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Hoping the Caddies stand forever

Amarillo seems to be known around the country — if not the world — for two things:

That big ol’ 72-ounce steak that one can eat for free at the Big Texan Steak Ranch … and Cadillac Ranch.

And that brings to mind the thought I’m sure is on the minds of a lot of people in the wake of Stanley Marsh 3’s death: What’s going to happen to the Cadillacs?

All the headlines I’ve seen from across Texas and the nation have referred to the death of the “creator of Cadillac Ranch.” Yep, you have to link Marsh with the 10 Caddies stuck nose down in that pasture about three miles west of the Amarillo city limits on the south side of Interstate 40.

http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/news/texas/article/Stanley-Marsh-3-creator-of-Cadillac-Ranch-dies-5559319.php

It’s become a tourist stop for those passing through the Texas Panhandle.

On one visit to the Ranch — where I was taking yet another out-of-town visitor — I ran into a huge tour bus full of tourists from Australia and New Zealand; they were en route from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C. They had to stop and see the Caddies. Two young men and I were talking and they couldn’t believe the sight of the cars stuck in the ground, all covered with spray-painted graffiti.

“Who does this kind of thing?” one of them asked. I mentioned Stanley’s name, told them Marsh called it “art,” and then said, “Welcome to America.” We had a big laugh.

So, what will happen to the Caddies? I’m not privy to any knowledge about that, but my sincere hope — perhaps it’s a hunch — is that the Marsh family is going to take great care of it in memory of Stanley.

Stanley Marsh 3 engenders widely varied reactions from people whenever his name comes up. Some of that reaction isn’t entirely favorable.

However, he did create a unique roadside attraction for Amarillo to enjoy — and it gives tourists something by which they can remember Amarillo.

Those memories have made a lot of people for the past 40 years or so smile. What can be so terribly wrong with that?

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POTUS always on duty

What is it about presidential critics — and I lump them all together regardless of party — that makes them forget that presidents of the United States never are off the clock?

Byron York, writing for the Washington Examiner, is at it again, chafing at the notion that President Obama played some golf while the Iraq crisis heats up.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/barack-obama-golfs-while-the-middle-east-burns/article/2549799

We’ve heard this so many times before I’ve lost count.

President George W. Bush was lampooned because he vacationed at his Central Texas ranch while crises erupted around the world; Bush also was known to tee it up as trouble arose.

President Ronald Reagan spent a great deal of time at his beloved Rancho Del Cielo in southern California.

President George H.W. Bush was photographed speeding around the Maine coastline aboard his “cigarette boat” while Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in the summer of 1990.

President Bill Clinton also liked to play golf and, oh yes, the critics lampooned him too.

Presidents are on duty 24/7. They never go anywhere on the planet without the “football,” that case carrying the nuclear launch codes. They are briefed continually by their national security teams. They know what’s happening at all times.

York, though, takes umbrage at Barack Obama’s love of golf. Allow me this, Byron: Dwight Eisenhower liked to play the game as well, as did John Kennedy, Gerald Ford, G.H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

So bleeping what if the president enjoys some relaxation? Let him relax and seek to stay sharp when the chips are down and he has to respond to whatever crisis is erupting.

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SM3 leaves behind unique legacy

The news that swept across Amarillo today that Stanley Marsh 3 has died leaves me with very strange feelings at this moment.

I didn’t know Marsh well. I had made his acquaintance during the past 19-plus years I’ve lived in Amarillo. But like many of us here, I surely knew of him, his quirks, his “eccentricities,” his generosity, his art and his legal troubles.

Marsh’s death is huge at more levels than I can even count.

He’d been in failing health. The details of his death aren’t yet known as I write this essay.

Marsh’s legacy will be difficult — indeed, likely impossible — to replicate.

* Cadillac Ranch remains arguably the most unique roadside attraction in the United States of America. That’s Marsh’s creation. My sons love the place. One of them has declared it to be his “favorite place anywhere in the world.” Whenever he comes to visit, Cadillac Ranch is a must-see event. He has told me he believes the Cadillacs serve as antennae for an underground communication system Marsh uses to talk to beings in outer space. I laughed when he said that the first time; over time, I’ve come to believe just about anything associated with Marsh.

* Those yard signs sprinkled all over Amarillo, with the quirky sayings, poetry verses, witticisms, theories of life, whatever, also are part of Marsh’s legacy.

* The estate he shared with his wife, Wendy, just north of Amarillo Boulevard, is named Toad Hall. I’ve never been there, but I only can imagine how it looks.

* The “art projects” he developed across the Panhandle’s landscape also are part of his legacy. Perhaps you’ve seen the “floating mesa” off Boys Ranch Road. How about the dinosaur overlooking U.S. 60 near Miami?

* Stanley and Wendy Marsh also gave generously to West Texas A&M University and to Amarillo College. Wendy Marsh was appointed to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board by the late Gov. Ann Richards. Their commitment to higher ed was beyond question.

* And, yes, there is the legal trouble. In recent times, some individuals have leveled accusations of sexual abuse against Stanley Marsh. That’s all I am going to say about that at this time.

How do you sum up this man’s life? He was born into wealth. He married into it. He was well-educated and sought — usually through some highly unconventional means — to make a name for himself.

I’d say he succeeded.

The last time I saw Stanley Marsh 3 in the flesh was in 2006. I stood on the parking lot at Amarillo City Hall awaiting the remarks of Ku Klux Klansmen who had gathered there to make some kind of statement. Marsh and a large group of protestors came marching onto the lot, banging drums, blaring horns, clanging cymbals and other noise-makers to disrupt the Klansmen’s effort to be heard.

Marsh and I spoke briefly on that warm day. He said some nice things about the work I was doing at the time for the newspaper.

What should happen now to the art this man leaves behind? I do hope he’s taken care of it, particularly the Caddies out there west of the city.

Stanley Marsh 3’s journey on Earth has ended. Wherever he’s going, I’m certain it’s going to be quite a ride.

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Changing a political culture

Maury Meyers’s death in Beaumont this week reminded me of how one politician — in this case a mayor — can seek change in a region’s political culture.

Meyers did that during his two tours of duty as mayor of a significant city along the Texas Gulf Coast. He sought to instill a more business-friendly climate in a city that had been perceived as “anti-business” because of its strong union influence in local politics.

I am not anti-union by any stretch of the imagination, but the city did languish at times because of the belief that its population was inherently unfriendly to Big Bidness.

Meyers, who grew up in New York, came to Beaumont and entered the public arena with a fresh outlook that shook up the status quo.

Many communities occasionally become stuck in the old way.

Amarillo is an example.

For too-long a time, the city’s governing body took a hands-off approach to economic development — or even certain elements of public safety. In recent years, that notion changed with a city council (which used to be called a “city commission”) that decided to make a public commitment to downtown redevelopment and also to try cracking down on lawbreakers who ignore red lights’ command to stop at intersections.

The downtown redevelopment initiative — including a tax increment reinvestment zone and its commitment to working with a developer that’s supposed to spearhead the work — remains a work in progress. The red-light camera surveillance program is more established, even though critics still complain about its effectiveness. Government, it turns out, does have a role to play in developing a community.

Maury Meyers wasn’t the archetypical political trailblazer. I’ve watched others shake up the norm in uncomfortable ways. My hometown of Portland, Ore., had a mayor, Neil Goldschmidt, in the early 1970s who put the brakes on new highway construction and committed the city to redeveloping a first-class mass transit system that would enhance downtown’s growth. He succeeded wildly.

The larger point here is that individuals, or small groups of elected officials, can make a difference.

Cities need more forward-thinkers like Maury Meyers.

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Benghazi suspect nabbed

Quite a number of President Obama’s critics had wondered aloud about why the United States hadn’t yet captured any of the Benghazi consulate attack.

They seemed to forget that it took the United States nearly a decade to locate and kill Osama bin Laden, the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks.

Lo and behold! Today it was announced that U.S. special forces captured Ahmed Abu Khattala, the reported mastermind behind the Benghazi attack that killed U.S. ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three others.

It took — what is it? — less than two years to find Khattala.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/suspect-benghazi-terror-attack-captured-libya-u-s-n133141

Hey, of course it won’t stem the criticism. The critics will say we should have caught the suspected mastermind a lot longer ago. Were these critics harping on the length of time it took to take bin Laden out? Gosh, I cannot remember it.

The question now is this: Where is Khattala going to be held, in Guantanamo Bay or somewhere in the United States?

It makes no difference to me where they hold this guy, as long as he’s kept under strict watch under the tightest security possible.

NBC News reports: “He will be tried in U.S. court — most likely in Washington, D.C. — and is currently being interrogated by FBI officials. He faces charges of killing a person in the course of an attack on a federal facility, providing material support to terrorists that result in death, and using a firearm in relation to a crime of violence.” Khattala could get the death penalty if he’s convicted.

However, politics being what it is, look for Obama administration critics to find plenty of grounds to criticize the effort that produced the very result they had demanded in the first place.

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No do-overs on Watergate

The late Richard Nixon probably had a few regrets along the way, perhaps some things he wished he could do over.

Forty-two years ago today, some goofball goons broke into an office at the Watergate hotel and office complex in Washington, D.C., and sought to steal some papers from the Democratic National Committee. They were acting on behalf of President Nixon’s re-election committee.

It was, as Nixon’s people described it, a “third-rate burglary.” It soon would mushroom into something quite different. It became a cat-and-mouse game played by the campaign committee, the FBI, the CIA and, oh yes, the White House itself.

The coverup orchestrated by none other than the Main Man himself, the president, resulted in Nixon’s resignation from office a little more than two years later.

The very term “Wategate” added the “gate” suffix to subsequent controversies that many have thought to turn into scandals. But this one stands alone. It was a doozy.

Imagine, though, if President Nixon could do it over, get a second chance at trying to do the right thing, assuming of course that he was capable of doing it.

It might go something like this:

H.R. “Bob” Haldeman, White House adviser and good pal of the president: Uh, Mr. President, I have just heard something that you need to know about. I just got word that the D.C. cops have arrested some morons at the Democratic Party headquarters. They’ve been charged with burglary.

President Nixon: Say that again, Bob? Oh, never mind. I heard you first the time. You mean to say that someone got caught trying to screw up my re-election campaign by pilfering papers from (DNC Chairman) Larry O’Brien’s desk drawers? What in the bleeping name of all that is holy is this all about? Don’t those yahoos know I’m going to win re-election by a landslide against anyone the Democrats throw against me? Who told ’em to do that?

Haldeman: Mr. President, it appears it came from CREEP (the Committee to Re-elect the President). They issued the order.

Nixon: You know, that’s about the most appropriate acronym I’ve ever heard. (Nixon laughs; so does Haldeman, nervously.) OK, here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to get on the phone right after this meeting and you’re going to fire the campaign chairman. Tell him you’re acting on my direct order. Get him to tell you who else was in on the planning … and then you’re going to fire them, too.

Haldeman: That’s it?

Nixon: Oh, no, Bob. Call the press office and tell (White House press secretary Ron) Ziegler to schedule a press conference. I’m going to go the briefing room and I’m going to announce the firings. I’m going to apologize publicly to O’Brien and the Democrats for this terrible lapse in judgment on my campaign staff. I’m going to announce that the White House will cooperate fully with local and federal law enforcement authorities. I’ll announce that anyone in the White House who had any advance knowledge of this event should just leave immediately. I’m going to clean house. I will not stand for this kind of conduct.

Haldeman: OK, and that’s it?

Nixon: One more thing. Then I’m going to answer questions from the press. I know those guys hate my guts, but it’s the right thing to do.

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Working with an enemy … or a friend?

Good grief. My head is spinning over this bit of news out of the Middle East.

Iraq’s crisis — with Sunni Muslims seeking to overthrow the Shiite government in Baghdad — has prompted the possibility of the United States working (get ready for this one!) the Islamic Republic of Iran to find a possible diplomatic solution.

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/209560-should-us-work-with-iran

How does that saying go, the one about “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”?

The Sunnis want their country back. They ran Iraq for decades under the ham-handed rule of Saddam Hussein. The United States invaded in March 2003, overthrew Saddam, who then was hanged.

Iraq then elected a Shiite government, friendlier to next-door neighbor Iran.

The Sunnis now have erupted, vowing to retake Iraq. Iran doesn’t want that, of course. It fought a bloody war to a stalemate against Saddam Hussein’s forces in the 1980s. The Shiites in Tehran oppose vigorously any idea that the Sunnis would take control in Baghdad.

Oh, and then there’s little issue of Iran despising the “Great Satan,” which in Tehran is also known as the United States of America. We’ve had no bilateral relations with Iran since those “students” overran our embassy in November 1979 and held those Americans captive for 444 days.

But in this instance, there might be some mutual advantage in seeking to stop the Sunni advance in Iraq. The Iranians want the Sunnis to fail, as does the United States, which has a serious stake in preserving the government it helped form in Iraq.

Should the United States reach out to its current enemy, Iran, in trying to broker a deal that ends the crisis in Iraq?

Yes, but only if the Iranians can be held to the tightest terms possible to ensure that they deal in good faith. Is that possible? Give it a try to make that call.

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R.I.P., Maury Meyers

This brief message will be of interest perhaps only to my friends in Beaumont, Texas. But I need to express some sadness today over news that a former mayor of the city where I lived and worked for nearly 11 years has died.

Maurice “Maury” Meyers served two stints as mayor of Beaumont — in the 1970s and again in the late 1980s. He was quite a visionary fellow who veered far from what I understand had been the norm for Southeast Texas politics.

http://www.beaumontenterprise.com/news/article/Former-Beaumont-mayor-Maurice-Meyers-dies-5554661.php

A region that prides itself on homegrown talent and achievers welcomed this New York-born and bred Yankee into public life. Meyers obviously didn’t speak with that distinctive Southeast Texas combination of Texas drawl and Cajun inflection that is so common in a region I’ve referred to over the years as Baja Louisiana. No, he spoke the language of a New Yorker as he campaigned for public office and then made pronouncements from his mayoral bully pulpit.

Meyers sought always to promote Beaumont as a business-friendly city, which at times was a difficult sell in a region known to this day as a haven for plaintiffs seeking judgments against businesses. The region’s historically high membership in trade and crafts unions often was seen as an “anti-business.” Meyers sought to change that perception.

I think he succeeded to some degree.

Perhaps the apex of Meyers’s political career came when he challenged the late long-time U.S. Rep. Jack Brooks in 1990. Meyers ran as a Republican against the cantankerous Democratic lawmaker. Meyers lost, which was no surprise, given Brooks’s huge reservoir of support among African-Americans and union members. The newspaper where I worked, the Beaumont Enterprise, endorsed Meyers over Brooks — a decision we didn’t make lightly. Suffice to say it angered “Sweet Ol’ Brooks” greatly.

I respected Meyers greatly for the courage he showed in trying to reform what I thought then was a stagnant political culture.

He was a good man who fought like hell for the city and the region he adopted as his own.

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Sexual orientation is no disease

One more comment on Gov. Rick Perry’s foray into gay politics and then I’m done.

I just read Paul Burka’s blog post on the subject. Here it is:

http://www.texasmonthly.com/burka-blog/rick-perry-homosexuality

Burka’s fundamental point is a simple, but quite profound, one. Alcoholism is a treatable disease; homosexuality is not.

Perry was asked at a California political gathering if he thought being gay is a disorder. He liked it to alcoholism. “I may have the genetic coding that I’m inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have the desire not to do that. And I look at the homosexual issue in the same way,” Perry said.

I’ve noted already, so I won’t belabor the point, but the two issues simply are not connected at any level.

And yet, the Texas Republican Party has adopted a platform plank that suggests that someone can be counseled out of being gay through what the GOP calls “reparative therapy.”

Whatever has become of the Texas Republican Party? The goofballs are in charge.

There. On this subject, I’m out.

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Lake Meredith returning to glory?

What’s with some of this open speculation about the possibility of pumping water out of Lake Meredith, just north of Amarillo?

Don’t even think about it.

http://www.myhighplains.com/story/d/story/-/6Nfc49XbsEGTy7nFlICU3A

The Canadian River Municipal Water Authority, which used to pump water from the once-full lake, says it’s risen several feet because of recent rain that’s drenched the Texas Panhandle. Why, it’s up to 36 feet, about 10 feet higher than when it hit its lowest point.

Yeah, that’s a big deal. It’s not such a big deal, though, to signal a return to pumping water from the lake to cities up and down West Texas.

The drought that remains — yes, we’re still in a drought around here — has reduced the quality of the water. Pumping it would require expensive treatment to make the water fully potable.

Besides, let’s remember also that Lake Meredith — even in its replenished state — is still far below its historic high and is unlikely to return to that level any time soon, if ever.

The recent rain has been welcome and well could signal a dramatic turn for the better in our weather pattern. Then again, it might not mean anything at all.

Do we pump water once again from Lake Meredith? Perish the thought.