"The jig was up. And even as they screamed and bitched at each other, the bloggers were already out with the story..." - Jimmy Herrera, bartenderBy RON MEXICO
The Paz Files
HARLINGEN, Texas - They were whooping it up all across town. Pro football was in the air, but it was hard booze that electrified the surly crowds. No big revelation there; on any given day, it is beer and hard liquor that fuels this town. It is said that without beer, Harlingen would be The Vatican. It is the Number One cause for trouble in this struggling town of some 70,000 fun-starved souls. It's been years since anyone read about the spectacular. Alcoholics, and guys just driving around as if alcoholics, rule the local social roost.
A year ago, it was newsman Juan Montoya. The Brownsville blogger downrange known for journalism blows to the body spent his 90 days in jail after being busted for reckless driving and doing it under the influence. A bit closer to here, Rio Hondo City Administrator Hipolito Cabrera, no relation to Foster Brooks, is on the hot seat after news surfaced that he'd had a few DWIs on his record, but had left them off his job-seeking resume.
Then came Tyler Patton, the publisher of the under-achieving Valley Morning Star that seems to do its best to not cover the news here. Patton was busted, as well, after leaving a popular bar frequented by other local newshounds, one being the indefatigable Jerry Deal. Patton is on leave from his job, this after being flashed on the pages of his newspaper in the most unflattering way. Well, maybe next to being accused of fondling little girls. But it's a serious hit for Patton and the newspaper. Drinking and driving never mix. You throw a few cocktails down your throat and chase it with a few beers and, well, you start believing you're Parnelli Jones, or Evel Kneivel, a daredevil in the making.
Patton's fate is likely sealed, if Freedom Newsppaer's regional honcho, Olaf Frandsen, has his way. Frandsen is as unforgiving a boss as were Ghengis Khan and John Ehrlichman. Not that it should matter much to the Valley Morning Star. Its value to the community has sunk dramatically. Where once it chased legitimate stories to do with elected officials and their sexual affairs, it now waits on the annual influx of Winter Texans to fatten its subscription base. Cover the Hispanic community as a contributing factor? Ha ha ha. The Star would rather do anything but that.
So, let Tyler Patton sit things out.
Maybe he had a bad day at the office. Maybe he lost still-more advertising. Maybe the boys at the chamber of commerce, where he also does his buisness impulse, told him his enterprise has lost all steam and is no longer seen as a viable member. Maybe the editor told him the newspaper needed to get off its air-conditioned ass and do real journalism. Perhaps the staff marched in and told him to get his shit together. Or maybe he was pissed cause the Cowboys barely beat the Redskins on Monday Night Football.
Any of those things, and thousands of others, drive Valley men to drinking.
It's part of the culture, part of being so dispossessed as a region that booze is the only social salve for the area's forever-agonized masses. "Wanna get a cold one?" long-ago replaced "Get a job, yet?" as the principal question of the community's day...
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[Editor's Note:...Writer Ron Mexico admits that he likes a glass of red wine for breakfast, and that he chases it with his beloved pan dulce. "Un marranito," he says, proudly...]
19 comments:
Sounds like Michele Bachmann has been consulting with her top secret security advisors (that would be the bible and the ouija board). She needs to quit the race because she has a much better chance with a successful reality show with her equally quirky, ridiculous Alaskan friend. Hilary looks so good compared to these two bimbos.
You got that right. Booze is king in the Valley.
that publisher guy probably does have big problems. drinking is a disease
Booze, is everyone favorite drink, at Las Casuelas two women dressed in nursing garbs were drinking margaritas at 11;00 am.
Hopefully, they didn't work in the emergency room.
At Baloos, they open at 11:00am and people are already waiting for the bruskies and mix drinks.
By the way, I see men and women boozing it up, pretty darn good.
Jr. Bonner style.
People in the Valley live for the week-ends, beer, wine, hard liquor, Marijuana, hard drugs, infidelity, wife beatings, fights, shootings, Husbands, boyfriends, live ins, queridones, spend the week end in Jail, yep, welcome to South Texas, right along the Rio Grande or as Elliot Elcomedor use to say, along the scurioulos border.
You want a cold brew with some good sounds? The Palm Lounge in Brownsville!
It's gotta be pretty depressing in town for the publisher of the newspaper to get drunk. Wow!!! poor Harlingen.
Harlingen is depressing, it has nothing going. I mean the damn town is deader then billie the kid.
I live in New Mexico for many years, and use to go dancing to a reservation for fun, heck, every week-end the crazy female indians would get into fights. During the week the women were friends. That reminds of me of Harlingen.
Just for everyone's info, I have been having breakfast at Las Casuelas and have not seen Jr. bonner and his short stumpy looking darling.
Ron, is it possible someone alerted him???
There is an old truck stop in Combes, and a new Circle K that has a rest. I will check there tomorrow.
ALL:...From what we've heard, Junior Bonner goes to this & that eatery depending on which of his women he is with on any particular morning. He goes to Las Casuelas with his main squeeze, Cylantra, but can also be found in the charms of two women from Rio Hondo who often stay with him in his doublewide mobile home. All of them, he swears, have something to offer... - Editor
“Where once it chased legitimate stories to do with elected officials and their sexual affairs,…”
The Star had to give up this avenue of reporting, one of their own managers was asked to retire after trapping and forcibly groping female employees in a small room at the Star. Also contributing to the demise of the Star’s gripping journalism of sexual misconduct was the fact that the very reporter covering City Hall was having an affair with one of her editors. When she started to swell she was sent off to do human interest stories on the Island. Another female reporter boffed half the male Harlingen police officers, as did one of the Star’s female advertising staff.
One reporter had his driver’s license taken away, so he rode a bicycle to work. At least two editors were redolent of bad booze by late afternoon, every afternoon, after spending long lunches at the Ekls Lodge bar, and thought nothing of driving off to another bar after work. One Star employee made repeated obscene and threatening phone call to an ex-girlfriend, and then rammed his car into hers. Another took the steering wheel off his car everyday to keep “Them” from putting poison on it – he also had to get up and move around the room every so often to prevent the Russians from locating him with their radar beams sent from a sub in the Gulf of Mexico.
There is a long list of kooks and nuts, drunks and druggies, tramps and sluts, and poor spellers who graced the offices and pressroom at the Star; Tyler Patton is just paying homage to his predecessors.
Wow! That is stunning stuff, Cub reporter. No wonder there was no time for serious news in that rag. It should shut down and stop embarassing the city!
Great reporting from cub reporter! What else do you know, Dude? Tell it all. The city desrves to know!
Good story from Cub reporter, man you always wonder about that place, most of the women are kind of hefty.
Mr. Editor, Cylantra doesn't speak English, I have seen those two together, and while Jr. eat's oatmeal and toast, Cylantra eat's guevos rancheros with plenty of pico de gallo.
Cylantra has robing eyes, always looking at other men.
You mean he goes to Maria's ar Rio Hondo, wow.
Paz, what about the BS going on with Constable Robert Lopez and Chief Joe Rodriguez? Robert in all his glorious righteousness claiming that he is offended by sexual forwards from Rodriguez? Lopez, the known philanderer and wife beater claiming that Rodriguez did on purpose to get him in trouble? The only reason that Lopez is crying is Rodriguez is considering challenging Lopez' position. Rodriguez is nothing but an uneducated idiot who confessed that he sent it when it came out private on Lopez' cell phone? Both are worthless anyway!
people at the Morning Star are weird. Who can trust them? NOT me!
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