screaming. Nonetheless, several people I encountered today expressed enthusiasm for the “cool” Canadian air that is forecast for the beginning of a new week. Lows in the 60s and high temperatures in the mid-80s are enough for even the most petulant Southeast Texan to “turn that frown upside down.” Jeez, you don’t know how long I’ve been waiting to use that term, that hokey, bromidic saying that I also despise.

Being September the hope of generally cooler temps sometime by November isn’t all that fills the air around the southeastern corner of Texas. And I think I can speak for most who live in or are visiting this area when I say that of what I speak is not the least bit a cause for elation. I give you the lovebug or as we like to say around here: “Thuh luuuv-buggg.”

Earlier this afternoon I was waiting in the grocery store aisle to buy some cooking spray. Yes, I use it most of the time to cook something in a pan. No, I need not explain. A lady was examining the various cooking sprays — used to there was only Pam, lovely young thing — and she asked: “Is this the kind you use on your car for lovebugs?” She went on to explain that if you spray it on your car the love bugs will come right off when washing it. I had never heard that, or if I did, I don’t remember it.

Perusing the Internet, where you get the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth including half-truths and non-truths, a number of sites attest to the abilities of cooking spray — to spray on a pan before cooking. Yes, it seems from several quick looks online that Pam, or other cooking sprays, can help facilitate lovebug removal when washing your car. Unfortunately, it also can fry you up a mess of baked Plecia nearctica. Had I known this, I would have thrown myself down on the grocery store deck and would have prevented that lady from continuing about her business until she promised to only apply Pam for its intended uses.

Or not.

The late John A. Jackman, a professor and entemologist at Texas A & M University, said perhaps the sanest way to deal with the amorous insects was, well, to deal with them:

 “There is no easy solution to lovebug problems. It may be necessary to learn to cope with lovebugs with a variety of methods for a few weeks each year.”

Sane is as sane does, especially when it is your own sanity.

 

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Someone stole my radio antenna perhaps to smoke drugs but the issue isn’t black and white

My truck radio antenna was stolen about a week ago. I was riding along, expecting to hear some noise on the radio and sure enough, noise is all I heard. A static-like hissing noise. I happened to look out the windshield and said: “Holy s**t, my antenna’s gone.”

Looking at where my antenna once stood I noticed that the base of the structure was gone. I looked closer and could see the little grooves where it appears the mast could be screwed in, or perhaps in this case, out.

I originally thought: “WTF?” I have an 11-year-old Toyota Tacoma. It’s not in the best of shape. Toyotas — This is the fifth Toyota I’ve owned over the past 37 years — have a habit of its engines outliving by years its interiors. The plastic on my steering wheel is all sun-rippled and has a crack I am patching with duct tape until I buy a cover for the wheel. I’m waiting for it to get cooler before I tackle a couple of maintenance issues. I don’t drive the truck very far these days as I have a car furnished for my part-time job. Money and heat are the two things holding me back with my vehicle issues. Like Pa Kettle used to say: “Yeah, I’m gonna fix that one of these days.”

The point is, what kind of low-life would steal a car antenna off a weathered automobile produced during the last century with more than 160,000 miles? Well, one answer that was suggested to me was meth heads.

I pulled up in the complex parking lot Monday and saw a black gentleman cooking on a little barbecue pit behind his behemoth pickup truck. We are not supposed to cook on outside grills, I suppose George Foreman’s grills inside are okay, where I live along with hundreds of other rules. And yes, it does matter in this case the race of the fellow who was surreptitiously barbecuing.

We exchanged greetings as I took another look at where my antenna once stood so proudly on the front fender of my sunfire red pearl Tacoma and exclaimed to no one in particular: “I don’t understand why someone would steal my damn antenna.”

The covert cook asked a couple of questions and then proclaimed: “Meth heads.”

He didn’t know so much about down here in Southeast Texas but back in Missouri, the secret chef said, “People steal car antennas to smoke meth or that stuff you can buy in the convenience stores.” I couldn’t imagine how exactly someone would use a car antenna to smoke drugs. I do remember in the 70s how, let’s just say people I knew, would find all kinds of inventive ways to smoke pot. A pipe from a beer can, for example. Or perhaps using a tennis ball can for a bong. Then there was Old Faithful — so I am told now! — using aluminum foil to fashion a pipe. But a car antenna to smoke meth? Well, I knew people who free-based cocaine and smoked various drugs from a pipe. This was years ago and if they could afford some of these drugs, cocaine for instance, they usually could afford a pipe.

People nowadays have all kinds of different ways of smoking different drugs. Some of these substances seem to warrant quite a bit of caution compared to the days of old, sitting around listening to Led Zepplin while puffing a peace pipe. Take this forum on “fent for example,” which actually exhorts its meth-addled readers to find an “old school” car radio antenna and “snatch that mother****** right off … ” Scumbag! Fent, short for Fentanyl, is a powerful pain killer supposedly “100 times stronger than morphine.”

I have no idea what, if anything, the person who stole my antenna was smoking. I was at the front desk here last week when our manager told a young guy he had to leave because he’d been seen smoking bath salts. “I didn’t know it was illegal,” was the guy’s answer. Yeah, well I kind of doubt he doubted it was against the law too.

Back to the black man who told me about what stolen antennas were used for, he had indicated that is what folks back in Missouri did with the antennas they stole. Here in Beaumont, Texas, he wasn’t for sure.

“Especially the black folks down here,” he said, twirling his index finger around next to his temple to indicate the well-known sign for the crazies. “Those people are strange.”

I found that a very odd statement although many of the rednecks who comment on the local newspaper’s Web site would agree. They would agree that all blacks are strange. And worse. Right now, we are on the verge of some serious racial problems in Beaumont. It’s a long story. Much of it has to do with the city having become majority black due to white flight to the suburbs. The most recent ignition point has been the local school superintendent, a black man who just recently retired who was the highest paid such school official in Texas. Instances of financial mismanagement was uncovered and the former superintendent and some of his supporters have been very arrogant, almost as if they were untouchable especially when the district’s electrician was given a lenient plea-bargain after his first trial for bilking the district out of more than $4 million ended in a hung jury.

The angriest whites spew their hate in the comment section of the local paper’s stories and a blog that seems to delight stirring the pot in true Hearst — the paper’s owners — fashion.

So I don’t believe I was just whistlin’ Dixie when I told the black covert cook that, if indeed some of the black folks down in these parts seem a little crazy, he must have not seen many of the white folks.

In the meantime, looks like I am going to fashion a clothes hanger into an antenna if I want to hear my truck radio again. I hope no one, black or white, steals it.

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Help is on its way

Well, unless a freak wind accident causes an upset in my world overnight this hopefully will be my last Isaac post. I am sick of this storm mainly because it makes me ache. As I’ve said in this space many times before, low barometric pressure has a habit of doing that. Right now a very narrow outer rain band from what is once again Tropical Storm Isaac showed up on radar about 25 miles to the east of where I am. Right along the Texas-Louisiana border.

It is funny how geographic borders have a propensity for stopping weather. One of the local TV weather guys said we would get no rain out of this storm. But it seems to be crossing the border. Go back, you damn tropical rain! Your kind isn’t allowed in our partially-drought-ridden state! Egos.

I stepped outside and was hit by one little drop of rain. I don’t know if that will be it for our experience with Isaac, other than some pretty good breezes. But we may get some rain tonight. Or we may not.

But more importantly, at least for the folks who actually got hit by the storm, I counted more than two dozen of those big Asplundh bucket trucks parked outside the MCM Elegante’ Hotel here on the outskirts of Beaumont. Asplundh — pronounced “AH-splund, the ‘h’ is silent” — is the big tree trimming company. The trucks and its crews are waiting for conditions to allow them into areas hit by Isaac so they can cut trees blown into all types of precarious conditions by the storm. Believe me when I say, if you got hit by a hurricane, or ice storm or large tornado, you want as many of those tree-trimming trucks as well utility repair trucks, there and you want them there yesterday. That is because the sooner they get there, the sooner your electricity is restored.

So, help is on its way. Good news. From Texas.

 

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No Eddie Munster today. We are still pre-empted by Isaac.

What? Is he talking about that damned storm again?

Why yes. What else is there to talk about except the weather? I mean, I sure as hell don’t see a future in talking about the Republican National Convention. The giant infomercial. And just to be totally fair, the Democratic convention will be the same only with people wearing less expensive clothes. That is except for the movie stars and entertainers.

So yes, Big Boy, the weather is making my joints hurt. A hurricane as nearby as Isaac certainly does cause my arthritis to -itis. Or is it to arth? See the doctored GOES satellite picture below which showed now Hurricane Isaac about 30 minutes ago. Obviously, one can see the hurricane. At the left, bottom is a little triangle I made to, sort of, represent “The Golden Triangle.” Why didn’t I make it golden? I didn’t think about it. Beside, golden might be difficult to spot with the surrounding color. It’s called The Golden Triangle because the location of the cities Beaumont, Port Arthur and Orange, Texas, all make a triangle when viewed geographically. The golden part had to do with the prosperity from the “oil bidness,” much of which started in this area upon the gushing of Spindletop in January 1901. Either that or it was from what color the skies were from smog until it was eventually cleaned up somewhat.

 

One of the cloud bands, whatever it might be called, from the storm passed over earlier when I was at work. The wind whipped up and whistled like a 50-foot tea kettle. Guessing from what the local wind readings were, I’d say maybe the sustained winds were maybe 20 mph, whipping up to almost 30 mph. Perhaps the winds weren’t that strong.

Even with those winds blowing by it is hot ‘n humid. Perhaps I need a trademark “Hot ‘N Humid ™ :” It will make you sweat, and how!”

I have been watching The Weather Channel, at least when the sound is off, and when the sound is off and a torso shot is visible of meteorologist Stephanie Abrams. Seriously, I have come to respect Stephanie as a broadcaster. She yaps a lot but she is multi-talented and seems to pretty much know here stuff. The Weather Channel has pulled out all the stops for Isaac. That is, unless it hits somewhere other than Florida, Alabama or Louisiana, and as I have mentioned before, especially New Orleans. If it hits far western Louisiana or far southeastern Texas, no biggie. Nobody lives there. I mean, I do, as does several hundred thousand people.

The storm coming on almost the anniversary of Katrina in 2005 has made-for-TV-drama written all over it. Plus, isn’t it always about New Orleans? Oh well, I’ve gone down that road before. My neighbors, thankfully, didn’t experience the many deaths of Katrina. In some way, though, people often feel a little of themselves die when they suffer losses as they did with their lives uprooted by first Hurricane Rita and later Ike.

Issac will probably bring more suffering to the north when the storm makes its way inland, however far it goes. And such systems can travel a long ways. I hope the wind we have seen today here in Southeast Texas is about the gist of Hurricane Isaac. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was not the case. I wouldn’t mind if it clouded up or even rained a bit. But a bit is something that one only sees a bit of when it comes to tropical cyclones.

So maybe tomorrow I can talk about Mitt Romney’s stretch blue jeans or his cloned-looking kids, or how Veep candidate Paul Ryan bears an eerie resemblance to Eddie Munster. But once again today, this space has been hijacked by Isaac.