TACO TUESDAY:.......In This Next Episode...Over Men And Horses, Hoops And Garters, Lastly Through A Hogshead Of Real Fire!...

 

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

BROWNSVILLE, Texas | Adela Garza has her fans. Take it to her and see some of Brownsville's better-known residents light into you like trailer park fleas on an aging Anglo. She's that freakin' popular, that respected. The smiling gent in the photo with her above is celebrated Mexican boxer Julio Cesar Chavez. Go ahead and pick a fight with her, Rube.

And good luck.

As local white-bread bloggers Jerry McHale and Jimmy "Blah, Blah" Barton discovered when they went after Texas Southmost College here recently, Ms. Garza, chair of the TSC Board of Trustees, does not even have to say one word to shut them up. It just happens.

Hear anymore from the quieted bloggers?

Of course not. They hit town like the first bowel movement after Thanksgiving and haven't been heard from since. So much for that TSC welding program scandal they promised but never wrapped-up. Loud and fat-sausaged, they posted story after story after story of what they perceived as firing material that went right up to the school president. None of it stuck. McHale (shown in photo above) and Barton, souls rented to darkness, have since gone away rather flaccidly.

Those who know her say Adela Garza has a disinclination for conflict, but it is not a weakness.

The silly, unarmed bloggers would peter out, was her feeling. Elderly dudes tend to head out for a cold beer hoping for something else, but they always slink home as if trained nursing home residents.

Peter out?

Of course, they did...

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Silly Los Fresnos Mayor Alejandro Flores is up for reelection on November 7th. He is a Brownsville dude, born and educated. Somehow, he found himself in Los Fresnos and in the job of mayor. Flores, shown in photo above, is smalltime to the max, but he has one obsession.

His co-pilot in politics is...God.

At least, that's what visitors to his activity-filled Facebook page get pretty much daily. It's God and God's glory for him all the way. If ever a public servant went all-out unabashedly with his religion, it is Flores.

His bent is rather corny, posts often totally about community-aimed projects for kids and families. We have not heard or come up on any opposition for his campaign, but Los Fresnos is a small town in every sense of the word, there on the highway that takes you to Port Isabel and South Padre Island if you're driving in from the Upper Valley.

Tiny Los Fresnos counts barely 8,000 or so residents, most of them not of the garish variety. Mayor Flores and his flashy style, dress and personal imagery, would lead one to believe he's the mayor of a much larger city.

The word is he's favored to win reelection.

His "look" of metropolitan pizazz seems somewhat overlearned, however...

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How 'bout them fancy-schmancy bus shelters? What - they're not there yet?! Ooopsie-roo. The City of Brownsville promised them, didn't it? I read that somewhere. Was it in the local blogs? Had to be. No one else is screaming Holy Hell about the lack of this basic civic need.

I mean, you judge a city by its bus shelters, right?

Uh, not here. Oh, well. Summer had the shelters front-center, man. Steady reminders for the air-conditioned bureaucrats at City Hall. And still nothing?

Well, no. Rains and cold winds will roll in and city bus riders will face the elements as they always have - without shelter from the storm, as the song says. When you live in a poor community, you endure the struggles with the lack of things. Civilization is here, only not in the realm of bus stop shelters.

Perhaps the next mayoral candidate will reframe the issue, define it differently. You know, say they are needed not for the poor riders but for the entry to that All-America City competition.

You think?...

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Well, they say he buys the Black Shinola by the box. To paint that bushy, worm-like mustache and give himself the Vicente Fernandez look. We speak of Cameron County Sheriff candidate Jesus Rosas Jr, shown with Mrs. Rosas in photo above.

Oh, well. We're told he actually is a very, very qualified dude, able to holster a gun and look the part of lawman, quick with the lingo of law enforcement and just an all-around good guy raised on meat.

We still believe incumbent Sheriff Eric Garza will be reelected in the upcoming next election. It's a hard row to hoe for newcomers challenging the guy with the office. Garza may have his faults, but he does wear the official badge his challengers want. Wears it every day, in fact.

Rosas Jr hangs in second place, behind Garza but comfortably ahead of third pretender Ronnie Saenz.

I dunno. Does Rosas Jr look any more sheriff-like than Sheriff Garza? No. They both look more like district clerks than the second coming of former, 84-year-old Sheriff Omar Lucio, he of the go-along on raids fame.

Rosas Jr seems to still be pushing his campaign via Jerry McHale's "Community Shithouse" blog, which keeps us from saying Rosas Jr has a brain.

Perhaps he'll surprise us - and himself! - by reconsidering the idea of throwing his campaign cash away...

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Border anthropologist Tony Zavaleta, a prominent trustee of Texas Southmost College, is over the recent, public dust-up he had with the aforementioned Blogger McHale, the 73-year-old clodhopper behind the recent went-nowhere attack on TSC's welding program.

We asked Dr. Zavaleta for comment to elderly McHale's feverish preoccupation with local welders, but Dr. Z asked to be let-off the controversy, citing a desire to ignore the sloppy blogger, this after saying that he'd never, ever speak to McHale again. As we reported earlier, the clash ended a 47-year friendship between the two. 

Mutual pal Ben Neece, the highly-regarded former municipal judge and city commissioner, did tell The McAllen Sun that he'd spoken to the self-aggrandizing blogger and that the pompous blogger had told him he'd be laying off Dr. Zavaleta but remain as TSC's primo archenemy.

Neece may be the one to smooth things out between these two once-tight amigos.

Who knows, however. McHale's attentiveness to the welding story has been like the savoring of a cannibal. What is that they say about an unwearying old goat:

"His teeth are loose, but he still wants sex"...

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Have they sold her a bum deal? What a cruel thing to do to a woman out on her first political campaign as a brand-new Republican! Laura E. Cisneros (shown in kinda old photo above) is her name and the 34th Congressional District brawl is her game.

She seems to have bought into Blogger Jerry McHale's promise that his blog will see her to victory.

What a crock!

McHale had her leading favorite Mayra Flores in a poll taken by something he calls STIJA, which does not exist and is nothing more than McHale lying one more time. No one is actually polled; McHale simply comes up with fake numbers to support his commentary.

That Dr. Laura E. Cisneros is paying for this is the season's laugher. Someone hand her a primer on McHale's history of posturing paying politicians as something they often are not. Ms. Cisneros was a Democrat up until last November, fer Chrissakes!

But it could just be that hers is a Vanity Campaign, one for the family scrapbook and not for actual accomplishment or winning results.

Sad...

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Yeah, whatever became of schoolteacher Julie Olvera, shown in photo above. The year was 2015 and she was busy helping boyfriend and City Commissioner Ricardo "Rick" Longoria with is reelection campaign.

I'd been writing about the election and befriended Julie along the way. Things between them seemed lovely, as in romance on the go, kissing & hugging, that stuff. Both were for BISD as teachers. One day, Julie headed for Rick's house in Southmost sort of unannounced and, when walking into the house, found Rick busy loving some other Babe, in the sack.

Julie was not amused. In fact, she was angered, shocked but damned angered.

The story here was Rick's unknown dilly-dallying, at least unknown to Julie. Suffice it to say that there was a quick split and, suddenly, Julie had a whole lot of free time in her hands. We would talk on the phone, which developed as I began to fill the breakup puzzle piece by piece as I covered Rick's campaign. I did invite her to dine with me in McAllen, and she drove over in her pickup.

I was driving my Audi TT sports car at the time, so we met at a Starbucks on N. 10th Street and then rode in my car to Mambo's a seafood restaurant on the city's West Side. We scarfed on the great seafood and talked at length about Rick and his escapades, most of it graphic and way off the political campaign. Photos surfaced of Rick naked and wielding a Jedi sword, some used in stories published by Brownsville's bloggers.

She was hurt, yes. But Julie also had decided to push Rick out of her life.

The last I heard, sweet Julie had moved to Michigan and was back teaching. She sent me a note once to my Facebook page saying she'd met a guy up there. I didn't chase that one.

So, who knows? She may be well-married and have a few kids by now.

Life is funny that way...

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Is he going for it again? Does once-supportive Blogger Juan Montoya know anything? We speak of 2020 sheriff candidate John Chambers, the Republican who was beaten by current Sheriff Eric Garza in a close, but not that close race.

There's not been a peep from Chambers.

Opportunistic Montoya did take his side (for cash, eh?) and posted numerous articles pushing his campaign and torpedoing Garza's. The backing struck some people odd, in that Montoya (shown in photo below, at left) could be said to be a die-hard Democrat. And his disdain for Garza has continued over the past three years, leading me to conclude that Monty will again back Chambers if Chambers brings his big, fat wallet around.

Hey, business is business, ese.

We'd like to see Chambers again in the contest. Two other candidates have announced, but neither has the sort of punching bag persona that Chambers brings to politics. He's a cowboy, too, though, which is a big downer for us. Chambers vs. Garza. Fifteen rounds of boxing.

Both have the sort of Bummer Charisma that makes for interesting Journalism.

Am I enjoying myself yet?...

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This is still the Main Event for the 34th Congressional District seat. Democrat and incumbent Vicente Gonzalez vs. Republican Mayra Flores.

Brownsville bloggers are pushing nobodies (Laura E. Cisneros, Greg Kunkle and Mauro Garza) in the Republican Primary, but those bloggers are just spreading free general garrulity. Yeah, why not a few laughs?

Gonzalez has the backing of the national party on his side and Flores hers on the right.

That's the next Battle of Palo Alto, Baby. Any other possibility is airborne shit. The bloggers know it, camps for Vinsanity Gonzalez and Frau Flores have known it. Yeah, there's Blogger Jerry McHale telling those arriving at his blog that greenhorn Laura E. Cisneros is leading All-Pro Flores in early polling. Ha ha ha.

That's Jerry, his bald pate allowing wrinkles of insincere surprise to travel all the way to the back of his head. To do its job, a good joke has to circle the skull's inner walls. I mean, if McHale had a dog its name would be "Scram." With one of these (!), for the correct effect.

We do expect Laura E. Cisneros to switch to the Independent Party minutes after she finishes last in the upcoming party primary.

We can already see her typing her announcement notes: "To Whom -"

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Minor league Blogger Jimmy "Blah, Blah" Barton is fast coming off his woeful performance in the now-forgotten TSC Welding Recital and back to pushing his boring Laundromat Bulletin Board blog. That's Jimmy in photo above with wife, Nenny, pre-2018.

Who knows why this guy thinks he's a credible newsman. Must be some lost self-esteem thing. He moved to Brownsville back when he was of draft age but never served in the military. To her great credit, Nenny did an Army stint, however.

Anyway, we monitor Jimmy's silliness only because, well, he can be hilarious with his bad grammar, skewed angles to serious news stories and the sort of stolen journalism valor brashness that always makes us laugh. He never went to college. By his own admission, his life has been one of working at grocery stores, at motels and at unloading shrimp boats at the Port of Brownsville.

Indeed, his morning story today is about recalling ordering food for his motel guests back in the 1960s from a long-gone restaurant.

Yeah, real "investigative" stuff.

Heh heh...

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Finally, how are those Fish Tacos in Brownsville anyway? Do they pass prime seafood muster? I mean where can you get some that'll satisfy the taste?

We do like the ones served at two-three restaurants in McAllen, but, well, Brownsville's closer to the Gulf of Mexico, so we figure it ought to be somewhat better.

But is it?

We don't see much about Brownsville's restaurants in the Brownsville press. Bloggers don't seem to be into restaurant reviews. They should. Readers also eat, boys.

Oh, well. Perhaps we'll drop by some eatery and check out the local grub.

Who can ever forget lunch at noisy, busy-busy Leonardo's on Central Boulevard back in the day?...

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Taco Tuesday out...

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