I Love You, Texas.
I know sometime in the past I’ve written about Loving County. It’s way out in West Texas and has a current population of 57. Most of them hate each other.
The county is run by one family or the other one depending on the outcome of some of Texas’s most outrageous elections. Back when the Democrats were in control I used to tell people that I had voted Democratic all my life and when I die I want to be buried in Loving County so I can continue to vote Democratic.
I was pretty much serious about that.
And then, bygawd, along came fracking and Loving county got rich.
The tax base hovers around $7 billion to $9 billion. And the county’s budget has grown from about $2 million in 2008 to more than $28 million.
The salaries for many of the top officials in town — the judge, auditor, treasurer, clerk, justice of the peace, county attorney, constable and sheriff — are $100,000 or higher.
The current County Judge is Skeet Jones and pretty much every other county official is related to Ole Skeet.
Now I’m just kinda skipping over the background here but suffice it to say that Skeet is just a tad too big for his britches. And it appears he just popped a button.
Lawmen came to remote Loving County, Texas, on Friday to arrest the county judge, a former sheriff’s deputy and two ranch hands on one of Texas’ oldest crimes — cattle theft.
Judge Skeet Jones, 71, the top elected official since 2007 in the least populated county in the continental United States, is facing three felony counts of livestock theft and one count of engaging in criminal activity, accused of gathering up and selling stray cattle, authorities said.
They are cattle rustlers. I’ll be damn. As if there wasn’t enough graft going on to sustained 4 cowboys in the middle of damn nowhere.
I hate to see someone named Skeet – and that’s his legal name – suffer a tragic end, but Skeet made his bed, you know.
You can read more about it right here. It’s worth your time.
His wife said they were being targeted; ya think after a year long investigation!
1“Get a rope.” Isn’t that the traditional Texas response to this situation?
2This is really too much fun!
3Not just above the law.
In front of, behind, under, and inside of the law.
But Skeet is a better name than Donald. And he ran his beef-on-the-hoof rustling operation better, more efficiently, and longer than Trump Steaks.
4Cattle rustling, by a judge who already makes $133,000 a year? I agree with the lawyer: “You can’t make this stuff up.”
5It wouldn’t be Texas without cattle rustling.
6Cattle rustling is a crime? The Supreme Court will find it is a longstanding tradition and must be honored — or even celebrated.
7Cattle rustling is only a crime when done by Dem voters . /s
8Gloomy here so early in th AM. I really needee to know about Skeet! What a hoot!
9The name Skeet brings to mind a real ear-worm from the early 1960s by Skeeter Davis. “The end of the world”. I don’t know about the rest of the U.S., but it played endlessly on AM radio in Texas. Nobody here will thank me for bringing it back to mind, but the hairdo is one that’s probably in a framed picture at the WMDBS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGLPvnbryGU
I was once nearly arrested for cattle rustling in North Texas, when a friend and I had pulled over to water the bushes around 1:00 AM. First time I had a BAR pointed at me. Not to mention shotguns and revolvers.
10HOLY FRICKIN CRAP Professor, were BARs standard issue for State Troopers in north Texas then?
11And did you resemble some notorious Oklahoma cattle rustler known for crossing the Red River that they felt the need for that kinda firepower for side of the road irrigation?
And , sorry but I gotta ask.
First time?
For BAR’s?
Methinks your students are benefitting from a wealth of experience that most couldn’t comprehend.
But the U.S. Constitution does not mention cattle rustling!
12P.P. : strangely enough, I’ve had alleged law enforcement point BARs at me twice. First was the “rustling” case, where my friend and I pulled over at night to lower our water level, in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately it was next to a field where some local wealthy rancher had been losing cattle, and we were in a pickup truck. There was a stake-out including sheriff’s deputies from two counties, Texas Rangers, state highway patrolmen, and cops from Fort Worth. They were irked that we had blown their stakeout, to say the least. One of the sheriff deputies wanted to arrest us for indecent exposure … but none of them had seen what we were doing. Plus, I asked just where did they check their hydraulics while out there waiting – and it turned out they used the same culvert we had stopped next to.
The second time was a year later, when I had to deliver to a 7-11 late at night. There had been a series of robberies where a crew would kill everyone in the store to eliminate witnesses, so Fort Worth set up “shotgun squads” hiding in the back of the 7-11s. The store manager forgot that he had called in for the delivery and so when I walked in with 20 loaves of bread, three shouting cops burst out from the back. One of them had the heavy artillery. It was real exciting for everyone involved.
That 7-11 manager never got a night delivery again.
My students don’t hear about my earlier life. Except for the occasional texas-ism, like “don’t sit there staring at me like a tree full of owls, try answering the question”.
13Having lived near Lubbock at one time, $100,000 is not enough to make me want to live in this hellish region but it is way too much for what are mostly part-time positions.
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