Rumors Move Across The Local Geography in County Politics...Has John Wood Applied For a Job At Banana Republic?...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - The insider spoke in hushed tones, careless whispers that bounced off the shag carpeting and never the walls inside campaign headquarters. It was getting late in candidate John Wood's dogged drive to win the race for Cameron County Judge. Antsy was the word of the day here this morning.

WWJWD?

Yeah, what will John Wood do? After the contest, we mean. Chances are very good that he will lose to incumbent Carlos Cascos on November 2nd, and so we were asking about Wood's future. And then one of his campaign workers, a naive-looking man with nothing to lose, said it: "John's submitted an application at Banana Republic at the Mercedes outlet mall."

Now, we asked ourselves: Do we have that on good authority? The outlet mall, popular as it is in the poverty-stricken Rio Grande Valley of Texas, has no reputation as a cemetery for losing political aspirations. John Wood working as a salesman at Banana Republic seemed plausible, but we could not help but wonder.

We tried sitting the mustachioed Wood down for an interview, tried all damned day. But his spokeswoman kept telling us he was taking a nap, and then it was something about Wood taking a shower, and then it was something about Wood catching up with the county doings by sitting at his computer to read the day's offerings at MyLeaderNews.com - Harlingen's no-nonsense Blog. In any case, he never came out of his office, and it would have been something, say, to see Brownsville City Commissioner Melissa Zamora pop-in just so that we could ask her what the Hell she's doing helping his doomed campaign. But she never showed, as they used to say in All-Nude bars of the 1970s.

So, we drove to Mercedes and hung-out at the expansive outlet mall's food court for a sandwich and chips before going-off to look for the Banana Republic store. There, we were told all Summer clothing was at half-price and that men's blue jeans could be had for an additional 10% off the price tag. For a second, we could imagine John Wood working in this store, hounding customers, smiling his ass off, being cordial and helpful, just to make a sale, yeah.

There was something musty about the aroma inside the store. Perhaps that was why...

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