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Man, there are Cajuns everywhere!

Yesterday I was waiting to have my name called for a nurse visit at the Beaumont (TX) VA Clinic. I listened to the cacophony of people’s names shouted out by folks in Primary Care mixed with those attempting to yell louder from the laboratory or X-Ray for patients. Soon, it hit me like a ton of boudain. This place has Cajuns up the wazoo.

A nurse would yell for “Mr. Breaux.” Then someone would holler “Mr. Led-ger,” her pronunciation for a Mr. Leger, which is most times spoken as “Lay’-jhay.” With those folks found, on the intercom came “Mr. Melancon please go to the pharmacy.”

I suppose I had me what us pseudo-intellectuals like to call an “epiphany.” I don’t know what my Cajun friends might call it, maybe an “epiphany.” Me, the pseudo-intellectual might say: “I had an epiphany this morning but I lost it in a paradigm shift.”

The northern part of Southeast Texas is where I was raised. I now live in Beaumont — the largest city in Southeast Texas if you don’t consider Houston as Southeast Texas — by way of Mississippi, the Western and Southern Pacific, as well as East and Central Texas. Now I must clarify the terms “East Texas” and “Southeast Texas.”

Folks down here in deepest Southeast Texas consider Jefferson, Orange, Newton, Jasper and Hardin counties as Southeast Texas. Okay, maybe even Tyler County. Now if you extend the boundaries of Cajun Country from the most southwestern Louisiana parishes into Orange and Jefferson counties, one might have to say the boundaries of Southeast Texas also include Calcasieu and Cameron parishes. Of course, we are talking cultural boundaries here.

I had a chief petty officer from Dallas who was master-at-arms, kind of like the head of the security guards, when I was stationed in Mississippi. We would argue to no end about what was and what isn’t in East and Southeast Texas. I said I was an East Texan. Because we didn’t have alligators and chemical plants where I grew up. But the chief said, “No that country is Southeast Texas.” After all these years, I have to say the chief was right (as always.) If geography didn’t make me a Southeast Texan, then I suppose demographics finally did.

We didn’t have many Cajuns where I grew up in northern Southeast Texas. Oh there were Cajun folks there. I had some good friends whose grandma spoke Cajun French. That was pretty exotic though. What happened was that some of the crackers in South Louisiana who saw the Cajun people as some kind of second-class folks. The Cajuns weren’t even  allowed for many years to speak or learn Cajun French in school. Then in the late 60s, a cultural revolution that hit the rest of the country came to Louisiana. And, in the intervening years, many Cajun folks had moved to Southeast Texas, for jobs related to the petrochemical industry and shipbuilding. The latter being mostly during World War II and the former after the war.

When I moved back to the Golden Triangle — Beaumont, Port Arthur and Orange — I had to learn to pronounce many of the Cajun names I didn’t otherwise know. Why names like “Thibodeaux” and “Fontenot” (“the place is buzzing,” ‘ol Hank Williams sang.) take up considerable space in the “Greater Beaumont Area” phone book. Along with names like Chavez, Hernandez, and others I tried to correctly say I have somehow become at least partly apt at taking a spoonful out of the ol’ melting pot.

Some 40 years ago, I didn’t even know what boudain was, much less pronounce it. I remember when Mr. Latiolais (pronounced by him as “Latch’-o-lay,” some others with that name have different ways to say it) came to town and opened his supermarket called “Latch’s.” That was my first exposure to boudain and I fell in love even though some say “Ecchh” or “Nasty stuff.”

I have seen the Cajun culture grow in Southeast Texas, and around the country and even the world. Of course, we are part of Cajun Country even though we are Texans. So, yeah, there are quite a few Cajuns here. I am glad there are. I couldn’t imagine a world without Cajun cuisine or Cajun waltzes or Zydeco music. I know both states come with its baggage. Some of those first bags were made of carpet and we still see those types though they hide their bags. But this area of the country has become a much richer place to live.

 

 

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The locomotives are fired up and ready to crash

When one envisions a train wreck it is likely two locomotives barreling down the tracks at each other as was the case during the late 19th century stunt known as the “Crash at Crush.”

George Crush was a railroad passenger agent who had the lofty idea of bringing thousands of people from across Texas to watch two locomotives crash into each other at top speed. The Missouri, Katy and Texas Railroad, for whom Crush was employed, thought it an acceptable idea and four miles of track were built for the 1896 spectacle that was to be staged some 15 miles north of Waco. Some might ask, “Where else?” when something spectacularly weird or tragic takes place. Waco is definitely a news-rich environment at times.

Some 80,000 people gathered on the big day for a helping of food, fun and good ol’ Texas politickin’ at the event dubbed the “Crash at Crush.” The two old locomotives gathered heads of steam that would make the “Little Train That Could” envious and the collision, of course, resulted in a grand display of physics. Unfortunately, hot, flying, debris from the train crash rained down on the visitors. The stunt killed three and seriously injured six. The event was captured in song by Texas ragtime artist Scott Joplin’s “Great Crush Collision.” The M-K-T railway, which eventually merged into Union Pacific, was called “The Katy” for the letters “K-T.” Coincidentally, the blues standard “She Caught the Katy (And Left Me A Mule To Ride)” was recorded by the great modern blues artist Taj Mahal. I can just imagine how hellish it must have been to traverse those few Central Texas prairie roads on a mule.

So you have a train wreck, what else do you have?

Well, I can see those two old locomotives now, rushing and crushing into big and small parcels of shrapnel seemingly falling from the heavens as the crowd stands mesmerized. Thus, we have the concept: “Watching a train wreck happen, in slow motion, and unable to do anything about it.”

I know the feeling. I feel it now as, perhaps the most over-inflated ego and demagogue to hit the U.S. Senate since Sen. “Tail Gunner” Joe McCarthy, tries to orchestrate a train wreck in the hallowed halls of Congress. I speak of Republican/Anarchist/Tea Party Sen. Ted Cruz from Texas attempts a legislative equivalent of holding his breath until his face turns blue. If only he would do that and … Sorry.

A veritable frenzy engulfs the great and mighty Ted Cruz by the national media. He is different and more exciting than those stuffy old numbers of the treasury and the stuffed shirts of Capitol Hill. Cruz, in his own right a media and Tea Party darling, is also alienating members of his own party. Another “Man Bites Dog” in the eyes of the 24/7 cable era.

The media has done a fair job of predicting the monetary costs that would arise if Cruz succeeds in his machinations to both shut down the government and stop funding of Obamacare There is likewise the enormous harm to citizens that Cruz and his anarchists could do with shuttering the federal government . The media talks of that some.

But not a word is said of the hundreds of thousands of lives that could be colossally damaged if a government shutdown happens. I am talking of government employees. I can give you thousands upon thousands of harmful results that could befall the government worker in the event of another federal shuttering. Even the military would feel the harm, although the troops themselves would still be protecting us. Thousands of bills may go unpaid. Who knows the numbers of unpaid mortgage or rents the closed federal government might spring. Missed car payments and electric bills. Will there be street people who carry a GS-7 rank? If a shutdown happens and lasts only a day or two, there is no guarantee the workers will get that back pay. Long-term, some government employees might collect unemployment. But it isn’t a ssgiven, as that is handled from state-to-state.

No one is talking about these human costs. Maybe the media is doing that in Washington. I don’t know. I’m lucky if i can read the Washington Post twice a week online. No one is talking so here I am.

This runaway train needs to stop. We don’t need a Crash at Crush in Congress.

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Future is here and it’s kind of weird but not too shocking

Once upon a time, I said that I only needed a computer that would act as a word processor and nothing more. Later, I developed a need for the Internet. Then came a requirement for working on spreadsheets. Photo editing eventually became a need because I started using a digital camera. Later my phone acted as a camera and a music platform as well. And then I found myself needing a Power Point, or in my case, the OpenOffice Presentation. Pretty soon, I was on Facebook and Twitter. After awhile, I was a regular computer geek.

Maybe I wasn’t a regular computer geek. Perhaps I was an irregular computer geek. Well, let’s say I was an irregular computer geek and a dyed-in-the-wool geek.

The future is here but I'm not shocked.
The future is here but I’m not shocked.

Some 25 years ago I didn’t even imagine I would be using a computer, much less did I think I would be using the damned thing every blamed day. I am five posts away from having 2,400 blog posts. What the hell is this blog thing? That’s like a diary isn’t it? I figured a few of my friends would look at it and we’d have some laughs. I have visitors from 27 different countries. Why would someone from Ukraine or Iraq or Ireland or even Morgantown, W.Va. Feel the need to read my musings?

I listen to music and read the newspaper on my laptop. I take photographs, do calculations, check the compass and even find my way on a map using my telephone. Imagine that? I don’t need a telephone man (or woman) to wire my house or connect a line to my home. I don’t even have wires going to my phone. I always take it with me when I go somewhere. I don’t have one ringer sound. I have as many sounds as I can afford or within my imagination. I am not charged for long-distance calls. I can send as many text messages as I want. I have 400 minutes of phone. Crap on a stick! I don’t even need a fourth of that.

I can remember my family’s first TV set, vaguely. My parents had black and white TV all their lives, even though they could have afforded color in the later years of their lives. I also remember the first telephone my folks had, at least once I joined them. Apparently they had one before I was born and then went without one for several years. Our phone was on a “party-line.” I can remember Mrs. Irons, who lived in the house across the front part of our field from us and also on our party-line, talking to her sister. Sometime they would be talking about canning vegetables or gossiping. I wasn’t supposed to be listening in. Most of the time, nothing the women said was worth eavesdropping.

When I first read the sociological gem “Future Shock,” I wondered about the type of society that could freak out over too much change happening too quickly. I have lived that type of change and, yes, it’s pretty amazing. Maybe it is the convenience that technology provides which provides a “future shock absorber.” Then maybe it’s not. Excuse me now, while I go put my TV dinner in the microwave for a couple of minutes.

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No matter whether one turns left or right … and we’ll leave ‘er right there

Well, you know how it is once you get to surfing –‘Let’s go surfin’ now, everybody’s learning how, c’mon and safari with me’ — on the old Weborooskie. Pretty soon you’ve gone from one side of the street to clear across the Chihuahuan Desert on out and over Pacific Beach.

It all started with a drive to work one morning last week. Here I am on Willow at North streets in downtown Beaumont. Here the road is one way, and three lanes from Interstate 10 all the way through downtown to old U.S. Highway 90 a.k.a. College Street where it would run into Waterfront Park on the Neches River did its route not stop at Main Street. There it is surrounded by the somewhat modernity of the City Hall and the BPD headquarters catty cornered across the street. Then there is the much more elderly modernity of the Beaumont Public Library.

Sometime in the past few years they closed Main Street between the privately-owned, LaSalle Corrections-run Jefferson County Downtown Jail and the Jefferson County Courthouse. Also that little street there included the old entrance to the Port of Beaumont.

Excuse me, but I went a way too far. I waited for the car in front of me to turn left on the red light as a traffic light stopped the cars on Willow. Beaumont doesn’t have what I would call an overabundance of one-way streets. That would certainly be the case as compared to Waco. That city where I worked for seven years and lived for six and a half years must have been laid out by an engineer who had a strong taste for something strong. That is even though the always battling pamphleteer William Cowper Brann, or Brann the Iconoclast, who at the time was perpetually at war with Baylor University and its Baptist supporters. This at the late 19th century saw Brann as one of the most popular writers in America. Brann, who used to call Waco “Jerusalem on the Brazos,” was involved in a 1898 shootout on the streets of Waco near the present day city hall. Brann died from his gunshot wounds, but not before pulling a gun and shooting his assailant, a rabid Baylor supporter named Tom Davis.

Speaking of city streets, Beaumont still has its one-ways: Laurel and Liberty which run from downtown to form what is now Phelan Boulevard. The boulevard runs past the goats and Miller’s Discount Liquor on its way to the West End. Pearl and Orleans also run in opposite directions downtown. There are others going one way.

Am I ever going to get to my tale about stopping at North on Willow? Why yes, since you asked. The car in front of me was signaling left as it stopped there at the one-way North. The traffic signal was a plain red light for us folks headed only one way, which was south. No red with an arrow pointing left. So why didn’t the car in front of me turning left? Well, because it was a case of ignorance of the law. And you know what they say about that. So, you ignorant son of a Ditch Witch, why didn’t you turn?

“Oh I didn’t know you could turn left on a red light.”

To be honest, you can’t turn left on every red light but:

 “A left turn on red is allowed when the street you are on is one-way, and the street you are turning onto is also one-way (to the left, of course).  Makes sense if you think about it– it’s just a mirror image of a right-on-red,” this says Brian Purcell, a.k.a. ‘The Texas Highway Man,’ who has an excellent blog about  the ins and outs of Texas highways.

I am not sure if this is still a living blog, but it has a lot of great information.

Something else I found that may not be as interesting when trying to find Texas highway 411. But if you, for some perverse reason, have an interest in Texas highways and byways, then go here and view this collection of Texas highway maps dating back to the 1940s. It is quite amazing to see the growth that has occurred in some areas. For instance, the booming white-flight city of Lumberton to only eight or so miles away to the north of Beaumont on U.S. 69, 96 and 287.

In the early days you would see hardly any municipalities on the map between Beaumont and Silsbee. Eventually, you would see “Loeb,” or which I knew as “Chance-Loeb,” in the 1960s when we would drive that road between Beaumont and the Pineywoods where I grew up.

Today, the U.S. Census count puts Lumberton as the largest city in Hardin County at 11,943. Silsbee, once a thriving mill town and perpetually Hardin County’s largest town, now stands at a population of 6,611. Kountze, where I once lived (actually my mail was received there–I lived in an unincorporated community called Beaumont Colony between Lumberton and Kountze), is the county seat and has a population of 2,123.

Interesting, yes? No? Well, it was to me although it might be hard to follow. What this essay should teach one and all is that it is difficult to discern where a road might take you and whether one should turn right or left on red.

I think that is what it should teach you, anyhow. But what do I know, right?

 

 

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FRIDAY’S GUESSWORK–YOU MAY WIN A PRIZE, OR NOT

Here, you the viewer try to guess this Friday’s made-up picture and you will get to win these fabulous prizes:

**An autographed copy of a great eightfeetdeep classic

**A genuine Southeast Texas rock

**Your name will appear in a official post of EFD.

All you have to do is send me your guess of this week’s historical figure. I might even let you win if you are close. Send your guess to eightftdeep@hotmail.com.

If you seriously expect a prize, please add your mailing address and name or vice versa:

Who am I?
Who am I?