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“If not for Christmas … by New Year’s night”

Tony Russell “Charles” Brown grew up Galveston and taught chemistry at Carver High School in nearby Baytown, Texas, after receiving his degree from Prairie View A & M.  This was decades before integration and just as the U.S. went to World War II. Brown worked in a mustard gas plant in Arkansas and a Southern California shipyard before settling in Los Angeles. It was there Brown honed his skills as a pianist in blues bands and eventually recorded his music.

His Christmas blues standard “Please Come Home for Christmas” was a hit in 1960. It was popular enough through the various holidays that followed that it had sold 1 million records eight years later.

Brown was always more or less claimed as a “Southeast Texan.” Of course, he was Southeast Texan having grown up in Galveston but not “down home Southeast Texan” in the Beaumont-Port Arthur-Orange “Golden Triangle” in which Janis Joplin was a native. He was more a native in the ZZ Top style. The three band members played many time in the Beaumont area, especially before they made it big. With the Frank, Dusty and Billy being mostly a Houston band, they too were co-opted by those of the Beaumont area.

Brown died in 1999 and was buried in California.

It really doesn’t matter who is from where though. During the number of years I lived outside of Southeast Texas, I never really felt at home in the area when I visited for the holidays until I heard James Brown’s “Please Come Home for Christmas.” And as much as I like the Eagles version of the song sung by northeast Texan Don Henley, sometimes there is nothing like the original.

May you all have a Happy Christmas wherever you are or whatever you are.

 

 

 

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Duck thumpin’ in Louisiana and topless oil wrestling in Texas

No. I will not sit here and wax philosophically over the A&E Network’s suspension of Phil Robertson from the hit reality series “Duck Dynasty.”

Robertson is the leader of the backwoods Louisiana clan who became suddenly rich after making duck calls. Now you cannot go to a store without seeing a T-shirt, a Christmas card or dog blanket featuring the Robertson family. Why it’s enough to make the AFLAC Duck freak-out.

The elder Robertson made remarks in a GQ interview which were disparaging to gays. His remarks happened to include a translation, perhaps his own translation, of The Bible, I Corinthians 6:9, “Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers — they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.” 

Now that isn’t exactly the King James Version I grew up with, which interprets the verse as:

“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind.”

Okay, read the various translations here on your own. I beg your pardon, I never promised you a theologian.

I also never knew what a bunch of backwoods rednecks who make duck calls, and presumably lots of money these days, has to do with arts and entertainment. Entertainment, perhaps. Arts?

But I don’t see why Phil Robertson is not entitled to his opinion. Scores, maybe thousands of others in the entertainment business certainly feel free to mouth off on subjects, including homosexuality. Remember when folks blew a gasket upon the pronouncement of Dixie Chicks’ singer Natalie Maines during a concert that she was ashamed George W. Bush was a Texan? Why the Fox News crowd would have thought Maines had given away the Manhattan Project secrets.

The First Amendment gives Americans the right to say something no matter how profound or stupid, or profoundly stupid. And the people have the right to decide in the marketplace whether Robertson is just ignorant, mean or stupid, or all of the aforementioned.

So shut the fark up already.

Oiloiloiloiloiloiloiloiloil

This afternoon I found a flyer on my truck. It was from  a place called “Jaguars Club” in Beaumont. It featured a well-shaped chin, a swath of brushed blond hair, and a wet T-shirt clad with a pair of women’s breasts. It implored me to come every first and third Tuesday of every month and enjoy $5 cover and $5 dances. Most intriguing was the feature on Thursday nights, which is:

“Topless Oil Wrestling Match”

Now I presume that this would include women wrestling topless while frolicking in some kind of oil. They wouldn’t want to upset Phil Robertson lest he comes in with a mouth-load of duck calls and thumping the customers on the head with his Bible. (Note: Robertson has labeled himself a “Bible-thumper.”)

Beaumont, Texas, being the place where the modern oil and gas industry began with the Lucas Gusher at Spindletop in 1901, I would like to think that good old crude oil would be used in this wrestling. After all, I am sure some folks might label the spectacle as “crude.” Others might call it just another night in Beaumont.

On the back of the flyer, more breasts. This time a pair of what looks to be feminine hands pulling the edge of her “I assume it’s a her” halter top back thus to give a bit more of a glimpse to a breast. This side advertises Wednesdays, which is “College Night” at Jaguars. Halfs are popular that night. Covers 1/2 price, 1/2 price “VIP” (I don’t know what this is and will undoubtedly not ask) and 1/2 price table dances.  An amateur contest happens at midnight with a $200 cash prize. For what is the cash prize offered? It could be a variety of contests, most of which I would imagine offers some sort of partial nakedness.

This being Beaumont, Texas, however, home to Spindletop, I would imagine every college boy and every good ol’ boy who has yet to pass out by midnight would have a quart of oil in the back of their pickup. So I imagine some topless oil wrestling could be put together on a moment’s notice.

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A nice respite from a winter that hasn’t made it here just yet

Today has been a beautiful day outside. No clouds can be found and it was warm enough this afternoon to go for a walk in shorts and a T-shirt. Winter is slightly more than a week away but we have seen freezing temperatures a couple of times already here in Southeast Texas this month and those temps below 40 degrees  for more than half of our evening lows. That, of course, pales in comparison to what seems practically two-thirds of the rest of the country this month.

A friend in Alaska e-mailed a picture of her husband snow-blowing for the second time, I assume she means in the same day. She noted that Anchorage received 16 inches over a two-day period, a time during which it had to warm up to snow.

This country has enough versatility that if it were possible to sell such differences we’d probably be like those folks in the super oil-rich nations of the Middle East where people get paid simply to exist. That not being the case, we must instead work out in all kinds of weather and even have our livelihoods live or die upon the weather.

I never worked outside much, at least where the weather was a major factor. That is, unless the weather was hot. When I was a younger man and worked fighting fires, I certainly had no type of weather affect what I was doing. At least, we weren’t told to go home if it got too hot to make a fire call. Likewise, we weren’t sent home if the streets became slick with ice.

It might seem obvious that fires would be easier to handle in colder weather than hot. Well, sometimes yes and sometimes no. Let’s say you have a freezing cold day. You enter a building pretty much, burning up, pun intended. Well, you will feel better or at least warm up temporarily. But, hopefully, a few minutes later you emerge from having the fire’s main body knocked down. Back then, I smoked cigarettes, so I’d smoke two or three after a fire like many of my cohorts would. Don’t ask me why.

Eventually, you not only warm up you then cool down and then may start freezing your ass off because you begin to sweat, especially if you are wearing long-johns. That, plus an extra 50 pounds or so in firefighting gear. There seems no way to win.

Then there are those days when it’s cold enough that you need to wear outerwear on the outside but not on the inside. In the winter, especially, people tend to have many interior places overly warm. There are different reasons, among them being large spaces to keep warm. You go inside from the cold, but it is not-too-cold inside. In fact, it gets hot quickly.

The concept of “layers” is suggested for many locations. This is true in places where it gets cold then warms fairly soon as the day progresses. Then you are taking part of your clothes off and, unless you are in a familiar space, you have to find something to do with your sweater or coat or both. Or maybe your pants, just for something completely different.

Seasons do not usually turn an “on” and “off” button but you have plenty of head start that winter is on its way and soon. Take for instance the snow and yuck many places have already received this year in North America. So, you have received fair warning that winter is upon us and for many the climate will only get worse. Be sure to layer up, button up and probably, you will want to keep your pants on in most cases. Unless you happen to find yourself in a “pants optional” spot.

Just remember that you can’t prepare for all contingencies, but do endeavor to use what little sense you’ve been given. Have a happy winter.

 

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Got chili on my mind

It’s not as cold as it has been lately, still the temperature here in Southeast Texas has stayed less than the mid-50s all day. I suppose what I’m saying is I thought of, in those recent colder days when we faced temps which never got out of the 30s, whipping up a bowl of red. Yes, I am talking chili.

I learned long ago, when I was a young man who fought fires for a living, that there are all sorts of difference between real chili and the canned stuff. Actually, my Momma made a good pot of chili. I suppose that she might not like me bragging and perhaps would secretly feel a bit hurt, but I made chili better than Momma’s. My first bowl, when I used a prepared seasoning mix — produced by an old Nacogdoches football star in Chireno — was the best I ever tasted at the time. Then my friend Bruce, and sometimes even Waldo, would try to out-cook me. But they never did. Well, during those six or so years we had an actual cook-off, Bruce did manage to beat me a couple of times. I eventually grew out of a packaged mix. Besides Red, who made the mixture, went to that big chili parlor in the sky sometime back then.

If you have a need for canned chili — and I understand that sometimes it is necessary — you should buy Wolf Brand. In more recent years I would often buy Austex turkey chili. It was less fattening as well as cheaper. Wolf Brand always had the “brand” thing going. Back in the 60s and 70s this Texas Ranger looking fellow would come on TV and ask: “Neighbor, how long has it been since you had a big, thick, steaming bowl of Wolf Brand Chili? Ha. Well that’s too long.”

So, it’s not really cold, but I’ve been making chili and as soon as I look over and publish this, I’m going to eat a bowl. And you know what? It’s got beans. It has organic-damned chili beans in it. That’s why I didn’t give Bruce too much of a hard time the other day when he told the world on Facebook that he made some chili with beans. I once was a “no beans” chili cook/consumer. I figure a man like me needs to watch his diet at my age and condition, so I have some 90 percent lean and 10 percent fat ground beef. It’s cheaper than the turkey that the store carries and it actually has less cholesterol than that same turkey. Anyway, I recently had my blood work done and cholesterol isn’t a major problem with me.

Chili is a dish that doesn’t need meat. I can just imagine sitting around sipping tea with a bunch of vegetarian chili heads. But to each their own. A bowl of red, or two, has an amazing power surrounding it. I don’t know what it is other than being delicious. Though really, is there anything wrong with something that tastes good that you can make to your spec?

That’s a big thick, steaming bowl of homemade chili. How long has it been since you had a bowl?