In National Debate About Arizona Shooting, Palin Falls Flat...She Feeds The Rhetoric Of Hate, Then Wants To Bail...

"It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions..." - Sarah Palin, yesterday

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

AUSTIN, Texas - The past three have been good for Sarah Palin's bank account. She has milked her selection as vice-presidential candidate by Arizona Republican John McCain to its maximum. It is said she has earned millions since those days, when she found a national stage and a following that both perplexes and energizes. She has her fans.

Yesterday, Palin tried to distance herself from criticism aimed her way by a wide range of Americans that included political pundits and editorial writers. They collectively blamed her for the shooting of U.S. Rep.Gabrielle Giffords last Saturday in Tucson, Arizona. What brought the wolves to her door in Alaska was the young man (skin head, shown below) who fired the gun into Congresswoman Giffords' head and into a half-dozen others who died in the shooting. He seemed to be the sort of fellow who followed Palin's anti-government rhetoric, said the pundits and newspaper writers. Jared Lee Loughner, the shooter now in federal custody shown in photo below, could easily be the poster child for the Palin following - Americans angry at the government, the world and anyone not of their color or bent. That's your Tea Party, America. Deal with it.

Palin never has been a person to weigh-in on anything with any sort of sentient intelligence. She is smalltown as all Hell, a wannabe hillbilly who chased her college degree by attending 5 colleges and winning a mayoral race in a tiny town of 6,000 residents before ascending to the Alaska governorship. Heady, she is not. Indeed, she has been cartoonized by journalists and TV comedians to the point of laughter. At best, she is in the same league as the character of Ellie May Clampett in The Beverly Hillbillies TV sitcom. The difference, however, is that the actress who played Ellie May (Donna Douglas) was, well, acting the part of a dumbass. Palin is living it.

In her camp of haters, bigots and racists, she is seen as presidential material. That does not in any way shape or form speak to America; it speaks to a collection of losers, under-achievers and, yeah again, racists. Most know she has no chance of winning a race for the White House. But she is a tool for those who wish the best only for a certain segment of our society. The cold part of the Arizona story is that Palin has been a vocal supporter of the immigration hatred moving across that state. Without question, she has fueled the fire of bigotry and fanned its flames.

That she now wants to flee from the criticism she is getting in connection with the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords is the mark of a true coward. Palin has no leadership skills; she is a dumb broad who will say stupidities and laugh like some trailer trash moron. The map you see above is a map prepared by Palin's camp, a map that has politicians she disagreed with in the crosshairs of a rifle scope. Congresswoman Giffords was on that list. At last report, Giffords continues to fight for her life, doctors saying they are cautiously optimistic that she will recover from the horrible head wound. But there she is in a hospital's Intensive Care Unit bed.

Sarah Palin is to blame for the Arizona shooting. Maybe not entirely, but she is to blame...

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Early In The Year, It's Old Man Winter Calling All Coats And Sweaters...Wind Chill At 17; It'll Be A Frigid 22 Tonight...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

SAN MARCOS, Texas - Day broke in the 20s here, wind chill hanging down in the 15-degree range. It's blowing out there. A cold, wild wind has come. It sure makes for great stops for coffee in any of dozen franchise and mom & pop stores. The forecast for the rest of the week has area temps hovering in the 40s, with Monday bringing a shot of a New Mexico summer, when the high is expected to be in the mid-60s.

Welcome to a Hill Country winter. So much for that hair trim.

Dallas was frozen when we left on Sunday; the Texas Panhandle doing its best to fend off a killer snow blizzard. Winter has always been a special time of the year for me. Sweaters and scarf are out, that great corduroy sports coat my daughter gave me for Christmas a few years ago still the champ. I bop about oblivious to the bullshit swirling about the country. What, me worry? Got a bitch to throw at me? Take a number.

Elsewhere, the nation's population either freezes to paralysis or awaits a semblance of the frigid northern winds. Given a choice, I'd rather throw a goddamn alpaca on my back and survive the drop in temperatures than suffer through heat and humidity that saps the Hell out of life.

It'll pass, of course. One season always leads to the other. But there will be time for Hawaiian shirts and flips and shorts and golf. Today, I'm up for a cup of hot, black coffee and a croissant. Serve it up, sweetheart. I'm on a mission for the North Pole.

And after the coffee, perhaps a warm Belgian waffle topped with strawberries. Yeah, that'll do. That'll get me into the night, when, I'm told by the local weatherman, it'll be, at best, 22 degrees...

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Of Political Shootings, Political Deceit and A Tough Time In America...Watch Out, Boys...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

DALLAS - That shooting in Arizona last Saturday that now has a congresswoman fighting for her life has been described as having resulted from the country's years of hateful rhetoric and outright bigotry. It is a sign of our times. It would be the easiest question to ask if all we had to say was, "What's brought us down this darkened road?"

There is no one answer. We are - and always have been - a nation of mongrels, people out to get for themselves, for their kind and for their feeling of power. You could say everything that happens to us as a country is our own fault.

But why does a 22-year-old young man decide he must kill a politician he hates? Why did Jared L. Loughner load his gun and walk it to a grocery store in Tucson last Saturday and shoot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and shoot and kill a half-dozen others attending the congresswoman's storefront function. Loughner is in federal custody and not talking; Giffords, shot through the head, continues fighting for her life. It's too Banana Republic for me, but there it is.

We have added the photo of South Texas politician to the top of this story to perhaps show how and why some Americans get so pissed-off that they go looking for what the Tea Party calls that "Second Amendment Remedy," which is a not-so-vague reference to making one's way to the gun locker.

Former Democrat Aaron Pena - the gentleman in the photo above - recently angered many of his constituents by switching to the Republican Party. In Edinburg, which is the center of his legislative district, this did not play well, with many residents issuing harsh comments about Pena's political future. His move falls into the "action draws reaction" category, and we suspect that Mssr. Pena is now wearing a gun. In the world of gunplay, Arizona has been vying for Top Gun, but Texas is still the place where the Republican governor could be out on a jog, spot a coyote, and shoot it, as he did not that long ago. Things must be somewhat bad for those who feel they're on the losing side of our excitable politics. And why should it surprise us when someone decides assassination is the answer?

We have no way of knowing how may of our elected officials will be carrying weapons this morning as they head out to do heir jobs. One politician familiar to this web site - Harlingen Commissioner Kori Marra - made it a special point to note that she feared attack in explaining her reasons for carrying a gun (she is shown at right). Another in a city near hers is said to always carry a small gun in his boots, even while presiding over his town's council. Texas Gov. Rick Perry (shown with gun in photo below) openly acknowledges he sports a weapon. Well, so much for trusting law enforcement and so much for calling for peace.

Politicians are to blame for the congresswoman's shooting. It is the hellfire bullshit they throw against each other, against certain sectors of the population, against anyone not agreeing with their views, their, yeah, politics. It is a damning indictment against this, the so-called most civilized country on the planet.

This Loughner kid will be portrayed as a loner, an angry young man, a zealot and everything else that was lapped on Lee Harvey Oswald and Sirhan Bishara Sirhan. But there's more to it, of course. There is a deeper background to the tale, the story of how Loughner targeted Congresswoman Giffords perhaps after reading and hearing political crap aimed at her by the likes of the moron Sarah Palin and the Goddamned Tea Party. Palin included Giffords on her "crosshairs" list of politicians the Tea Party wanted to take out. Palin has backed-off anything to do with that, but that's par for cowards who front lawlessness under the guise of protecting the U.S. Constitution.

We mourn those who died last Saturday, including the 9-year-old girl shot in the attack. What must her mother have felt at seeing her daughter die at such a scene? News reports have it that she had been born on Sept. 11, 2001 and had been inspired by President Obama's election in 2008. We also later learned that she was the granddaughter of former NY Mets and Yankees Manager Dallas Green. For that murder alone, this Loughner guy should be shot in public.

 All we know is that something needs to change. America needs to make a turn toward civility, toward the idea that we remain a united country and not a collection of barbaric animals...

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In Cowtown, Youth Basketball Is A Special Treat...Como Lions Beat Southwest Knights...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

FORT WORTH, Texas - The Como Lions just had this big, stocky kid who wouldn't let up. He ran the court, controlled the rebounds and monopolized the lane. Final score: Lions 40 Knights 13.

So it went Saturday evening at the Bertha Collins Recreation Center in the city's East Side, there in the shadows of the growing skyline and the beat of excitable, talented urban youth sports. We ambled in at about 6 p.m., walked through the teams gathered near the court's entrance and found a place on the three-tier bleachers alongside a flock of proud parents and screaming kiddoes.

Welcome to clean sportsmanship.

I was surprised at the level of talent playing on the old and musty court. Twelve-year-old kids dribbling like pros and other stopping on a dime to shoot 3-pointers as if NBA material. And, what's more, it was free. Snacks were evenly priced. Not too shabby for a road game, which is what it was for us. We looked for flaws in the talent, but found little to criticize.

There is a difference between the basketball game played in Dallas-Fort Worth and that played elsewhere in the state. Here, at this level, you could see tall and lanky kids sprouting to the point of making fans wonder just how tall they would be at age 18. Stars coming, was my thought.

We watched and applauded; we cheered at fantastic plays and booed the refs.

It was a much-appreciated treat, absolutely.

Perhaps there is hope for America's future. From what we saw, these were kids doing their best to do what their coaches were screaming at them to do. Dreams live long and die hard in sports. Basketball demands team play. We could see that readily.

The best player on the losing Knights team could've played with any team and starred. Yet, his effort alongside less-talented mates did not get him what he, his team and his coached wanted - a victory.

My only regret was not paying for the experience. It would have been nice to help the city-sponsored league get on with its noble work...

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In The World of Alcohol, Austin Stays With The Bottle...Music Blares; Cops Bust Away...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor

AUSTIN, Texas - Texans know and love their liquor. It goes well with the country & western music moaning loud and proud about Ma, trains, guns, wives, rain, dogs and prison. Here, in the state capital and the acknowledged center of the universe's fun, boozing in public has reached something of a milestone.

Cops say they busted more than 6,000 residents on driving-while-intoxicated charges last year. 2009 was a good year for chasing the girls and lost cowboy notes across town, but it is fabled Sixth Street that drew the Top Three bars police say served the tireless drunks.

Austin PD's novel idea of logging arrests may spread. Cops here routinely ask arrestees where they drank the night away. The locations span the many, many bars along the party drag. Listed by cops as the Top Three venues for 2009 were JBlacks, The Ranch and Molotov, a trio of wildly popular bars on the west end of Sixth Steet.

It makes you wonder which bars in, say, Big D, or Houston, or Brownsville might make those cities' Top Three. And perhaps the Austin model will spread across the Lone Star State, a state known far & wide for its death penalties and bars. It's sort of in keeping with police work that tries to shame local miscreants. In Fort Worth and other locations, sex offenders are publicized by way of websites used to disseminate the info. Other communities have citizen vigilante groups creating websites to list adulterers, vandals and thieves. It all goes to an attempt at making Life a bit better.

Austin's beer culture is here to stay. Too much history rolls down Sixth Street. Too, too many freedom-loving Texans have partied along the famous district, which also spills over into adjoining Fifth Street, where famous music venues such as Antone's also attract large crowds on weekends. It's not uncommon to see bar patrons leaving joints at an angle, barfing on the sidewalks and crawling away as if seconds from dying. Beer is funny that way. Three-four-five-six-seven bottles and there goes the next 60 days, arriving in brightly-lit drunk holding tanks and then the county jail. It can get weird when family and children are involved. Dad's in the can, say the kids as they move from bus stop to the classroom. Wives merely endure.

It could be worse.

New York and Detroit and Chicago and Miami and Los Angeles wrestle with crack houses...

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On A Slow Clock, Wimberley Trucks Along Gracefully...A Rolling Geography & A Cup Of Hot Chocolate...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ

Editor-In-Chief

WIMBERLEY, Texas - Breakfast here comes with the usual early-January cold breezes that seem to swirl around the rising hillsides for long minutes and then circle in to slap you in the back as you walk into the lovely Wimberley Cafe on the town square. It wouldn't be Wimberley without the red wing hawks flying the air flows overhead or the road-weary cafe patrons looking for a plate of bacon and eggs. It is a menu of the sort you see everywhere, but, as with most locales, it has its Special.

You'll find it in the kid's menu, but anyone can get it: Peanut Butter & Grape Jelly Sandwich (served with chips). Yeah, $2.99. I didn't ask what chips, cause I settled for the BLT, with kettle chips. A tall glass of iced tea chased that stuff down my throat. My mind was on the ambiance, which seemed a slow-motioned episode of some rural western of the 1970s, the kind where the waitress skips across the dining room sporting a cowgirl smile and the personality of any smalltown pageant Miss Congeniality winner. Ashley was our waitress this morning, and she did her profession proud, granting me permission to take the menu with me, smiling as she said, "I won't tell."

Well, what's a smalltown if you can't walkin and leave with something that speaks of its uniqueness.

Wimberley isn't known for anything special, although it is the hometown of a good friend I met long ago in  Galveston, when I was island bureau chief for The Houston Post and she worked for the American Cancer Society. Somewhere in that friendship, an invitation was extended concerning a drive to her hometown. It never happened; things were moving too fast for me back then. Too bad for me.

The drive into town, on Texas 12 coming from San Marcos, is made pleasant by a sprinkling of odd sights that range from a side-of-the road bed of cactus to emerging businesses that appear not to have been there, say, three-four years ago. Wimberley is growing, is what Becky Murphy told us when we ambled into her shop, Under One Roof On The Square - a neat artist cooperative. She has seen growth walk in, tossing the small town into some rolling angst. It's mostly California people buying huge chunks of acreage in town and on the fringes, building moster homes and spiking the property rates.

Wimberley is so small that septic tanks are the way to go for sewer service. A small sign pasted above the commode in the Wimberly Cafe's bathrooms say as much, so paper and paper towels are tossed into a trashcan set alongside. It's part of the local color, the so-called attraction for anyone looking to get away from the rat race and the comfort of modern luxuries to be found up and down I-35 to the east. But most anyone we know would trade that for the deceleration they'd find here. Jewelry shops do business alongside antique stores and tourist stuff (neat t-shirts), while nearby a cabin motel sits peacefully alongside the small, clear water stream cutting across town. It has four cabins, smoking allowed only outside. The aging tall trees in the back of the property and down in the canal look to be somewhat old.

It was a Wednesday. The crowds would come on the weekend. Still, some wanderers filled the shops on the square and the restaurants that sat as if in a photograph, their facades seemingly at rest. It's growing, however. New construction can be seen in the main drag leading into town. The Burger Barn on the left side looks rather new to the local economy. And one could live with the idea of a town uninterested in the McDonald's of the fast food world, or the Burger Kings, or the Whataburgers. You won't find those here.

But what I couldn't freakin' get is why lovely Wimberley couldn't have at least one Starbucks.

Oh, well. That cup of Joe we could've picked up at Sip! on the square likely would have done the trick. But it was sorta cool, so we went with the hot chocolate. Not bad. It would have been a wild reach on this particular day, but the idea of snow beginning to fall as we walked back to the car seemed, well, neat...

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Another Roadside Attraction: In Texas, It Don't Get No Better'n Old Texas Highway 21...The Road To Bastrop...

"You're an old soul. You've been here before..." - Thomas McGuane

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

BASTROP, Texas - You can go to Dallas and find every excitable glimmer of glitz your little heart may desire. You can head for the Texas Coast and find a pleasant evening walking the sands, cocktail in hand. You can head a bit west and find the leathered essence of The West. But drive Texas 21 on the way here and see a bit of Old, Old Texas.

There are clear signs of the past everywhere in The Lone Star State - from falling homes that served as family comfort 150 years ago, to economic general stores still holding hard to ancient Enco gas pumps that no longer work, to faces that come at you as if from a screen showing a Sam Peckinpah movie.

I love the old vehicles you see abandoned and rusting in front yards, wild brush and just about anywhere someone wanting to unload a broken-down vehicle can leave it without drawing the local law's heat. They're all over the place along the backroads of Texas, serving as free postcards from a very long time ago.

What is it about our aging vehicles? We park them under a mesquite and forget about them, as if to leave them there is to see them move into the motorized beyond. Up near Amarillo, some guy planted a dozen or so Cadillacs hood-first into the hard panhandle ground in a sort of homage to that particular vehicle model. Elsewhere, it's mournful-looking Ford pickups and tractors and big-finned cars that no doubt inspired the designer of Batman's wheels. If rust could smell, it would be the neat smell of once-fine leather moving across the weedy lots that serve as background for some of the state's oldest buildings - frame, tin-roofed homes no longer in the societal mix.

Yet, it is a beauty of sorts we're watching as we roll into town looking for Maxine's, where the cheeseburger will be served without cheese to a wandering non-cheese eater. There, our favorite waitress, the eloquent Barbara of the Big Black hair, will flash her best smile and tell me, again, that she is not Maxine, no. (Little joke between us). Today, I'll ask her about the abandoned vehicles on the road into town, and, hopefully, she won't tell me she used to ride in some of them. Barbara is getting up there in years, but, then, who isn't?

In any case, it's a cool, sun-splashed day in the Austin area and we're thinking that, yeah, it's a good day to check out the roadside attractions and, of course, the best time of the year for some genuine country grub...

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Chasing The Cowboy Note: In Texas, There Is Still A Place For Dancing The Two-Step & Drinking Cold Beer...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Special to The Tribune

SAN ANTONIO, Texas - A few miles north of here, off I-35 that takes you to Austin and Dallas, sits a cavernous dance hall that could, if it wanted to, host indoor football or one of those monster truck bashes. Cowboy's Dance Hall will afford you all the Conway Twitty and Jerry Jeff Walker songs you may want to hear, plus throw a bikini contest here and there just to get you away from the frilly cowboy garb.

They may be rockin' in open-range Lubbock to electric Buddy Holly tunes and rap music in Dallas's Deep Ellum, but Texas is still a veritable Cowboyworld. Glances to the left and right as you motor up or down some major or rural highway always brings yet another glimpse at the one thing most associate with the Lone Star State - a freakin' side-of-the-road bar, some looking as if all it took to build it was $400.

But, yep, they're out there, and a stop is worth the time.

Every region has its flavors, is what area chambers of commerce will tell you. South Texas has Tejano rock, El Paso its Marty Robbins and West Texas its Lonely Boys. The coast is for Selena and Janis Joplin and the panhandle for, yeah, christian rock. Thrown together, it's one weird mix that can also readily be seen as the state's We Are The World effort. Johnny Rodriguez hasn't stolen a goat in decades, but he's still around, last seen at a joint called Stagecoach in Fort Worth, where he sails off into midnight with his Is Anybody Goin' to San Antone anthem. And what college student of the late 70s doesn't remember dancing a crazy-boot tune like Ray Wylie Hubbard's Up Against The Wall, Redneck Mother? I do. Over at Billy Bob's Texas in the Fort Worth Stockyards, where the night included a bone-rattling ride aboard the mechanical bull and a cavalcade of eye-balling the frosted-haired chicks from Weatherford and Burleson and Denton arriving in brightened halters and tight jeans.

It's all still out there.

And after a year of border music in the Rio Grande Valley, it sort of makes for something of a new song for our national album. We're more Rolling Stones fans (from way back), but a progressive country tune sounds good to our ears these days. Brownsville-born Kris Kristofferson put out a string of winners. And there were many nights when his music stormed out of my beat-up VW's 8-track back in college, as I rolled from Fort Worth back to Arlington after one of those long, blue-ball dates with a gal who would become my wife. But I'd get home to my small apartment two blocks from campus and grab a beer from the small fridge before heading into my bedroom to drop a David Allan Coe album onto the cheap turntable. It all made for one of those nights when the pillow feels cold as hell and the booze drivel leaks out of the lower corner of your mouth, fucking up your hair when you roll-over in the middle of that erotic dream.

Coe would croon the perfect, pick-up country & western lyric: "...you never even called me by my name."

Yeah, I've been gone from cowboy music too long...

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In Search of Something, We Land in Central Texas...Writing Is Fighting...Novel Gets Its Way...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

NEAR AUSTIN, TEXAS - There was that time when I'd hang around little Granbury up south of Fort Worth for weeks, writing who knows what and publishing a weekly newspaper that soon folded. It was my Smalltown, USA Era, a time in my life when newspapering had gotten old and magazine work was hard to get. Still, it did something to me. My days in the Big Cities wore on me for years. I was more than happy to walkabout Granbury and scarf on cookies and ice cream while taking a break from my office. Those days had me driving the 35 or so miles from our home in Fort Worth. Something told me that's what I needed to be doing, perhaps out of some desire to shed the newspaper life. It didn't last more than six months, but I loved it.

I'm up here writing my next novel - Rope - and so far it's getting itself done.

There is something very different about the Texas Hill Country as it relates to the rest of the state. In a way, it hangs onto yesterday much better, with a certain charm and a discernible get-up. You know it and feel it as soon as you amble into a coffee shop in Bastrop or Lockhart or Wimberley. All I need now is to find that tin cup I've been looking for as carrier of my usual black coffee. This morning I had a pumpkin empanada with my cup, a favorite Mexican pastry I grew addicted to in the Rio Grande Valley. It's hard passing up the pan dulce at Mi Tierra Mexican Restaurant in San Antonio's Mercado. Two empanadas, two chamucos (cookies) and a cochinito. For the road.

I don't know what's going to happen to this Blog. It's hard writing about a place when you're not there, although it is possible. But, more and more, I find myself wanting and needing the silly chats I have with people I meet around here. There's Barbara, the lanky, Big Haired waitress at Maxine's in Bastrop and Darlene, the friendly, laughing owner of The Motley Menagerie in Kyle. Darlene knows me by name after one visit. Julie at the Pie Shoppe in downtown Kyle also took time off her busy day to chat with us as we drank her coffee and enjoyed her pies. It's a breather for me, yes. And I've always said it's good to become a known-figure wherever it is you're living.

My next stop is the Bluebonnet Cafe in Marble Falls. I went there once when at The Houston Post to write a story about the Hill Country becoming a mecca for retirees and I remember it served me one of the my Top 10 breakfasts of all time. That was another of those reporting assignments that forced me to take the long way home, but the story was done for the Sunday edition.

Rope is one of those serpentine tales with a multitude of characters and sub-plots. It keeps me entertained, and pissed-off.

And, yes, there are still those times when you absolutely need the Big City, which around here is Austin. It, too, has its charm. For those moments when one might tire of the quaint small towns, well it throws a Tex-Mex joint like Serrano's at you. I love its patio in winter. Stand-up heaters keep you warm, but who needs heat when you're putting away a plate of huevos rancheros with warm tortillas and hot coffee...

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The Burial of Toni Chapa: After A Long Search For A Dwarf Coffin, Internment...No Tears Shed...

By RUDOLF VON BULOW
Staff Writer

HARLINGEN, Texas - The short and violent life of free-lance writer Toni Chapa came to a weird end this morning, when officials of the immigration detention center where she was being held finally planted her into the ground in a pre-dawn burial ceremony attended by a small group of fellow dwarfs.

It was a quiet, no-frills funeral procession and internment that almost did not happen. Officials spent the last few days looking for a small coffin they could not find until last night. Chapa, a native of Nicaragua, had entered the country illegally on the back of a husky Mexican coyote who bilked her out of her life's savings. In Texas only a week or so, Chapa managed to write one story for The Tribune before authorities arrested her at her home here. A medical exam yielded the killer news that Ms. Chapa had breast cancer.

The smallish body was initially scheduled to be flown to Managua, but The Tribune covered costs for a local funeral mass and burial at a site not revealed to the public.

"We take care of our own," said Editor Patrick Alcatraz. "Toni was a plugger. Couldn't write worth a damn, but she tried. Scrapper is the adjective for her. Toni Chapa was not born with any sort of writing talent. What she offered was a nose for stuff few people care about. We suspect that Chapa is now where she was supposed to be all along - writing for the dead."

A soulful mariachi played Las Golondrinas as prison workers lowered the tiny coffin into the ground shaded only by the craggy branches of a dying mesquite. Nearby, two cows played at looking interested as gravediggers shoveled, but soon ambled off toward a better-looking meadow yards away.

"May you rest in eternal peace," said a prison chaplain ordered to supervise the burial. "You fought for something all your life and it is in your next stop where the chit will be cashed. Toni Chapa, may your soul travel light and may you be re-born to do good for Mankind."

Overhead, a southbound airliner's contrail cut across the light-blue sky.

Somewhere, better-off people were off to church or to the local cafe for a breakfast of huevos rancheros or rising from the movida's bed to go home. Here, on a beaten, cow-chip covered piece of harsh Rio Grande Valley ground, Toni Chapa was settling in...

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It Begins Anew: The Year 2011 Has Dawned In All Its Spangled Glory...Hell-o, Old Friends...

By KERMIT PEREZ
Special to The Tribune

McALLEN, Texas - And so it begins. 2011, the Year of the Rabbit in the Chinese calendar, is underway, a wagonload of booze sailing down the city's plumbing, still more storming in a hundred-thousand party bellies. It's been a haul of sorts getting to this day, but it's here.

Plot your best yearlong journey, settle in for some good college football today, and enjoy the beginning of something new. For the most part, what you did in 2010 will stay in 2010 - falling-down partying included.

Celebrations ranged. Here, as in Gotham City, a stroke-of-midnight ball drop propelled booze-fueled residents into the New Year. It was a Moon Pie Drop in Mobile, Alabama and a giant Peach Drop in Atlanta. Perhaps next year, the City of Palms will go to a Tamale Drop, which would be more regionally appropriate.

But it's a new start time for personal renewal.

Make it a good year...

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In Brownsville, A Swearing-In Of The Old County Judge...Even As His Opponent Blows It Off...

By BOB VERACRUZ
Special to The Tribune

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Flinty John Wood never did concede defeat, but Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos is expected to enjoy his swearing-in ceremony here late Monday afternoon, Jan. 3rd. The Republican Cascos will take the oath of office recalling a certain congratulatory telephone call he received from Democrat Wood shortly after the Nov. 2nd election, a telephone call Wood soon labeled premature and later took back.

It seemingly will be the end of a contentious race that began early in the year, went through the long, hot summer of campaigning and then waited on the goofiest vote count in local history. That's when the race turned into a would-be Manos Arriba! political heist, with both men claiming victory and with discombobulated County Elections Administrator Roger Ortiz (shown in photo below) first handing the post to incumbent Cascos, then to Wood, and finally back to Cascos. In there roiled hours during which both political camps charged someone was messing with the vote count, Cascos parked his vehicle in front of the Ortiz home for who knows what reasons, and Wood (shown in photo above right) began making calls to people he thought might fit-in nicely in his administration.

It'll be Cascos loyalists at the courthouse tomorrow, all signing-on once more for another term.

Wood never did say why he would not concede, even after he vaguely said he wouldn't be challenging the final count in court. His critics charged, perhaps facetiously, that Wood's last hope was the immediate, untimely death of Cascos - a hope that also died with each passing day.

Cascos arrives with much to do. Cameron County lags behind its neighbor to the west in jobs, growth and promise. Faith, say many here, has brought them this far; now they need Cascos, or someone in his capacity, to do something, anything. A drive around the county, spanning this town, the county seat, and Harlingen up the highway, yields photographs more suited to Mexico than the U.S.

"There are abandoned buildings and cars everywhere up and down the highway," said one resident. "People over in Hidalgo County to the west think we live like hicks. Cascos may be in, but he won't do squat. Come back in two-three years and ask me again. Cameron County is just North Matamoros, man - a friggin' cesspool. All these unemployed people. Sheeeeeee-it, you kidding me about feeling good, or what?"

Wood, meanwhile, leaves his county commission seat on the same day, perhaps believing he is the Valley's Al Gore and insisting that something happened and he lost an election that would have made him county judge - the eternal aspiration of every commissioner.

Will he surface at some point down the road?

Most around here say they hope not. Cameron County, like Hollywood, does not easily overcome a bad taste in the mouth. In this town and county, sequels work only in adultery, goes the line in the streets...

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A Valley Life: Young And In Love...Gay Teens Battle Border Culture...But They're Out There...

By RICARDO KLEMENT
Staff Writer

HARLINGEN, Texas - More and more, news reports around here blast away at the blackout boozing and marijuana problems afflicting area teenagers. They're drinking, and they're tokin'. School suspensions related to both can be readily found in the archives of a high school's attendance rolls. But there's another trend that is not only manifesting itself on schoolgrounds, but also in local homes.

Gay teens, young people wrestling with sexual orientation in a harsh land where El Macho is king, where a young boy claiming homosexuality stands a good chance of being shamed and whipped. Julio cannot be Gay, says the mother. Julio is pinche dogmeat, says the father.

It is a story so well-hidden that the press has yet to give it a looksee. Gang warfare is covered, as is the equally-pressing problem of school dropouts and Brown-on-Brown crime. Gay teens remain in the Rio Grande Valley's darkest closet, there with incest and wife-beating. Only occasionally does one hear of Gay teens speaking comfortably or openly. Isolated incidents of gay bashing among teens gets news coverage, but only as isolated incidents. The bigger story remains under a pile of rough, wool military blankets nobody wants to peel back.

Brokeback Mountain, the Hollywood movie about two lonely homosexual cowboys in Wyoming, plays here as Brokeback Chorizo - a hardly-disguised attitude that something is wrong with being gay, so we're gonna stomp on'em and we're gonna beat it out of them. In the dominant Hispanic culture, homosexuality is said to be gaining a place on the couch for discussion, but not at the dinner table. The Catholic Church, long the favorite of Hispanics, remains staunchly against the Gay lifestyle. Teens find no refuge against open hate in the church, or from priests.

But they're out there, in and out of the closet. Speak to any openly Gay teen and be told their number is rising by the day. They are fast becoming a sub-culture, said one, a group onto itself, oblivious by choice of whatever else is going in at school and in their respective communities.

Gay in the Valley is not Gay in Dallas or New York.

There is no Gay Pride parade in Brownsville. There is no Gay bar in Harlingen, and the ones in McAllen, we're told, open and close before they gain valleywide acceptance. Politically, gay teens have no champion. To date, no city official has come out and said he or she is Gay. Rumors abound about other bureaucrats, such as cops and firefighters, but it is still risky for them to declare their sexual preferences.

"You can be Gay in this town," said one resident. "Just don't tell me about it. I don't wanna hear it."

Ignorance plays into the fear. Some genuinely wonder how two homosexuals can ever enjoy sex and express shock when told that coupling is still the connection of choice. Is oral sex different when performed by a male mouth? They say no. They say males choke less than women. They say young women employ phallic sex toys. They say it matter-of-factly, without apology.

It is a life being lived and, looked that way, well, who's to quarrel with a young person's idea of love...

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Mystery Of The Night: A Chance Encounter In a Fine Bar...Long Goodbye At Closing Time...

By RUDOLF VON BULOW
Special to The Tribune

McALLEN, Texas - I got there late. When I spotted her, she was with this other dude, a rough-looking, older man who looked sickly, although it could have been the night's hard booze. This party town at 2 Ayem is a sight for gerontology nurses, that army of aging hipsters parading younger chicks is as visible as are the bouncer's bulging muscles. Romance, Valley-Style. I'm learning the ropes, man. It's all I can say now.

She looked black from where I stood at the bar. Pretty black, legs like the actress Juliet Prowse, lovely and healthy, energetic, like they could go all night. What she was doing in the City of Palms was the mystery for me. Was she from Houston, or Dallas? I should've walked my ass over to her side and asked. Something, however, told me the frown-faced bozos at her side were there to keep flies like me off her. I swear she looked like those black women in Paris, all ready for a night of lights, an hour-long dance on the dusty, wooden floor.

Men go through this all the time is what I hear, even here in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Beauty pops in at the wrong time, like when you're at Taco Palenque on N. 10th Street here, or at The Vermillion bar in Brownsville. And, invariably, these pretty birds, are with the wrong man, forever, scruffy, leather-bound clowns whose bodies and faces belong elsewhere, like in Mexican drug trade movies or the pages of a Central America nature magazine.

How does a guy make his move in the Rio Grande Valley? It's not like it is elsewhere, is what the locals like to say. In Dallas, a wink is as good as a nod; in the Valley a wink at some woman can draw gunfire. In the Big Apple, where beauty is beauty, the hook-ups at midnight yield a better crop simply because the crop is all-good, as they say. In the RGV, a good-looking woman is as rare as a good avocado at HEB. It's a crapshoot, yes sir.

So I drank on into the noisy night. A band onstage wailed away at a Rod Stewart song I hadn't heard in years. Rod Stewart in the Valley? Okay, why not? I expected George Strait even at the tortilleria. Him, or Selena. Can't dance to Selena just yet. We'll see next year about this time. I should be dancing like the frontman of Little Joe Y La Familia. Put me in jail, baby, ha ha ha ha.

Yeah, well, I'm headed to that same Entertainment District bar to see is she's there tonight. What are the chances? None, I tell myself. Just another Valley mirage, a beautiful moon-lit scene in a clear driveway puddle.

She's back in Chicago, for sure...

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Death Of A Boxer: Border Light-Heavyweight Maceton Cabrera Dies...He Logged 159 Wild Fights...Never A World Champ...

By BAD BLAKE
Special to The Tribune

MATAMOROS, Mexico - Legend has it he once went 65 brutal rounds on a horribly hot, muggy night against a thin Filipino who just wouldn't stay down. Maceton Cabrera never got the limelight away from this dusty, war-torn bordertown, but he was a warrior from another boxing era.

Cabrera, a brawling light-heavyweight born with a club foot, died this past weekend in an uncharted ejido south of this town. He was 73.

The son of a perpetually-unemployed mechanic, Cabrera began boxing at the age of 12, when his father put him in the ring against a 35-year-old middleweight in need of a pigeon. It would be the first of his 159 trips to the ring. His overall record is unclear, although some say he likely lost more fights than he won. "But that was because he went in against everybody, even some heavyweights," said local boxing historian Marco Facundo Gonzalez. "Maceton never backed away from any fight, and he never gave up. There are photos of him with his face bloodied to a pulp, but he's standing at the end of the fight. Like a good Mexican, Maceton was there."

Cabrera would stalk his opponents across the ring with extreme prejudice, the pursuit of a knockout being his only drive. Blood-thirsty fans loved to see him box. Cabrera would drag his club foot behind him as he bobbed and weaved and feigned, the strained music of mariachi trumpets energizing him and the crowd. His best punch was the uppercut to the liver, said his manager in an interview carried this morning by a local radio station.

According to the manager, Cabrera never made much money from his fights, but he was a regular on border fight cards. Fans from the Rio Grande Valley who knew the fight game would get their tickets in advance for all Cabrera brawls.

"He was the guy you wanted at your side in a cantina fight," said one fan. "Maceton would just look like a goddamned rock as he cut across the ring with that big foot dragging behind him. It was like an anchor, but he didn't let it keep him from boxing. He was a boxer, ese vato."

Cabrera often fought at the Arena Coliseo here. His fights were covered by local newspaper reporters on both sides of the Rio Grande. His fights were the only fights where the line at the battered box office was always longer than the line at the popular sidewalk taco stand in front of the arena. Women flocked to ringside seats, many of them exhorting Cabrera into the late rounds, perhaps feeding a primal need by seeing the sexual side of boxing upclose.

He was buried under grayish skies in a weed-filled, hillside cemetery full of unmarked graves, friends and family weeping as a murder of crows circled the grassy land for minutes before flying south...

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[Editor's Note: Writer Bad Blake is a part-time country & western musician who also likes to dabble in Journalism. He has written for Dog Fancy and Successful Farmer magazines. Currently, he resides in a mobile home with his girlfriend, Darlene. This is his first report for The Tribune...]

Mama Chapa Journal: In The Rio Grande Valley, Beans A La Charra Rule The Family Dinner Table...Pintos Fuel Valleyites...

"The right time to eat is: for a rich man when he is hungry, for a poor man when he has something to eat..." - Mexican Proverb

By MAMA CHAPA
Tribune Food Writer

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - It is said of Mexican women that when they gather their thoughts to fix a meal, that they get their best recipes from God. Mama Chapa believes it 100 percent.

My sons, especially my shortest, the one not so smart, always would ask for their favorite: Frijoles a la Charra. I would buy a few sacks of pinto beans and a bushel basket of vegetables, bacon when we had the extra pennies, which was rare in my country of Guatemala. But my physically-eccentric son ate well. He scarfed plates of my Charra beans, with a dozen corn tortillas he'd butter-up. Perhaps that is why he is so short and stocky now. Too many tortillas will keep you close to the ground, is what my father, Antonio, Sr., would say between shots of mescal.

The strange and long-hidden history of Charra beans is not well-known. It all dates back to the days of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, when sex-starved women groupies would ride the revolutionary trains with Villa's forces across the Sonoran Desert of Mexico. One thing would lead to another and beans would be delivered to the women by the hungry soldiers. A campfire would rise from the harsh geography and then a dozen clay pots and then someone would bring gallons of water for the bean-cooking. The women would throw whatever greens they could find into the pot for flavoring. In no time, the overland beans would be steaming and the starving soldiers angling in for a plate of the thoroughly-Mexican delicacy.

So, when my chubby son would cry, I would place a bowl of Charra Beans in front of him, and his eyes would go crazy and then he would stop crying. He would eat and eat and eat and then fart for hours, which was Little Tony's first stab at speaking. His equally short & fat father was the same - beans and beans and beans and then clouds of methane gas. But what's a mother to do? Today, they have Bean-O to stem the passing of gas. My boy tried it, but it doesn't work with him. He farts like a heavyweight champ, in church and at political gatherings even.

I thought of a way to help The Tribune's readers get an inkling of what I am talking about. So I worked up my own recipe for Frijoles a la Charra.

Recipe: For 12 servings.

1 1/2 lbs. Pinto Beans, uncooked
1 gallon cold water
3/4 lb. Bacon pieces, chopped into 1 inch squares
1/2 C. plus 1 Tbsp. fresh Garlic, chopped fine
4 Tbsp. Cilantro plus 1/8 C. Cilantro, chopped fine
1 C. White onions, chopped
1 Tbsp. cumin
1 Tbsp. chili powder
1/2 gallon cold water
1 1/2 Tbsp. Salt
2 C. Roma Tomatoes, chopped

Soak beans in 1 gallon cold water for 8 hours. Drain when ready to use. In a 2 gallon heavy pot, cook the bacon pieces until well done. Do not undercook the bacon. Add 1/2 C. chopped garlic, 3 Tbsp. cilantro, and chopped onions to hot bacon. Cook until onions are transparent. When onions are ready add beans, cumin, and chili powder. Stir and add 1/2 gallon cold water. Turn heat to medium low. Add salt and stir. Cook beans slowly until fork tender (approximately 1 hour). Stir constantly to avoid burning the bottom. Add tomatoes, the 1 tablespoon of garlic, and cilantro, and serve.

Hopefully, your boy will not stop growing. I often think my boy blames me for being short, and for being picked-on by everyone in town. But that chaparro gordiflon still eats his beans...

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[Editor's Note:...Any connection read into this story related to names is strictly unintended and coincidental. It should also be noted that Editor Patrick Alcatraz loves his Tex-Mex food...]