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World goes mad in Georgia. Stay away.

Oh. This can’t be good.

Lawmakers in Georgia have passed what the NRA calls “one of the most permissive gun laws in the nation.” Talk about permissive. The law, that Republican Gov. Nathan Deal intends to sign, would allow guns to be carried in bars and churches. The legislation is a virtual “Guns Everywhere Bill,” according to those who oppose it.

Okay, once more. I am not a gun opponent. I have owned guns for a good portion of my life. I enjoy target shooting, specifically, if it involves blasting the hell out of cans. Take that you damned polluters.

But — and it isn’t just quasi-liberals like myself or just plain liberal anti-gun people — many people believe guns should  just not be welcome in some places. Allowing guns in bars and churches is like inviting folks back into some Old West movie.

It doesn’t take a sociologist to know that the nation is politically divided at the moment. People who are getting hammered in bars may sometimes particularly get prickly when discussion of political issues get out of hand. Bar shootings are certainly not novel. The same goes for churches. Inflamed passions also may erupt when some preachers get on a tear and start calling a sinner a sinner and a who is a what’s it. Shootings in churches are not something that never happens. Even more is that true when someone has a bug up their ass about certain religious faiths.

Stay out of Georgia is on my agenda and should be on the minds of others as well.

Around my area, here in Southeast Texas, the big thing is promoting open carry of guns. We’re talking mostly long guns — rifles and shotguns, assault-type weapons — but maybe pistols too. The whole shebang locally started when a man who had a gun store in our local mall was detained by police for walking inside the mall to his store with a so-called assault rifle in plain view. Some nervous people made several calls on the man to police because he was exhibiting the weapon. That makes perfect sense in light of several mall shootings in recent years, both in the U.S. and in foreign countries. It wouldn’t have hurt anything if the man carried his rifle in a case, bag or box.

People thought nothing of it when, as kids, we would walk through town with our guns going hunting in the nearby woods. But that was then and this is now. I have thought that perhaps open carrying of weapons, as opposed to concealed carry, might make sense if you were in a frame of mind to pseudo-license handguns. I no longer think that is a good idea. Why? It’s partly because of seeing these men, women and children marching up and down the shopping area sidewalks carrying their rifles and shotguns. I don’t think it does anything other than upset folks. And when you have people with inflamed passions … well, see above in churches and bars.

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The finer things in life, baloney! Seriously!

Here I sit eating pieces of beef jerky. I have often wondered why is it that I do not find myself in a position in which someone will ask me: “How is beef jerky made?” To which I would answer: “Well, first you start with a very, old cow.”

I couldn’t say if I ate jerky as a kid. I can long remember eating Slim Jims, which are the same as jerky only different.

In many cases there are numerous foods today which were not available to the general public when I was growing up. A major reason for that was or is geography. I grew up in a town of about 2,000 people which was some 60 miles from a “metropolitan area.”

The first Mexican food I remember eating was actually what is identified today as Tex-Mex. That makes sense geographically since I grew up and live in Texas as well as Texas standing next door to Mexico. My mother would buy these enchilada and tamale TV dinners with frijoles y arroz, which we knew, of course, as beans and rice. Although I had eaten at a few Mexican restaurants in Texas and the South, I was never exposed to honesto a dios Mexican food until the time I spent in the El Paso-Juarez area and in Southern California. The first “authentic” Mexican food that I found in a restaurant outside of the Southwest was in Lufkin, Texas, of all places.

First of all, I went to college in Nacogdoches, which was just across the river from Lufkin. Casa Morales was the name of the restaurant. Located in downtown Lufkin, the place had great food and an ambiance to match. As well as a good plate of chile rellenos, one might search through the racks near the cashier for historietas, the graphic novellas which were more lurid and even pornographic than comic. Casa Morales later built another restaurant in Redland, a community closer to the Angelina River that separates Angelina and Nacogdoches counties.

Growing up, pizza was something my mother made with a Chef Boyardee Pizza Kits. I probably first had pizza in a pizza place in high school when I traveled to the Beaumont area, where I now live. Since that time I have eaten pizzas in the northeast U.S., Chicago, the West Coast as well as Australia and New Zealand. I must note, I have never visited New York, though I have had so-called “New York-Style” pizza.

There was some standard fare growing up. My mother made wonderful fried chicken. I remember her fried tripe was excellent although some people I know might gag at the sound of the entree. By the way, I had some really good menudo the last time I stayed in El Paso with my friends. Menudo is known, of course, for its magical powers as a hangover cure though I didn’t eat it for that reason on that particular occasion and it was still delicious.

Other dishes from my mother’s hands included, probably my best-loved dish that she made, her pigs-in-a-blanket. This was long before I heard the term kolache, but this was very near what her pigs were.

We were country folks and as such we would eat some dishes not-so-mainstream growing up. One of my sisters-in-law told of her being stunned to see on one of her initial visits, served on my family dinner table, a cooked baloney. Of course, that is considered soul food in some parts of the country today. My Dad, himself a good cook having served as a merchant marine steward in WWII, would buy a billy goat for the 4th of July that he would barbecue. The meal, especially using meat of a kid goat, today is known more by the Mexican method as cabrito.

I would be remiss not to mention a concoction my dad would make that he called “Son of a Gun.” Now my brothers and I have discussed this many times although I am not sure we arrived at a collective agreement as to what this meal was and what all it contained. Some of my siblings said it was my Dad’s version of “Sonofabitch Stew,” the old cattle drive fare that included just about any ingredient of a cow or other edible meat and lots and lots of hot sauce. But this stew my Pops whipped up was more like a Slum Gullion Stew, which is a watery stew of practically any ingredient handy.

In my Dad’s case, this thin stew consisted of potted meat and some type of canned tomato product such as tomato sauce or tomato soup or perhaps canned tomatoes. I surmise he added hot sauce, salt and pepper and he would often bake up some homemade corn bread as a side. It was truly some righteous stuff.

I have eaten barbecued monkey meat on a stick in the Philippines. I added an egg to a hamburger in Australia but turned down the “beet root.” Today you can get just about any kind of meat or vegetable depending on how much you want to pay and how far you want to travel. But sometimes the simplest meals one may find are the things no farther than one’s pantry or local grocer store. It is all the better when you know the food is made at home, and for love just as it is prepared for sustenance.

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The state seizes Beaumont school control. The circus has left town.

The state board that oversees public education in Texas announced today that an appointed board of managers will rule the troubled Beaumont school district.

A letter from Texas Education Commissioner Michael Williams to the Beaumont Independent School District superintendent and school board said the managers along with an appointed conservator and superintendent will run district functions effective June 15. This means the current elected board and its appointed superintendent, Dr. Timothy Chargois, will cease supervision of the largest district in Southeast Texas. A copy of that letter is here.

The announcement comes in the wake of years-long controversy, often based along racial lines, over financial and other mismanagement. Some of the former has resulted in the alleged disappearance of  millions in public dollars. A few pleas by district officials made in federal court may result in prison time as well as financial reimbursement and fines. A deal was also worked out by federal prosecutors and the district’s electrician in which the latter will receive no prison time for allegedly bilking the district for more than $4 million.

A Texas Education Agency report released earlier this month noted ” … a severe breakdown in the management of the district’s finances both by the board of trustees and the superintendent.”

Additional criminal investigations by local law enforcement and the FBI are currently under way.

Not addressed in these official reports are the racial overtones that pervade the controversy. Some of the racial discord dates back more than two decades in which the school district incorporated predominantly black schools and marked the beginning of a “white flight” that has today left Beaumont as a city with a black majority in population. Population estimates for 2012 by the U.S. Census show Beaumont with a population of 118,228. Of that population, 47 percent is black and 40 percent white.

Much of the racial-driver controversy concerning Beaumont schools teetered in the shadows until recent years under the district’s predominantly black school board and its black former superintendent Dr. Carroll “Butch” Thomas. Before Thomas retired in 2012, his salary of more than $360,000 was the highest in Texas. This despite Beaumont ISD was not even in the top 20 Texas schools in enrollment size.

The zenith of the BISD controversy came about after voters in 2007 passed a more than $380 million bond issue. Some of the most vocal critics say Thomas and cohorts mishandled funds in the bond issue. The large “Carroll A. “Butch” Thomas Educational Support Center, with a 10,600-seat football stadium at its center, is perhaps the monument for the BISD storm that either saw its peak today with the state takeover or whatever else is to follow.

Within the fight against the school board has been a vocal minority led by white residents of the district’s more affluent neighborhoods as well local Tea Party activists. The opposition leaders include one of the few white school board members and one local attorney who serves on the Beaumont City Council. Many who are among the most vocal, and often the most racial, can be found at the board meetings and on the comment sections of local media stories. Often the most vocal make their thoughts known pseudonymous online, such as adopting racist names for Beaumont school leaders as well as making sure minorities in other stories are likewise not given the benefit of doubt for their actions.

I must admit, it was once fun watching the squabbling on both sides. But no longer is that the case. Many of the opposition to the school board and its appointed leaders Thomas and Chargois, will feel vindicated and perhaps even giddy upon the actions taken today by the Texas Education Agency and its distinguished commissioner, Mr. Williams. It is pertinent to point out that Williams, who is a Republican former Texas Railroad Commissioner, is also black. I fear though that if the white BISD opposition does not get out of those appointees what they want, the vocal minority will likely point at the black TEA commissioner and probably at any African-Americans he appointed to the board of managers. Perhaps even, the loyal opposition may show its ire at the whole group.

If such takes place, it can only result in more discord and more white flight.

A word for the media here. I am sure all the local TV stations will claim their role in this hoped-for correction of the district. The TV stations are already doing their annoying “It was first reported here … ” The local newspapers took a very, very slow start into covering problems in the district as did the TV stations. Were it not for several of the aforementioned ringleaders of opposition, the media coverage of the district problems would have been nil. Had these media outlets been competently led, they might have seen Pulitzer or Peabody prizes in their future. While I would be willing to bet the TV and newspapers may win some prizes, the awards will be nothing near what they might have been had the local media been on the ball. It’s even possible these problems would have never even come this far.

So much for the fun and games. The circus has long stopped being fun. The clean-up crew now has to try and sweep away all the crap that the clowns, rather than the elephants, left behind.

 

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The days of grocers past

Does anyone remember the jingle: “Let’s go to Henke’s now, Henke’s now, Henke’s now … thrifty place to shop.”

Well, the song is a lot like the one you hear or may have had heard in the past that goes: “Let’s go Krogering, Krogering, Krogering … “

It’s all the same and with a reason. The giant grocer Kroger bought Houston-based Henke & Pilot chain the same year I was born, in 1955. The Henke name was no longer used beginning in 1966, or there about. Although the jingle seemed to hang on.

I suppose if you are under 30 and grew up in the U.S., most grocery stores have always been a constant. I know the grocery chains in East and Southeast Texas haven’t seemed to change much over those years. Where I live, in Beaumont, there aren’t a lot of grocery choices. There is Kroger, of course. Two larger regional chains seemed to have elbowed out any potential large competitors with the exception of Kroger. H-E-B, which was once pretty much a Central Texas chain has grown like crazy and even some of the smaller towns around here have mid-sized or small versions of its stores.

H-E-B has mega-stores in different locations in the state. Two were built when I lived in Waco. There is one humongous H-E-B in Beaumont on Dowlen Road that anchors a small strip mall. When it first opened it featured a small “Central Market,” which is the company’s gourmet grocery chain. One may find all the hipsters at the Central Market in Austin (that should be ‘Markets,’ and they are littered with ‘foodies’ in major suburbs like Plano and Southlake in the DFW area.) I will give the tres chic  H-E-B that it does have many great items one would be hard pressed to find elsewhere.

Unfortunately, Beaumont isn’t a hipster town — at least not in reality — so its H-E-B Central Market was gone and installed was a doc-in-a-box. A new, and presumably likewise large, H-E-B is now solid ground but will be coming up at the site of the old Baptist Hospital at South 11th Street and College. This is next door to the booming Memorial Hermann Baptist Hospital and its surrounding medical village. This is kind of a crossroads of where Beaumont’s  mostly Black, goodly-sized Hispanic and minority White population all have to go at one time or the other. If they don’t go to Baptist they usually go up 11th to Christus St. Elizabeth or to Texas Medical Center in Houston.

Of course, the “Golden Triangle” also has an abundance of Market Basket stores. It is a chain in Southeast Texas and Southwest Louisiana some half-century old, based in Nederland, Texas, that has seemed to do just fine.

Various other stores either went out of business or got bought out. The Brookshire Brothers chain, based in Lufkin, can be found pretty much in the Big Thicket and Deep East Texas areas. The company has also moved into areas of east Central Texas and parts of Central Texas as well.

One need not mention Wally World.

I think about some of the stores that were once here in Beaumont: Albertson’s, Gerland’s, gosh knows who else. In Nacogdoches, where I spent a great deal of my life, Safeway was once a huge, unionized store. Kroger was also unionized there. One of the first girls I dated upon first moving to Nac, I met at Safeway. Those are the kind of memories one likes to have of a grocery store instead of getting stuck in line to no end. The Safeway girl and I parted quicker than some of those lines, I would suppose. But we left amicably as she wanted to move back to Houston and I said, well, if someone wants to move to Houston then I guess I have no great opposition to it. I was fine just where I was at that time, and several other times.

Also I remember the little East Texas town from where I came. We didn’t have any of those big-named stores. Maybe a couple of years after I left a Brookshire Brothers came. It was a familiar brand because my uncle Sox retired from the company. Uncle Sox then worked part-time after retirement in a little town outside of Lufkin called Huntington. Uncle Sox worked for Boots store, named after a man called Boots. Sox and Boots. Seemed kind of proper, yet still gets a big family chuckle.

Some of the small-town stores I remember delivered. Dick’s Grocery, whom I am named for (Dick, not Grocery), used to set their fruits and vegetables out on the curb. I remember one store, owned by Ira Bean, sold a little of everything. Then there was Joe Harrell’s who we saw for smoked meats and his homemade sausage. And like family was J & J’s, the corner store, but not like in a convenience store. I remember they had a big old wheel of cheddar sitting on top of the butcher case. John & Juanita were as good of people you could find.

Man, those were the days. Well, excuse me because I have to go to Kroger’s. Have a great weekend.

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Sir Elton and I might have bad timing to see each other

If it wasn’t for the minor annoyance of possibly having knee surgery on Wednesday, well, I probably wouldn’t go anyway to the Elton John concert that’s happening just a few miles down the interstate from me. I mean few, like three or four miles maybe.

There are still tickets left, according to Ford Park, one of the most financially-troubled venues in Texas over the past 15 or so years. And it would be a nice gesture to help out old Elton, well, he is only about to turn 67 in a couple of week. It would be even a better move to help out Jefferson County and its prime real estate entertainment complex. Still, I just can’t see myself paying $99 or $69 tickets. If I had a date — what a riotous thought — I would have to sit in one seat and my date in the other. I would probably take the $99 seat. Which explains why a date for me is such a flight of fancy.

Sir Elton is a musical hero of mine though. I can remember listening to “Rocket Man” on KEEL-AM in Shreveport or WLS in Chicago. The latter station we would hear every now and then in Navy boot camp at Great Lakes, Ill., which is right on Lake Michigan though I never saw it from boot camp. But that jingle they would play “Chi-ca-go weathe-r!” Kind of like “Buy Mennen!” or as George from “Seinfeld” put it “Co-stanza!”  Now, 40 years later that damn radio station jingle is still in my head. No matter that the AM station probably has gone through about 10 format changes since then.”

the moon
I hope my legs won’t break, walking on the Moon. Or Enchanted Rock. Copyright 2004. Eight Feet Deep

 

After high school and in the Navy and on into college did I come to learn both old and new — relatively speaking — works of some of the great rockers like Elton. It was at the house of my friend, the incredible late Betti, red-headed hell-raiser she was, where I first heard what was to me the most improbable Elton tune “Texan Love Song” from his 1973 album Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only the Piano Player.

“So it’s Ki yi yippie yi yi
You long hairs are sure gonna die
Our American home was clean till you came
And kids still respected the president’s name … “

Call it what it was, satire. Betti’s friend Russell sang it and played it well on the guitar.

Sir Elton’s opus as far as I am and many others are concerned is the 1973 double-album — yes vinyl — Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. It had a bevy, or flock perhaps, of great songs. Sir Elton was on fire back in the day.

Back especially in the 70s was I very fortunate to have seen quite a few rock concerts. Some were very popular groups at the time: Creedence Clearwater Revival, Grand Funk Railroad, ZZ Top, Bob Seger, Fleetwood Mac (the latter three times within a year and a half in North America and New Zealand), and the perennial favorite the Rolling Stones. Other individuals and groups, super or not, I had what I feel was the misfortune to have not seen: Any group with Eric Clapton, the Beatles, Warren Zevon, the Who, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and Led Zeppelin among them.

Ford Park hosted another favorite, not so super group, a few weeks ago: Foreigner. They have played across the U.S. staging local competitions for high school choir groups to join the band on stage to help with the chorus of “I Want To Know What Love Is.” A local school choir was chosen, the contest hosted by an area TV station. This was a stroke of genius, at least in theory, especially when performing with those high school vocal groups with a soul-gospel orientation, such as some of those from my area. It’s a lovely song that was great when it was released. I do remember hearing it ad nauseum on Christmas Day 1984 while driving all the way across Texas from the most eastern county to the most western.

I can’t remember what the prices were for Foreigner but I know it was more than I would pay for these days.

Honestly, I don’t know what it would take for me to attend a rock or country, stadium-sytle, concert these days. The second-coming of Elvis, Jimi, Janis, George and John, perhaps? Maybe if I were a young person today I wouldn’t mind paying such prices, but there is a time when such events are like what climbing up the steps to the Lincoln Memorial or walking up Enchanted Rock would be for me today with my torn lateral and medial meniscus. Ah yes, it comes back to that.

Yes it does. I want to get the damned thing fixed and in a hurry. The surgery won’t help me walk up Enchanted Rock today — the picture I took in 2004 always reminds me of the Police song “Walking on the Moon” — but at least, maybe, I won’t hurt so much when I walk down the street and hear yet an old tune come floating out of my memory.