Eight Feet Deep

Politics have obviously long been a passion in my life. It has truly become a love-hate relationship though. Politics these days have become so visceral that it really isn’t as much fun as it is a struggle, an ugly wrestling match with faux wrestlers if you will.

I may have fantasized during portions of my life that I would some day run for office. It was never really serious because I had seriously engaged in the study of fun as a younger man. I was never in serious trouble. Nevertheless, there was a time in my life during college when folks at the little country store up the road told people who were looking for my place that they only had to drive for about a mile and look for the house with people on the roof. In other words, I never thought I would ever be elected to any serious office. I did think about running for the archaic office of Inspector of Hides and Animals here in Jefferson County — a non-paid, unfunded, position with no reason for being these days — but the county already had an inspector and the office was soon rustled off to oblivion by the Texas Legislature.

There was no way I thought I could ever pull the wool over anyone’s eyes that I had a good time as a younger guy. But apparently some politicians think they can do so. Some pols think they could go to college in one state, party like a big dog, throw furniture and TVs out hotel windows at Spring Break and 20 years later get elected in another state. This seems the mindset of Kentucky Tea Party senatorial candidate Dr. Rand Paul, according to an article on GQ magazine’s Web site.

The article reports that an unidentified woman said Paul was a member of the locally infamous “NoZe Brotherhood” at Baylor University. The brotherhood is a secret society that pretty much has dedicated itself to having fun and raising Hell at the nation’s largest Baptist university located in Waco. However, the GQ story reported that actions of Paul and another student seemed to go a little overboard when they purportedly kidnapped a woman who was acquaintance of Paul’s and tried to force her to smoke bong hits of pot as well as worship the “Aqua Buddha” at a creek outside of Waco.

This was all in 1983, about the same time I was having a lot of fun my ownself. The woman involved in the incident said it has been blown out of proportion and that Paul and his friend was just “messing” with her even though she described what happened as being “hazed.”

I never ran for office because I used to party a bit. Here is Rand Paul running for office even though he apparently did some partying too and perhaps even went over the line at least once. Who knows where the truth is in all this. When someone runs for office with a big-time following a lot of money can help make old hurts hurt less. I’m not saying Dr. Paul did. It just seems like politics has to be  taken with a big ball of perspective, much more so these days than in days past.

One wonders if Rand Paul is elected to the Senate he’ll show up to an office party wearing his old fake nose disguise from his days as a member of the NoZe boys?

Is it better that one should feel like an idiot rather than being one who is an idiot with no feelings at all?

Who wrote that? I did, just now.

Whether my lead is a profundity or mere blather, chances are someone has thought or expressed those sentiments at one time or another. None of this really matters anyway, for I am about to talk about coffee. What, did I bury my lead somewhere? Where is it? You get the shovel and I will borrow a GPS and perhaps we can find that damn thing.

Once upon a time, I drank a lot of coffee. As my great hero, prophet Willie Nelson, once wrote: ” … and I learned it all in the Navy.” Quite odd lyrics because Nelson was in the Air Force, but it rhymes for his song “Pick Up the Tempo.”

“I’m quiet and I’m loud and I’m gathering a crowd and I like gravy/About half off the wall but then I learned it all in the Navy.”

Great words when you think about it. It describes me, somewhat, back when I drank a lot of beer — and coffee.

The two go hand in hand, beer and coffee. Copious amounts of both substances were always around back in my Navy days. This was much more the case in shore duty than at sea. You aren’t supposed to drink alcoholic beverages while at sea, for the most part at least, with the U.S. Navy. That is not to say it doesn’t or hasn’t happened. Smoking illegal substances also wasn’t, and isn’t, allowed while on shipboard either. That didn’t mean you wouldn’t find some sailor higher than the main mast at any given time back in the late 70s when I sailed on a destroyer.

Back to coffee though, it was everywhere and you could find it in big industrial coffee makers. That is what we  drank, big industrial coffee. Beer was also omnipresent back then as I told some of my brothers and other kin this weekend at a family reunion. In an effort to make the Navy more livable, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Elmo “Bud” Zumwalt, made certain liberal changes such as making beer available in vending machines in more of the Navy’s “BEQs,” which was what barracks were dubbed. BEQ, stood for, bachelor enlisted quarters. Honestly, you could get a PBR (Pabst Blue Ribbon), an Oly (Olympia) or the evil Schlitz beer for just 30 cents a can.

Then, you could drink a couple of cold ones at lunch at the Navy Exchange cafe or at the Enlisted, Chief’s or Officer’s clubs.

After knocking off work, many would stop off at the bar off base. In my case, this was Jim’s Lounge or the Postman’s Lounge, which were a block down the street from each other in Gulfport.

If one put their minds, well I guess those aren’t the proper words to use but, to it they could drink a lot of beer by the time it was time to go back to the barracks for a night’s sleep. Then, you get up, head to the chow hall for breakfast. Eat eggs and bacon or Shit on the Shingle (cream chipped beef on toast) and have  massive amounts of industrial coffee before heading to work, where the first order of business was for one to break their coffee mug out of their desk and  head to the coffee machine.

It was a big, vicious, circle and thankfully I finally went to sea where we only drank beer in port for the most part. Of course, if you were at sea for two or three weeks you had a tendency to make up for all that lost beer-drinking time once you hit port.

Although I long have only had the occasional beer instead of my massive days of beer swilling, I drank quite a bit of coffee up until five or so years ago. That was when I last worked, full-time, for a newspaper. Newspapers, despite their quiet sounds of desperation these days, complete with the stealthy tapping of computer keys, still produce their share of heavy coffee drinkers. As for beer drinkers or that of any other kind of alcohol, I don’t know. There are probably some ranging from the Gen Ys to the fading Old goats from the Boomer days who go get loaded after work. I can attest that for the most part, the really old days of having a pint bottle in your desk drawer has long been gone. I don’t know what the Gen Ys do these days, and don’t really care. Right now I am a bit miffed at the Gen Ys. I’ll get over it, maybe.

Gradually, I came to drink less and less coffee. Some days I have managed to barely drink a cup of coffee, and have even skipped a cup, picking up a relatively tasteless unsweetened ice tea from McDonald’s on the way to work. I have even thought about just quitting coffee altogether.

But there is something about coffee that I seem to need and it isn’t particularly the caffeine apparently. Coffee transcends the many phases of my life ranging from the coffee with milk and sugar that I used to have at Mom’s, what we called the only grandparent I ever knew, through the Navy, as a fireman, in college (where the lady cashier in the student center cafe always called us “Hon,”) my slacker days, my journalist days to present day. That”s about 50 years of coffee. Thank goodness I quit cigarettes 10 years ago.

So I am sitting here, wondering just why in the hell I bought a new coffee maker earlier this afternoon at “Tar-jas.”

Last week I had at least one cup of coffee while staying in a motel near Dallas. The Joe machine was one of those with the coffee in a pouch inside wrapping. You put the pouch in the filter basket and it makes two cups of Java. The coffee was pretty good too considering the water there tasted like it was taken minus purification from Lake Lewisville. I had the idea after this experience that I would try to find me a one or two cup coffee maker. My reasoning was that the microwaved instant just doesn’t get it done, plus a regular Mr. Coffee wastes too much water and coffee when I am brewing the cup o’ mud just for myself. I don’t know about anyone else but when you brew one cup of coffee in one of those machines, it just doesn’t come out like anything  compared to cooking coffee for at least three cups.

Only, the coffee makers that make one or two cups were all for sale with at least three digits to the left of the decimal point. What? Then, I found a Chefmate, regular 12-cup maker, on sale for $7 at Target. Right. Like I am gong to spend a hundred something dollars to make one or two cups of coffee when I can get a machine for $7. Really, I want just a cup. That’s about it. That can of Maxwell House will probably last me three-quarters of a year.

I know there are differences in coffee machines and those who are really into coffee can justify the expense of what pricey Joe machines turn out for the discriminating coffee head. If you are really THAT into coffee,you should seek professional help, you should check out this site.

For me, coffee is a delivery system for a little bit of stimulation that I sometimes need as well as a portal to the majority of my life. Coffee is a time machine that paying $2-4 in Starbucks for will not make those memories any clearer, nor will it achieve whatever level of a coffee buzz that I seem to use these days. That level of stimulation is not a very high mark. The memories remain what they were years ago.

Hopefully, my coffee will taste good when I drink it in the morning. That is all I ask for and if it is achieved for 7 bucks plus the dollar stack of filters and the three bucks for almost a year’s worth of coffee, I will see that as one hell of a bargain.

Over the past week or so I’ve seen — like those great Western swingers Asleep at the Wheel sang — “miles and miles of Texas.”

It has been years since I could get in a car and drive and pretty much drive non-stop for hours on end. I’ve driven what is near the widest width of the Lone Star State several times, from near the Sabine River in Newton County to El Paso. The last time I remember making that drive was on Christmas Day 1985. I practically had I-10 to myself that day except for the occasional black and white of the Texas Highway Patrol. That was a 16-hour drive. I do good to make it three hours without having to find a hotel to spend the night these days, due to a variety of back, neck and knee ailments that only get worse the more you set in a little moving box.

One fact I have gleaned from those trips both east-west and north-south in Texas is as follows: If you love Texas you will come to love it more after seeing it from miles and miles of  highway. If you are disposed to hating Texas, those miles and miles will make you a dyed-in-the-wool Texas hater. I fall in the former category. Oh, there’s quite a few things I don’t like about Texas. Its governor for one. Ol’ Good Hair Rick making those outbursts during the beginning of the Tea Parties on how Texas could secede from the union and divide itself into five different states? That’s a crock, of course. Texas, if its folks chose, could divide itself into five different states but it would still be in the U.S. and would  have much more congressional representation than everyone else.

The provisions that would presumably allow Texas to divide itself came about as a result of the 1845 annexation deal between the Republic of Texas and the United States of America. That division will never happen though. As the proud little book from long ago, “Texas Brags,” which you could buy at the Stuckey’s stores on the Interstates, pointed out none of the five states would ever be able to let the others have the Alamo.

Oh and secession? You ever hear of the Civil War, or as some call it down South suh, the War of Northern Aggression? Frankly, for all its flaws, I’m pretty damn proud to be a born and bred citizen of the US of A. I served in its military and as part of its government, and yes, I’m pretty damn proud of that too.

A song I heard on the “Outlaw Country” channel of Sirius XM satellite radio — a pretty good thing in my mind that satellite radio thingamajig — while cruising down I-45 on Friday kind of puts this big old piece of Earth known as Texas into a big ball o’ perspective. It is a tune by a fellow named Bob Cheevers called “Texas Is An Only Child.”

“Texas is an only child/A real lone star/you can be a friend, no matter who your are/the Alamo’s still stands/the rivers running wild/the great state of Texas is an only child.”*

Check out the link, where you can hear that and other songs by Cheevers, or while you still can. Musicians change up Web sites like they change their non-existent underwear. That is, all musicians except Los Lobos. As far as I know, you can listen to I guess everything they’ve ever recorded on their Web site “Player.“ Those ol’ boys from East L.A.: David Hidalgo, Louis Perez, Cesar Rosas, Conrad Lozano and Steve Berlin are one of America’s musical treasures. They form a blend of rock, Tex-Mex, folk, country, R&B and various sounds from South of the Border. I will probably head over to their radio as soon as I’m finished to get my fix of “Good Morning Aztlan,” one of the band’s best rollicking ballads. Los Lobos isn’t from Texas but they’ve played on “Austin City Limits” probably more than a lot of Texans and they’d certainly be welcome in Texas by all but a  few cops who just don’t like brown folks very much. Oh well, it’s their loss.

Cheevers has a great song in “Lone Star.” Who cares if it is somewhat hokey and Texalitionist. Hey, Texas is where I live and I’d wrestle a bear to protect this great state, provided I had a very sturdy anti-bear suit, a tranquilizer gun, a baseball catcher’s mask, a Smith and Wesson .357 Model 19, a Remington 870 pump, a bazooka, or perhaps my friend Tere whom I haven’t seen in years. She once whacked an alligator upside the head with a .22. Weird? Why of course not, it’s just Texas.

*Bob Cheevers musical lyrics are reprinted through the “Fair Use” doctrine.

When one goes off somewhere for a week of training related to a job or some other endeavor some folks will just roll their eyes or wink and say: “Sure you are going for training. “Nevertheless, I really did train this week and it was pretty extensive subject matter that took up full days and then some.

It was nice to see Dallas this morning, passing through, going home for Southeast Texas. A lot of folks I know who don’t live in Dallas say they don’t like Dallas. Maybe it is because I spent extended periods of time there, living there in a couple of different incarnations for as long as a year, that makes me feel Dallas is a pretty cool place as cities go. I am not the biggest fan of cities though. Like the song — I think Jimmie Dale Gilmore wrote it but his Flatlanders cohort Joe Ely is most remembered for it — “Dallas (Have You Ever Seen Dallas From a DC-9 At Night)” (Sorry, I had trouble embedding a You Tube Video) Big D is distinctive both night and day. The song is dark as befitting a tune about the nighttime although the narrative evokes an individualistic posture of the city even when seen from above.

Dallas is much more distinctive during the daytime. Maybe the fact that I have seen the Dallas skyline from afar so many times that I have just noticed it more but it seems to me that the horizontal look at the Dallas vertical profile is probably as unique as any U.S. city with the possible exception of  New York. Most interesting of all Dallas skyscrapers, including even Reunion Tower which many of my friends jokingly refer to as “Mr. Microphone,” is what is now known as the J.P. Morgan Chase Building.

Formerly the Texas Commerce Tower, the 55-story building described as “post-modern” architecture is most notable for it’s curved roof and its breath-taking “sky window.” The hole, which is what it is, is six stories high, 27-feet wide and 80 feet deep. During the time I worked as a temp in downtown Dallas I would look at the tower from different angles and watch the Southwest Boeing 737s descending to Love Field fly by it and I would imagine what a sight it would be if the sky window could accommodate one of the aircraft for a fly-through. Keep in mind, this was almost 20 years before 9/11 and I was just daydreaming.

As interesting as Dallas is I passed on through it without stopping this morning.

I did stop in a small town just south of Dallas off I-45 called Ferris. I figured Ferris would have a little downtown area and it did. It’s kind of a quaint little place where I found a really good Philly Cheesesteak. The place is called Alfonso’s. If it was called St. Alfonso’s I would have expected a great pancake breakfast. Alfonso’s was in an old building on a corner in which a 7-day a week sno-cone business operates out of from a little door-window around the corner from Alfonso’s. The cheesesteak place was amazingly modern inside with flat screen TVs on either side of the dining area, one turned to a weather station and the other to the Fort Worth-Dallas NBC affiliate.

It was kind of early, after the place opened when I came in so I heard the cook say that “he might have to wait awhile for the fries.” So, they must’ve been really good although I had none. The tea had not finished brewing either but the ice water was great on a day surely on its way to be another in the triple digits. The cheesesteak was good and I wished I had ordered the large one instead of the small. Even so, for $5.11 cash I got the sandwich, some chips and the water.

Right now, I am cooling it in Huntsville for the night before I drive back to Beaumont and back to the old routine. Just how routine the routine will be, who knows?

The last few posts I joked about being out of town for training. In fact, it was labor training for my part-time job. Unions may not be popular and members will be the first to admit how the bad apples in the past have hurt the movement in total. But they have long  performed a vital function to help workers that would be or are otherwise exploited by, let’s be frank, assholes.

It was disturbing to hear of the Connecticut beer warehouse shooting today. That is, of course, for the nine senseless deaths which included the gunman. It also was jarring to hear about the shooter killing his union president and who came to represent him before his employers, in addition to fellow co-workers. Labor has long been and, hopefully will forever be a brotherhood and sisterhood of those who just want to get what they deserve and to help those who are wronged or might be wronged by employers. May our fellow labor members and others killed in this absurd loss of life rest in peace.