It seems a lot of writers have these great places where they can stay for free, in the woods of Canada or New Hampshire, and write their great American (Canadian?) novel. I don’t quite know how works out. I can’t afford to move, or quit my job even, much less move to the woods of Canada. Why I bet they wouldn’t even let me in there. I’ve never been to Canada but the general wisdom is that it’s full of nice people. Some might not find me so nice, at least sometimes. I get a bit grumpy with age and pain.
I know of people who say all Canadians aren’t nice. That doesn’t surprise me. I’ve been to Australia and New Zealand. I met a lot of nice people there. I also met a few who were real wankers. The same goes for people I met in the South Pacific and Indonesia.
The point is I am in this hotel room trying to find a halfway decent place to live or stay that costs next to nothing. It is funny, actually not, that this country is filled with empty houses. That is especially true with what the mortgage crisis. All these empty houses, and so many people who need a decent roof over their head.
I still can’t help but hang my head in disgust looking at the former Baptist Hospital of Southeast Texas, at the intersection of College and 11th streets in Beaumont. The five-story building built about 60 years ago has been empty nearly 10 years since the hospital was abandoned and rebuilt just to the east on College. The word is H-E-B — the big, San Antonio-based regional grocer — wants to raze the building and put in one of its superstores. That would be okay as well. This end of town needs such a store too where one can find all the fine foods, wines and cheeses.
I don’t care who moves in as long as someone will occupy all these empty buildings all over the place. Well, I’d hate to see a big 5-story building full of Al-Quida terrorists and rednecks and armed black African separatists. Although such a move might tend to “thin the herd” so to speak. A story I saw today says the Astrodome is suffering from neglect. Well, I hope they find some good use for it as well. But a lot of the houses from the mortgage meltdown will never be occupied. One day, maybe 10 or 15 or 20 years from now — those merely unoccupied homes will have become abandoned or used by the homeless or for crack houses and shooting galleries for heroin — will be torn down for someone bent on “urban renewal” or “gentrification” or one of those four-cent words public administrators and planners love to use. Until then, people say: “Gimme shelter.”
And don’t forget I could use a nice place in the woods to write my book as long as it is not in Canada, or anywhere outside of Southeast Texas for that matter.
Yes. I’ve been absent again. It seems like my life is getting interrupted at every turn which, in turn, turns me away from pounding out something on the old magic board. It seems as if fate has a way of burying one deeper and deeper in — ¿como se dice? — caca. Even if I am not correct in my Spanish usage, at least most will know I am trying convey the word “shit.”
I’ve thought long and hard about writing here as to how I now no longer live in the same little s–thole I have resided in since 2007. Wow, that would be a long time except for the fact that a guy I have known for several years told me he lived in the same little hole since 1997. Holy crap! But alas, we are no longer living in the little hole for it has been condemned by the city. The place we knew as the “man’s home not being his castle” has its medieval gate shuttered by chain-link fencing. There were rumors beforehand “the Man” was cutting off all our utilities but it was in reality four-to-five hours before I knew I must move or go to jail. I had been warned several days earlier by a couple of city doofuses (doofi?) Nevertheless, we all had to wait over the weekend until the word came down. And down it came, like getting swatted by overused flypaper.
So here I am, again, looking for somewhere to live.
In giving thought as to how I would relay such a story of life on the edges I had to consider a number of factors. Among those are legal issues which may arise from the saga, that is issues raised by me is what I am trying to say. I will say that I have seen local governments do a lot of things the wrong way and this story involves my city government doing something wrong at every turn. And, if that almost 60-year-old marvel of American kitsch we knew as sort of like home winds up dozed away and replaced with a multi-story chain hotel or some large medical facility to support the creeping medicine of the hospital about a block away, I will have even more to say.
Some portions of my life, though, should end up in my book. You’re doing a book, you might ask? Of course, all writers are writing a book.
When I first started this blog, after my full-time job as a newspaper writer ended, I naively thought I could write whatever I wanted here in this spot. That was before people I know actually started reading it. Oh, I know the same will probably happen with the book. If so, I hope they — those friends, family and other loyal readers of EFD — pay for the book instead of being a cheapskate like me and waiting until the publication finds its way to the library.
I can’t guarantee this tale of which I speak will be a good story. I mean what happened itself is a very bad story. I am damned near homeless again. But maybe the tale will be something of interest, perhaps a laugh, maybe it will even cause you to shake your head in disgust. I doubt my love life, what there was of it there, will play a big part.
One day I will tell the story of how I sit in by an air conditioner that is blowing cold as if the sun was headed on a collision course with our planet. I will tell of how I sit in an Interstate 10 motel wondering how I will pull this all off, finding yet another place to live in the spur of the moment. I will also, hopefully, relay the tale of what becomes of the 58-year-old castle down the street I have not quite called home even though I lived there for quite some time.
But for now, blow on big A/C. Summer is a’ coming. And, yes, if you know of a place to rent let me know. Soon.
Oh I will have an interesting tale to tell, maybe. It’s just been a(n), interesting maybe, day. I could give snippets, but I won’t.
On another front, I stayed up late in my hotel room in Houston last night watching the movie “Capote.” Phillip Seymour Hoffman was excellent as the effeminate, brilliant writer. If you have not seen it, the movie focuses on his pursuit of the story which led to the novel-like non-fiction book “In Cold Blood.” I had forgotten or perhaps didn’t know Capote was assisted in his research of the Clutter Family murders in Kansas by Nelle Harper Lee, who had just finished “To Kill A Mockingbird.”
I guess Capote may have been difficult to take for some but “In Cold Blood” was one of the first of what became an overloaded genre of “True Crime” stories. Nevertheless, it was interesting to see a depiction of how Capote went about researching and writing this masterpiece of modern non-fiction, with (plenty of) blemishes and all.
It’s hard for me to sit on the sidelines on days like today.
A courthouse shooting leaving one dead and four injured, of the kind which makes the national news happened today here in Beaumont.
Here is great breaking news report by Houston-based Michael Graczyk, the sharp Associated Press writer whose byline most people see on stories about the prison system and executions. He has attended just about every execution for AP since Texas restored the death penalty.
Unfortunately, when big stories such as these break, it is usually when people die violently from some source of the other. People still want to know the story — who it happened to and who or what caused it; what happened; when the event took place and the timeline, if pertinent; in what location or locations the event happened; and lastly, why it happened. It might take awhile to learn the latter, whether days, months or even years.
It is a rush reporting a captivating “spot” story whether one is reporting from the field or back in the office doing the rewrite. If you told me 20 years ago I would find rewriting what reporters at the scene report and then timely crafting the information into an interesting and informing story, I might have said you were smoking crack. Either reporting from the scene or back at the desk is a challenge for someone who wants to and has a burning desire to tell a story that is important to untold numbers of people who are trying to find out “what is going on?”
Reading some of the early coverage of this tragic event givse me pause as to just how good social media is for reporting or more specifically, how can it better used? Much of what I saw early on was a conglomeration of disparate parts of the story. Some information came from witnesses, some from someone who held some type of officialdom even though this person may be commenting something that is nothing more than hearsay. For instance, I read a “live” Twitter feed of the police press conference held a couple hours after the incident. It was difficult to determine just who was speaking and just what the relation was between the person speaking and the “newser.”
My “wistfulness” and my take on how journalists were tackling the story isn’t at all to make light of what happened. After all, this is my city and what happened affected my “neighbors” and their families.
If I might, one last time, take from my experience in journalism to look at what happened I would point at where this happened and the immediate event that may have triggered it.
You may think you hear a lot about courthouse shootings. I don’t know how many actually happen a year. When such an incident occurs it automatically is a larger than normal story no matter the city or town where it takes place. Courthouses — whether local, state or federal –are the almost sacred temples of our laws and the people who look to those laws for protection and for fairness. When one is on trial for their life or reputation or is seeking relief over a property or familial issue, one naturally will find high emotion. In the case of this shooting it appears the alleged shooter was on trial for the very serious charge of aggravated sexual assault.
We have armed security and metal detectors in most of our courthouses these days. The Jefferson County Courthouse, where this happened, is no exception. But even those dedicated individuals who guard our courthouses and screen those who enter cannot keep a built-in emotion at bay. So this happens. No arguments about guns because they are useless. The genie is out of the bottle when it comes to guns.
It’s a sad event. But for one who spent a great deal of his life writing about such happenings and surrounded by the drama of the moment it leaves an old newshound with just a tiny bit of nostalgia.
My sorrow for those lost or injured goes without saying.
There is a university in the town where I reside. I didn’t go there. One of my brothers did. A bunch of people from my high school went there. But I didn’t. The biggest connection to Lamar University that I have is that it’s located down M.L.K. Boulevard a couple of miles. It was practically in the neighborhood when I lived in Beaumont the first time, some 33 years ago. Back before my South Park neighborhood was transformed into a poorer and blacker shell of itself by White Flight. That sounds racist. It isn’t meant to be. It is just one of those urban phenomenons which always seems to be tinged by race that happens these days. It’s akin to the NBA having evolved from the days its star players were medium-sized Jewish guys to the present with gigantic fellows of all ethnicities, albeit mostly Black Americans.
Your geography/sports history lesson out of the way, I don’t go to Lamar athletic games. I should, especially since the school has fielded a football team for the last couple of years after abandoning the sport in the late 1980s. That team is coached by someone I know, or at least had a decent conversation with one time.
I sat and talked with the now-Lamar football coach, Ray Woodard, one time a bit more than 20 years ago. He came to where I edited a small-town weekly newspaper to see my secretary — yes I had a secretary once; three different ones actually– with whom he went to school. So I was glad when Woodard was hired to resurrect the Cardinals football team.
But I wanted to say a few words about the Lamar basketball team. The Cardinals are in the NCAA tournament for the first time in more than 12 years and have been guided to the “Dance” in the Bobby Knight tradition. That’s because Lamar is coached by Pat Knight, his son.
Lamar Cardinals Head Coach Pat Knight, far right, as an assistant for his father, Bob Knight at Texas Tech. The younger Knight had a losing record after replacing his father as Red Raiders head coach. Now Pat Knight leads the Cardinals to the NCAA tournament. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Photo by Steven Wilke
Pat Knight isn’t Bobby Knight, but he is his father’s son. He also learned from the master as a player under Knight Sr. at Indiana and later as an assistant coach under the elder Knight at Indiana and Texas Tech. Pat Knight took the reins from his Dad at Lubbock. It wasn’t the best of times. He was fired at Tech with a 62-69 record after three seasons as head coach.
Knight inherited a group of talented underachievers at Lamar. The mostly junior-senior group will play Vermont in the first round of the NCAA tournament Wednesday in Dayton. The Cardinals should win this game and go on to face No. 1 seed North Carolina. “Should” is the operative word. Pat Knight garnered quite a bit of media attention when he ripped his team during a news conference after losing in the Southland Conference tournament to my alma mater Stephen F. Austin. Said the younger Knight:
“We’ve got the worst group of seniors right now that I’ve ever been associated with,” Pat Knight said. “Their mentality is awful. Their attitude is awful. It’s been their (custom) for the last three years.
“We’ve had problems with these guys off the court, on the court, classroom, drugs …. If you act this way in the real world, you’re going to be homeless, without a job.
Here is a great story by David Whitely in Sporting News that puts the “rant” — which turned out to be the motivation the Lamar bunch needed — in context. The blast and others Knight made this season toward an often listless Cardinal team were controversial but also applauded by many. I didn’t care for a lot of the temper tantrums shown by Bob Knight during his coaching years, but I still admire that the man expected more out of the young players than just bouncing a ball. It just so happens that he is a big fan of — surprise — education. Imagine that at a college! Some 80 percent of Bob Knight’s Indiana players graduated while the NCAA average was 40 percent. The younger Knight also seems follow his father’s sense of priorities.
Can the “Son of Knight’s” Cardinals get past the first round? On paper they should. They appear to be favored to beat the Catamounts. What the hell is a catamount anyway? Well, according to Western Carolina University’s site — their moniker also is the Catamounts — it a wildcat found in the Appalachians which is kind of like a cougar or puma or maybe a lynx or some other “souped-up wildcat.”Getting back to the game, the Cards past performances and the rants which followed, show that nothing is a given for this bunch that was recruited B.K. (Before Knight.)
Knight also had his Lamar team square off with top contenders during the regular season which resulted in 20-point-land losses but apparently with a decent effort against then-No. 3 Kentucky and then-No. 2 Ohio. So if this Cardinal team plays a good game against North Carolina after having to first dispose of the Catamounts, it will not be surprising.
If Lamar beat a North Carolina or replayed Kentucky to a win, I will be shocked. If they were somehow to come from out of nowhere and make and win the Fab Four or Terrible Two or the Awesome One or whatever the last of the big NCAA tournament hype is called, I would be flabbergasted. I would have a lot of company, like most of the remaining world which first and foremost would probably include that underachieving team from Beaumont, Texas.
