In Today's Republican Politics, No Homage To Bush...George Not In Party's Forefront...

"Nixon was a professional politician, and I despised everything he stood for - but if he were running for president this year against the evil Bush-Cheney gang, I would happily vote for him..." - Hunter S. Thompson

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

FORT WORTH, Texas - Some national pundits writing about Monday's debate pitting Republicans interested in challenging President Barack Obama are wondering whatever became of former President George W. Bush. The War President's name did not come up during the rah-rah gathering in New Hampshire, an important primary state.

Presumed favorite Mitt Romney hopscotched himself away from anything to do with his party's recent past, focusing, as did his six other nattily-attired pretenders, on the doings of the current president. Romney and Gingrich and Paul and Santorum and Bachman and Cain and Pawlenty stood tall, as if seven high school kids posturing temselves for class president. If anything, only two of the lot has a reason for taking that stage. The others, especially the untrustworthy Newt Gingrich, should have been at home watching.

But Bush's name being ignored says much about this party.

Republicans forever wish to clean the slate of their messes. There was no mention of the cost of that Iraqi war lapped on Americans by George W. Bush, he of the questionable National Guard service. There was no mention of the huge federal treasury surplus left behind by Democrat Bill Clinton when Bush moved into the White House. There was no mention of the monster deficit Bush created. There was no mention of anything to do with the impish Bush.

It is a rare insight into the mind of the collective GOP. They are quick to blame and complain, but never to accept the same. Disgusting is too good a word to describe today's Republicans. It is a party of insular Americans out to strap on their boots and start stomping all that they dislike - from those of other religions, to those not their kind. That is the ugly side of America, a country now as divided as it was ahead of the Civil war in the 1860s. I reeled at seeing Black-American Herman Cain on that debate stage with those marshmallow Republicans. He has as much credibility with them as Billy the Kid had with his many women. They'll take him as a symbol of inclusion, but he has no shot at gaining any influential office within the party.

That Cain does not recognize that makes him either an idiot or some sort of full-bore believer in the Great American assimilation fairy tale. At least Jesse Jackson was on the side that welcomed him. Cain must think that his business success as a pizza mogul will grant him some sort of standing with the GOP. It hasn't happened for any Black yet. That's clear as all Hell is to Gingrich. Yet, Cain is going on. His is an exercise in something or another to do with ego, a campaign bent on feeling good and thinking things have changed in America. At that level, little has changed. Cain must not read the newspapers. He'll fold that small tent in a few weeks. Glib Alan Keyes, a Black-American with an intelligence Cain will never match, learned that lesson in 2008.

But it is Bush's lack of commercial legacy that haunts this new gang of wannabes. His currency, earned and devalued during eight horrible years endured by this country, is worthless.

No, Bush will not be at the Republican Party's nominating convention.

They'll flash his face on the Jumbotron and say a few words before moving on with the monumental task of unseating a president who has done more in two years than Bush would ever have done in 100 years. The story is there. Look it up.

It might have been a bit different had Jeb Bush decided to do the unimaginable and gone after this cycle's GOP nomination. Jeb would have thrown his brother's name out like confetti.

And that would have been good for the Democratic Party. Ah, Bush, what a card. Guy should have been Commissioner of Major League Baseball and nothing more. As for these hollow-suit Republicans, well, personnel managers will tell you that it's always a bitch hiring someone to replace a fuck-up...

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At GOP's First Debate, It's An Evening Of Laughs And Backslappings...Used Tires As Contenders...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

AUSTIN, Texas - Southern Black Herman Cain said he was a "deep dish" pizza-lover kind of guy. Former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty sided with Coke over Pepsi. Defeated U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania went with Jay Leno over Conan O'Brien.

That's as deep as Republican presidential wannabes got during the polirical season's first presidential candidates debate in New Hampshire. Broadcast across the nation last night by Cable News Network (CNN), it turned out to be nothing more than an evening with six guys in suits and a noisy, annoying woman arriving to declare her candidacy for the highest office in the land.

This morning, pundits are saying that noisy one - Michelle Bachman, a congresswoman from Minnesota, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney won the debate. It was not a debate by any stretch of the imagination. It was, however, the first such gathering, and all of us know the "get real" fireworks won't start until the field narrows itself down to two or three.

Americans know the drill. Primaries will come after the telling Iowa caucus, and then after the primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina. Before long, some of these posers will lose favor and drop out. Newt Gingrich, he of the many wives and $500,000 jewelry revolving account at Tiffany's, will be the first to bid adieu. He arrived at the debate last night after his campaign manager and a host of senior aides deserted him last week. Bachman is going nowhere in national office, her claim to the Tea Party banner being contested by too many others even as she covers herself with it.

Cain, founder of the Godfather's Pizza chain, is out of sorts with the Republican base. Indeed, he seemed to be the only Black-American in the hall where last night's debate was held. He reminds us of Alan Keyes, another glib Black-American who tossed grenades at his Republican opponents, but got nowhere. Cain will be gone soon, as well. Ron Paul, the Libertarian-Republican, is simply too old and ornery. He wants to do away with the Internal Revenue Service and bring back the American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan "today." Not gonna happen, Ron.

Romney seems the safest of the lot, and perhaps that is why he leads in the early polls. "Any person on this stage would be a better president than President Obama," he told the crowd to no laughter. His biggest burden with the voters may be his religion. Romney is a Mormon. Santorum is unemployed after losing a re-election bid for his seat in the U.S. Senate. Why he thinks the country would elect such a recent political loser is the mystery. We suspect Santorum, an extremist of the Far Right, won't last the race.

It'll be interesting to follow the ascent of the GOP's favorite son, as it will be to see the fall of some of these unqualified pretenders. Part of our psyche rests in seeing these meaningless spectacles ahead of a presidential election. I found it hilarious that Paul looks like he's coming out of his economical suit every time he speaks. It, too, was funny to see Cain act as if he was being taken seriously.

But more amusing yet was Bachman's giddy announcement early in the show that she was running for president. The more she spoke, the more it looked like this woman, at best, was suited for the job of aide to Hillary Clinton...

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Reporter's Notebook: Of Balmy National and Local Politics...Pro Basketball...Perry...And Rope...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

AUSTIN, Texas - News never sleeps. You can move out of town for a few days and return to see that little has changed. It's hotter than it was in May, but that's the summer scorch. Stuff has a way of working itself into your brain, whether you like it or not. It's part of the biological journey, taking the bad with the good, the ugly with the attractive, the horrible with the enlightening. We're in a vignette-state-of-mind this morning, so here goes something of a wrap-up.

1.) National Politics - New York Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner is still with us, even after his flirtation with sexless sex. He's been asked to resign his seat. Weiner is holding on. That sad episode with sexting photos of himself to women not his wife will fade. That's the nature of scandal. Eventually something else surfaces and the press moves on. Next up is an expected catfight between Republicans Sarah Palin and Michele Bachman. Already, the two darlings of the Tea Party are throwing darts at each other. Both want the GOP presidential nomination that would pit them against Democratic President Barack Obama. It's a losing proposition for both Republican molls, but the bitching between them should be entertaining.

2.) Pro Basketball - Last night's stunning victory by the Dallas Mavericks in Game 6 of the National Basketball Association's championship series brought the first pro basketball title to Big D. It was a shocker for Miami Heat fans, but there it was on national TV. The hero was a scrawny guard named Jason "Jet" Terry. Left to play the mpo-up role of suporter was Mavericks whiner Dirk Nowitzki. He'd been been the problem for that team for the past decade. The Big German made "gunning" his trademark, and he selfishly shoots at every opportunity. And when he's been off, the press has fallen for his claims of a fever, a bad hand and other health problems. When they compare him to Hall-of-Famer Larry Bird, well, that's the last straw. Bird led the Celtics to three championships, was league MVP three times and won a title as a coach. Nowitzki's accomplishments pale when compared to Boston's Number 33. Hopes spring eternal in Big D, but Dirty Dirk always finds a way to disappoint. Good thing he had the Jet...

3.) South Texas Politics - Success often comes when the wagon is stopped and turned in another direction. It's a moment-in-time for residents of Cameron County down by the ungovernable Mexican border. A new congressional district has been created and already a few road-tired pols have lined up at that trough. Residents of the poor district should look to a new face for representation. Voting for the same old do-nothings will get them just that - nothing. We offer the suggestion that a worthwhile candidate would be Brownsville City Commissioner Melissa Zamora. She's young and largely untainted. Ms. Zamora would be a breath of fresh air, and it would punish the politicians seeking the office just because they can. It's time for a new political chapter for this region. Well, it's been time for a long time, actually. Electing a Lucio, an Oliveira, a Villalobos, or an Ahumada only tells the world that dumb continues to be the best adjective for a part of the state forever characterized as being backward.

4.)  The Governor Of Nothing - Rick Perry has a closet problem. He is the elected governor of a passel of Texas Republicans. Perry is said to be considering a run for the presidency after yelling his desire to secede from the nation. Now, he wants to pray. The son of West Texas ground is hosting a prayer summit next month in which he plans to become Joel Osteen, Jimmy Swaggert, Billy Graham and Paulino Bernal. Who'll attend is anybody's guess, although some of the usual suspects can be counted on to arrive wearing their best black garb. Look for Republican John Cornyn to show up dressed as John The Baptist. Look for crazed Republican State Rep. Leo Berman of the English-only movement to waltz in as if he thinks he's in Jerusalem. And that's Tom DeLay in the flowing white robe looking kinda spiffy as a Bible-thumping Klansman. It's all for show, a bad one at that. Perry never was as religious during his days as a Democrat. But that was sometime back, before he got the opportunist bug in his blood. As for his chances at the presidency, well, it'll be a long time before a Texan gets that job after the mess left behind by one George W. Bush. Then there's that touchy closet problem for his guy. He'll have to come clean.

5.)  Rope - Writing long-form fiction is my last addiction. I'm into my next novel, and, well, it keeps me in coffee and out of trouble. My blogging takes up about 20 minutes of my morning once I settle on a topic. The rest of the day, for the most part, is me in my made-up world, me messing with a plot, the plot's characters and me fighting with it all. As most who know me know, my bent is in writing contemporary westerns. Not cowboy tales, but modern fiction set out west. This one follows a bit of my earlier novel Half The Town, but not entirely. It concerns a rural vet treating his animals and his romantic interest as if passing fancies. Love finds its altitude, only it is his Big City dog creating the drama. They say pets will adjust to whatever setting you place them in, so long as you nurture then. Uh, no. Big City dogs hate the smalltowns. This one does. This one doesn't give a damn about the smell of bacon & eggs in the morning, or about the quiet of the rural evening, or about the girlfriend coming over and staying overnight. Big City dogs hate that. They want their space. They demand attention. They bark at ghosts, and they kick ass at every opportunity. As Chapter 5 ends, a reputation has been made. Neighborhood dogs know the score. And Evelyn, the hard-headed girlfriend in the story, has announced she damned straight is taking that waitress job at the Nuclear Club in town...

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Trafficking In Sex: Threats, But No War Yet Against This Shame...U.S. Looks The Other Way...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

AUSTIN, Texas - It is the one crime used by television to sell police shows like NYPD Blue, Law & Order and Cold Case. Glossy national magazines find the topic always yields a high readership. True Crime books invariably find one or two of these sad and sordid stories as grist for the idle mind. Cops note it as a growing problem and politicians carp endlessly about its coming to America.

Sex trafficking is here, and it is taking young lives for a horrible ride.

Here's a testimonial from a young victim, a woman who came forward amid threats from her pimp: "He called me a stupid bitch…a worthless piece of shit. I had to tell people I fell off stage because I had so many bruises on my ribs face and legs. I have a permanent twitch in my eye from him hitting me in my face so much. I have none of my irreplaceable things from my youth."

Her name was Felicia, a minor prostitute-stripper enslaved by a trafficker at a very young age.

It's a painful lifestyle usually lived by runaway girls and poor women. Their story is well-known; pimps and other abusers have used them since time immemorial. In Texas, the crime is everywhere, in Dallas and Austin and Houston and San Antonio. Lately, it has arrived in small towns along the Texas-Mexico border, where young girls are kidnapped in Mexico and delivered like sacks of drugs to bars and strip clubs in places such as Laredo, Starr County and other spots along the Rio Grande Valley.

Not much was heard about the trend during the state's recent legislative session, where budget deficits and partisan politics stole the day. No state politician made a big deal out of sex trafficking, although they know it's there.

The problem remains. Prostitution lives around every darkened street corner in the urban centers. Every now and then, the rural areas are scenes of wanton sex offered in mobile homes and other out-of-the-way buildings, stories exposed in after-the-fact newspaper stories. It is a profitable trade. As one pimp put it sometime back, perhaps using language addressing the female genitalia as coldly as it can possibly be used: "Once you wash it, it's as good as new."

That sad photography atop this sory comes from a lengthy report in the current edition of Vanity Fair magazine, which offers a tapeworm of a story about sex trafficking in America. The report is at once insightful and alarming.

There are no bordellos in the U.S., other than the legalized sprinkling of whorehouses in Nevada.

But there are those who say they absolutely can be found in the many cheap motels that dot the American landscape. According to the magazine, it's the usual threat of violence and offer of drugs that enslaves the women. That is not news; it's been the method of operation for pimps seemingly forever.

Americans like to see this as something to be found only in the outs of Bangkok or Manila or Mexico City, where young girls are traded as if baseball cards, where they are forced to serve sex-starved foreigners and where the unsympathetic governments look the other way.

All of that has landed on America's shores, in places such as Philadelphia, New York and Chicago.

Look for it and find it in Smalltown, USA.

It's there, too...

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In Texas, The Big Gun State, Few Signs Of Lurid Political Sex Scandals...Well, There's One...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

AUSTIN, Texas - A few years back, in a "Naked City" column published by the Austin Chronicle, hay was made about rumors moving across this city regarding Republican Gov. Rick Perry's sexuality, namely asking the question: Is he Gay?

Local bloggers went wild with the story, leading Perry to seek an interview with the mainstream Austin American-Statesman in which he stayed on topic and said he was not Gay. The tales told about Perry's alleged dalliances were lurid in nature, although little came from his wife when some reported that she'd caught him with another man in a somewhat compromising position. In town, pro-Gay groups marched to the governor's mansion and held a rally, loudly informing Perry that it was okay to be Gay, urging him to come out of the closet.

That was the last Texas sex scandal.

Perry remains in office and is said to be a contender for the Republican Party's presidential nomination in the 2012 race against sitting President Barack Obama. It's too early - and he has yet to announce - to wonder about whether the Gay rumors will re-surface. They will, of course. Perry has made much of his public morality the centerpiece of his governorship, a posture that of late has included his zealous pursuit of the Sonogram Bill as a requirement for Texas women getting abortions.

The governor's rumors are in sharp contrast to the volcanic roiling going on within the scandal involving U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner, a Democrat from New York's 9th District whose life has been turned upside down by his admission to sexting racy photos of himself to a variety of women not his wife.

It's all part of American Society. Freedom also allows for citizens to be free to be stupid. Weiner's fate is still up in the air. He has said he won't resign and his colleagues in Congress wish he would. Life in the National Fishbowl always brings out the best in scandal and hypocrisy. Remember Wilbur Mills, Rita Jenrette, Donna Rice, John Ensign, Gary Hart, Mark Foley?

Perhaps that is why those many Texans who chase Rick Perry's private life, who want to unmask his true sexuality, are chomping at the bit, hoping he does seek the presidency and is forced to throw open his closet.

It's too juicy of a story for Texans to merely let it go...

- 30 -

National Affairs: Angst In The Nation's Capital...No Sex Equals Scandal...Scandal Lite...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

AUSTIN, Texas - It's been a wild and turbulent week for Democratic U.S. Congressman Anthony Weiner, what public relations handlers call his naked moment in the "Nuclear Winter." Weiner being caught in a sexting scandal is not the worst side of the mess; he's a married man with a rather exotic-looking woman most men would say was enough to go straight forever.

Huma Abedin is her name. She is the woman in the photo atop this story, standing alongside her husband in what had to be better days.

Weiner's story of absolute stupidity has played across the national geography since late last week, when news surfaced that he'd been sending lewd photographs of himself to 21-year-old Genette Nicole Cordova, a college student across the country in Seattle, via his cellular telephone. She is shown wearing a striped top in photo above.

According to Weiner and the young student, nothing actually happened between them, but that did nothing to save him from the humiliation of a press conference he held yesterday in which he admitted being part of the the playful game after denying it for days.

Weiner is not alone in any of this. America's politicians have made extra-curricular sexual flirtations and couplings a national art. Former Republican U.S. Senator John Ensign of Nevada took his obsession with a married female staffer all the way to the bedroom, even as he also employed her husband. To wriggle out of it, Ensign had his wealthy parents slip a check for $96,000 to the woman. It didn't play as he expected. Ensign resigned ahead of a Justice Department investigation and he still lives under a cloud of the coming indictment.

Weiner wil survive if his party colleagues wish him to survive. He won't if they don't.

A respected politician from New York's 9th District, he represents a section of New York City that includes the Queens borough. In his plans, say those who know him, was a run at the New York City mayorship in 2013, when current Mayor Mike Bloomberg presumably would step down.

Who knows what will become of Anthony Weiner. Literary giant F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote that there are no Second Acts in America, referring to the stage and to the country's distaste for re-runs. It'll be interesting to see how the next few weeks unfold for the congressman. Much will depend on other news hitting the airaves and newspapers. Democratic Congressman Gary Condit endured a few years in office following the disapearance - and murder - of his young aide, Chandra Levy. But he lost the ensuing election, after what many agreed was a positive career in Washington, D.C. Condit did acknowledge he'd had an affair with the young woman, however.

Weiner says nothing happened in his case, although one is led to conclude that perhaps that was his mission all along, his goal, his wanton desire, which is too bad for his wife of barely one year.

The list could go on and on about these guys. Both major political parties have had their scandal stars. Both parties have for the most part found ways to ease them out of office. It'll come for Weiner, but that could be the last of his worries. His wife is a former aide of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a woman who herself went through a mess of her own with her husband, the former president, and his dalliance with a bubbly young intern, Monica Lewinsky. Clinton stayed with her man in a however-guarded manner. Perhaps she is counseling Mrs. Weiner.

The story will have its legs for the next few days, fall off the national psyche, and ultimately re-surface when either Weiner resigns or is served divorce papers.

That's the Second Act we've come to know in these matters...

- 30 -

In The Nation's Breadbasket, Cool Mornings And Hard Work...It Only Looks Quiet...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

FRIEND, Nebraska - A blue-gray morning blooms ever-so-slowly as you move west on Highway 6 past this small town of some 1,100 sleeping residents. Sunday morning is for rest, especially the early hour of 7 ayem, when all you hear is the sound of your car's rolling wheels and all you see is shuttered homes and farm equipment parked neatly alongside vehicles that speak of farming. Friend has many such neighbors. Move down Highway 81, the road south to Kansas, and you see enough portraits of the American farmer to make you believe all is well in the grain fields.

"One farmer feeds 128 people," reads one particularly-insightful and prideful sign.

For miles and miles, the landscape is of fields, grain being the most common. It is tall grain silos that stand as the symbol of the American midwest, the so-called breadbasket of the world. It is the tractor moving easily across large fields that bring it to life. An assortment of gear and equipment, tractors, balers, mowers, flows among them, stand at the ready. This is not a place where one sees idle men; work is a daily need and requirement. The fields will burst with bounty, but they have to be worked, and time is as demanding as the mortgage company and the banker overseeing the purchase of farm equipment.

Odd as it may sound to most, the life of a farmer is a sun-up to sundown undertaking that does not come with a quick jaunt to the corner convenience store for a Coca-Cola or a bag of chips. You may see one or two such businesses as you move down the highway, but they're always miles from the fields, in town.

It would take an outsider a good year to learn the ins and outs of farming, to understand the ways of the successful farmer and to perhaps appreciate the work someone else undertook to get that loaf of bread to the dinner table. Here, a good pair of denim overalls is as good as is a tie-and-suit in the city. Fashion is simple; the boots always weathered. You can spot a farmer in ways more than just how he speaks and walks. They can dazzle you with statistics and commentary to do with crop prices and geo-politics that brings sleep-less nights to the family. America may import 84 percent of its seafood, but it feeds the world with grain that becomes flour. That loaf of wheat bread came from here. So did the contents of that box of corn flakes.

No, the American farmer is not dead or lazy. Corporate farms may own the cattle and the pigs and the horses and the chickens, but much of the the land around here is family-owned. Down the highway to the east, a daily symphony of trucking moving into and out of the grain mills attests to the region's energetic farming lifestyle. Trains run a daily schedule, as well.

It would be easy, a throwaway line, to simply say that there is no problem with the American farm or farmer. That would be true and untrue. Farmers worry about the staples in their business: good seed, weather, prices at the market, government involvement in foreign trade, etc., etc.

But it also is true that what you see in this part of the nation is a certain pride in the hard work it takes to see one day lap onto another.

It is something to be admired...

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In Rural America, A Neat Mood For Living And For Writing...Not Much Going On...That's Okay...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

WILBER, Nebraska - At some early point in any writer's young career, someone throws out the idea that writing is fighting, and that the best writing comes after you've been around the block a time or two or three. Some writers love the sounds of the Big City; others run for the outs of civilization.

There are, of course, cases to be made for both.

Journalism is about the lightning story of the day. You want that, well, you head for the Big City, where electric stories come out of nowhere, where the creativity of the large population offers stories that both stun and excite. New York is like that, as is Boston and Los Angeles and Miami and Dallas - great places for news reporting.

If your bent is writing fiction, the best inspiration comes from leaving all that behind, from abandoning the rat race and from decelerating to a lifestyle of corn bread and beef hash and home-grown vegetables and sun-ups that come as if on Valium. Sunsets are for closing the chapter of the day, for ending the day's writing output, for ditching the favorite, ragged cowboy shirt and looking for the best one in the dirty pile. Nothing is important in the small towns, like this one. And everything has meaning.

The morning coffee and the small, unassuming cafe comes in that steady flavor known only to those who brew it in the small owns. You can have your Starbucks in New York and it'll be fine. In another way of equal value, that cup of coffee here brings its own attitude, its own slap on the unshaven morning face. Hit me again, Darlene. That's your best cup yet, sweetheart.

Writing fiction in book-form is a long sonofabitch of a journey, one that energizes you at dawn and pisses you off at noon. And don't bother with the telephone. Stash that bastard away until the weekend. Don't bother me, not even if the damned building's on fire. Catch up with me in Texas, baby. I'll be here a spell.

The words roll, like tiny, clean pebbles pushed forward in a clear-water stream, nouns and verbs as minnows below, adjectives as dragon flies above. In the story, the lead character coughs himself awake before sliding off the saggy bed as if an overweight drunk. He heads for the wash sink and throws handfuls of water at his face, missing it. The mirror shoots back the craggy face of some wasted cowboy looking for a beer, saliva moving south, hair as if abandoned hay. It is another day in the slow lane.

Motel television has it some other guy wants to be president. A tornado has ravaged Massachusetts. The Dallas Mavericks have beaten the Miami Heat in pro basketball. Summer is scorching the land from Wyoming to Manhattan. One hundred degrees in Columbus, Ohio. The usual noise is out there if you want or need it. Days can be planned or allowed to go to Hell. You decide.

Outside, the town looks as it has looked for the past 100 years...

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In A Tiny Nebraska Town, The Taco Plate Sells Well...It's Miles From Mexico, But Old Mexico Can Still Be Found Here...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

CRETE, Nebraska - On a warmish Wednesday just after noon, Gladys Lopez walks about her small Mexican restaurant on Main Street, watching customers that on this day includes six Hispanic guys in soiled blue jeans and workshirts. It's not as busy as it used to be, but, then, Lopez acknowledges that many Hspanics have left town in recent months. As with other American communities, Hispanics without proper immigration documents are packing and moving out ahead of stricter law enforcement.

The Lopez family has been in Crete for a few years. The restaurant bearing her name has been in business about that long. It stands not far from a store up the quiet street selling Hispanic-themed goods. It isn't that rare, perhaps because 28 percent of the town's 6,290 residents are Hispanics, according to the 2010 U.S. Census. Czech-Americans and some of German-descent are in the majority.

Most Americans know Nebraska as a magnet for Hispanic undocumented immigrants looking for work,  especially if they'll do the hard work required by the state's many meatpacking plants. Indeed, those same plants occasionally are raided by agents for the federal government. But Hispanics remain. They are more visible here than they are in, say, Galveston, Texas.

A drive up and down local streets yields a neat rolling landscape of aging buildings home to traditional mom & pop stores and businesses. Aging houses from another time dot the community, some occupied and some vacant. The elderly are as common a sight as are the older American cars that move across town. There are three motels, two not exactly attractive. Crete is roughly 20 miles southwest of Lincoln, home of the University of Nebraska. Here, tiny Doane College (1,700 students) offers a 4-year college degree and some Master's programs. There are not as many fast-food outlets as one sees even in towns of this size in Texas or New Mexico or Arizona.

One Burger King does business here. There is one Dairy Queen and one Pizza Hut. Sit-down restaurants number only eight, including Gladys' place.

Still, it's a slow life one finds quickly. Police info says Crete has not had a murder in 10 years. Burglaries are the problem, as are DWIs. Rapes number between 2 and 5 yearly, according to city statistics. If outward appearances are any indicator, well, Crete is your typical Mayberry, RFD. Gomer works at the corner gas station. Andy Griffith is the sheriff and Opie is the kid kicking a can down by the railroad tracks.

The mood is tranquil. Work on an aging bridge across the Blue River creates some noise, as do the many trucks moving into and out of the grain silos that serves as Crete's tallest structures. It's June, the beginning of the local Summer scorch when the worst temperatures approach the 100-degree range.

At Gladys Lopez's cafe - it seats 32 - in downtown Crete, tasty beef tacos sit well with a weary traveler after the long drive into town. It features the basic plates of traditional enchiladas and burritos, and nontraditional huaraches and pupusas you'd find in most cities and towns of the American Southwest.

I ask her why she stays and she tells me her mother lives here, as do a few relatives. She comes from the Mexican state of Michoacan.

"It's a beautiful part of Mexico," I tell her, knowing it.

"Y aqui tan caliente," she replies with a smile.

Lincoln is up the road and another world awaits. There, the news is that a massive fire destroyed the school district's administrative offices. Elsewhere, life throws its ceaseless monsoon of social issues at everybody, mostly in the form of angst-filled political rains. And that's okay.

Here, we'll sit a spell inside cafes of the sort America rarely celebrates...

- 30 -

In Wichita, Airplanes Still Roll Off The Assembly Line...Trash Is The Problem Of The Day...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

WICHITA, Kansas - The fat, 863-page telephone directory in this city of 330,000 residents lists four major companies dealing in residential and business trash collection. A few smaller outfits also compete, offering a variety of other "haulings" for a modest fee. That's important, because the city does not employ a garbage collection army to run the streets piling the week's trash into city trash trucks. Here, it is private enterprise.

Few are happy, however.

Now, the city is fronting a novel solution: Pay-as-you-throw.

What that means is that residents, who have been complaining about the variety of fees being offered by the various trash-hauling companies, will be asked to consider a proposal that will allow them to request either an economical container (the favorite of the senior citizens), or go with the larger family-size container that will admittedly bring a higher cost.

They are also looking at being charged by-the-bag, or by-the-weight of their trash.

Wichita is a city that has flown higher. It is proudly referred to here as the Air Capital of the World. Residents point to well-known aircraft outfits such as Stearman, Cessna, Mooney and Beechcraft, all founded here in the 1920s and early 1930s. Additionally, Cessna and Hawker Beechcraft remain a reliable employer, along with Learjet and Spirit AeroSystems. The city's chamber of commerce also notes that Airbus and Boeing maintain a healthy workforce in Wichita.

And in local sports, its minor league baseball team, the Wichita Wingnuts, currently sits atop the Central Division of the competitive American Association of Independent Professional Baseball with an early-season 12-6 record, following last night's 6-2 win over the Fort Worth Cats. But that's success above ground and on the basepaths.

Down below, it is the garbage that filled a portion of The Wichita Eagle's front page yesterday. Wichita considering pay-as-you-throw trash, read the headline.

Chiming in with its own opinion, the Environmental Protection Agency went on record as saying pay-as-you-throw trash fees actually lead to a decrease in garbage, anywhere from 25 percent to 45 percent, which is a major drop for communities charged with availing and maintaining costly city dumps.

City officials worry that the fees under consideration are too wide-ranging to be fair.

For the moment, residents weigh the options: Less trash, smaller containers, trash by weight. It'll be one of the above. The city is scheduled to consider recommendations later month. It is a novel approach to a problem strangling city budgets from Miami to Seattle. For years, New York City has hired barges to sail its trash away, to New Jersey and to Florida. So perhaps this ambitious experiment being tried here will grab the attention of cities and towns across the country.

If the idea flies, that is.

In a flyboy's town like this one, that's the bottom line...

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In Baked Sooner Country, Talk Is Of Fish...Is That Your Best Tilapia?...No, That's Flounder!...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

OKLAHOMA CITY, OK - Big Time pro basketball is big and getting bigger here. The local National Basketball Association franchise made the playoffs this year. Other than a mean tornado or two, it's been the year's best excitement. But, then, some things that at first seem not to fit the geography, like basketball in this rabid football state, somehow find that unique niche that works. Fishing in Oklahoma isn't a state attraction, for example. You need more water than what this dusty and flat panhandle-shaped shank of the U.S. has to offer. The joke around here is that there are more bottles of water in Oklahoma convenience stores than there are ponds, lakes, canals, rivers, ravines or even semi-large puddles after a rainstorm.

One doesn't come to Oklahoma City to eat seafood, however. Cape Cod in New England, along the Atlantic, is the place for that. San Francisco does right by the Pacific catch out west. Rolling in here, we thought it would be some Dust Bowl tale we'd be writing, or maybe something about the Oklahoma City bombing, or maybe something about the exciting Oklahoma City Thunder and its spectacular superstar, the former Texas Longhorn Kevin Durant.

But nooooooooooooooooh.

It's fish.

Fish is on my mind today. Yesterday, I unfolded a week-old edition of The New York Times taken from my stack at home and read a story about how the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is having a devil of a time policing stores and restaurants. Why? It seems fish is being mislabeled right and left. Labeling fraud, is how the usually staid FDA characterizes it, and it is a big, big problem from coast to coast.

That Mahi-Mahi you picked up at the store? It may not be such a thing. It could be flounder. That Grouper may be catfish. The problem, says the government, is rampant.

And it's a big deal. The pricing of fish in restaurants often is based on what it claims on the menu. But cheap fish apparently is being substituted for expensive fillets. "Yellowtail stands in for mahi-mahi," read the story in The Times. "Nile perch is labeled as shark, and tilapia may be the Meryl Streep of seafood, capable of playing almost any role."

If you don't know fish, you're at the mercy of the store or the seafood restaurant. But the FDA believes customers have a right to know what they're buying and they also have the right to get what they're paying for. The fraud is being seen even in the best restaurants, say critics. They blame the FDA for being lax in monitoring fish as it comes in from overseas. Labeling, say those critics, is not a priority in other countries, where fish simply is a bigger part of the daily diet and consumers aren't as picky. And so, the U.S. is being pressured to effect new fish identification policies, such as using "genetic bar codes" to label the fish properly before sending it on its way to stores and restaurants with the correct ID. You see trout on the store's package; you want trout on your dinner plate.

According to the FDA, 84 percent of all seafood consumed in America comes from foreign countries. Another approach the agency is considering is use of DNA testing, which provides what the FDA is calling "gene sequencing;" that is, the tracking of fish by species as it arrives from, say, Japan and is packaged for sale. With that in place, inspectors will be able to identify misbranding during routine checks of distributor supplies, store stock and restaurant kitchens.

"If you're ordering steak, you would never be served horse meat," Dr. Michael Hirshfield, chief scientist of the nonprofit group Oceana, is quoted as saying in The Times. "But you can easily be ordering snapper and get tilapia or Vietnamese catfish."

For unsuspecting fish lovers, the only thing that matters is taste.

The average diner is not knowledgable enough to be able to identify the majority of fish being served or smart enough to know the difference in taste, however minimal when it is, say, drowned by some sort of chef's choice sauce or another. It's a crapshoot, apparently. You ask for swordfish and get mako shark. Does it matter? No, unless you happen to know the difference. Most of us do not.

One way to be sure is to order a whole fish.

You still may not know exactly what it is, but the odds are a bit better that you just might...

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Public Education: Challenging Students and Ranking High Schools...National Scores...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

HARLINGEN, Texas - There are the football teams that never seem to bridge into playing the game played upstate. Every season, Rio Grande Valley high school squads have one or two teams that run roughshod over local competition. But when they compete for state championships in their respective divisions, they all fizzle against the bigger and faster teams. It's the annual exercise in grand and busted dreams.

Well, look to Edinburg and Pharr-San-Juan-Alamo North high schools for the sort of students that will make you proud, not on the football field, but in the classroom.

A recent study of what the kids are doing in public schools undertaken by The Washington Post yielded some interesting results. Post reporter Jay Mathews has been tracking Washington-area students since 1998, using a neat Challenge Index that measures how public high schools are preparing students for college. The newspaper then published its rankings. This year, Mathews went national with his survey.

I'll use his words to explain his methodology here: "The formula is simple: Divide the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or other college-level tests a school gave in 2010 by the number of graduating seniors. While not a measure of the overall quality of the school, the rating can reveal the level of a high school’s commitment to preparing average students for college."

So, using all that, The Post ranked the Science/Engineering Magnet High School in Dallas as the best in the country, Number One. Number two was the Talented and Gifted High School, also in Dallas.

Alternative schools, some called Charter schools, did well.

The Science Academy of South Texas in Mercedes grabbed the highest Valley ranking, coming it at #25. Another Mercedes school, the South Texas High School for Science Professions is ranked #32. Edinburg's South Texas Business, Education and Technology High is in at #89.

From the traditional ranks came PSJA-North at #150, Hidalgo Early College at #295, Edinburg High School at #704 and Pharr's Valley View High at #850.

No other RGV high school cracked the newspaper's Top 1,000.

The findings are intriguing, especially in the face of Texas' decision to slash public school funding. The Lone Star State continues to lag behind the larger majority of the other 49 states in funding-per-student and in classroom achievement. Still, it is good news for the above-mentioned RGV schools that managed to gain a spot on the list.

Charter schools like to think they do things differently, and they do wonders with their spectacular teaching and curriculum innovations. But it's also refreshing to see traditional schools and their reading, writing and arithmetic, such as PSJA-North and Edinburg High School, do so well.

Unlike the football legends of the Fall, these are dreams fulfilled...

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Texas Backroads: East of Austin, North of Nowhere...Lockhart, Texas Endures...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

LOCKHART, Texas - The old man in khaki pants and shirt and weathered, dark-brown cowboy hat lifted his arm and threw something at me about my parking skills. "It's crooked," he said in Spanish, referring to the car and its place between the lines that denoted my space. "Nice hat," I said in turn, smiling and drawing the same from the old coot. We were going into Black's BBQ, a local tourist attraction in beef.

You can pull in here after a drive from Austin or San Marcos to the east and know that strong whiff of smoked cow will soon get you a plate of the best BBQ the state has to offer. Nevermind the more-famous Salt Lick in Driftwood west of Austin. This place smells like smoked brisket from 10 miles out.

In fact, not that long ago, the Texas Legislature proclaimed Lockhart as The Barbecue Capital of Texas. And they were right-on to do it, cause Lockhart has four major barbecue restaurants. Smitty's is a favorite. But we cruised into Black's if for no other reason than because it was the first of the four we spotted, believing that one couldn't be any worse than the other. Black's did not disappoint this hungry cowboy.

"Brisket," I said to the mustachioed Mexican guy behind the counter after I'd loaded my plate with red barbecue beans, some cole slaw and a dinner roll the size of a softball. The mid-May day had broken too-warm, but Black's was as cool as a cucumber as we waltzed in ahead of the old man. Inside, a sprinkling of old white people sat poking at their plates, no doubt whispering sweet nothings into their ears, while across the way a group of younger men scarfed-up their BBQ chicken and sausage before headng back to the ranch.

Somewhere else, others hurried here in there, perhaps to El Gallo Tex-Mex in Austin, or to Dan's Diner in Buda, or to Tacos N Tequila on the far western side of 6th Street in Austin, where a two-taco plate will set you back $13.99. But they're tasty as all hell. Glazed beef, is what they call it at the ritzy, nouveau joint at the corner of 5th and Pressler streets.

Here in slower Caldwell County, where the ornate and aging county courthouse looms as the pride of citizenry, it is BBQ that sets the table. Red and white-checked tablecloths all over the place, iced tea at the ready, root beer there for the kiddoes. Healthy slices of my beloved pecan pie waiting their turn.

There's something about leaving town for lunch. Twenty-some miles isn't much, but 20 miles outside of Austin gets you a weeding of tiny towns where the living is easy. Lockhart is the sort of community that also suffers its young, mainly because they tend to leave town as soon as they're able. Old is in here, visible on the sidewalks and in the eateries. You can smell the meet being smoked, but you can also smell the Ben-Gay worn liberally by the elderly. It's a daily senior citizen postcard, for sure.

We ate slowly, me going for drink refills.

Alongside, the chattering went on, as if short scripts were being rehearsed by actors who'd likely uttered those same words many, many times.

"You doin' okay, Lurleen?"

"Oh, yes, Henry. How are you doing?"

The old guy in the desert storm gear had found a place at the far end of a line of tables set along a wooden rail that separated the entrance from the dining room. He waited on his take-out. We watched him a bit. He had to be in his late-nineties, the deep wrinkles on his face looking like well-grilled fajitas. The hat on his head held its place nicely, khaki pants working themselves out of his boots as he walked.

I smiled at him as he ambled past us on the way out.

At the door, he stopped and looked back, before saying, "Long road out there."

It was, I am pretty sure, an autobiographical line...

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