Category Archives: Texana

Another Texas classic

All we lack here is a dead body, and who knows? One might turn up yet. So far we have a Texas Supreme Court justice and his wife indicted for burning down their suburban Houston house for financial reasons–and inadvertently torching a neighbor’s house in the process. Then the DA says there’s not enough evidence against them to go to trial, the foreman of the grand jury disagrees and accuses the DA of politics. Today, a judge dismissed the charges, though the grand jury foreman remains adamant. We could still use a hidden love child, drug dealing, or at least the "other woman" with big hair and oversize plastic-surgery boobs. But even without them, or the dead body, it’s still a pretty classic Texas case. Stay tuned. Bound to be more to come here.

UPDATE: Well, there is a little matter of $57,000 the judge illegally spent from his campaign donations for mileage reimbursement over three years. I didn’t realize gas was THAT expensive. And there’s still hope for the love child and the other woman, since the daily notes the judge has still not accounted for his absence the night of the fire.

“See Rock City”

There was a time, long ago in my vanished youth, when I would see these words painted in white on the sides of old barns on major arterial roads all over the South and as far north as Illinois. Dew on the Kudzu reminded me of it in a piece on the aging tourist attraction on Lookout Mountain, TN. The mountain, with its Lover’s Leap, drew my paternal grandparents on their Chattanooga honeymoon in the winter of 1904. I know because I still have a little sewing kit with a yellowed plastic cover over a fading colored paper insert on the top that my grandmother kept as a souvenir. Rock City opened later, in 1932, and it’s still trying to keep up with the times. Most of its painted ads have also vanished as the old barns have fallen down, but the place now has a Website, and a Webcam. Looks overcast this morning, up there in the clouds.

Under siege

I go out only when I have to, such as when picking up Mr. B. from school in the afternoon, but otherwise… KVUE’s pollen counter Illona Torok explains:

"Another day, another huge jump in the Cedar pollen. Close to 5000 grains were counted today. A weak cold front will kick up the winds today, further increasing levels for Friday…"

Sure be glad when this is over. Good thing I have a Neti pot to clear my nose and sinuses. 

Requiem for a whitetail

Is it better to die from a hunter’s bullet or an arrow? Either one would seem preferable to what actually happened to this nine-point buck northwest of Dalhart in the Texas Panhandle:

"…the magnificent buck in the prime of life merely limps in painful increments from the feeder to the tall grass, the grass to live oak, live oak to cedar and, finally, out of sight."

Mike Leggett, the Austin daily’s often-eloquent outdoors writer, describes the sad end of a whitetail buck. 

The Year of the 6th Cav

6CavRegtDUI

My old Army bud Chuck Waldron and I like to recall our eight to nine months as platoon leaders in the Sixth Armored Cavalry Regt., 1968-69, before going to Vietnam as light-infantry advisors to SVN militia. Among other things we guarded Nixon’s inauguration, though me and my guys got to sit in the warm armory while he and his had to be outside in the cold.

I know he’ll be interested in this Civil War enthusiast’s plan to spend this year tracing the then-new regular Army regiment’s activities through their annual returns for 1862. I wonder when the unicorn shoulder patch was authorized? Before, or after, the regiment served here in Austin under Custer in 1865-68 as post-war federal occupiers?

A Dallas honor killing?

That’s what Phyllis Chesler of Pajamas Media is calling the slaying of two teenage girls whose Egyptian, cab-driver father, Abdul Said, is being sought for the crime. If true, Chesler says it’s just the latest one in North America.

UPDATE: The girls are buried, in what Jihad Watch sees as an ambiguous Muslim service. Meanwhile, dad is still at-large. 

The phony reefer ticket

On the surface it looks like Texas pols have finally gotten some common sense in the failed and futile drug wars. This year peace officers can merely ticket someone with less than four ounces of marijuana. But it’s still a Class A (up to one year in jail) or B (up to six months) misdemeanor. The only folks benefiting here are the cops who don’t have to take time to drive you to jail, and the county which doesn’t have to spend more money on bigger jails to house all the possession cases. Despite that, only Travis County (the People’s Republic of Austin) seems to be ready to use the new law–the state’s other 253 counties are afraid it might make them look lenient. Is this a sign of more common sense to come? Not likely.

Via Mouth of the Brazos