Friday evenin’ was pouring rain, with tornado watches and thunder-boomers all around — so Polimom wimped out on those now-famous pig races on Baker Road. Since I’ve been real interested in all the hollerin’ and carryin’ on over there about that new mosque thing, it was a real disappointment to me, but ya know, it’s hard enuf to keep this big hair lookin’ right on a good day, and a girl’s gotta have her priorities right, I always say.
Ain’t it lucky that blogger Lou Minatti captured this tender bit of local joie de vivre and released it via YouTube:
Looks like they was havin’ them a serious good time, and if’n I’d come across sech a thing out in the back of beyond someplace on a clear Texas night, I’da thought nothin’ of it. In fact, I might even’a bummed a plug of chaw and joined right in!
I cain’t hardly tell y’all how friendly-like it all looked, and I’m just pleased as all git out that Katy has been put on the map like this. Ain’t nuthin’ worse than sittin’ out here on the prairie and havin’ folks think we’re all civilized or sumthin, ya know? ‘Cept… well… there’s a little bitty problem with all this that’s been nigglin’ at me — kinder twitchin’ around in the back’a my mind fer awhile now.
THEM PIGS AIN’T RACIN’ IN KATY!
Now I recognize that most folks might not care much where them pigs is a-racin’, but since Polimom’s mailing address IS Katy, I’m findin’ all this publicity a mite embarrassin’.
And ya know what else? It ain’t clear that Craig Baker knows where he’s racin’ his pigs, either… cuz on his website, he says they’re all set up in Barker, TX, which’d be jest dandy, ‘ceptin’ ole Baker Road ain’t in the zipcode he’s got with his directions.
Ain’t that a puzzler? How kin somebody be a-livin’ on the same spread fer nearly two hundred years, and not know where they’re at?
Fact is, them pig-handlin’, fireworks-shootin’ Friday nights are goin’ on in HOUSTON! Yup — they’re out thar in 77094, and when I plugged that number into my handy-dandy mapquest, a big red star is a-settin’ almost smack dab on top of Baker Road.
A-course, it don’t really matter, since ain’t nobody tryin’ to give no offense to them Muslims. It’s all about the principle of the thing, ya know? I mean, Craig Baker probly woulda decided to have him some Friday Night Pig Races if there’da been a regular ole church goin’ in next door, right?
It ain’t got nothin’ to do with religion, or tryin’ to deliberately offend anybody’s sensibilities — as Houston’s own local rag (the Chronicle) shows ya:
Katy-area resident Phil Canavespe was one person who was willing to talk about the community’s concerns. He said he purchased land and a ranch house from the Bakers, and he backs the stance Baker is taking with the Muslim group.
“This is not a racist or a religious issue,” Canavespe said. “It’s a two-lane, unmarked road with no shoulder or support for any type of church.”
His wife, Susan Canavespe, said what Baker is doing with the pig races is not “mean-spirited, it’s just Texas-spirited.”
There! Told ya! (Ain’t that Texas spirit sumthin’?)
So y’all just go on, now, and hev yerselves a big time over there in Houston, k? We’ll come visit real soon and join in the hollerin’, cuz we know y’all are just a buncha good ole boys.
* * * * *
Others noticin’ the goings-on just up the road:
:
The Debate Link
Crooks and Liars
A point or 50???? Dangnation, Ed! I’d have to redo all that big hair if’n my head shrunk up that much.
Awww, it ain’t that difficult. Just cinch up them Daisy Dukes nice and tight, and in a week or so enough brain cells will become so oxygen-starved that you’ll drop 50 easily š
And, it won’t affect your big hair a-tall — your head doesn’t shrink, it just doesn’t feel so full and heavy and all. š
~EdT.
That was a real stretch to be funny. I used to write funny little things like that when I was about 12, but then I grew up. What a stupid, childish perspective on this story. Let me try it Polimom’s way:
Weeellll, sheoooot! Too bad them old City o’ Houston kiyeds cain’t keep ’em up thar grades in high skewl like them thar Katy kiyeds cayan, huh? Maybe dey cain’t hep it that they is so much smarter than them HEWSTON stoodents in evr’y grade.
Whut ya think?
How’s that for serious discussion on the subject matter of a non-event like this? The man’s family has been there for 200 years, and they told him to pack it up. Not only that, the road and the area can’t support that much new traffic and flood control, dumbass.
Don’t yer just luv beein’ politicully
kerrect, Polimom?
Joe — Thanks so much for stoppin’ by this evening. Looks to me as if you, as a Houstonian, find it a tad insulting to be presented to the world as a hick.
I have complete empathy for your bruised feelings… which leaves me confident that, if you sit and stew on it a while, you’ll figure out why I wrote it this way.
But maybe not.
Yes, Polimom, a public show of individual defiance is most definitely Texas-spirited, as expressed by the famous Texas transplant Davy Crockett, “You all can go to hell, I’m going to Texas.” Or just about anything said recently by Kinky Friedman.
To those who maintain themselves on a severe irony-deficient diet, let me point out a few things that need pointing out:
As they say in that room where old people pass the time marking on pieces of cardboard with Magic Markers: BINGO! Of course, the fact that the story is about an event (or series of events) that is also stupid and childish helps.
Please provide evidence, which would be admissable in a court of law, sustaining this. Nobody else seems to be able to. Without it, this becomes a “hesays-she says” thing, and I suspect it would be laughed out of most courts.
Which is why they have permitting processes for putting up new buildings, and the inspectors determine what type (and how much) mitigation is required before issuing the final permits.
I think that sums up Polimom’s feelings on the subject.
Now, for the other shoe: had this been a Jewish group wanting to build a new synagogue/Community center, and the ‘neighbors’ been so uncouth as to pull this type of stunt, we would have likely seen the following:
1) the ADL would have been over it like stink on *@#!
2) We would have had references made to events in the early days of Nazi Germany, as the Jewish people were marginalized, leading up to the Holocaust
3) More than likely, the Feds would have been all over the esteemed Mr. Baker + Friends, looking to see if they could hang some sort of civil rights/hate crime charge on them. (In fact, it is entirely possible that at least one of the spectators at last Friday’s “event” was an undercover Fed.)
Whether the folks in Katy/Houston/wherever want to admit it or not, the conduct of Mr. Baker & Friends has been at the very least boorish & un-neighborly, and at the worst deliberately provocative and racist, needing only the addition of some white-sheeted goons and a burning cross to complete the picture and remind us of the not-so-nice side to “Southern Hospitality.”
~EdT.
“Looks to me as if you, as a Houstonian, find it a tad insulting to be presented to the world as a hick.”
Where did I write that I was a Houstonian? Try Boston. Or how about Michigan also? There are lots of property rights problems all over the country, especially in Detroit, that get this same type of spin all the time. These folks do business their way, from the old country, and if you don’t do it that way, the press comes in and calls it racism and then seeks to demean the local mindset, which is usually not typecast in a positive way in any regard to reality. There in Texas, of course they’re going to hick this up to the max. How else? Never heard of an affluent neighborhood like that one, full of degreed professionals that are far more educated compared to much of Houston (at least by the statistics I read). Can’t see how you can put that hick language to a group of people like that. Maybe you are doing the same thing that you think those folks are doing…judging others based on your own prejudice, assumption and ignorance? How hippocritical. Based on the info I have, about 70 percent of the people who live in the Katy area the last 25 years moved there from other parts of the nation, and now the world. Guess this kind of sums up the feelings of people in a more “national” arena now, doesn’t it?
Sincerely, Joe
The “hick” from Boston
living in Michigan
Sincerely, Joe
The āhickā from Boston
living in Michigan
Sigh… Joe, technology has provided a whole passle of cool tools with which I can track my visitors. You do know that, right?
Meanwhile, while Joe was traipsing about in the demographic weeds, Ed T (in a far more patient frame of mind than I, apparently), responded with some valid points.
You’re absolutely right, Ed. There are very real concerns about development — any development — on Baker Rd. There are also myriad methods of redress. Too bad this particular landowner had to take such a knee-jerk, juvenile approach and make the entire area look idiotic.
Let’s see… Mr Baker was letting his cattle graze on land that didn’t belong to him (I presume he had secured the permission of the former landowner – it isn’t that uncommon.) The KIA buys the land, and asks him to please remove his cattle from what is now their land. I don’t think that is a behavior limited to the ‘old country’ – and do they even allow people to keep farm animals on their residential property in the Motor City (I don’t think they do, in Houston proper)?
Oh, I don’t know… it looks as if the rest of the neighborhood is doing a pretty good job of making themselves look idiotic, based on the statements made by the various homeowners in the area.
Bottom line, folks: this isn’t about ‘property rights’, ‘frea speach’, and it certainly isn’t about the quality of the Katy public schools vis-a-vis HISD. This is about a person who was a bit over-sensitive, reading something into a comment that wasn’t there, then over-reacting in a BIG way, dragging his neighbors (who have a serious case of NIMBY-itis) into the fray. Yep, the media may have hyped it a bit, and extended Mr. Baker’s 15 minutes to 25… but this is the SAME type of crap we saw when the Vietnamese boatpeople came in back in the 1980’s, and the KKK took up the banner for “local fishermen’s rights”.
I guess it says something that the Great White Sheets haven’t shown up with their crosses and lighter fluid yet.
~EdT.
Wow – that means his family’s settlement pre-dated the Austin colonists by something like 15 years! We need to let the historians know – maybe they’ll rename the state Capital to “Baker’s Field” in honor of this momentous discovery!
~EdT.
Bottom line, its his land and his pigs. He has the right to do whatever he wants. Don’t like it? Don’t go to the pig races.
Not necessarily – he can’t commit a felony on the property, he can’t violate any land-use restrictions that are in effect, and he probably can’t violate things like noise ordinances etc. that are in place.
If he wants to race pigs, that’s his business. If I want to say that in my opinion he is an idiot and a bigot for doing so, that’s mine. If outsiders want to think that everyone in Katy is an uneducated, rednecked, piece of trailer park trash who somehow never got over losing the War of Northern Aggression – that is their business.
~EdT.