Category: Orphans

Had it not been for a girl I might be living somewhere today on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. I might also be much prouder of the state I was living in than the one in which I reside today.

Tough words for a Texan to say. For most of my life Mississippi has appeared as a perpetual bottom dweller when it comes to lists concerning education or wealth or this and that. Texas has also made the lower parts of the same lists in more recent times though I have managed to stay proud of the Lone Star State itself, its people and its history.

But it is history — at least United States history which will be taught to future public school students — that makes me hang my head in shame.

You see, we have this bloc of ultra-conservative, fundamentalist religious zealots on our State Board of (Un)Education that is steering all courses in the directions of their beliefs and their beliefs alone. Right now the focus is history. Perhaps tomorrow they will slant all mathematics to the right.

These zealots tried but failed to strike the name of Scopes Monkey Trial attorney Clarence Darrow. They were successful in having language that tries to vindicate that old reprobate Sen. Joe McCarthy. In the new right-wing history in Texas, conservative icons Newt Gingrich and Phyllis Schafly are the important names to remember on history tests on the sections covering the late 20th century.

It is worse than I can describe. High school students who learn the history according to the right-wing nuts on the SBOE or SBOU, will be at a disadvantage when they attend college and learn what the rest of U.S. students have been taught about their past. Those who don’t go on to college will just be cheated out of a decent education because Texas voters were either duped or thought they could legislate the 1950s back into schools which are perceived to be rife with trouble.

Don’t get me wrong. I still love the pine forests of East Texas and the marshes of the upper Texas coast. Likewise, I enjoy driving the Hill Country of Central Texas whenever the highly allergenic ashe juniper (mountain cedar) isn’t pollinating. There is also beauty in the West Texas mountains and North Texas prairies.

There also is no other state, in my mind, with such a fascinating history as that of Texas with its past as a republic and its colonial past which includes Spain and Mexico.

But our elected board running the public schools in Texas is robbing kids of a decent education due to their narrow-minded political and theocratic agenda. We should teach students about the conservative movement and how it has affected politics and the economy just as we should teach the New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. Likewise, influential conservatives in history including Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley, Ronald Reagan and as much as it pains me to say it, Rush Limbaugh, deserve their place in history texts along with FDR, JFK, Teddy Kennedy, Clinton and Barack Obama.

History can live and thrive under a big tent. And making children educationally backwards serves no great purpose either in improving society, nor toward molding it into one’s shape politically unless you aim for a totalitarian society. So how about it? Let’s get these nuts off the Texas board of education. Let’s teach history, the good and the bad. The kids can handle it and they will be better citizens for it.

Oh, as for the girl whom I moved back to Texas for from Mississippi after the service? Well, that didn’t work out, but that’s all ancient history.

I’m watching the news about the situation of the earthquake aftermath in Haiti. Not much to say but if you feel compelled to help, there are plenty of places where you might so offer. There are too many for me to link. Just look for your best charity or find charities in the yellow pages, put the pages on the wall and throw a dart at it. Whatever you hit, call that organization or look at their Web site. You can’t go wrong.

Not much that comes out of Waco, Texas, interests me much anymore. I’m sad to say that because I do have a few friends there. But I look back upon the seven years I lived in Waco as a chapter in my life. Enough said.

I must confess that I was interested to hear that region’s incumbent state Sen. Kip Averitt was bowing out of his re-election effort citing “health reasons.”

Averitt is a Republican and is described and I believe is a moderate one. Another GOP-er from Burleson — south of Fort Worth — is on the ballot. No Democrats are running and the only opposition to GOP candidate Darren Yancy are some Libertarian candidates.

I knew Averitt and, although I didn’t agree with his Republican politics, he certainly threw whatever he had handy to help out in major local issues. Well, one might ask, isn’t that what a legislator is supposed to do? Perhaps, but sometimes legislators try to make themselves larger fish in their small pond. Averitt didn’t try to to that although he became, I think, fairly influential in the Lege. It didn’t hurt that he had as a mentor former Sen. David Sibley, another Waco Republican, as a mentor and boss. As well, it didn’t hurt Averitt that he represented and was of the same party as former governor and later President George W. “Gee Dubya” Bush.

Averitt, Bush and the Texas House equivalent of Democratic majority leader, Rep. Jim Dunnam, gave Waco some stature in the state politically. Along with the very sharp U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, who Nancy Pelosi talked up at one point as a possible VP candidate for Barack Obama, the Waco and transplanted (Bush) pols helped make Waco fairly formidable politically. This came in handy with certain problems Waco had, such as water pollution the city blamed on upstream dairies and a threat of closing the Waco VA hospital. The latter, of course, is a federal matter but Averitt’s political muscle didn’t hurt when appealing to fellow Republicans such as the state’s two U.S. senators.

Gee Dubya is now hanging mostly in North Dallas and no longer president and main draw to Crawford. He actually lived a few miles outside of Crawford, which is located along with Waco in McLennan County. With Averitt’s departure, one wonders how Waco will fare politically in state matters and political power?

Such changes do not signal a failed (portion of a) state. It happens and has happened in Texas since 1845.  Really, I guess, even before Texas was a state. State politics in Texas have seen influence alternate from rural to urban, East Texas to Central Texas, Central Texas to South Texas. And predictably some cities have had more pull at one time than others.

All in all, politics happens.

I wish Kip the best with whatever health problems he has. I can identify.  Mine, luckily, haven’t been life-threatening and I hope neither is his.

Congratulations T-Mobile. After a year and a half of crappy service you finally let me out of my contract without having to pay the $200 early termination fee. I guess if you complain long enough and loud enough and profane enough and file multiple complaints with the Better Business Bureau you may finally get a little to go right your way in the ongoing battle with the big, evil cellular company.

It, on the surface, seems that a little sense is made in the fact that my Broadband is with Verizon, so just maybe I should add a telephone to that contract.  Which is exactly what I did and wasted no time doing it. I got what appears to be a better phone for $10 plus a much better plan — 900-some-odd as opposed to 300 just vanished with each new month — and the cost should be roughly the same as having separate cell and Internet plans. I say should be. I have been screwed with so many times by telecoms that I feel I have to stay awake all night to make sure they don’t pull some new BS with me. Or so it feels.

Ah, a bit o’ justice, for a little while at least with a new phone company and a new phone. And now, I have to learn how to work the damn thing by reading a owner’s manual that my long-dead dog could have written better. Let the fun begin.

The temperature was in the upper 20s when I left for work this morning.

Not long after I got there I heard the unmistakable wail of a electromechanical siren. As far as  I know, only the fire department here in Beaumont uses them anymore. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, an electromechanical or mechanical siren is the big, silver, bullet-shaped device now seen mostly on fire trucks. Such sirens are becoming increasingly rare since the multi-toned “woo-woo” electronic siren has been the emergency vehicle  warning signal of choice for probably  the past 40 years.

Sure enough, from my office window I saw a fire engine crossing Willow and heading west on Calder. I thought for just a second about how one issue those riding that engine no longer have to “sweat” is braving the cold while hanging onto the tailboard.

Riding the tailboard or “back step” of fire engines have largely gone the way of mechanical sirens and being a “leather lunger” by entering burning buildings without an Air Pack. Most career and probably very many volunteer departments banned the practice because it was too dangerous. Firefighters could fall off a moving truck or get rear-ended or might be ejected if the engine was to careen out of control in an accident.

When I worked as a firefighter we rode the tailboard — come hail or high water. One engine company I worked with had — definitely a luxury in our small department — five men. Three firefighters rode the back step. Our Air Packs were mounted on the wall and we would back into them and strap them on, all ready for action once we were on scene. One time while still a rookie I wondered out loud what would happen with us hanging on to a metal bar and standing on a metal step, if lightning were to strike us and particularly if the strike hit my Air Pack?

One of my cohorts said something to the effect that such an incident would send me shooting into the clouds like a bottle rocket. I didn’t know if that could actually happen or not, but it sounded dangerous so I thought: “Cool.”

We were taught in rookie school that the trick to riding the back step was flexing your arms and knees to better absorb the bumps. We weren’t taught that riding back there on a 20-minute drive into the countryside in subfreezing weather would freeze just about everything your body had to offer if not properly attired.

For the first time in my life that first winter I worked I bought some long johns. I grew up where you didn’t really need a pair during the winter unless you worked outdoors or did something foolish like ride on the back of a speeding fire truck.

We had a matched set of Laverne pumpers at our Central Station. The were big honking fire engines, bringing to mind aircraft crash trucks. Since this was the late 70s or 80s, we called the engines Laverne and Shirley. These trucks had back steps to get up to the hose bed and lay some line but the firefighters (the rank, mere peons, not the profession collective) rode in  the jump seat which were mounted  amidships, or just behind the cab. Here the chauffeur (again the rank and not “James” of “Home, James” fame )could operate the pumper as well.

The jumper seat had seat belts and we might have been somewhat safer, though probably still exposed to more auditory damage being only a foot or two behind the electronic sirens, if we actually belted ourselves in. But we wanted to get our Scott packs on and be ready for action. Plus, we wanted to see if there was a big plume of smoke, or the big red glow, indicating a “burner.”

I spent most of my short firefighting career — moonlighting as a college student — at a small three-man station. There I would ride the back step. But if we had cold or bad weather, the lieutenant had all three of us riding up front. It was real cozy.

Just before I started writing I read this forum in a firefighting magazine’s blog about this very topic. Many of the firefighters these days never rode the tailboard. Some sensibly said they think it was idiotic to ride the tailboard, which in terms of safety and liability is true. But as others pointed out, it had a coolness factor that outweighed any perceived danger.

It was cold as hell riding back on the tail at times but when springtime rolled around and we’d cruise through the college with those young coeds wearing those tight shorts for the first time of the season, the tailboard was the place to be.

Ah the folly of youth and the thoughts of “forever young.” I never got hurt riding the back step. I never came close to being hurt. That doesn’t count the time I seriously thought I might die when I passed the object of our mission, a burning gasoline tanker. Of course, I guess that doesn’t count because I was riding ol’ Shirley and had to catch the plug to energize the supply line and I was standing up then instead of sitting strapped into my jump seat.

Anyway, that fire engine this morning sure stirred up the memory ignition. Those memories were both cold and cool — like a nice cool drink on a warm day — or something like it.