Since my last post on Dallas and Hell, the Lone Star has mercifully backed off a bit. Although the humidity is hovering around a hundred and twenty percent, the rains have cooled Old Hell down tolerably. But as I am learning, when Texas gives, Texas also takes.
Off and on today I have been out trimming small mesquites. Hopefully all of your encounters with this almost shadeless "tree" came out of a barbecue bottle and not up close and personal. The mesquite is truly one nasty customer; more like a big rack of thorns with a few tiny leaves placed here and there by God to dress it up a little. The enormous white stabbing things, needle sharp, seemingly cover every inch of the mesquite and if one is not careful (and even if one is) the result is worse than being jabbed by an ice pick. The mesquite grows in Texas like crab grass grows elsewhere--all over, and fast. There is a town just north of here called Mesquite. The people who formed this town must have run out of heroes or ideas for why anyone would name a place after a horrible tree like the mesquite in beyond me.
But as I learned today, the mesquite's daggers are only its first line of defense. In roughly every other tree that I sawed into I found a colony of vicious fire ants. Fire ants are surely the devils of the insect world; their sting is like that of a small bee and they are aggressive beyond belief. They are remorseless. They will hunt you down in record time. The angry brutes today attacked my feet in seconds and even as I was slaughtering them right and left like Samson of old other fiends were racing up my clothes to attack other unnamed parts. After a few such encounters (and some swelling feet) I changed my tactics. In quickly, out quickly was my new motto. For the most part it worked. But even as I would periodically come into the ranchero for something to drink, ten minutes later I would discover one or two of the ugly things crawling on my clothes still looking for a patch of bare skin to sting.
Quite a place this Texas. Quite a place.
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Fish-Eye Foto of the Day
May 10th:
Just moved to Texas! Now this is a state that knows how to live!! Beautiful sunny days and warm balmy evenings. What a place! It is beautiful. I've finally found my home. I love it here.
May 22nd:
Really heating up. Got to 100 today. Not a problem. Live in an air-conditioned home, drive an air-conditioned car. What a pleasure to see the sun everyday like this. I'm turning into a sun worshipper.
May 30th:
Had the backyard landscaped with western plants today. Lots of cactus and rocks. What a breeze to maintain. No more mowing the lawn for me. Another scorcher today, but I love it here.
June 10th:
The temperature hasn't been below 100 all week. How do people get used to this kind of heat? At least, it's kind of windy though. But getting used to the heat is taking longer than I expected.
June 15th:
Fell asleep by the pool. Got 3rd degree burns over 60% of my body. Missed 3 days of work. What a dumb thing to do. I learned my lesson though. Got to respect the ole sun in a climate like this.
June 20th:
I missed Tom (my cat) sneaking into the truck when I left this morning. By the time I got to the hot truck at noon, Tom had died and swollen up to the size of a shopping bag, then popped like a water balloon. The truck now smells like Friskies and Cat S--t. I learned my lesson though. No more pets in this heat. Good ole Mr. Sun strikes again.
June 25th:
The wind sucks. It feels like a giant freaking blow dryer!! And it's hot as hell. The home air-conditioner is on the fritz and the AC repairman charged $200 just to drive by and tell me he needed to order parts.
June 30th:
Been sleeping outside on the patio for 3 nights now, $400,000 house and I can't even go inside. Tom is the lucky one. Why did I ever come here?
July 4th:
It's 115 degrees. Finally got the air-conditioner fixed today. It cost $500 and gets the temperature down to 85. I hate this stupid state. It was not meant for human habitation. Give it back to the fire ants and scorpions!
July 8th:
If another wise ass cracks, 'Hot enough for you today?' I'm going to strangle him. Damn heat. By the time I get to work, the radiator is boiling over, my clothes are soaking wet, and I smell like baked cat!!
July 9th:
Tried to run some errands after work. Wore shorts, and when I sat on the seats in the car, I thought my butt was on fire. My skin melted to the seat. I lost 2 layers of flesh and all the hair on the back of my legs and can . . . Now my car smells like burnt hair, fried ass, and baked cat.
July 10th:
The weather report might as well be a damn recording. Hot and sunny. Hot and sunny. Hot and sunny. It's been too hot to do jack squat for 2 damn months and the weatherman says it might really warm up next week. Doesn't it ever rain in this damn state? Water rationing will be next, so my $1700 worth of cactus will just dry up and blow over. Even the cactus can't live in this furnace.
July 18th:
Welcome to HELL! Temperature got to 115 today. Cactus are dead. Forgot to crack the window and blew the damn windshield out of the truck. The installer came to fix it and guess what the first words out of his mouth were??? "Hot enough for you today?" My friend had to spend $1,500 to bail me out of jail. Freaking Texas. What kind of a sick demented idiot would want to live here?? Will write more later when the trial is over.
(The above--with a few adjustments--was forwarded by a Dutch friend. Although some other poor devil composed it, the sentiments pretty well square with my own. Like General Sheridan once said, "If I owned Texas and Hell, I would rent out Texas and move to Hell.")
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Caricature of the Day
I have not watched TV much in the last two months and none at all in the last two weeks.
So, imagine my euphoria when I did sleepily push the power button Thursday night and I saw that, within a few minutes, the Turner movie channel would show Union Pacific. The last--and only time--I had ever seen this thundering Cecil B. DeMille classic was over thirty years ago. And I never forgot it; imagined I would never see it again in this lifetime. But....God Bless Ted Turner.
If the "Golden Age" of Hollywood was the 1930s and 40s, the Golden Year was 1939. Jesse James, Dodge City, Gone With the Wind, Young Mister Lincoln, Stagecoach, Drums Along the Mohawk....and those are just some of my '39 favorites with a Western theme. Throw in The Wizard of Oz, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Roaring Twenties, Gunga Din, and Goodbye Mr. Chips, and you see why it was such a stellar year. Add Union Pacific to the list.
With literally a cast of thousands, with sets that are right out of the period, with costuming as accurate as any movie ever made, before or since, and with a wonderful script and plot that holds you throughout, the film is pure DeMille. Then add an incredible cast. Joel McCrey as the hero, Barbara Stanwyck (below) as the saucy Irish engineer's daughter that every one loves, Robert Preston as the formula-villain who proves his mettle in the end, the leering Brian Donlevey who proves nothing in the end except that he is still a wretch, his hired gun and card shill, a young Anthony Quinn....there are already enough headliners to ensure box office bullion.
But in typical, epical DeMille fashion, Union Pacific tells a mighty story--The Winning of the West. From the brawny Irish gandydancers who brawl their way through one Hell-On-Wheels after another, to the young Indian warriors (real Indians) who imagine they can halt the Iron Horse by shooting arrows into it, this is one movie that everyone who loves the Old West must see.
