Eight Feet Deep

Pundits are led quietly out of New Hampshire by a little boy after getting their predictions wrong Tuesday evening.

The New Hampshire primaries are over. So what’s next for the pundits (pictured above) to hype? In the words of whomever wrote “Jinny Crack Corn,” I don’t care. Actually, I do but I don’t today. I’m just plumb tuckered out listening to punditry about the primaries by a bunch of primates, who mostly got their predictions about the winners wrong last night. Hillary and McCain. Yep, they won.

In reality, a strange place if I ever saw one, I had forgotten all about “Jinny Crack Corn.” This article, which is about a film portraying racial discrimination and notes different ways that blacks rebelled against their treatment, explains the song. It — the song — is supposedly from a slave’s point of view that a jinny is cracking, or eating, corn in the corn field and the slave is not doing anything to encourage the jinny to move on because “the massa’s gone away.”

Now it is at this point where I have to point out the whole sordid physiological make up of jinnies, hinnies, etc. A mule is a cross between a mare and a jackass. The mare, of course is a horse of course and no one can talk to a horse of course. Geez. A jackass is a male donkey. A hinny is a cross between a female donkey, known as a “jennet” and a male horse or stallion. This column by a veterinarian explains the whole thing. Read it. You will be tested on it.

This concludes my jackass blog post for the day. Adios, padner.

Regardless of what I might say from time-to-time I really am a political junkie. I’ve been interested in politics since I was a young boy, waiting around my grandmother’s office for the election results. In my hometown, my uncle was county Democratic chairman, a post he kept getting elected to for more than 40 years. As a matter of fact he was county chairman up until the time he died. I never really aspired to be like him, whom a friend of mine described as a person whom: ” … you ask for the time and he tells you how to build a clock.” But be that as it may even in a little town, in the abstract office where my uncle and others counted votes, politics had its share of excitement.

But these days are not the old days. All politics are local only in the most of localized races and even there party politics have more and more reared its ugly head.

Much speculation has been generated from the conference in Oklahoma where a number of moderate politicians from both the GOP and the Dems gathered to discuss how partisanship is running our country into the ground. Of course, the media is excited because there is room for speculation about the prospects of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg — an attendee of the conference — running as an independent for president.

The need for sensibility in politics is obvious. One can see just how far our country has come when on the day of the New Hampshire primaries, talk radio and even the MSM can’t stop talking about Hillary getting teary. Hey, who gives a rat’s a**?

It doesn’t matter to me what happens with respect to a third party. I think it is inevitable that a new major party will emerge eventually. If I had any money to bet, my pennies would be on a break-up of the Republican party. Unless some of the more ultra-right can begin to accept the notion that people can agree to disagree, then perhaps we will see a new Whig movement or something. Millard Fillmore — even dead for almost 135 years — would be a quite an improvement over the jackasses in the executive branch today.

Something has got to give. The hand basket’s come off and society is headed straight to hell, or at least to Tijuana. Or maybe Tijuana’s headed here.

As I mentioned here Sunday I was basically just surfing when I came across information about earthquakes and ended up writing something concerning the small quakes which have taken place in eastern Texas and western Louisiana. I remembered thinking that a look at these tremors, especially a series of them in 1964, would be a good story for our local newspaper. The Beaumont Enterprise runs a staff-written news feature called “Southeast Texas Tales” which visits long-ago news or stories. Well, this morning I looked at the paper’s Web site and, lo and behold, there was a Southeast Texas Tales story about the 1964 earthquakes and mentioned concerns for the safety of Toledo Bend Dam which I also addressed in Sunday’s posting. I first thought: “What the hell?”

Enterprise staffer Mike D. Smith wrote a very good story and talked about some of the very things I had wondered about. Maybe he’s psychic. If so I am going to start asking him for lottery numbers.

Meaty Mondays — Where we push past the borders of good taste in the search of something that tastes good.

“You’ve got to have a motto.” That’s what my inner you was telling me. My inner you is kind of like my inner me only it’s you. Be that as it may when one delves into heavyweight matters of thought one must have food for the mind and body. And sometimes that food is barbecue.

Beaumont, Texas, where I live, has a lot of barbecue places. Texas has a lot of barbecue places. The entire southern United States have a lot of barbecue places. And some localities do the damnedest things with their barbecue. Like when I visited Arkansas for the first and only time, for now I hope because Arkansas is a nice state, I found out the hard way that they put cole slaw ON their barbecue sandwiches. What’s up with that? I am not a picky eater but I am when it comes to cole slaw because there are 99,999,000 ways to screw it up.

The good news is Fat Mac’s in Beaumont doesn’t put cole slaw on their sandwiches. The bad news is I think their barbecue is good. What’d I say? Yes it’s good. It’s not excellent. It’s not magnificent. It’s not slap yo’ mamma good. But merely good.

Last Friday I decided to stop by Fat Mac’s which I did and bought a sausage sandwich and had a side of potato salad. The meal with a drink came close to $10. Not a bad value. In the olden days, a couple of years ago, I used to eat at Fat Mac’s because of their hamburgers. They made and I feel they probably still do build a mighty good hamburger. The problem, which to many is not a problem, is that it was heavy with garlic taste. I love garlic but garlic didn’t love me back. However, now that the doc put me full-time on Prilosec, maybe I will give it another try. They give you buns, meat (cheese if you want) and you pick up the fixings.

This restaurant has an inner dining room and an outer that is screened in. The latter is not recommended on a cold day. There are tables and chairs in the half-outdoors dining section while the inside has very long communal tables and benches to sit upon. There is a lot of faux redneck crapola adorning the walls such as reminding you that it’s not a deer camp so you should clean up after yourself. It’s kind of reminiscent of the Rudy’s barbecue chain which is mostly a Texas chain. I don’t know if the restaurants are named after some guy named Rudy or whether it’s a play on the word “rude.” Fat Mac’s people aren’t rude even though the surroundings suggest otherwise.

If you live in Beaumont or are visiting or passing through you might give Fat Mac’s a try. My favorite overall barbecue place is Patillo’s on North 11th Street. Maybe I’ll write about it sometime.

Fat Mac’s Smokehouse
5555 Calder St.
Beaumont, TX
(409)862-8600
$ Reasonable

This afternoon I have been reading about earthquakes for no particular reason that I can think recall. Actually I read something and then read something else and then made it to here on the old EFD blogging room. Am I a nerd or am I just bored?

Earthquake data of many types are available on the National Earthquake Information Center Web page which is produced by the U.S. Geological Survey. What I found interesting was a historical earthquake database on which one may search a certain area using latitude and longitude information. Since we don’t get a whole lot of earthquakes here on the upper Texas Gulf Coast I thought I’d take a look see if any quakes had been recorded. And to my surprise I did find some reports within the 150-mile radius of where I am now typing this — Beaumont, Texas — 47 incidents to be exact ranging from the late 1800s until 1983.

Why the list stops at 1983, I am unsure. The USGS does have more recent reports but the closest earthquake I found within this century was a 2.7 magnitude shaker some 21 miles west of Bryan, Texas, which is 139 miles west northwest of where I am.

I also gained a little knowledge about an interesting project while I was trying to find out where these historical quakes took place. A Web site for the Degree Confluence Project allowed me to find out the general vicinity of where the tremors took place by entering latitude and longitude. What the project entails is people who are trying to visit each place on earth at which the latitude and longitude integer degree intersects. The people who reach that place takes pictures at the very spot and writes a little story about their trip. Hey, it’s something to do!

Using the degree project information I tracked down the area in which 17 of the 47 earthquakes listed within 150 miles of where I live occurred. That would be in the general vicinity of the Kisatche National Forest in western Louisiana. Actually, that parish (the Louisiana version of an American county) is home to the Army’s Fort Polk and is also next door to the Texas county in which I grew up.

I remember hearing about those quakes. This was back in 1964 and I had heard of tremors being felt at the northern end of the county where Toledo Bend Dam was being built. I remember some people talking about the possibility that the shaking came from military exercises taking place at Fort Polk, but later I did find out about a fault in the earth running through that area. Great place for a dam, huh? Probably, at least there is good fishing there, or so I have heard.

According to the USGS information, the quakes in that vicinity ranged from 2.6 to 4.4 in magnitude. All of which means little compared to the constant rumbling in the earth in places such as California or Alaska. But people who are fortunate to not experience quakes tend to take these things for granted, kind of similar to the way people in this area had become fairly complacent about hurricanes before Katrina hit our neighbors in Mississippi and New Orleans, and then Rita came barreling her way thorough our very own streets.

Scientists point to the New Madrid Fault, so named because of nearby New Madrid, Mo., as likely to have “the big one” which I suppose could be felt as far away as where I live. A series of earthquakes happened in 1811-1812 which were among the most powerful ever felt in the United States, an estimated 8-magnitude during each of three of the quakes, says the USGS. Damage occurred as far away as Washington, D.C. and Charleston, S.C., and the quakes caused church bells to ring in Boston some 1,000 miles from the New Madrid area.

The New Madrid quakes even figure into the mystery of how beautiful Caddo Lake, in northeast Texas and northwest Louisiana, was formed. A history of the lake points out that some believe the lake was the result of the quakes while others point to a huge log jam, known as “The Great Raft,” which packed the Red River which flows nearby at Shreveport.

While it is kind of cool to think about the amazing power contained in this force of nature, perhaps we should bear in mind that New Madrid-like quakes will likely happen again. Scientists say a 90 percent chance exists that a quake with a 6-to-7 magnitude will take place within the next 50 years in the Mississippi Valley. The area in which the earthquakes, which are expected at any time, is vastly populated in comparison with the early 1800s. Most buildings were also not built with protection from earthquakes.

Yes, quakes are a mighty awesome force and mighty scary as well.