Well, It's Burning Down in Texas
Seems some utility lines went down
Apologies to the late great Stevie Ray Vaughan for riffing on his breakthrough 1983 album and song, Texas Flood. The first stanza actually goes like this:
Well, it's floodin' down in Texas
All of the telephone lines are down
Well, it's floodin' down in Texas
All of the telephone lines are down
And I been tryin' to call my baby
Lord, and I can't get a single sound
Stevie was a great, a guitar prodigy true to his love of the blues at a time when music had largely been hijacked by the corporate purveyors of bland pablum. Corporations have hijacked everything now, not just music. The blues, the foundation of rock and jazz, were being forgotten. It was the beginning of sales driven control of artistic expression, that undermined the freedom, passion, and meaning imbued in the music of the late 1960s through mid 1970s. Of course, those musicians sang of love as always, as well as drugs and psychedelic trips, but more importantly they rejected the status quo, protesting the Vietnam War, questioning the conformist thinking of the 1950s, the embedded racism of our country, and the appalling, wanton environmental degradation of our Earth. Perhaps, after all that turmoil, the country was exhausted, helping usher in a decade of mostly forgettable, vacuous pop music.
SRV wasn’t political, just a supremely talented guy whose service was performed by keeping the blues alive when milquetoast forgettables like Huey Louis and the News, Journey, and George Michael were being promoted. The 1980s even managed to make Elton John awful. Stevie was also a true Texan, born and raised in Dallas. I’m thankful, Ted Cruz and Greg Abbott aren’t the state’s only products.
It’s not flooding down in Texas, but it’s been burning big time. Texas was stolen from Mexico during the Mexican-American War of 1846 to 1848, when “Manifest Destiny” justified any atrocity we committed to clear a path to the West Coast and beyond. This makes the state name ironic, as it comes from the Caddo Indian word “Tejas” which means friend, even as Greg Abbot snags desperate “illegals” on hidden razor wire in the Rio Grande attempting to come back to land we stole from them.
Texas is also a state with countless famous butt-head slogans. In watching the record setting panhandle fires of the last three weeks, two come to mind here.
“Everything is bigger in Texas,” and “Don’t mess with Texas.”
Wrong, and wrong again.
You see, something is bigger than Texas, and she’s been messin’ with y’all. Her name is Mother Nature. And she’s been kicking some serious, swaggering Texas ass.
Here’s a little Texas aphorism from another Texas politician I admire about as much as a cat turd.
“Some folks look at me and see a certain swagger, which in Texas is called walking.”
— George W. Bush
No worries, George. You can look up the word “aphorism.” It’s in the part of the dictionary with words that start with the letter “a.” You’ll find “asshole” in that section, too, buddy.
Oh boy, I can feel my Texas readership waning.
Texas is indeed big, the second-biggest state after Alaska. It’s also the home of Big Oil, the primary driver of these fires. The largest blaze was the Smokehouse Creek Fire, but there were two others in the region as well. In total, a staggering record 1.2 million acres burned within two days. At least 7,000 cattle are dead and 3,000 more are to be euthanized, their hooves and udders burnt. The cows are worth between $2,500 and $3,000 apiece, and hundreds of miles of fence are destroyed which can cost up to $10,000 per mile to rebuild. It appears around 500 homes and structures have burned down as well.
Texas A&M Forest Service investigators say that power lines ignited the massive wildfires, while utility provider Xcel Energy waffles, initially saying its equipment appeared to have sparked the Smokehouse Creek fire, but then walking it back by pointing out power lines are owned and operated by various companies in the area.
Melanie McQuiddy whose home near Canadian, Texas was destroyed filed a lawsuit against Xcel Energy alleging a pole failed, which the company and its subsidiaries “failed to properly inspect, maintain, and replace, splintered, and snapped off at its base” on February 26, causing the fire. The lawsuit states, “As a result of the utility, powered utility lines hit the ground, igniting a fire, which spread quickly into an uncontrollable conflagration.”
While a utility pole appears to have sparked this disaster, record high temperatures over 20 degrees above normal for late February had evaporated moisture and dried out vegetation, creating perfect conditions for this record setting event. I have enormous sympathy for the people who endured this horror, who will likely spend years dealing with opaque insurance companies and inadequate policies trying to recover. However, it’s also a sad irony that Texas represents Big Oil like no other state, and that beef is the worst agricultural product we can consume in terms of increasing emissions that contribute to global warming.
Since 2018 Texas and the US has been the beneficiary of an enormous oil boom. The impending end of the state’s massive Permian Basin oil fracking is in sight, I touched on it in The Vanished but Inevitable Return of Reality. What we’re seeing from these panhandle fires is the price you and I pay for continuing to burn fossil fuels. Even as Big Oil ruins the planet, and turns record profits, our tax codes continue to subsidize this lunacy in billions of dollars of tax breaks every year.
Consider that in 2022 Exxon, the largest US oil producer, made $56 billion, or $6.3 million an hour and the following companies doubled their profits from the previous year, Shell at $40 billion, Chevron, an all-time record of $36.5 billion and France’s TotalEnergies $36.2 billion. BP’s record profits, came to nearly $28 billion, with ConocoPhillips, bringing up the rear of the pack at $18.7 billion. You can read all the details in my February 2023 article, The Real Eco Terrorists.
Davey Crockett was elected to Congress in 1826, representing Tennessee. When he lost his seat due to political circumstances, the American folk hero, known as the “King of the Wild Frontier,” famously said, “You may all go to Hell, and I will go to Texas.” This statement was an expression of an American feeling of a profound right to unfettered individualism.
These fires are evidence that uncontrolled individualism comes at a great price to our collective well-being. We need to address that. And Davey, although it’s not officially fire season yet, it appears Hell has come to Texas.
Thank you. I am happy to do this and see others waving the warning flag, too. Our mainstream media isn't doing its job.
Awesome writing. Thanks so much for putting pen to paper, so to speak. Looking forward to following the links to your other pieces.