Possible Explanation
Okay, so you guys keep asking why Texas is so crazy. Hell, where else could Louie Gohmert get elected and Rick Perry be considered a hot presidential prospect?
Well, customer Rick may have found the answer. He was thumbing though old Life Magazines from the 1950’s and found this.
It seems that central Texas had uranium in the dirt and sold that stuff as snake oil. They claimed uranium could cure your ills better than pills and made a small fortune by selling the opportunity to be covered in Texas dirt.
As if that wasn’t weird enough, along comes some “scientific” dudes who started claiming horse hockey because people were getting short-changed on their exposure to radioactivity.
State soil engineers claim that dirt samples they have tested are less radioactive than the granite walls of the state capitol.
Well, there ya go.
So, Texas crazy is not in the water. It’s the foundation on which our state is built.
And only in Texas would state bureaucrats claim that the problem wasn’t that uranium would kill ya, the problem was that people weren’t getting enough of it.
I love yew, Texas.
Thanks to Rick for the heads up.
Well, at least now we know what to blame: the uranium in the soil and Capitol of Texas. I love knowing who to blame, don’t you?
1And here I was blaming it all on the white colonists from Kentucky and Tennessee. My bad!
2And they STILL feel there’s not enough of it.
Have you noticed how all the top Texas dudes want to bring all of the U.S. high level nuclear radioactive waste to Texas? And have you also noticed how the legislature is studying the potential benefits (not, also, mind you, the possible negatives)? And have you also noticed that the Texas legislature is about to be in session for its every-two-years 5 months of death, destruction and disaster to everything we all hold dear?
This story is not in the past tense. Also.
3Yes, Marion, I definitely have noticed it. Oh boy have I noticed it. Lots of things we have taken for granted will be changed, not sure all the ways but they will. Remember the Alamo. Call your legislators and say LISTEN UP, WE WANT TO HEAR YOU SPEAKING OUT COURAGEOUSLY ABOUT OUR MAIN ISSUES, LIKE WATER AND NOT PRIVATIZING IT SO THAT THE SUPER DUPER RICH CAN GET RICH OFF THE BACKS OF FARMERS AND RANCHERS. Last night my nephew and I had one of our perennial arguments about money and taxes. He said he gave the government more than he earned and I said not possible, and he said just don’t want to give them so much. I said well, that means you are making a ton of money and you oughta pay a lot of taxes and don’t complain, you use all the resources we all help pay for, etc. etc.
4See? This forum is a great place to get our arguments lined up. Happy holidays and enjoy the longer days coming along.
5Is that the actual start of Republican bass-ackward thinking as perfected by Karl Rove and Faux Nooz? The old “up is down” “low taxes bring in more revenue” “less is more” propaganda?
6Decades ago, my wife’s grandmother went down into a uranium mine, hoping to cure her arthritis. She was not cured, perhaps she should have remained longer, until she glowed. If nothing else, it would have made it easier for her to read when the lights were out. In that case Louie and Rick should move into a uranium mine. With those two the lights are always out.
7I’ll help decorate the mine if it would help them go stay there, but I gotta do it remotely.
8I came here…. in about 1944. My mom, my sis, my brother and I..drove here, from “up north”. …..
Our introduction to “Texas” was in a “hotel” in …. I think…. Madisonville……. that had bed bugs.
We came here from D.C. just before the end of WWII, and it was still gasoline, and tire ration stamps. My dad had a job here…working on warships…. Otherwise, we may have turned around and gone back north.
However, we didn’t. We, my sister, brother, and I, got a good education in the public schools.”Texas History” was a little confusing” we grew up with “American History… Didn’t know what a “Middle School” was. We called them Jr. High School. But we learned…… History, Geography, Math, Algebra, English, Science, and ….. before we could graduate High School….. we had to pass a course…. that was called “Social Studies”. We were after…… the Supremes decided…. we could survive…. without “Prayer in School.”
And….. we survived. We learned the “Basics of how to survive in life”.
Should be required as a course … in High School. to get a diploma.
JMHO.
9Years ago, slightly before my time, I hear they had x-ray machines in stores to help fit shoes by taking x-rays of feet. People didn’t know the stuff was that dangerous in quantity. Of course they also used cocaine as a cough remedy. Then there was a “hero” drug that was supposed to cure cocaine addiction, so they called it hero-in….
When we were in England about 20 years ago, my husband got the trots and I found an over-the-counter remedy at the local chemists (drug store). It contained morphine. Opiates are constipating, but I had him ditch the unused portion before trying to bring it back through customs. And the British are amazed that we sell Tylenol in 500-pill bottles– they sell it in small packs because an overdose will destroy your liver.
10Sorry JJ.
I’m old…My mind wanders.
In HISD…. before we could receive a High School Diploma, there were two required courses we had to pass.
One was “Social Problems”…. and we were actually encouraged to read the newspapers, for a class discussion.
At that time, we had three. And my folks took them all. The Houston Post, The Houston Press, and The Houston Chronicle.
The other course we were required to pass was “Civics”. It was in this course…. that we really learned……. (not according to Rick Perry,) but according to the Gospel of learned people of the day…. how our Government actually works.
I really feel sorry for kids in school in Texas today.
They don’t have a snow ball’s chance in H**l of actually getting a worthwhile education in Texas.
Again, JMHO.
,
11So that explains it all! In a way, what a relief!
12Years ago (I refuse to say just how many) I did a lot of roaming in the Colorado Rockies back country. On one such foray I ran across an old mine. Nothing unusual about that except this mine was a bit different. First off it was in an area where there was very little mining… for anything. Secondly, the structures were a little too new to be left over from the glory days of the gold and silver rushes. Interestingly, the holes and cracks in the structures had been patched with old off-set printing plates. But the thing that really set me to wondering was outhouses marked HIS and HERS! Needless to say, that called for a little investigation when I left the wilds behind. Turns out the place was in operation years earlier as a cure-all spa where the suckers would be lowered into the mine to breathe radon gas! The treatment was guaranteed to cure everything from arthritis to zits. Of course, death does “cure” all those ills.
13On second thought, maybe I shouldn’t be telling this story. I would not want to give any ideas to the GOP for their healthcare plan!
Rhea,
14A kid would stick her or his feet into one of those machines and the kid, parent, and sales person could all see the kid’s foot bones and an outline of the shoes. We would not think of going by Buster Brown shoe store without sticking our feet in the x-ray machine and wiggling our toes.
Now, dammit! Someone needs to come up with something weird that I am actually too young to have experienced.
Uncle Dave, did you see that flying machine Wilbur and Orville flew over North Carolina?
15Uncle Dave, I got into a conversation on Amtrak going past NYC about how I’d seen smoke rising from the World Trade Center site when I went past on the train on 9/17/01. We talked about other events that everyone remembers, until I got to Apollo 11 and he drew a blank…. (He knew what it was; he just hadn’t been born then.)
16Uncle Dave –
You probably remember this, but it goes with the x-ray shoe machine.
Lead toothpaste tubes!
17That in conjunction with mercury filings for our dental cavities – – no wonder we grew up listening to heavy metal bands like Led Zeppelin, Iron Butterfly, and Deep Purple.
Uncle Dave –
You just can’t be old enough to remember…
18electric belts. They were the latest thing in battery operated Viagra circa 1900!
And, no I am not that old either – but I have seen photos. One of those belts even showed up at a local antique auction a couple of years ago.
(in my best Bugs Bunny voice): Now I’ve seen everything!
19They say age is relative, so for any commentators feeling your age, check out this site for a measure of your relative youth. http://www.bhigr.com/media/css/bhi_logo.png
20Well…being from Gohmertville and livin’ in the dead center of the Chapel Hill Oil Field, my daddy’s land had oil underneath it. When they drilled oil wells, there was a bunch of liquid leftovers that needed someplace to go. So these oil drillin’ companies made deals with my daddy to spread that stuff on his hay pastures ‘cuz it fertilizes the grass. What they didn’t tell my daddy was it makes the pastures glow in the dark ‘cuz that stuff is radioactive for years!
That may ‘splain why Louie is a couple bricks shy. But then there’s pRick…no ‘splanation for that guy…sigh!
21They are still mining uranium near Corpus Christie and/r Goliad. I wonder where the left over dirt from these mines is being stored?
22As a long-time fan of B horror films I am well aware that radiation causes bizarre and lethal mutations: giant ants, giant preying mantises, giant man-eating blobs, and right-wing Texas politicians.
23I’m trying to remember old stuff. Remember funeral home fans? All the churches had them and other places too because they sure didn’t have air conditioning. You opened the windows and turned on the fans and you sat there and used that cardboard fan. I even have one that opens out that kind of folds into a third of itself and is really pretty when open. You always knew when revivals were in town. Oh, and remember the Sunday night services outside where it was “cooler”?
24Gotta Go with Juanita Jean on this.
25The areas up around Hanford ( WA) area and I think, may be wrong but did a google, you got Doc Hasting’s who has never been known for his healthy outlook on sanity. Perchance radioactive dust has spawned a political class as jaundiced and perversely ignorant so as to prosper in the radioactive high dry desert.
Read the story of the “Radium Girls”. They painted the luminescence on the face of watches and clocks.
http://www.waterburyobserver.org/node/586
26Thanks for the link, Clemtown. An amazing example of why science, unions and consumer protections laws are needed.
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