Eight Feet Deep

It is a rainy day on the upper Texas coast from one of those tropical waves that ooze up from the Gulf of Mexico from time-to-time. There really isn’t much to do on days like these except watch it rain.

Rainfall has kind of a relaxing effect, somehow to me, Getting out in it and driving through monster puddles as well as dodging oblivious drivers is nonetheless a pain in the ass.

No relaxing for me, however, having once more to deal with the good old U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. It seems like I spend all my days off with them. Perhaps they should start paying me.

Adieu for the weekend. Bring on the Freedom Fries.

Driving along this morning virtually out in the middle of nowhere my serenity was jolted by … something. I was on Texas Hwy. 12 between Vidor and Mauriceville where not really much of anything is around except some trees and maybe a few houses. All of sudden something came barrelling out of the sky and struck my window shield, leaving a boomerang-shaped chip no larger than about an eighth of an inch. The object was dark and about the size of a piece of iron ore so perhaps it was some sort of cosmic debris. There was no overpass around and whatever it was came hurtling out of the sky. Whatever it was, it certainly broke any chain of thought but fortunately it didn’t shatter the glass.

At least some of the Southeast Texas area will see a collective rise in their IQs as Houston rock station Rock 103.7 no longer airs the Walton and Johnson show in the mornings.

This hideous waste of air time that passes for entertainment is going to a new right-wing news talk station in Houston. Good riddance. The show which is about as funny as a Hummer dealership in Darfur had taken the morning spot post Stevens and Pruitt at what was once KLOL-FM before it changed format to an Espanol station. Stevens and Pruitt were rude and talented where Walton and Johnson was just — pathetic. But I suppose I should tell you how I really feel.

Now if Rock 103.7’s Wendy Miller would just STFU (the first definition) for a little while. Miller is one of the best “on-air personalities” in the area but she talks just a bit too much. No, make that way too much.

Riding Amtrak is an experience. It is, however, one should experience if he or she has time and patience to spare.

Yesterday was one of those times for people in which both time and patience was needed after the West Coast bound Sunset Limited sat for hours surrounded by flood waters in southwestern Texas.

It probably sounds like something is always happening to Amtrak trains. Being stalled here, derailing there, leaving stranded passengers everywhere. But that’s probably no more the case than, or quite less the case, of air passengers getting stuck on their planes or in the airport for one reason or the other.

Personally I like traveling on Amtrak and that’s saying a lot being the impatient person that I am. Both times I traveled on Amtrak included some significant chucks of time which were way out of the boundaries of the trains’ schedule.

My first train trip was on the occasion of my 40th birthday. I took the Texas Eagle from Longview, Texas, to Chicago. From the Windy City I rode the Lake Shore Limited traveling the edge of some of the Great Lakes through places such as Cleveland, Buffalo and Albany before arriving in Pittsfield, Mass., where I spent the week with my friend Sally.

The train was about six hour late in arriving in Longview and I had zero time for a layover in Chicago, just catching the other train in time. On my return trip, I got to spend enough hours in Chicago just to get a bite and take the elevator up to the top of the Sears Building.

My next trip was for a newspaper assignment and I was unable to leave the night I planned so I took the bus to Austin a day later and rode back on the train.

But it’s a wonderful way to travel. You see sights you wouldn’t notice if you were driving or couldn’t see from the air if you were flying. It’s mostly a laid-back way to go and especially on longer trips you have the opportunity to make friends with various misfits.

Before taking my first train trip, I was a little nervous about Amtrak because I too heard nothing but bad things happening to Amtrak. But as misfortune would have it. A train wrecked out in the desert between the time I bought my ticket and departed for the east. I figured the possibility that I was on a doomed train had somehow lessened. Maybe that’s absurd, maybe not.

Still I imagine being cooped up on the train all day like the people yesterday were was no fun. But it’s like Mrs. O’Leary once said: S**t happens.

The president attempts to convince a young T-ball player that U.S. troops should remain in Iraq.

It seems as if old Gee Dubya has gotten us into a big, unsolvable mess in Iraq. The majority of Americans wants our troops out of Iraq yesterday. What the hell are they yelling about? Many of those same ones drank the Kool Aid and believed Saddam had WMDs when it all got started.

The truth is, or so it seems, that there is no good way for our troops to leave Iraq without a solid military conclusion. And that doesn’t seem possible short of either withdrawing and then dropping atomic bombs on Iraq or sending our entire military and mercenary forces there and show them what a jihad is all about. But both solutions, neither of which I am at all fond of, thankfully seem likely.

Being ever the cynic that my friends say I am, I have long thought that Bush will announce sometime — perhaps a week before the 2008 presidential election — that regardless of the status of the war, we achieved victory in Iraq. This will be followed by the first troops leaving on the Monday before that General Election day. Hell, he’ll probably march old Osama out around that time too.

I don’t know where my friends get it that I am such a cynical person. Oh well.