Eight Feet Deep

A short while ago I returned from a three-night, all-paid stay at the Houston VA Hospital after being taken there early Monday afternoon by ambulance. It’s not really as dramatic as it sounds and fortunately nothing was seriously wrong with me, of course I suppose some would debate that. I shall write more about my medical misadventure as soon as I am returned to my (half) wits.

Texas House District 19: Deepest of Deep (South)East Texas.

Since I do research of some form or another in both my profession as a writer and in my part-time job as a federal government data geek, I sometimes would rather not dig deep into some topic to find something that might or might not be significant or insignificant. So I don’t know whether Texas Republican State Rep. Mike “Tuffy” Hamilton of Mauriceville is the first GOP member from Newton, Hardin and Orange counties to ever serve in the Texas House. There always is that period in history my irritated grandparents (or for you younger folks — great-, or great-great or you get the picture) called “Reconstruction.”

It is safe to say what now makes up Texas House District 19 had not been occupied for at least 50-some-odd years (since I am 50-some-or-perhaps-a-lot-odd) years by a Republican until Hamilton, who owns popular Mauriceville eatery “Tuffy’s,” was elected in 2003.

I grew up in District 19, or at least one of the counties. But I don’t live in that district now and haven’t since a brief stay in 1996. I really have no “dog in that hunt” as we rustic Southeast Texans say. I’ve talked to Hamilton a few times and he seems like a really nice guy. I also don’t know if Hamilton has done anything highly objectionable to me other than push for a law making certain prescription drugs harder to access which may eventually have some effect on my well being, or not. Nonetheless, the Texas Legislature has become a Republican institution and one that is seemingly more interested in partisan matters than helping the public. So, I am interested when a Democratic candidate comes along who might defeat the incumbent.

Attorney and former Vidor mayor Larry Hunter is expected to announce tomorrow he will seek the Democratic nomination for the District 19 House seat. And Vidor, is a name that sets off a number of bells for those friends of mine — black, white, brown, chartreuse, et. al. — who really are unfamiliar with this area.

The rather benign description of the town’s history in the “Handbook of Texas Online” pretty much obfuscates Vidor’s past as a hot bed of Ku Klux Klan activity. Hunter and other latter-day Vidorians have tried for years to sell Vidor as not being that redneck place. But it continues to happen because the town does have its rednecks. Most recently, CNN did a special devoted to racial relations and Vidor was a focus because of some remark made by some redneck chick in a local restaurant (Not Tuffy’s.)

A town hall meeting was held by CNN’s Paula Zahn, that took place in the larger and nearby city of Beaumont, which is just across the Neches River.

Vidor’s biggest problem is its image. It has been for many years. And it doesn’t help that it has a minority of truly ignorant, sometimes violent, redneck ass****s for residents. But just as black people pose the biggest threat to other people, so is it that dumb-s**t white rednecks pose the biggest danger for white people, not to mention their own well being.

What does this have to do with Larry Hunter? Not a thing. It’s doubtful that race, should both Hamilton and Hunter receive their respective party’s nomination, would be a major topic in their candidacy. Race is a topic I feel neither candidate would want to discuss should both seek the Texas House. It wouldn’t be bad for either to speak on the subject of race relations because Mauriceville and Vidor are only 10 or so miles apart from each other on Texas Hwy. 12 and if you believe your grandmother and football coach, the apple usually doesn’t fall far from the tree. But either candidate will most likely not bring up any subject with the “r-word” unless some distraction surfaces forcing the candidates to do so.

Hamilton, like his longtime predecessor Democratic House water policy guru Ron Lewis, by and large, has followed the informal House rules and has been largely been seen and not heard in his early years in the Texas Lege. Hunter is just preparing to announce. So we don’t know if either will win their party’s nomination, much less be elected to the Texas House. But unlike the days of my youth when there was only the Democratic party in Texas, partisan government now reigns supreme in Texas and it is as rotten on the local and state levels as it is on the national scene.

If I still lived in either Newton or Hardin counties — two of the counties in District 19 and the two in which I have lived — I would take advantage of any opportunity given by the House candidates to ask them questions. And if you have the opportunity to ask, don’t be afraid to ask them hard questions, such as those on matters of race and rednecks. This is the 21st century. Such inquiries are okay. They might be unwelcome to those running for office, but one probably won’t have a cross burned in their yard anymore should one ask. That’s what I hope, at least.

Permit me a final thought about the Eagles new album. After posting last night I came across a “Rolling Stone” review of the Eagles’ latest work. If the one song I heard on “Long Road Out of Eden” had a familiar sound — other than the fact it was done by the Eagles — it is because “How Long” was penned by frequent Eagles songwriting contributor J.D. Souther. It turns out the song was as the review put it a: ” previously unrecorded relic of the group’s early-Seventies live sets.”

The old old is the new new. Or is it the new old is the old new? I always get those mixed up.

Driving back to Beaumont from Nacogdoches on Friday I kept punching the radio buttons to find a station that didn’t suck. I happened upon a so-called “country gold” station out of Houston. Where that station really is, its call letters or whether or not what they were playing was really country and/or gold is irrelevant.

What is pertinent was this great song playing that I’d never heard before. I have to admit that I am not a country radio music fan. That is not to say I don’t like country-western-just-country-western or what the hell. I just think that we have entered into one of those periods like the late 1970s and early 1980s when, to put it into Babs Mandrell’s own words, damn it, “country wasn’t cool.” It wasn’t cool because it wasn’t country. It was pop and pop music that stunk. Had not Emmylou Harris, ol’ Merle, Wylie Neilson, Jerry Jeff and those who didn’t bow down to Nashville’s insanity been around, country music like the fabled “Minnow” of “Gilligan’s Island,” would have been lost.

The song I heard on the country-music-gold radio the other day reminded me of works from some of the country rock bands and performers who became so distinct in the 1970s — folks like Gram Parsons, groups like the Eagles, Pure Prairie League, and so forth. I thought to myself after listening to this rocking country-like tune that if this was country gold, I wondered why the hell I never heard this particular song before. It wasn’t until watching “60 Minutes” this evening that I discovered why that was. It was a new song.

That song, “How Long,” is a single off the Eagles first album of new material in 25+ years. The album, CD or whatever the hell they are called these days, is titled “Long Road Out of Eden” and after watching the interview on the CBS news magazine, I went online to order it, which with shipping came out to be about $17-some-odd.

This is not the first time I have bought a record due to the strength of one song. I probably have bought most albums after hearing one or two songs. I don’t think I ever bought an album or CD without hearing a track. But after hearing this one song — which is as good or better than “Already Gone” but will never be “Take It Easy” — I decided to live a little and buy the CD. I doubt this arrival matches my eagerness for a new Tom Robbins (not TIM but Tim is an okay actor) novel which seems to only come ever 5-6 years, but after 25-something years with the collaboration of Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Tim Schmidt and Joe Walsh, I think the wait may just be worth it. If not, at least “How Long” is a great song.

Who says those TV news magazines are a waste of time?

The old, red brick streets of downtown Nacogdoches, a.k.a., “The Oldest Town in Texas.”

It all seemed so familiar. Big pine trees, Mound Street, my old apartment on Price Street and the red brick pavement of Main in downtown Nacogdoches.

The Spainards established in 1716 the mission Nuestra Senora de Guadalupe de los Nacogdoches at a Caddo Indian settlement that would ultimately become Nacogdoches, Texas. I worked my way through college there as a firefighter from the late 1970s to the middle 1980s. I left after graduating from college. I came back for several years for what turned out to be a relatively “slacker” period of my life. Then I came back a third time as a journalist during the early 1990s.

Of course, a lot happened in between the time the Father Margil, head honcho of the missions, supposedly ended a drought by whacking two holes in the ground with a stick to create twin springs known as “Los Ojos de Padre Margil” (The Eyes of Father Margil)and the time I first came to Nacogdoches. That is just as much took place between the time I left in 1996 and visited during the past two days. What I am getting at is Nacogdoches, Texas, has oodles of history and I have quite a history with Nacogdoches as well.

I lived in this sometimes rustic, often-times entertaining town during most of my 20s, my early 30s and early 40s. My college friends always joked about the subversive nickname for the town that the local tourist bureau wouldn’t have touched with a 10-foot Pole: “Nacogdoches — Home of Virgin Pines and Tall Women.”

All three periods of time that I lived in Nac, of course, are pretty much the ages which form your very being for the rest of your life which, I suppose, means that Nacogdoches left me a very warped individual.

My Thanksgiving was spent with another warped individual, my friend Rick, whom I don’t believe I have seen in about 20 years. We caught up on who all was still around, who remained there as burn-outs and various and sundry other commonalities that resulted in our spending time together in the first place.

On my way out of Nacogdoches this morning I drove past Stephen F. Austin State University, where I graduated and which was generally the glue for my connections with most of the acquaintances I made there. That is similarly true whether these people actually went to school or not. College was why I ended up there in the first place. But the people and the charm of the town was what kept pulling me back.

Past SFA I drove down Mound Street and its old Victorian homes, to the short Price Street where I had my first apartment, before literally hitting the bricks downtown and making an exit once more with the local classic rock station playing Z.Z. Top’s “Jesus Just Left Chicago” as the closing theme.

I told a friend there once, several years ago, that I would never move back to Nac. The friend, Melanie, who moved back there after spending her post-college years in Austin, told me one should “never say never.” That is good advice I suppose. The truth is, however, I doubt I will ever return for good there.

In a fit of clear thinking this morning, I finally figured out that Nacogdoches is like that one great love you had and lost, or you lost it. Do what you will to get it out of your head, but that love will always be there and your thoughts will remain wistful about just how wonderful that relation was. That is, of course, with the tendency to forget any of the bad or the painful.

Well, it’s good to know that I suppose. Perhaps the thought will bring some clarity during my next visit. I doubt it though and really don’t care. Clarity is vastly overrated.