Category Archives: State news

State news

Journey coming to an end

at the beach

COLORADO CITY, Texas — It hasn’t been the Trip of a Lifetime.

My wife and I have experienced a couple of those already in our 44 years together.

We did, however, answer a key question: Are we able to spend more than, say, a long weekend on the road in our fifth wheel travel vehicle?

Our answer? Yes … absolutely.

It’s our final night on the road. We’ll get up in the morning, unplug the water and the electricity and head to Lubbock for lunch with two of our best friends in the world. Then it’s home to Amarillo.

We’ve had a wonderful time catching up with some old friends along the way. We saw family members … including our precious granddaughter Emma.

We have nearly completed the big circle that covered roughly have of our huge state. We’ve taken in a good portion of Texas’s amazingly diverse landscape: from the Caprock, to rolling hills and the lakes, the Piney Woods, the Gulf Coast, the Hill Country — and tonight we camped out at Lake Colorado City State Park, which feature the cactus and scrub brush common in West Texas.

Our pets — our dog and cat — proved to us that they’re both excellent travelers. We took a gamble with our 13-year-old kitty, Mittens; she didn’t let us down. Toby the puppy? You know about him. He’s the coolest customer … ever!

Our latest journey is about to end. My wife and I are convinced more than ever that, yes, by golly — we can do this when the time comes to quit working for a living.

 

national news, political news, State news

What would LBJ think of today’s political climate?

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LBJ

JOHNSON CITY, Texas — What would Lyndon think of what happened today?

We’ve spent the past three nights in President Johnson’s beloved Texas Hill Country and it was in this tranquil environment that we heard the news out of Washington — that House Speaker John Boehner is resigning his speakership and his congressional seat at the end of October.

The reaction from across the political spectrum? Well, President Obama — with whom Boehner has had many enormous differences — called him a “patriot” and a “good man.”

The reaction from the right wing of the speaker’s Republican Party? They cheered the news. Good riddance, Mr. Speaker.

Right wingers are smiling at the news. They want the speaker out of there.

Which brings me back to Lyndon Johnson.

LBJ was a proud Democrat. He also was a supreme legislator, thought by many to be the greatest Senate majority leader in the history of the “world’s greatest deliberative body.”

He took his legislative skill with him to the vice presidency and then — in that spasm of violence on Nov. 22, 1963 — to the presidency.

How do you suppose he earned the legislative kudos? He earned them by knowing how to compromise and how to get his friends in the other party to join him in enacting critical legislation. The Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, enactment of Medicare? All three of those landmarks were achieved with bipartisan support engineered in large part by the president of the United States.

Today, the mood and the atmosphere is different. Arch-conservatives — and, for that matter, ultraliberals — would rather fall on their proverbial grenades than compromise with politicians they see as enemies, and not just adversaries.

Lyndon Johnson would be an unhappy man were he to rise from his grave in Stonewall and see what has happened to the two great political parties that at one time knew how to work together to get things done for the common good.

In that respect, the president likely would throw his arm around Speaker Boehner, wish him well and hope for the return of better days atop Capitol Hill.

 

 

State news

What a way to go, Mr. President

lbj

STONEWALL, Texas — My wife and I came to this place expecting to be moved in some fashion.

Neither of us expected precisely what we felt when we walked up to this family plot on the sprawling LBJ ranch, which the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the National Park Service have turned into a national historic site.

The cemetery lies under a grove of live oaks. It’s got a few headstones. The tallest two grave markers belong to President Lyndon Baines Johnson and first lady Lady Bird Johnson.

It was the circumstances of the president’s death that struck me the most today as we paid our respects to the late former first couple.

My wife marveled at the peace and serenity of the place. She said — only half-jokingly, I believe — that she “wouldn’t mind” being buried there. It won’t happen, obviously.

But later on our tour of the ranch, we heard from a young guide — who admitted he was born in 1991, 28 years after LBJ’s death — about how the president was able to go out “on his own terms.”

Johnson’s presidency perhaps killed him. I remember how he had aged in the more than five years he served as president. He’d had two heart attacks already, the first one coming in 1955 when he was just 47 years of age.

The Vietnam War raged throughout his presidency — which began, of course, under the enormous weight of international tragedy, the assassination of President Kennedy.

Johnson would win election in the 1964 landslide. Then he would become the target of intense national anger over the conduct of the war he inherited from his predecessor.

He left office in January 1969 and returned to the place along the Pedernales River that formed his character.

The young guide informed us how LBJ — once he settled in back at the ranch — resumed his smoking habits, dragging on Lucky Strike; he drank too much; he ate all the foods he wasn’t supposed to eat, given his history of heart trouble.

Then, just four years and two days after leaving the White House, the fatal heart attack struck him. He phoned his Secret Service garrison the moment he felt it coming on and told them, “Get in here, boys; something bad is happening.”

He died essentially in his bedroom.

President Johnson was just 64 years old when he died. But he was an old 64.

They buried him under the live oaks about 200 yards from where he came into this world in a modest home that’s been reconstructed.

My thought as we left that place today? What a way to go, Mr. President.

 

State news

A whole other country … indeed

gulf of mexico

ROCKPORT, Texas — We’re learning first-hand what the Texas travel industry has been saying since, oh, seemingly forever.

The state is like “a whole other country.”

That’s how it goes. The idea is to tell visitors about the physical diversity of this huge state. Politically diverse? Not really, but that’s a subject for another time.

My wife — and our dog and cat — and I are halfway through a two-week journey through much of the eastern half of our huge state.

Texas comprises more than 260,000 square miles. We’re going to see most of its physical diversity by the time we arrive back home on the High Plains, which I refer to affectionately as the Texas Tundra.

We’ve traipsed across the treeless Caprock, camped out among the thick forests that surround Lake Texoma, motored through the Piney Woods of East Texas, endured the stifling humidity of the Golden Triangle and again just west of Houston.

Tonight we’re camped out along the bay that comes off the Gulf of Mexico. We’re about 30 miles northeast of Corpus Christi. Rockport’s a nice town, but we intend to enjoy the gulf water as much as is humanly possible.

The nice part about this latest stop on our intrastate journey is that it’s cool enough during the day that we can go without turning on the air conditioner in the fifth wheel we’ve hauled from Amarillo.

Does it get any better than that?

In a few days we’ll head toward the Hill Country, where we’ll see even more lovely countryside.

I doubt we’ll be able to go without the A/C but, what the heck, you can’t have everything.

We’ll be back home on the Tundra soon enough.

The journey across this vast state, however, has given us a treat we’ll carry with us for a very long time.

 

Sports news, State news

Coach told ’em to hit the ref

moreno and rojas

Michael Moreno and Victor Rojas are two young men who’ve decided to tell the nation what has been suspected all along.

One of their football coaches told them to blindside a football official near the end of their game.

The official, Robert Watts, was hit from behind by the two San Antonio John Jay High School athletes in the waning moments of their game with Marble Falls HS.

Why did they do it?

An assistant coach has some explaining to do … more than likely.

Coach on the hot seat

If what the boys said is true, and we still need to hear from the coach — Mack Breed — has to face a serious reckoning.

The young players shouldn’t be excused for what they did to Watts. Breed, on the other hand, needs to come clean and either confirm or deny categorically any suggestion that he incited the act of violence.

The two boys — who’ve been suspended from the team for the rest of the year — said Watts reportedly tossed a racial slur at an African-American teammate and allegedly said something of a racist nature at some Hispanic players. That drew the coach’s ire, according to the boys.

Let’s get a reality check here. We’re talking about two young, and impressionable, boys. Who in their right mind — if that’s what happened — would plant any kind of mayhem-related idea in their minds while they’re in the middle of an athletic event involving full contact?

Moreno said this morning on “Good Morning America”: “You put your trust into a grown-up, your coach who’s been there since my freshman year. I trusted him that he wants the best for me and did what was I as told.”

Rojas added: “I wasn’t thinking. I was doing what I was told.”

OK, coach. It’s your turn.

You’d better be able to explain yourself.

 

State news

Hutchison came to region’s aid

Kay

BEAUMONT, Texas — A news story in the Beaumont Enterprise brings to mind a memory I have about a former U.S. senator who came to the aid of a region that had been struck by what’s been called “the forgotten hurricane.”

It was nearly a decade ago when the Gulf Coast, which was reeling from what had occurred in August 2005 in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina stormed ashore, suffered another killer storm.

Its name was Rita and it slammed into the coast at Sabine Pass, which borders Texas and Louisiana. It roared inland and tore into Beaumont.

City, county and state officials were having trouble getting the feds’ attention. Then came Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Texas Republican, who managed to parlay her good relations with Senate Democrats to fast-track aid to the region that had been walloped by Mother Nature’s fury.

As the Enterprise reported today: “I’ll never forget what Sen. Hutchison and her staff did for us, as a community,” said former Jefferson County Judge Carl Griffith. “(Hutchison) made a huge difference in a lot of people’s lives.”

What she did was work with Louisiana U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat, to obtain military aircraft to aid in evacuation and the delivery of supplies to the region. Other efforts to get the White House — where Republican President George W. Bush lived at the time — had fallen short.

Hutchison’s work made the difference.

Hutchison came through

Indeed, my memory of her familiarity with this part of Texas is quite vivid. I had the honor during my nearly 11 years working at the Enterprise to interview Sen. Hutchison as she would come by to, um, chat and to update us on senatorial goings-on.

And almost always, without fail, Hutchison would remind me of how she spent time visiting extended family members living in Old Town, a noted residential district in Beaumont.

She knew the region and wasn’t about to let bureaucratic bumbling stand in the way of relief for the home folks.

Nor was Hutchison going to waste the political capital she had piled up with her friends across the aisle.

Bruce Drury, a retired political science professor at Lamar University — who I knew fairly well while I worked in Southeast Texas — said that Hutchison’s ability to cross party lines is not nearly as evident with today’s Texas congressional delegation. “We have two Republican senators, neither one of whom have attempted to cultivate goodwill with the administration,” Drury told the Enterprise, adding that “to some extent the administration hasn’t been overly active in trying to establish links.”

As the former senator demonstrated, it’s nice to know people in the right places.

 

State news, Uncategorized

Be careful when naming structures

carrol thomas

BEAUMONT, Texas —  For many years I have held the belief that it is risky to put the names of living people on the side of buildings or other structures.

Why? Their legacies aren’t complete. Something might happen to tarnish their good names.

Today I laid eyes on just such an example. It only reinforces my belief in this principle: Make sure the person you are honoring has passed from the scene before you put his or her name on a structure.

Thomas leaves his mark

We drove by the Carrol “Butch” Thomas athletic field this morning. It’s a shiny new field where Beaumont’s public high schools’ athletic teams participate.

Why the concern over Thomas’s name being on it? He retired in 2012 as Beaumont’s school superintendent. Two years later, he crap  hit the fan at BISD. The Texas Education Agency fired Thomas’s successor, dismissed the school board and took over day-to-day operation of a school system injured grievously by malfeasance and outright corruption.

Two points: I once observed this school district from my post at the newspaper in Beaumont; but  never met Thomas, who became BISD superintendent after we left Beaumont for Amarillo.

I followed this story from afar, though.

It’s impossible for me to believe that much of what exploded after Thomas retired wasn’t already building while he was on the job.

He was a polarizing figure in Beaumont, according to all that I had heard about him. What’s more, the very idea that a sitting superintendent would allow his name to be inscribed on a structure seems off-putting in the extreme.

Thomas said at the time of his retirement that he was leaving while conditions were good. However, the storm clouds were beginning to form.

They broke not long after he left town.

Zooming past that gleaming athletic structure — with his name towering high above everything else nearby — just makes me recall the hazard associated with honoring a living individual

Knowing what I know what has happened to the school district he left behind leaves me with a bitter taste.

local news, State news

When a loop isn’t a loop

ty1

TYLER, Texas — Used to be when I thought of Tyler, two thoughts came to mind: roses and Earl Campbell.

Now a third aspect comes to mind, and it’s not nearly as pleasant as the scent of a blooming flower they celebrate every year or the exploits of a great University of Texas and NFL running back who was born and reared in this community.

It’s Tyler, just like Amarillo, has a highway “loop” that has morphed into just another busy street.

The main drag through the city of 97,000 residents is U.S. 69. If you think you’re going to bypass the heavy traffic by taking Loop 323, well, think again. It’s about as useful as Loop 335 is circling Amarillo.

The good news for Amarillo, though, is that the city — in conjunction with the Texas Department of Transportation — is moving forward with plans to extend 335’s western-most corridor with the aim of pulling heavy traffic off of Soncy Road.

I haven’t a clue what they’re going to do in East Texas to improve traffic flow through Tyler.

But after slogging through loop traffic hoping to avoid the clogged highway that run through the center of this beautiful city, my hope is that plans are afoot to do in Tyler what’s being planned in Amarillo.

A loop by definition is supposed to relieve motorists’ headaches, not worsen them.

 

 

State news

Getting to Ike’s park proves challenging

Eisenhower-State-Park-sign

EISENHOWER STATE PARK, Texas — So help me, it wasn’t supposed to be this hard.

We’ve hauled our fifth wheel all the way from Amarillo to Denison, the birthplace of Dwight D. Eisenhower. We exited the highway right where the sign told us exit. We turned west, heading — we thought — for the main gate to the park.

“Road Closed” blinked a large electronic highway sign. The park had been deluged by rain during the spring and early summer. Many campsites been damaged, some were destroyed. But it reopened for general use just a few weeks ago.

The first thought that ran through my mind: This isn’t happening. I did not want to have to turn that fifth wheel around on a dime, back it up, do whatever motor vehicle gymnastics I would have had to do to get our assembly pointed in the right direction.

My wife said, “Why not turn right at that street and maybe we can circle the block?”

Good call. Actually, it was a better call than I imagined.

We made the turn, headed north along this narrow street. Out came a gentleman. He waved us over.

You might recall a blog entry I posted about three weeks ago about being watched over by guardian angels in Santa Rosa, N.M. Well, another appeared in the form of this fellow.

I didn’t get his name. I’ll call him Mr. Wings.

Mr. Wings said that, yes, we could circle our rig around the block. But he informed us of an alternate route into the park.

We had to go north, across the Red River, into Oklahoma, turn left at the second exit, go west a few miles, then turn south  and drive “over the dam” and then we would find a great road into the park.

OK, man. Thanks.

We circled the block, came back out and standing before us was Mr. Wings.

“Good thing I talked to one of my partners back there,” he said. The road we were to take west was washed out.

He then instructed us to head back south on U.S. 75 take the second exit we saw, drive along U.S. 84, make a few sharp turns and that would take us into the park.

So, we got to Ike’s park.

It’s a lovely place. Quiet. Dark.

We’re quite certain that getting out of there in a few days won’t be nearly as harrowing as coming in.

As for Mr. Wings, he has shown me once again about the truth behind the existence of guardian angels.

 

legal news, Sports news, State news

This ref’s story becomes bigger than the game

referee-powerpoint-slide-template-for-microsoft-powerpoint-21668881

Robert Watts no doubt doesn’t want to be remembered this way.

It’s out of his hands now.

He’s the high school football referee who was pummeled late in a game the other evening by two San Antonio Jay High School players. They blindsided him with a hit in the backfield late in a game against Marble Falls.

Watts says he’s going to press charges against the players, who’ve been suspended from school. What’s more, an assistant Jay HS coach, Mack Breed, also has been suspended.

Coach’s conduct in question

Indeed, the focus now is turning to the coach.

Did he encourage the young men to hit the official? Did he actually give them permission to do this deed?

If the answer is yes to either, then the coach needs to face charge of conspiring to commit assault and battery.

It’s been reported that Watts reportedly made some bad calls on the field that went against Jay … and that he allegedly uttered a racial slur in the direction of one, or maybe both, of the players who hit him from behind.

Suppose he did make some bad calls. And let’s suppose further that he said something offensive to the players. Is that how they should respond? By hitting a ref — while wearing body armor — so hard as to potentially inflict permanent injury?

The University Interscholastic League, which governs high school extracurricular activities in Texas, needs to spare no effort in finding out what happened on that field.

That the young men would do such a thing by itself is inexcusable. They must not play football again in Texas.

The coach’s actions also require a thorough investigation.

To say this kind of conduct is inexcusable doesn’t do justice to what these young men did.