Jack Burns Lives!

Fire On The Mountain-Texas Style

New Ulm, Texas is a small, unincorporated community made up mostly of rancher types in the Southeastern part of the state, about an hour east of the state’s surprisingly liberal and progressive capitol, Austin. Lots of good-ole-boys, trucks and cows. Each ranch has the quintessential gate over the drive, adorned with the family brand and a flag or two. Some have just a Texas flag. Others have Texas flag and an American flag. Still others have a Texas flag and the Confederate stars and bars, but all have the Texas flag and not by accident.Texans, it seems, have always fancied themselves as Texans first and Americans or Confederate next. Loyalty to Texas comes first and don’t you forget it.

Inside “town,” there’s a spattering of quaint houses divided by a two lane highway. Connected to the highway there are one or two main roads with the side roads being mostly dirt. For supplies, you go to Schulz’s. Everything from soup to nuts, lariats, saddles and even some Fat Tire Beer. There’s a cafe and a church and no red lights. Life is quiet, as it should be.

I was on the third leg of a multi-purpose trip that included stop overs in Georgetown, Austin and eventually, Lafayette, Louisiana. An old friend from Tennessee relocated to New Ulm about seven years ago, and I decided I was too close to not venture over and see him. Like many Tennesseans before him, Tom finally gave Tennessee a well deserved middle finger, packed his shit and hit the road. Seems Tom took to heart Davy Crockett’s famous utterance “You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas.”

While I can’t see myself living there (I need closer proximity to red rock, mountains and live music), Tom has taken to it like a duck to water. He was fortunate to meet a native, marry and find the place of his dreams. He and Sue live on a nice spread with a tank full of stocked bass, enough land for a handful of what Abbey called “clumsy, stupid, bawling, stinking, fly-covered, shit-smeared, disease spreading brutes” to graze upon, a few chickens and roosters and a sweet horse named China. In terms of acreage, it’s the classic ranchette, less the mega-home. Tom and Sue live simply and are just good, country folk that will open their home to you. The beer is cold and the meals are hot.

As Tom and I sat on his porch and nursed a couple of cold beers, I realized some things had changed. When Tom and I first met, he was a ultra-right wing conservative. He’s still pretty conservative, but as most conservatives on the lower to middle section of the economic spectrum eventually learn, the government and big business are not really your friends. The deformed offspring of their commingled relationship, development, sounds great until it’s pointed at your ecosystem like a ten gauge shotgun.

The eye opening issue for Tom is the Trans-Texas Corridor. It’s a 4000 mile long, 1200 foot wide behemoth designed to provide rail service as well as carry trucks, cars, oil, optics, unneeded crap and illegals, ultimately from Mexico all the way to Canada. But the first 4000 mile section is in Texas, alone. For cars and trucks, there’s an 85MPH speed limit proposed, which means everyone will be doing 95MPH, burning fuel as if there’s no tomorrow.

Total cost? Nearly $200 billion, but that’s not the problem with the residents. The issue that has everyone up in arms and prepared to storm the capitol in Austin is the land grab. The state (and their road building buddies) need to seize nearly 600,000 acres via eminent domain. I’ve never met a single person that favors eminent domain seizures, but in Texas, this takes on a whole new dimension.

Everyone in Texas seems to have a loaded gun, but when you say “eminent domain,” those guns become cocked and aimed. They’re fightin’ words.

“They slipped it into a Bill, supposedly lied to voting state congressmen and slammed it through without so much as a word to the voters. Gov. Tricky Rich Perry (also known as Gov. Goodhair),close friend of Jorge Bush, inked this deal while campaigning to secure the borders and assist in building a wall. RIGHT!! The bastard deserves a fair trial and then hung. It’s bad. One thousand people arrived at the Department of Transportation meeting in Bellville, TX to discuss the TTC. Only about 3000 people live there. They don’t care, and these idiots keep sending the same good old boys back to congress in Austin. I, your most conservative friend, am becoming a rebel.”

Tom went so far as to say some are talking bloodshed. Violence. They’re saying they won’t leave their land without a fight. I got a little excited at the thought of a bunch of John Vogelin’s taking a stand.(John Vogelin is the lead character in Abbey’ On The Mountain, a novel about a rancher standing up to the feds when they threaten to take his land and turn it into a military range.)

And it’s not just the land grab. They’re pissed about the immigration problem, too. According to Tom, it’s so out of hand (they blame Bush with little hesitation), they’re convinced there’s a sinister plot by Bush and others to create a North American Trade Union and more or less dissolve the borders. Not good news to this crowd, as they’re just looking for an excuse to start shooting illegals crossing the border. A posse of Texas Rangers once again cleaning out “undesirables.”

Incidentally, The New York Times ran an article this week on the whole situation. The article makes an interesting point that sheds some important light on the situation. Something I hadn’t considered.

Experts say Texas is addressing a “problem” certain to worsen nationally in the coming decades: the price of gasoline may be rising but revenue from gasoline taxes is not, and with the rise of more fuel-efficient vehicles, less money is being raised for highway projects, even as traffic grows. So, transportation planners are increasingly looking to the private sector to put up construction money for toll roads in return for revenue from motorists.

Conclusion: Driving fuel efficient vehicles or driving less is costing the government money. Conservation is the enemy of the government. (We already knew the government was the enemy of conservation) The government is in the business to make money and will undertake massive public works projects, projects harmful to the environment, in order to keep the coffers full. If necessary, it will take your land (just like they took it from the former inhabitants) in order to keep the wheels of progress moving forward.

I really don’t expect the Texas countryside to erupt in violence. Most folks, even the most stubborn ones in the Hill Country, don’t have the stomach for real violence. The days of Quantril’s Raiders are long past and the government gained the permanent upper hand about the time the Gatlin Gun was invented. Yet, there’s something appealing, even noble, about a Vogelin type sitting on his porch, shotgun in hand, defying power.

My guess is the road is coming and things won’t get back to normal until the fuel runs out. The sooner the better as far as I’m concerned.

I could stand the peace and quiet and so could Tom.