The Clifton Record (Clifton, Tex.), Vol. 110, No. 33, Ed. 1 Friday, August 19, 2005 Page: 4 of 20
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The Clifton Record
Friday, Aug. 19, 2005
Marc's
Remarks
By Marc Johnson
Uf-Da! The Gap been without a
gas station since last November,
the 4th, but
m e b b e
somethin’ fixin’
to happen on this
bad deal. Under-
stand that its
been posted fer
sale on the
Court-House
steps. This
s’posed to take place on the 8th of
September at 10 a.m. This ain’t no
gawrantee that it’ll git opened up,
but at least its some kind of activ-
ity. Dad-burn, we need a station.
Sometime ’bout April, Sandra
and Bill Brooks opened up the
cafe. Called it “Bronco Billy’s.”
Lots of Gap folks glad to see this
opened back up. They done a total
remodel job, includin’ all-new
stainless steel kitchen stuff. Had
the place cleaned up and lookin’
god. And now, Sundaythe 7th, they
shut ’er plumb down. 1 ain't been
able to git in touch with them to
ask them about future plans fer
this nice cafe. All we hear are out-
house rumors. I ain’t got room to
repeat all of them, not that I’d want
to. Hopefully, soon, somebody’;; git
it opened back up. The Gap needs
a cafe.
Twenty-eighth annual “Septem-
berfest” fast approaching. Gonna
be, as usual, on the second Sattidy
in September. This is the 10th pa-
rade, starts at 10 a m. from up to
the St. Olaf Lutheran Church park-
ing lot. Just show up, don’t need
to pre-register. Second annual
“Wild Game Cookoff” gonna take
place down to the City Park. By the
way, seems the park project still
cornin’ up a bit short in order to git
this full matchin’ grant. Call Susan
down to City Hall if’n ya can do
anything to help with this project.
The phone number is 597-2756.
Time is runnin’ out to git-r-done.
Any y’all need any dogs? Seems
The Gap got way too many of ’em,
and the biggest part of ’em is
runnin’ loose. Folks just seem to
choose to ignore the ordinance
about keepin’ ’em on yore place.
And. the city don’t got the money
to build a pound, hire an officer,
etc., to handle this problem. They
tear up trash and scatter it to the
winds. They scare the heck out
from folks tryin’ to walk fer exer-
cise. Some of ’em carry a stick;
some of ’em have mebbe even
thought of carryin’ a gun. Whoops!
That’s probably a bad deal. Them
scoundrel dogs has used many of
our yards fer an out-house. Leave
a heck of a mess. But, guess what
Bet found on our front porch this
week. We got a double-rocker, one
of them made by J.M. Wallace out
from cedar, sittin’ there, and Bet
had a rug on it. A (« #$%& dog had
got up there and pooped rat on the
rug. Bet was hot, and I wasn’t over-
joyed. I had to clean it up! Good
thing I didn’t see it happen. I’d a
probably broke the law against
firin’ a gun. But, it’d been the last
poop that dog took, anywhere.
September the 10th is also the
day fer the “wet/dry’ election up
to the school, and they needin’ at
least one more person to help with
it. Call City Hall at 597-2756 if’n ya
could do this. It pays a little bit, fer
this 12-hour day of not doin’ no
heck of a lot. But, somebody got to
doit.
Any y’all figger why the Lege
down to Austin passin’ crap and
lettin’ our school fundin’ fall by the
wayside? New textbooks sittin’ in
warehouses, and they cain’t pay
fer ’em and git ’em delivered to the
schools what need ’em... now!
What is this? They managed to
give judges a raise, which resulted
in a retirement pay raise fer all of
them. Reckon it comes back to
takin’ care of “number one?” To
heck with our school kids, and
their teachers. School s’posed to
be cranked up by the time y’all
read this.
Don’t we all wish we knew the
answer to clear up the situation
over there in Iraq? We’ve lost
some over eighteen hunnerd folks,
and a bunch of folks is askin’... fer
what? I think we all agree it’s
turned into a situation worse than
any folks could imagine. The rea-
sons have changed. Strategy
changed, and we still losin’ folks.
They all need our prayers.
Thank ya, Lord, fer the good
rains. This neck of the woods
lookin’ really good. Some folks
even got a smile on their face.
See ya next week,
Marc,
Marc at The Gap
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2005
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# Editorial / Opinions
The Clifton Record
A Little Bit
of Nothin’
from or Norm®**
J
By Our Staff And Our Readers
Apparently, Not All Rights Are Equal
I’ve been watching with (actu-
ally, very little) interest the latest
circus in Crawford, and the reac-
tions of those who are exercising
their right to free speech.
If you’ve been living in a
vacuum, you might not know that
Cindy Sheehan has set up camp
outside the President’s ranch in
an effort to visit for a second time
with President Bush. She wants
answers to qnestions as to why the
president killed her son. It seems
she believes her son, who joined
the volunteer military was sent to
Iraq with the express intent to be
snuffed out.
As a member of the press, I un-
derstand how important freedom
of speech is to this country. I will
defend her right to say what she
believes, and to protest accord-
ingly even thought I — like many
others — question her methods.
It seems to me that, if you are
sincere with your protest, you get
out into public, make your views
known, then get on with you life.
To camp out with the intent to
meet with the president, who has
met with her once, shortly after
her son died, seems to be going to
the extreme, to say the least.
The longer the spectacle drags
on, the more it seems it is more
about Sheehan and less and less
about her son. Even her family
members urged her to stop doing
what’s she’s doing.
Still, she has every right to do
what she is doing.
But, apparently not everybody
has those same rights.
Those who criticize her actions
are being painted as unpatriotic,
against the Constitution, and
downright cursed by those who
support Sheehan’s right to protest.
Several groups, including one led
by syndicated radio talk show host
Mike Gallagher, have come under
fire for going to Crawford and pre-
senting the other side of the argu-
ment.
Gallagher mobilized many of his
listeners last Friday and made the
trip from Dallas to Crawford in a
show of support for President
Bush. The road trip was bom dur-
ing his show last Friday morning,
and by 3:30 p.m., a busload of sup-
porters was on its way
“When we got to the protest
area outside the President’s
ranch, we stood alongside the road
and sang patriotic songs, waved
our flags, and said supportive
things about the troops and their
commander-in-chief,” Gallagher
explained. “Then we got back in
our bus and went home.” He esti-
mated that between 100 and 150
listeners made the trip.
Sheehan supporters railed on
Gallagher, claiming the trip was
designed to “harass” and “bully”
Sheehan. Maybe they weren’t
there to see what really happened,
or maybe they just don’t want the
world to know what really hap-
pened (To be fair, I was not there,
either).
“At no point would we have ever
considered antagonizing or con-
fronting Cindy Sheehan. She’s suf-
fered enough. All Americans
mourn her loss. We just strongly
disagree with her accusation that
President Bush ‘killed her son,”’
Gallagher said. “In fact, when a
couple of reporters asked me if I
would go over to the anti-war pro-
Amerkan Veterans And Auxiliary Unit
Lake Whitney Chapter 1215
% Women's And Children’s Clothing • Miscellaneous
Hwy. 22, Laguna Park, Hours: Friday • Saturday, 8 a.in. • 1 p,m.
r
Onward...
Thru The
Fog j
test site and confront them, I
asked why in the world I would do
that. That wasn’t our intent at all.
“I didn’t even want to meet her,
and if I had, I would have only told
her how sorry I was for her loss,”
he continued.
But, it appears, Gallagher was
not within his rights to make the
trip to Crawford, as so many anti-
war, anti-Bush protestors insist
they have the right to do.
“So who could possibly find fault
with about 100 or 150 of us who
waved flags and sang ‘God Bless
America’ in Crawford Friday
night?” Gallagher asked. Well,
hundreds and hundreds of e-mails
within 48 hours bashing him for".'
the show of support for the presi-
dent.
Here are just a few of the (ed-
ited, obviously) messages sent by
these supporters of free speech: rf
• “Mike, you are an armchair
warrior and chickenhawk with a
microphone and you will go to hell
for helping the Bush crime family
lie us into this idiot’s war. Go
%@*& yourself with a lawn
mower, you sack of %@*& traitor.”
• “You have no soul, you fascist.
It is so easy for you to dishonor a
real American patriot when your
children are not in this war of lies,
you Nazi. What do you honor? You
honor money. I bet you wear a
white KKK hood, too. I hope you
burn in hell.”
• “A busload of Pink Nazi Hitler
huggers With no military experi-
ence needed. The uniform is ten-
nis shoes and kilts, so you can
%@*& and run at the same time!
You, Mr. Gallstone, are a
chicken%@*&.S are your bastard
Nazi family of chicken scum. By
the way, I know a guy with a VW
bus that would go perfect with a
Hitler hugging family like yours!”
• Please note that because of
the stunt you phlegm wad is doing,
attacking a mother who lost a
child, I wish on you that your bus
has an accident and all the hate
riders die. Who will mourn you?
We could %@*& on your graves.
It would be lovely to see the fate of
her son befall you children.”
• “...Just remember that you’re
gonna get what’s coming to you.
Bad Karma brings bad luck.
Maybe it’ll come in the form of can-
cer, or maybe one of your kids will
die, or something else terrible will
happen to them, or your wife will
die, or maybe she’ll get breast can-
cer. How nice! Karma isn’t scared
of Republicans and doesn’t answer
to whatever god it is you pray to.
You’re in for it, and I can’t wait.”
“Who would have ever thought
that organizing a trip to Crawford,
Texas would result in someone
writing me hoping that my wife
gets cancer and dies and my sons
are killed in a terrible accident?”
Gallagher said after reading the
hate e-mail he has received. “Evi-
dently, our little adventure has
touched a raw nerve in the fierce
anti-war crowd,” he concluded.
And, evidently, Mike, free
speech is only limited to those bas-
tions of patriotism who seem to
live to bash their country. It seems
that those who support the presi-
dent are not protected by the same
rights.
Kinda makes you proud to live
in the good old U.S. of A, eh? On-
ward.. through the Protest Fog!
CUFTON MASONIC LODGE #360
meets 4th Monday
each month at 7 p.m.
B.J. Shepherd, Worshipful Metier
Ken Williams, Secretary
WNvw.htcomp.net/cliftonmosons/clifton.htnri
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— Editorial
By Norm Taylor
With A Name Like...
“With a name like Smucker’s,”
goes the slogan, “everybody
knows it’s good.”
With a name like “Konstantyn
TVavinskyy” everybody can’t help
but wonder! (Konstantyn wants
his name pronounced with the ac-
cent on the “antipenult syllable!”)
Wonder no longer how good he is!
This Sunday, Aug. 21, at 3 p.m., the
First Presbyterian Church of Clif-
ton will present him in concert.
There will be no charge. A recog-
nized concert pianist in the Dallas
area, upon attending a recent per-
formance by Mr. Travinsky,
claimed, “on a scale of one to ten
he is a twenty-four!”
“Born in the Ukraine in 1981,
Konstantyn began to exhibit his
natural musical abilities at the
early age of five. During this time
he was living in the North Caucus
with his grandparents. By the age
of eight he participated in his first
competition in Kiev where he re-
sided for the next 13 years.
“In 1999, he graduated from the
Special Music School named after
M. Lysenko, and was accepted to
the Ukrainian National Academy
of Music. While pursuing a
master’s degree in piano perfor-
mance, he received an invitation
to continue his artistic career un-
der the guidance of Maestro
Vladimir Viardo, the Van Cliburn
medalist in 1973, and Artist-in-
Residence at the University of
North Texas in Denton.
“Konstantyn is a multi-award
winning performer and is becom-
ing well known for his Liszt inter-
pretations. He has enlightened
many listeners with his perfor-
mances in the United States,
Greece, Italy, Russia, and the
Ukraine.”
“Mr Travinsky is an internation-
ally recognized pianist and we are
honored to have him perform a
concert here in Clifton,” said a
church official.
Hope to see you Sunday, 3 p.m.
With his many achievements and
awards, Konstantyn TYa vinsky has
“got to be great!”
You will have the opportunity to
meet Mr. Travinsky at the recep-
tion following his concert.
Cheers,
ol’ Norm
The Solution To
School Funding In Texas
T:
he Texas Legislature has been debating how to fund
public schools in Texas for what now seems to be
_eons, and they appear to be nowhere closer to coming up with
a plan that when the legislators began. The costs of the special ses-
sions alone could have funded several smaller districts for years to
come, but yet, the discussions continue, and with no apparent end in
sight.
It’s time to put forth a fail-safe solution, maybe not to funding itself,
but in forcing the Legislature to act, and quickly. The solution, you see,
is in the hands of the school districts themselves.
Every district is in the process of trying to put together a budget for
the 2005-06 school year, and will have to set a tax rate to support that
budget. While the funds raised through ad valorem taxes are in no way
enough to run a district for a year, they are still indispensable. Most
districts use these funds to keep themselves running until the state
doles out its binding. Some districts even have had to go as far as to
obtain loans to keep operating until the state gets around to putting
the checks in the mail.
So, here’s how we suggest the school districts act. Every district in
the state should set their tax rate at $0.00. By law, taxing entities can
only raise their rates by a certain percentage each year. But, just for
discussion, if the rate is five percent, zero plus five percent is still zero.
That means none of the districts, in the future, will have the ad valo-
rem taxes coming in to support their operations prior to the state dis-
tributing funds. It also locks their tax rates at $0.00 from here to eternity.
“How does that solve the funding problem?” you might ask? It doesn’t,
but the next part of the plan will force a solution, and quickly. As the
bills come due and rolling in to the districts, they should immediately
be forwarded to:
The Office of Governor Rick Perry,
P.O. Box 12428,
Austin, TX 78711
With the bills from every district across the state — for everything
from school buses to staple pullers, computers to chalk — now in the
governor’s hands, you can bet one more special session will be called,
posthaste, and you can bet the governor would force the legislators
into a workable solution just as quickly.
So, the ball is now in your courts, the school district of Texas. If you
want our elected officials to, once and for all, come up with a funding
plan in a timely fashion, get those rubber stamps made with the ad-
dress above, and drop those tax rates to $0.00.
If that doesn’t force Governor Perry into finally getting business done,
then he might want to get his checkbook ready when the bills start
pouring in.
— David Anderson
Texan Packs A Lot Of Living Into 27 Years
Texans mourned the Aug. 17,
1840, passing of Henry Wax
Karnes, though no one could deny
that the red headed Tennessean
had squeezed several lifetimes of
adventure into his 27 years.
Arriving just in time to join the
fight for Lone Star independence,
Karnes served with daring dis-
tinction as a scout and cavalry
captain. Usually in the company
of Deaf Smith, he flirted with
death by slipping behind enemy
lines to gather intelligence criti-
cal to the rebels’ ultimate success.
Karnes’ best known adventure
began as a routine assignment in
May 1836. Under the terms of the
Treaty of Velasco signed by Santa
Anna, he was sent to Matamoros
to fetch those Texans taken pris-
oner by the retreating enemy.
Karnes and his companion, a
spit-and-polish infantry officer
named Henry Teal, entered the
border town under a flag of truce.
Their appearance on Mexican soil
less than a month after San
Jacinto infuriated those soldiers
still licking their wounds from the
humiliating defeat.
Other than whispered threats
and curses, the survivors of Santa
Anna’s decimated divisions
showed surprising self-control.
They did, however, demand that
the visitors remove all insignia
and combat decorations from
their uniforms, and the two Tex-
ans prudently complied.
Jose Urrea, the general who
defeated Fannin’s forces but did
not take part in the mass slaugh-
ter at Goliad, refused to meet with
the rebel representatives on the
prisoner-of-war issue. His re-
sponse to a written appeal was so
ambiguous that Karnes and Teal
decided to go home.
But on the eve of their depar-
ture, the central government re-
pudiated the Velasco agreement.
The Texans’ travel documents
were confiscated, and they be-
came “prisoners at large” re-
stricted to the city limits of
Matamoros.
Overreacting to the Mexicans’
tough talk about a punitive expe-
dition against liberated Texas,
Henry Teal wrote a secret letter
to Gen. Thomas Rusk. “You must
blow up San Antonio and Goliad!”
he advised. In an equally irratio-
nal postscript, another prisoner
suggested, “Shoot Santa Anna
ana his officers.”
A Mexican youth smuggled the
bizarre message across the Rio
Grande in the hollow handle of a
whip. The letter fell into the hands
of a border patrol, resulting in the
wide dissemination of the sensa-
tional contents.
The entire text was published
two weeks later in a New Orleans
newspaper, to which Gen. Urrea
happened to subscribe. Moments
after the incriminating edition hit
his desk, Karnes and Teal found
themselves under armed guard in
a military barracks.
This Week
In Texas
History ,
r
m
Q
The generally eventually cooled
off and changed the conditions of
their confinement to house arrest.
Under this more lenient form of in-
carceration, the Texans were able
to wander at will around town es-
corted by a pair of soldiers.
After four months in
Matamoros, Karnes and Teal con-
cluded their release could not be
won through diplomatic channels.
With the assistance of a sympa-
thetic American hatmaker, they
planned their escape.
Each evening before retiring for
the night, the captives were taken
under guard to the small pond be-
hind their living quarters which
served as a latrine. A local guide,
who accepted a bribe from the
hatmaker, would be waiting with
two horses for a fast getaway.
The escape proved to be the
easy part. Before their keepers
knew what had happened, Karnes
and Teal leaped on the waiting
mounts and rode away into the
sunset. Several tardy shots
missed the mark leaving the
guards to explain the embarrass-
ing episode to a livid Urrea.
Far more difficult, not to men-
tion uncomfortable, were the two
miserable weeks the fugitives
spent in a thicket hideout.
Drenched by the annual autumn
monsoon and eaten alive by in-
sects, they waited for the Mexi-
cans to call off the search before
finally finishing their flight to free-
dom.
After a long and hard-earned
rest, Karnes and Teal resumed
their respective careers. The
former devoted most of his energy
and battlefield talents to waging
war against the Comanches, while
the latter remained in the peace-
time army and continued to rise in
rank.
From most accounts, Henry
Teal was a haughty officer thor-
oughly detested by the troops. As
a result, no one was particularly
surprised when he was murdered
in his sleep a year after returning
from Matamoros.
Henry Wax Karnes, on the other
hand, was the classic frontier hero.
Ferocious in a fight, he was hand-
some, modest to a fault and the
best friend anyone could ever
want.
Bedridden with yellow fever in
San Mtonio, Karnes insisted upon
keeping an appointment in Hous-
ton. Exhausted by the long wagon
trip, he suffered a relapse and <5ed
three weeks shy of nis twenty-
eighth birthday.
Bartee Haile welcomes your
comments, questions and sugges-
tions at haile@pdq.net or 1912
Meadow Creek Dr., Pearland, TX
77581.
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Smith, W. Leon. The Clifton Record (Clifton, Tex.), Vol. 110, No. 33, Ed. 1 Friday, August 19, 2005, newspaper, August 19, 2005; Clifton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth790506/m1/4/: accessed June 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Nellie Pederson Civic Library.