Waco, Texas
Dateline Waco, Texas:
Several businesses in the Central Texas town of Waco (WAY’-koh) are dealing with a smelly problem that won’t go away: decaying cricket carcasses.
A bank, a drugstore and other businesses have been inundated with the odorous onslaught of dead crickets that have been trapped inside walls and have collected on sidewalks.
Fred Huffman, an entomologist who runs a local pest control business, says the cricket problem has been worse this year because mild winter conditions resulted in the insects appearing earlier than normal.
Oh, so that’s what they’re blaming the odor in Waco on now? I liked it better when they just blamed it on Baptists.
Thanks to Stephen for the heads up.
My husband was born and raised in Waco, and I did some time there in early marriage. Thank goodness we escaped. My favorite remark ever about Waco was when there was a minor kerfuffle about whether the denizens of Sixth Street could bare their boobs around MardiGras time in Austin. The radio talk show host said, “If we can’t occasionally act up in Austin, we might as well be Waco.” Point taken.
The cricket thing, though, that’s a pestilence straight from Old Slewfoot. The sump pump in the elevator shaft of a high school I taught in got plugged up with dead crickets one year. It began to retain water down in the bottom of the shaft, which, when mixed with the dead crickets, produced
1the foulest-smelling miasma imaginable.
That’s not the way you say it. My daughter who lived there for a while calls it “Whack-O”. When Baylor wouldn’t let Willie Nelson do a benefit concert in their stadium to assist people (mostly older folks who trusted their friendly, neighborhood bank – no FDIC) who lost all their savings in a nearby town, she swore she’d never set foot there again if (when) she got out. So much for christians. Baylor now has Ken Starr for its president. You remember him – the special prosecutor whose investigation of Bill and Hillary’s Whitewater deal that cost the taxpayers 42 million dollars and discovered they lost $30,000 on the Whitewater deal.
2Crickets are the plague sent to Texas. When I was a kid in Edinburg, they were so thick you heard them crackling when you drove on the streets. Shopkeepers slung buckets of soapy water at the ones on the sidewalks of the square. (I’m an old lady, Edinburg built a new courthouse in the 50’s.)
We have a few around here in Central Texas, but the plague seems to have hit Waco this year.
3I was mistaken. When I skimmed the headline, my first thought was that leftover odor was wafting over from a nearby town named Crawford.
Just had an email from a republican friend urging me to vote Mitt. I replied that I was going to wait out the next four yewars of Obama’s second, eight years of Hillary and eight years of Chelsea. I’ll be 102 by that time.
4My friend replied with scurrilous things about me, but I still love her.
I was born and raised in Waco, and the cricket plague comes to Waco every year, but some years worse than others. And a bunch of dead crickts laying on the streets and sidewalks does give off a rather unpleasant aroma. However, except for the preponderance of Baptists (only partly joking) Waco is a lovely town. Lot of the “old money” has died out and new, slightly more sophisticated money has taken its place. It’s growing – and not a half-bad place to raise a family. I love Baylor FB and BB and try to forget that the miserable Mr. Starr ever set foot in Waco, much less came to roost.
5So that’s what that fall odor was every year when I lived in Waco away back yonder in the 40s. Shoot I had just told myself that that it had something to do with Pat Neff, Baylor and the Columbus Avenue Baptist Church.
6Baptists. Feh! They wouldn’t recognize an omen if it bit them.
7Isn’t this the sort of thing that fundamentalists claim is God punishing sinners? Though I suppose it would have to be a relatively small sin.
8I wonder if my sister knows about those Waco crickets. Poor thing told me that the birds falling out of the sky in Oklahoma… or maybe it was Arkansas… was a warning from God to mend our ways. Then when tornadoes hit from Texas across the South to Georgia, she said, “See! People didn’t heed God’s warning so He sent tornadoes.” Waco must be really, really bad then.
9The odor is not just from the Baptists. I fly to the hospitals there regularly, and when I have to take the elevator to and from the heliport, I pre-breathe by hyperventilating, so I don’t have to breathe in so much while in the elevator. The odor is disgusting, and it won’t go away. The cricket infestation was bad for many miles around, but seems to be worst in Waco. It will take a long time for all the carcasses to decay completely so the odor decreases. It’s very, very bad.
10Wait just a minute. Speaking as a former babdist (that’s the way it usually was pronounced) every once in a while I feel a need to speak up, in their defense. For instance, there have been three Baptist presidents: Harry Truman, Jimmie Carter, Bill Clinton; and I’ll stack them up against your presbys, your whiskypalians, whatever. Governors?, Baylor has produced a few, Ann Richards and Mark White just to name two, Texas’s last two Democratic governors. And Waco is comfortable, like an old shoe. Compare Waco with Lubbock, Amarillo or Midland; Waco has been wet longer, has trees, and its right wing crazies are not nearly a scary.
The defense rests.
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