Category Archives: Texas

The Boy Captives – J. Marvin Hunter – Book Review

Posted on July 30, 2012 by | 8 comments

Hi readers.  Thanks for coming for a read.  I bought this tome in a thrift store in Kerrville before I knew it’s the hottest piece of literature to be had in TimeWarpVille [Junction], Texas. 

I suppose that qualifies me to brag I have a nose for cool, an instinct for hot, to boast that I was also country when country wasn’t cool, same as the song said. 

Over in TimeWarpVille every business in town has a stack of these with a $10+ pricetag.  And customers standing in line to buy soft drinks, potato chips, deer corn, and steel fenceposts will each answer verbal quiz questions about it, when asked. 

They likes it.  They likes it real good.  They know the family heirs to the publishing history.  This I know to be true because I asked and was answered.

I’m reasonably comfortable some of the other parts of this non-fiction book are also true.  There’s a fair amount of documentation and affidavits from people alive at the time of the incidents certifying various parts of the story they had personal knowledge about.

I’d guess the older brother, Clinton’s part of the tale he’d possibly be able to pass a polygraph on 75-80%.  Maybe higher.  Most of the details he gives don’t conflict with anything clearly different and known under more verifiable circumstances elsewhere.

Brother Jeff’s part of the tale, however, has a somewhat different air about it, to my suspicious mind.  I ain’t going to say he wasn’t traded to the Apache, not going to say he wasn’t adopted by Geronimo.  But if I had to stake any money on the truth or fiction of it I’d put my large bills on most of his story being lost in the dust of history because it ain’t on these pages.

Not that it matters.  Fact is, the book is a hoot, an interesting read, a flashback to a time when Brother Comanche still rode southeast under a Comanche moon, killing, taking captives, stealing horses.   Good descriptions from a couple of kids of settlers before their capture about their lives, the family.

And both brothers succeed in spinning yarns Marvin Hunter could put on a printed page well enough to keep the reader turning them, not putting the book aside for something with more potential for holding the mind in place.

You Texas readers would almost certainly enjoy this tome, thinks I.

Old Jules

8 Comments

Posted in 2012, Book Reviews, Books, History, Native American, Native Americans, Texas

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Naked City in the Sticks

Posted on July 30, 2012 by | 21 comments

Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

I’ve resisted posting a blog entry about this incident a couple of days now.  Felt I needed to allow it to settle in my mind enough to think calmly and clearly about it.

I’ve explained before that the nearest property line is almost 1/4 mile away from here.  No line-of-sight to the nearest dwellings.  Woods, rough roads and rough country between here and the nearest neighbor.  Aside from Gale, no reason whatever for anyone to be anywhere near here, and Gale rarely comes, never without honking his horn at the top of the hill. [That bluelike speck right-of-center in the pic is the roof of the cabin.  The barely-visible white loop’s the turnaround.]

Sooooo.  A couple of days ago I’d just finished my afternoon solar shower, poured a couple of gallons of water over my head for a soapdown shampoo and rinse out in the driveway.  Went inside to towel off and stepped back outdoors onto the porch to let the sun finish things off.

“DAMMITTOHELLSHIT!”

A cammie 4-wheeler with two people aboard was creeping by about 30 feet from the porch.  I jumped back inside to throw on some trousers and by the time I got back outside it was gone.  Not a sign of whomever I was wanting to throw rocks at and shout lectures about respecting property lines and the not-to-be-aspired-to human trait of nosy intrusion.

Because that 4 wheeler wasn’t coming down the driveway.  It came from the direction of the chicken house.  Nothing in that direction for another quarter-mile to the north property boundary fence. 

Even though that new neighbor’s got 90-odd acres for himself and his family to fart around on knocking down trees and blasting away with every caliber firearm ever invented, 90 acres just isn’t big enough when a man’s richer than 18 inches up a bull’s ass.  Got rich early enough to get thinking he could run over everyone in reach, bluff whomever he couldn’t buy outright.

When he was coming down here trying to get me to go on wages working for him I had a vague suspicion this was the kind of thing he had in mind, ultimately.  Getting a leverage in place so’s he could do anything he pleased.  He’d already described every property and house within sight of here in enough detail to suggest he’d explored already what was none of his business.  Described it without blushing, as though it was a given.

Sometime during those visits he was making down here I asked permission to haul water from his well up beside the driveway, and he’d given permission.  His water’s nearer than Gale’s from here, and the road’s better.  I’d done it once already.

But after this incident I’ll be going back to hauling water from Gale’s.  And the only thing I’ve got to say to him about what happened the other day:

“Stay the hell away from this part of Gale’s property and keep the kids and grandkids away from it when they’re visiting.  One of the rare positive stereotypes about Texans is that they respect property lines.  Where the hell did you grow up?”

Says he reads this blog.  I hope he does.

Old Jules

21 Comments

Posted in 2012, Communication, Country Life, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Parents, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Surveillance, Texas

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We Will Never Forget 7/27/53

Posted on July 27, 2012 by | 9 comments

Hi Readers. I just got back from the County Seat in Junction, Texas.  Nice little Texas town and I managed to get the title on the $400 stolen car transferred into my name successfully.

But it was a strange experience, not only because it was raining.  The whole town’s festooned with variations on the US flag and signs declaring they’ll never forget.

As nearly as I can figure, they must be celebrating the Cease Fire for the Korean War, July 27, 1953, and declaring the US ain’t ever going to bring our troops home from Korea.

Maybe the only town in the US still remembers that Cease Fire, celebrates it, and is overjoyed 25,000 US troops are still over there keeping the commies from taking over South Korea if they could.

Junction, Texas.  Time Warpville, USA

Old Jules

9 Comments

Posted in 1950's, America, Current Issues, History, Human Behavior, Politics, Texas

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The Illusion of Urgency

Posted on July 25, 2012 by | 16 comments

Lying in bed last night distracted from sleep by gallons of sweat pouring off my body I found myself wondering just why the hell the Coincidence Coordinators seem to be throwing so many obstacles in front of me and the cats getting the hell out of here, one way or another.  It just oughtn’t be this difficult if I’m not chasing a wrong path, or am avoiding one I ought to be chasing.

I take this stuff seriously [and honestly don’t give a damn whether anyone else believes it’s insane for me to do so].  Seems clear to me in moments of insight the function the cats serve in my life is that of an anchor.  The weight of my contracts with them keep me from taking the easy way out and living in a tent, a cave, somewhere I’d rather be.  Somewhere the humidity’s not so high and the heat’s more bearable.

On the other hand, I’m not certain I’d find life worth living at all without these damned cats.  That’s another feature of my life a lot of people might find insane, and another feature of it I don’t need to explain, even to myself.  It’s good enough just riding the satisfaction I get sharing my life with them without demanding sanity out of it.

I think I’d do just fine without them if they exited my life without my having violated my contracts with them.  But violating the contracts as a means to drive my life somewhere I’d rather be would cut just about everything I value in myself off at the knees.

Of course, there’s this damned project over there dancing around in the wings waving its arms around demanding a particular uncertainty principle be dismantled, provided the Coincidence Coordinators continue providing the means to pursue it.  Which, thus far, they’ve continued to do.

So where’s the urgency in it all, thinks I?  Where’s the source of the fire I’m building under myself to provide a driving ‘need’ to be in a tent or under a bridge?

Physical discomfort, thinks I, must be a big piece of it.  Cripes, I think of myself as immune to allowing that to influence my life, but there it is. 

And of course, I allowed a number of expectations to creep into my mind, demands on a future I’ve no reason at all to believe will come to pass.  Things involving smelling pinon burning beside a stream, looking at rocks through a magnifier.

Enough of all that was still lingering in my mind this morning to get me asking the I Ching about it.  He ain’t always all that helpful, but “any port in a storm,” eh?

Consultation on Wednesday, July 25, 2012 at 8:04 AM.

Present: Hexagram 61 Centering in Truth

Question:  What about just blowing it off and going to live in a cave or under a bridge somewhere?

Truth involves establishing an aware relationship between your inner core and the circumstances in your life.  Centering in truth involves the ability to perceive a fundamental wisdom, reflected within yourself – and also in others.

Truth is transformed into power when you disperse all prejudice and make yourself receptive to the world as it really is.  This power can be a remarkable force indeed – yet is rarer than generally imagined.  It can be maintained only by cultivating a genuine openness to things as they are – a willingness to see, rather than merely look.

Whenever your inner life is clouded, your influence in the world is under a shadow.  If you are fearful, you will be attacked; if you cloak genuine mysteries in dogma, opportunities for new insight will be lost.  If you vacillate in upholding your principles, you will be tested.  Yet, when you are firm and strong, the power of truth can break through even the most stubborn minds.

In any debate, the power to perceive the truth in the other side’s argument is essential to achieving success.  It is possible to influence even the most difficult people, or improve the most difficult circumstance, through the power of universal truth – for truth is something to which all things naturally respond.  Get in touch with that part of yourself that is aware of this universal force of truth.  Cultivate this inner resource, and you will become adept at using it to bind others to a common purpose.

The condition of things in the present is fairly stable. There are no specific changes indicated right now.

———————-

Guess I’d better dig out John Richard Lynn and read the judgements on Hexagram 61.  Otherwise I might get thinking it matters whether I’m crazy.

Old Jules

16 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, Animals, Country Life, Free, Human Behavior, New Mexico, NM, Outdoors, Survival, Texas

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Pieces of the Past

Posted on July 24, 2012 by | 3 comments

When Keith and I were in the fifth grade one of our classmates at Central Grade School , a girl named Ruth Durett, came to school with an ornate, silver-handled dagger she’d dug up in her back yard.  It was known that Coronado had camped a while in the vicinity of Portales, and in those days Portales people had a lot of interest in Spaniards and conquistadors. 

Ruth’s dagger became an object of envy, conjecture and debate.  Billy ‘the kid’ Bonney had also hidden from the law and raised cattle for a while at Portales Springs.  Some thought the dagger might have belonged to him.

Eastern New Mexico University was right there on the edge of town.  Ruth’s parents evidently thought someone out there might be helpful identifying the age, at least, of the artifact.  Took it out there and left it for examination.  Vanished into thin air, that dagger.

The people who came here a while, lived their daily adventures and died couldn’t resist scattering their belongings all over the countryside.  Nobody paid a lot of attention to them for a longish while, but sometime during the 19th Century a fascination became an obsession with many.  Acquiring them by any means whatever became the rule of thumb, on the one hand, preserving them if they couldn’t be conveniently stolen, on the other.  The British Museum’s an example of stolen ones that eventually made their way into preservation.  Same with other museums.

And naturally there are legions of academians, anthropologists, who’ve developed protocols and rituals of method for stealing them in approved ways, vilifying anyone who loots the sites without the proper credentials.  Nowadays they have the law on their side.  Probably today, ENMU would have found a light-of-day legitimate means of stealing Ruth’s dagger.

Even so, it’s not always easy to resist picking off pieces of the past.  I described in an earlier entry how Mel inadvertently tried to carry Oola’s skull home with him.  Exploring Alley Oop’s Home Circa 1947 and how something similar got Squirelly Armijo into all manner of difficulties.  ‘Squirrelly’ Armijo Survives his own Funeral

Maybe something in all that explains the popularity of Gale’s ‘Hanging Tree’ belt buckles.  A number of years ago Gale managed to acquire a mesquite tree they’d cut down somewhere with a history of having criminals hanged from the branches.  Naturally he brought it home and over the years made belt buckles, all manner of jewelry items from it to sell at art and craft shows.

Not everyone wants a hanging tree belt buckle, but a lot of people do.  I’ve never been able to quite wrap my mind around why.  For me, having my belly button rubbing against a piece of wood that was part of a long series of dangling partici-whatchallits just doesn’t have a lot of appeal.  But I hold my pants up with galluses, anyway.  Rarely wear a belt.

As for artifacts, I was never attracted to run off with Oola’s skull, either.  Though I do wear this arrow head I figure offed my old prospector on the mountain hanging on a thong around my neck.  [Recapping the Lost Gold Mine Search]

Old Jules

3 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Education, History, Human Behavior, Native American, Native Americans, Outdoors, Portales, Texas

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Long Humor vs Short Humor/No Humor

Posted on July 19, 2012 by | 25 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

I dunno.  I suppose I’d have to call the previous post successful in the sense a few people must have read all the way through it.  The testimony’s in the several subscribers who cancelled their subscriptions.

But generally I think my particular brand of BS as it manifests itself in attempts at humor works better if I keep it short.

On the other hand, the lead-in probably escapes a lot of readers, no matter how short the immortal prose happens to be.  Causes the occasional reader to think I might be wanting to seriously discuss politics.  A couple of the comments led me to think that might be the case.

All in all, probably the Universe is a better place if my attempts at funny just zip off into the ether and don’t hit anything on the way to Galactic Prime. 

Old Jules

25 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Communication, Creative Writing, Human Behavior, Politics, Texas

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Boom-Towning the US – Economic One-Upsmanship by Texasizing

Posted on July 18, 2012 by | 11 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

When the neighbor from up the hill described a business boom going on around Edinburg, Texas, [his previous home] the other evening it got me wondering why.  According to him, the entire Texas coastline is a beehive of manufacturing concerns, either operating, or under construction.  Even a Chinese owned gigantic steel plant.

After considering why this might be for a couple of days I concluded there’s a middling chance the Texas tax structure’s probably a major piece of it.  Texas doesn’t have a State Income Tax.  It relies almost entirely on sales taxes and property taxes for revenues.

That mightn’t sound too important at first notice.  But consider the implications more closely. 

  • First, workers employed in Texas can enjoy a higher take-home pay than those employed in states where income taxes are the revenue source.  This allows employers to pay the employees less than they’d have to do elsewhere.  Workers pay more when they spend their checks on consumer goods, but it doesn’t come out on profit and loss statements of the companies paying them.
  • Secondly,  CEOs, plant managers, high-ranking professionals living within the State, but who enjoy salaries high enough for investments of their incomes pay taxes only on their property holdings and consumer purchases.  Same as the legion of minimum-wage workers they employ.
  • Thirdly, all the nearby suppliers of raw materials, parts and labor for the industries enjoy the same tax-free status and are almost certainly able to offer their products and services more cheaply than they could do located in areas where State Income Tax exists.

For states with stagnant economies, especially those with coastal port facilities, but not limited to those, seems to me the answer might be to take a page from the Texas book.  The most immediate and obvious answer would be eliminating state income taxes and making it up in sales and property taxes.  But that would take a while.  Meanwhile, Texas booms and everyone else continues to lose jobs.

Naturally each situation would require site-specific solutions for immediate competition with Texas for new industries.  But several options come to mind:

  • Locate your port facilities here and we’ll do whatever’s needed to make absolutely certain your construction costs are lower than they’d be in Texas.  Whatever corners Texan regulators would allow you to cut in construction, environmental and safety standards, our regulators will allow more.
  • We’ll reduce our spending on our State vehicle fleets by putting a moratorium on buying any new vehicles for five years.  That money will be delivered in suitcases full of un-marked $100 bills to the people charged with the decision for your location.
  • We’ll make special interim provisions in our income-tax laws exempting dividends to stockholders, CEO and other high ranking professional employees from our State Income Tax.
  • We’ll lower our minimum wage to lower-level employees to the Texas minimum wage, minus the amount of the State Income Tax.  That will allow you to hire minimum wage-earning workers at the same rate it would cost you if you’d located in Texas.
  • We’ll overlook any hiring of illegal aliens you might do involving jobs good Americans don’t want.  Outdoors, heavy-lifting, that sort of thing.
  • We’ll provide lists of the names and families of all your high-ranking employees to all law enforcement agencies and prosecutors and provide a GET OUT OF JAIL FREE card for each family member.  If you, or family members are busted for illegal drug possession we’ll make certain the arresting officers are suspended or otherwise punished.  Your executive employees will enjoy the same privileges in that regard as any State, local, or Federal politician.
  • If your executives are non-white, non-Anglo, non-protestant they’ll never overhear themselves referred to at the country club as Chinks, slopeheads, zipperheads, Mescins, mackeral-snappers, ragheads, camel jockeys, or sand niggers, as they certainly would in Texas.

Naturally they’d have to develop other business-friendly encouragements over time, but those would, at least open the door for a beginning.

Old Jules

 

11 Comments

Posted in 2012, Current Issues, Government, Human Behavior, Politics, Texas

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Damned Environmentalists vs It’s All About Money

Posted on July 17, 2012 by | 22 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

The neighbor up the hill drove down to sit awhile yesterday evening.  We discovered once again, as we have before, there are areas where we’re rigid enough in our certainties so’s there’s no room for civil discourse.  We found two of those more quickly than it takes to tell it.  One involved multi-national corporations.

Neighbor:  Sure.  They’re shipping jobs and industry overseas because labor, costs of production are cheaper.

Me:  That’s what I’m saying.  They’re indifferent to the well being of US workers, the US economy. 

Neighbor:  It’s still jobs.  Still people working, making a living.  Africa, South America.  They’re all people.

Me:  Yeah, they’re people.  But why should a guy in Minnesota trying to scratch out a living favor losing it so’s someone in Asia can have a job?

Neighbor:  He can buy products cheaper.

Me:  He can’t buy products at any price if he doesn’t have a job.  Part of the job of his government is to make sure his job stays inside the country.

Neighbor, clamping jaw:  We aren’t going to talk about this.  You and I see it differently.

Then, a few minutes later:

Neighbor:  They want to build a pipeline to bring oil from Canada to the Texas coast.  Damned environmentalists are protesting, keeping them from it.

Me:  So why don’t they refine it up there.  Canada, northern US?

Neighbor:  No shipping ports.

Me:  What they need shipping ports for?  Nobody in Canada, Minnesota needs gasoline?  Cities don’t need hydrocarbons to produce electricity?

Neighbor:  They need to sell it overseas.   It’s all about money.  They can get better prices selling it to China or somewhere.

 Me:  Who needs to sell it overseas?  The people living on the land they’d take by government mandate to  put in a pipeline?  The people in the US who’d be heating their houses and running their cars on the gasoline if it’s refined close to where it comes out of the ground?  Who?

Neighbor, getting up:  Sorry I brought it up.

Luckily, neither the neighbor, nor I, depend on any sort of agreement between ourselves.  Neither has anything invested in the opinion of the other.  And whatever we might think about it, that oil’s going to arrive where the people who burn it pay the highest price.  The Canadian sands producing oil belong to people who might be anywhere, but who own stock in a company who bought the mineral rights.  They want the most dividends so they can buy more stock and get more dividends.

Old Jules

22 Comments

Posted in 2012, Current Issues, Government, Human Behavior, Nature, Relationships, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Texas, Transportation

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Stumbling Through the Communication Abyss

Posted on July 11, 2012 by | 7 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by.

Neighbor:  “Did you hear what the Governor of Texas did about Obamacare?

Me:  “I don’t know who’s Governor of Texas.  Don’t care what he did about anything.   Don’t know nothing about Obama, Obamacare, nothing.” 

Neighbor:  “Well you’d better find out!”

Me:  “I don’t go to doctors.  Haven’t been to one in 20, 25 years.  If I can get out of here before the election I might be able to go through the next presidential term without knowing who’s president.”

Neighbor shakes head frowning, shrugs.  The Universe pauses in anticipation of the next topic of conversation.

Old Jules

7 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Communication, Country Life, Current Issues, Government, Politics, Senior Citizens, Texas

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Hurling Off Splinters and Chunks of our Lives Into the Parker Spiral

Posted on July 9, 2012 by | 2 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.  Old Sol jumped when I said “Frog!” a little while ago, so you can rest easy knowing I’ve got him headed for the horizon, rate of climb indicator showing him right on schedule.  I’m figuring his ETA’s going to be about what you’re expecting.

Back when I was a wealthy man [measured in how much time I figured was left between me and exiting the vehicle] I used to spend a lot more time and energy begging and cajoling Old Sol to behave himself.  I put up with all his yawning and complaining, because I had a lot of life I was needing to get rid of and that seemed as good a way to slough it off as anything else.

Not just that way, either.  I was fat with life, spent it like a drunken sailor hurling chunks and splinters of it off every which way, losing weight gradually until I was more comfortable carrying what was left of it around in earth gravity.  I’ve got a lot more of my life spinning around in the Parker Spiral not knowing whether it’s Abel or Mable or which way’s up than I have left around here to tip my hat to.

What’s left is comparable to trying to squeeze groceries, gasoline, cat food and necessaries into a monthly Social Security pension check, so I tend to be more conscious about what I spend it on than I used to do.  It ain’t as though there’s any of it I can afford to run off downstream without me having had a look at it.

So, once I’ve reminded Old Sol he’s got important people waiting on him, I try to get on with my other business and let him tend his own affairs.  Lately he’s been grumpy about that, running the thermometer up over a hundred degrees F, but he’s going to have to get used to it. 

I ain’t got time for Old Sol’s games, not like I thought I did back when I was fat and wealthy.

Old Jules

2 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, Astronomy, Senior Citizens, Texas

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