Eight Feet Deep

Alas. I like using the word “alas.” It reminds of the words “a lass.” Or so I guess.

But alas, I find myself wide awake at 8:06 a.m. on the first day of my first vacation of the year. Actually, it’s called “leave” in the gubmint, the same as we called vacation in the Navy.

My morning starts off with my monthly medication visit to the “doctor” at the VA Clinic. Then laundry. Then pay a bill. Then I’m off to Nacogdoches. That is in Texas. It’s actually the oldest town in Texas although a place outside El Paso claims to also be the oldest. Since I spent the golden years of my young adulthood in Nacogdoches, I vote for it.

The last few days have been kind of hectic. I think I had something go wrong with my computer, my phone and bank account all within a span of 24 hours. Dell finally threw in the towel. They had enough of my complaining and having them send a technician to fix it. They are going to replace my computer in “seven to 21 days.” Whatever. I finally screamed in CAPITAL LETTERS on a bank chat site yesterday which enabled me to access my money again. As for my phone, it won’t let me use speaker phone but only, it seems, with Dell. Whatever.

On a personal note — as if the copy I have used to fill my blog this morning in has not been personal — my brother is in the hospital in Houston facing open heart surgery later this week at Methodist Hospital. If he is using his laptop and sees this: Hey Brother, hang in there. Get well soon! I will see you later this week.

I suppose I should get ready for my trip to the VA. More later. Perhaps today from Nacogdoches and if not tomorrow from Nacogdoches. And sorry for the sentence. Fragments. It’s a bad habit that hits me every now and then. Blame it on Facebook. Or laziness. But alas, I’m on vacationleave.

When a tremendous controversy would arise back in the day here in Beaumont, Texas, USA, one would be advised to stay home, if one’s home was in a safe neighborhood, or to literally head for the hills of East Texas.

Today, people just call each other names and spew slurs behind made up names on the local newspaper’s comments section after a controvery. It might surprise some to know that someone who worked as a journalist for more than two decades would prefer to see such back-and-forth on the Internet — where cases of racist and personal slurs, cease and desist. That is how I feel though. I just think the smug, if not totally ignorant comments, gives what passes for humanity in these parts a bad name.

But I’m not here to rag on the local newspaper’s comment section. I will either do that here at another time or perhaps go beyond my little blog and call for or join in some kind of action for or with those who feel like me.

Instead, I’m here to talk about our latest local controversy involving one of our most controversial figure. That would be one Dr. Carroll A. “Butch” Thomas, superintendent of the Beaumont Independent School District. Thomas, a veteran educator and administrator, is or if he isn’t is probably next to the highest paid school official in Texas. The Beaumont Enterprise database of local school employees says Thomas makes a whopping $338,493.69 per year.

With the glut of information on schools out there on the Internet both nationally and about Texas I couldn’t find a ranking of school district enrollments in Texas. But I did find some information from the Texas Education Agency indicating at least 46 Texas school districts had a larger enrollment than did  Beaumont ISD.  So one has to think that Thomas either lives in an exceptionally wealthy school district, did an incredible job in leading the district to top performance ratings, or else well, fill in the blanks. The latter is what many folks do. Unfortunately, there is some racial polarization among those who attempt to answer these questions. For you see, Thomas is black. The area has been hard hit over the years by “white flight.” Beaumont itself is 52 percent black  with the whites coming in at 49 percent. All of this kind of plays with difficulty in a town more Old South than Old West.

Stewing in the minds of some of the anti-Thomas (or perhaps anti-other) most recently has been a multimillion-dollar bond issue to replace some badly needed classrooms.  But that has also led to demolishing a cherished, mainly white, former high school plus the building of a ginormous stadium and athletic complex on the outskirts of Beaumont alongside Interstate 10 West. Attention: Travelers this fall driving from Houston east on I-10 through Beaum0nt on Friday and Saturday evenings from about 9-11 p.m., I think it would be wise to take U.S. 90 because there might be one mell of a hess after football games on I-10 just west of Beaumont.

Some “Greenies” were red with rage on Good Friday this year when the school district began tearing down the old South Park High School to make way for a new middle school. The old building was a historic one in what was once a separate, mainly white, school district. The South Park area of Beaumont was mostly white until just after the  30 years ago when I rented my very first apartment there on my own after leaving the Navy. My place was an old garage apartment behind a nice old lady’s home on Euclid Street. I only lived there for a month or so, before I moved to Nacogdoches, but I loved it there.

I remember that even in the heat of July afternoon I used to go jogging down the oak-lined streets in what was a quaint neighborhood. I was on unemployment after leaving the Navy. I’d get up in late morning, go out to a local refinery and put in an application, then jog after lunch. At night, I’d go out partying, just down the street at a bar called “Fat Dawg’s” or at the real nightclubs on that side of town, Rocks,  The Keg or Lady Long Legs.  That was then and this is now, however.

A great many who now live in South Park didn’t back when there was still a South Park High School. Today, some of the mainly black parents and even teachers say a more modern and safer middle school is needed. The Greenies, from the mascot of the South Park Greenies, are like me reminiscing about the old days. The Greenies sued the school over using bond money to destroy the school but in the end the district was able to legally tear down the old school, built in 1923, on a school holiday. (Note: I didn’t go to school there or anywhere in Beaumont. I don’t have much of a dog in this hunt.)

Perhaps a coupe de grace came  last night when the Beaumont school board voted with one dissenting vote to name the new athletic complex after Dr. Carroll A. “Butch” Thomas. Yes, using the whole name.

I rent so I don’t directly pay taxes to the school district. But I do have work around the district. I have to encounter some of the fine young students and graduates it has produced as well as some of its knuckleheads. I don’t care one way or another what happens in the war between the Thomas fans and the anti-Thomases. Let them fight it out amongst themselves and as long as they keep launching childish platitudes back and forth on the TV and in the newspaper, I will just sit back and be entertained. If they revert back to the old Beaumont ways of drive-by rock and gunfire attacks — this before the word “drive-by” was used –and rioting then I will get concerned.

I’m sorry to be that way but I have too many real worries with which to deal. Plus, I’m on vacation. Can’t you see?

“Schuze, um, ‘scuse me, ma’am. Could you point me to the Pea Tardy, um Tea Pardy, hic!”

I hear these people screaming: “We want to take back our country.” From what? To what? Jesus, some of these people are more sanctimonious than the most shrill liberals. Some make Michael Moore look like William F. Buckley.

It is understandable that the media would cover these gatherings both nationally and locally considering that Tax Day is only a shell of itself now that so many people — like yours truly — file by computer. I think I had my refund around the last week in January. There is no more B-roll to get at the post office. Yes, journalists are by nature lazy. Guilty. I was voted laziest in my school. (So were  two of my brothers). But I didn’t choose journalism as a profession, when I worked full-time as a journalist, to lift that barge, tote that bale. Or verse visa.

But there may be some history in the making despite how lazy the media may be. We might be witnessing the Whiginization of the Republican Party. Although certain ones among the Republicans or Tea Party might be loath to say it, political parties go through their own Darwinism. Some say hello, some say goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.

Sometimes a song gets so stuck in your mind that it’s embedded.

“Who walks through the classroom cool and slow. Who calls the English teacher Daddy-O … “

It just sits there over and over. It’s worse in the early hours in the morning when you wake up and try to get back to sleep.

“Charlie Brown, Charlie Brown, Yes, he’s a clown, that Charlie Brown … “

You often wonder if perhaps you are going a little bit crazy. Or maybe you are going way lots of crazy.

“He’s gonna get caught, just you wait and see. Why’s everybody always picking on me?”

But I guess it’s better than seeing things that aren’t there in your sleeping hours. Or in your awake hours.

It’s something to think about.

Something interesting caught my eye on the local The Examiner Web site and I don’t often say that.

How do I hate thee Examiner, “The Independent Voice of Southeast Texas?” Let me count the ways. I start with the premise of the paper and go from there. This article from the Houston Chronicle tells the sordid history both of the area’s only weekly “alternative” newspaper as well as the legal little record sheet called the Southeast Texas Record. The first, The Examiner, was started by a rich plaintiff’s attorney. The latter, started by the ant-trial lawyer U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It gets entertaining around this so-called “Judicial Hellhole” sometimes.

Needless to say an article about the “great train holdup” in Beaumont was enlightening and somewhat informative. When I say “train holdup” I don’t mean a train robbery or heist. I mean the seemingly endless number of railroad cars belonging to BNSF which hold up drivers on a number of Beaumont’s major thoroughfares several times a day.

The drivers — myself in that group — get pissed off. The city of Beaumont gets pissed off. The fire department, police department and probably if if be known FedEx and UPS get pissed off.

The Examiner piece notes that the city is encouraging drivers who get stuck waiting for trains to call local dispatch or 3-1-1 so officials can come down to the tracks and time the train stoppage. City Manager Kyle Hayes, who will undoubtedly have a downtown lake, or pond, named in his honor because of the time and effort he has spent having this big ugly hole dug, says he is going after the train folks.

But there is a slight problem. BNSF says the Port of Beaumont is holding them up thus a chain reaction of sorts happens. Plus, the consequences for stopping traffic for the railroad isn’t much. A ticket for trains not moving at all. And the city ordinance says the train must be in constant motion. No matter that rolling along at a millisecond per hour would still be considered moving.

If you look along the side streets headed off U.S. Hwy. 90 into more affluent western Beaumont you will find several overpasses for the train tracks. In the center city, not so much. There is Interstate 10, College St., Fourth Street. I’m probably leaving one out. However, more traffic flows from downtown over the streets that get blocked more often. The reason is a matter of geography. Just below I-10 and beside First Street is a huge BNSF rail yard. Reaching south of downtown is the Port of Beaumont, which gets more military cargo than any other U.S. port  or perhaps the Solar System. It’s basically a main railhead for Fort Hood in Central Texas and Fort Polk in not too far up in Western Louisiana. So there is a lot of cargo, a lot of train, a lot of immobile cars and a lot of pissed off people not to mention fire and police vehicles which often have to take the long way around.

I’m glad that Mr. Hayes is putting his energies into something other than digging that big hole that’s supposed to draw thousands of tourists. I just don’t think traffic tickets that are just a cheap cost of doing business for BNSF are going to make those rail cars travel on by any faster. Wait, I can hear them now!