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Thoughts of Spring in the land of the “real” Margaritaville

Happy Spring everyone.

For no particular reason on this beautiful first day of Spring I was thinking of a Margarita. If you touch adult beverages, whether sometime or damn near all the time you probably have your mouth set for something or other every now or then. That isn’t to say you don’t have your favorite — a shot of vodka, diet tonic and splash of lemon — but there are days in which excellence is rewarded. That isn’t to say anyone can make a decent Margarita nor may one find such a tasty reward just anywhere.

The secret to the best Margarita isn’t the ingredients, although you sure as hell don’t want to pour some unknown store-bought mixture on top of a shot Jose Cuervo and leave it at that. No, you want the mixture concocted with love or else a sense of purpose. Some of the best Margaritas I’ve tasted were in small settings of friends with the barman who takes pride in the mixture of frosty green paradise in a glass.

I hope some day to return to the site of the best Margarita to pass between my lips. It has been awhile.

Some say the Kentucky Club in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico, is the site where the first Margarita was mixed and served.

Chance are, a place that served drinks back in the day and is still tending bar has to be a place to find a drink or two.
The Kentucky Club in Juarez, paradise!

Outside, the Kentucky appears as just another hole-in-the-wall not far from the pedestrian bridge at the border of El Paso and Juarez. Inside, however, is living history. The bar itself is made of magnificent hardwoods. There is no telling how old the trees themselves were when brought down to build the long bar in perhaps in the 1920s. American celebrities from Clark Gable to Elvis to Marilyn were said to have drank here. A number of photos of the famed customers used to line the walls, I don’t know if they still do as it has been about 10 years since I last visited both Juarez and the Kentucky.

That isn’t to say I haven’t been near Juarez during the past decade. I have a close friend who lives in El Paso and, for many years, my visits to El Paso ultimately included a visit across the border. But all that changed when the immense violence from rival drug gangs commenced. It pushed the death toll in Ciudad Juarez to almost 9,000 people between 2007 and 2011.

It looked a few years ago that a shutdown might be in store for the “birthplace” of the Margarita. That might have meant the end of careers for people whose lives were spent working behind those rich hardwood bars, for those who went to work at the Kentucky Club usually ended up staying for the long haul.

But changes seem to be slowly taking place. Last year, “only” 750 homicides were recorded in Juarez. We speak of a city with a population of some 1 million less than Chicago. The Windy City which is notorious for murders saw slightly more than 500 homicides last year.

Only the slightest resemblance may be seen between “that frozen concoction” Jimmy Buffett made famous in the 1970s and the straight-up chilled, salt-rimmed drink or on the rocks that is the real taste of Margarita found at the “Kentucky Bar.” While a tequila-filled ice slush is a sweltering-day’s treat, it is the simple non-frozen drink that rekindles the romance of gringo’s discovery of another world.

Hopefully, the violence will end sometime soon and Ciudad Juarez will once again be the enjoyable trek to Mexico we once knew, and the home of the Margarita we once loved.

Cheers to Spring!

 

 

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The old sayings about the weather leave us forever wondering

The wind in the great out of doors a short-short ago was slicing like a Saturday evening straight razor. We are supposed to be kissed here abouts 45 miles north of the Gulf of Mexico with sea breezes that gently caress the evening. But alas those winds, like the 30-plus mph gusts that ripped me a new one as I walked out of the office today, were more like a nasal-to-chin sloppy one planted by the town drunk on a suicide mission.

Metaphoric pictures, and not necessarily pleasant ones at that, aside are the “March Crazies” as I call them. It isn’t a particular weather feature but more like a pre-Spring phenomenon that leaves you not knowing whether to fly a kite or tie your ass down to a sturdy oak tree.

The old sayings about the weather leading into Spring have now faded into memory. With the possibility — and for many probability — of intercontinental travel these days could only a meteorologist who has studied weather of areas traversing the big ponds know if these sayings universally hold water, pardon the pun.

Had I not witnessed it myself would I have known the old mariner’s weather verse is as true — many times — on the Big Sur side of the mighty Pacific as it off the Indochina coast looking fore and aft while sailing down the middle of the South China Sea. I once knew what basis in fact was “Red sky at morning, sailors take warning. Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.” Of course, that verse is also as foretelling sometimes as does the old saw: “If your left hand itches, it means you will be blessed with money.” That very circumstance has proven true at times, though just as often as when my left butt cheek itched.

My mother was not overtly superstitious but I think that she loved when these old sayings with which she heard all of her life became a reality. She used to point out “Thunder in February, frost in April.” And I can remember those times more than not.

The most confusing of the old weather sayings has been how “March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.” Or is it vice versa? At least in my part of the world does the former seem to be the most evident.

As entertaining are these old wise tales does the same go for the completely unpredictable. The wild and sometimes dangerous storms of Spring are still as great a wonder as can be imagined. Were it not so, perhaps L. Frank Baum might have spun an epic story around a blizzard or a drought rather than a tornado which caused a farm house to conk Dorothy on the head and heave her ho out into Oz.

The nugget of wisdom that points out how “April showers bring May flowers” seems as if it is making up for a ruined day, perhaps it is why Johnny had to stay inside. But it is just as true as “April showers bring April flooding.”

Times were back during the recent droughts when it seemed as if it would never rain again. But it did. Like that rainy July 4th I remember. Nothing was ruined for me on that festive day as the blessed steady showers came during a severe rain-free period.

Talk though you may about that weather and say there is nothing that could be done. Someday science may prove that just as empty as some lakes left dry by drought. But I had just as soon weather be left alone with perhaps the great advances in forecasting being a welcome exception. It is those winds that blew from the sea with gusto and which seemed to tear my bones apart likewise provide me a great comfort in its mystery.

 

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Off for Beautiful Day Holiday

It’s a beautiful day out here in the city of Beaumont, Texas. Our official motto is: “If you ever drove 1-10 from Houston to New Orleans you’ve been through our fair city. And if you’ve carried a ton of dope on that route, you may even have been busted here!”

The skies are clear, the wind is gusty. It’s just a typical late February day and almost March when any kind of weather can happen. Be that as it may, I thought I would take the day off from blogging and take a little walk. Barring unforeseen circumstances, perhaps even the seen ones, I should be back tomorrow, same bat channel.

Blue skies among the woods of Southeast Texas on this February day.
Blue skies among the woods of Southeast Texas on this February day.
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California burnin,’ Texas style!

Well if this isn’t a fine how do you do. The state of California is known for its wild fires that get out of control when the Santa Ana winds start blowing and whatever other kinds of natural freaks show up. And now? I don’t know whether the state just doesn’t have enough left to burn or is worried about what is left. But, a California university wants to pay to burn a patch of Texas ground.

Now I know the fire and environmental folks around Houston, where the 115 acres was scheduled for torching during the gusty winds this afternoon, have seen plenty of their own land go up in smoke and flames. Hey, wake up! Remember the disaster last year in Bastrop? Almost 1,700 homes burned up in the county, less than 100 miles away from Houston.

I suppose some of the folks out on the left coast just have money to burn. Break out the Gatorade for the firefighters and some margaritas for the neighbors. This sounds like something Guvnuh Good Hair Perry dreamed up.

 

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I second that a’ motion

My mind is out in space this afternoon, figuratively speaking of course. Where would I be if my mind was literally out in space and the rest of me was sitting in this chair while poking a keyboard ? That raises the question: How long would it take a thought to travel from the edge of space to near sea level?

I am pretty sure someone could answer that question or at least give it a shot. It seems like there are as many answers out there, perhaps even more, than there are questions. Here’s a question for you. How fast does the Earth move around the Sun? I had to find — on the Internet — an astrophysicist to answer this one.

“Earth’s average distance to the Sun is 150,000,000 km (93 million miles), therefore the distance it travels as it circles the Sun in one year is that radius x 2 x pi, or 942,000,000 million kilometers in a year of 24 hours/day x 365 1/4 = 8,766 hours so you divide to get 107,000 km/h or about 67,000 mph. You could also say the Earth moves around the Sun at 30 km/s. The Sun circles the center of our Galaxy at about 250 km/s. Our Galaxy is moving relative to the ‘average velocity of the universe at 600 km/second’ “– From “Ask the Astrophysicist, 1997.”

It certainly doesn’t feel as if we are traveling that fast. I bet if we felt that velocity, then even us Texans would talk fast.

Perhaps it is that I might make a couple of airline trips later this year that I ponder the many illusions one confronts when traveling in a physics-laden universe. I think in specific, why it seems one isn’t really going anywhere, or at least, isn’t going anywhere fast, while traveling at hundreds of miles per hour.

Oh, I’m not talking about takeoff or landing or making airborne turns or experiencing turbulence. I speak of the motionless feeling of flight itself. You can close your eyes and practically feel as if you are sitting in your favorite uncomfortable chair at home. Then, if it is daytime and not cloudy outside your little air cabin porthole, you peer downward some seven miles to terra firma and can tell the plane is moving somewhat. That is even though it doesn’t feel as if you are traveling 500 mph.

While you are looking at the ground to see what’s there or if you are trying to locate something you recognize, all of a sudden you see another airline in the distance and it is literally flying by. It’s flying by, as in “zoom,” it’s out of here!

It’s all just an illusion, you remind yourself. Such trickery doesn’t find limits in flight either.

I remember when my brother brought a motor boat home from Connecticut that he won playing poker with some Navy shipmates. We set “sail” out on Lake Sam Rayburn in East Texas, and when my brother cranked the outboard to full speed, it felt like we were “flying,” as in we felt like we were hauling ass! Yes, I know. It’s an odd idiom. But you know what I mean. We were maybe going 25 mph, but it seemed even faster out there on the lake.

Years later when I was in the Navy I joined my ship, a mid-1940s version destroyer, which was in a San Pedro, Calif., drydock having a new hull installed. It was only a month or so after I reported on board that the work was completed and we took the ship to water for the first time in several months for a “shakedown cruise”

It seemed to take forever to transit from the shipyards, under the Vincent Thomas Bridge and out past the breakwaters. Once on a bit more open water the captain ordered “All Ahead, Full” and the 30-year-old warship let its engines rip. I was standing out on the fantail watching the screws churn thousands of gallons of seawater effortlessly. I can recall the smile that came across my face as it did some of my new friends who were goofing off, getting sun and tasting the salty air spraying us all. I don’t know how fast we were going. I guess technically a warship’s speed is classified, but the Fletcher class destroyer as we were on was designed for almost 45 mph. Were we going that fast that day? Who cared, as long as little springs of water didn’t start popping out of the hull.

One of those other strange sensations on water, but even in the air or on the ground is how one feels after concluding a journey. In a car after a long ride, you might go to bed that night feeling like you are still riding. Or perhaps you feel “bouncy” after a long flight.

The sensation I found even more bizarre was docking in port after encountering heavy weather. I learned pretty fast how to walk down a passageway during big waves, thus gaining my “sea legs.” It came to be second nature, so it wasn’t a total surprise when I walked with sea legs off the brow and on down the pier for a ways.

Your body, nature, the land, sea, physics all seem to converge at times to play a little joke upon the unsuspecting. I adapted like a duck in water when I rode the Pacific on a 390-foot, 2,400-ton tin can. It took a bit longer not to tighten-up when the bumps began while flying the friendly skies. But it took only one ride that day at the carnival when my Daddy and I made the idiot decision to ride the gravity-defying Tilt O’ Whirl.

Life’s a trip, isn’t it?