BUG KILLIN’
By Bruce W.  AKA DDT/Insecticide

I’ve been out there again the last several days, dispatching legions of those suckers to the hereafter. Sure, I covered the front of my windshield and other bike parts with carcasses of varying descriptions, and I even nailed some of those critters with most of my own body parts, but who cares. There ain’t but one way to come by all that goo, and that’s to be out there amongst them varmints!

Riding around this neck of the woods in shirtsleeves is nice, especially when it’s the middle of January. (NOTE: If you happen to be a particularly sensitive member of the Yankee persuasion, you might want to skip the rest of this paragraph.) Our winters are hard to beat, although our summers can be rather unbearable. Anyway, I ride year round, and due to our subtropical climate, there are bugs available for me to slay every day.

Besides killin’ bugs while enjoying the feel of the Fat Lady between my legs, I get to spend a lot of time alone with my thoughts. Almost before I even clear the end of my driveway sometimes, the disk drive in my cranial cavity is whirring away looking for some new idea to roll around or some memory to rethink. Today was special that way.

I suppose because my last major road trip was to the Lone Star State, the story of how the Republic of Texas came to be, as relayed to me by an anonymous source, kept floating through my mind. It’s the sort of stirring drama that really makes one proud to share the same continent with those resolute, action-oriented folks, and I just couldn’t get all that out of my mind. You really can’t understand the revolution itself, though, without knowing what lead up to it or a little about us southerners, so let me explain…

Southern folk like Bar B Que the way Yuppies like Volvos, and, we won’t tolerate no bad-mouthin’ this national treasure, neither. So much so, in fact, fights still break out routinely over affronts to somebody’s favorite sauce recipe. What most folks don’t know, however, is that this special fondness we share actually changed the whole course of human events on the far side of the Sabine River once upon a time.

It all started with this shrewd entrepreneur feller in Tennessee, who was also an occasional politician and sometimes soldier. His name was Davy Crockett, and his steadiest career callin’ was franchisin’ BBQ places ever’where he could think of. This was good for sure, but it left him troubled about how to continue growin’ his business. He’d already set up stands and restaurants all over Tennessee and the surroundin’ states, but he couldn’t go any further north because those poor, underprivileged souls up there lacked a sophisticated enough palate to fully appreciate this remarkable delicacy.

Then an idea struck him: Why not expand into Texas! Heck, most of the Gringos down there had migrated from the south, plus, the Mexican inhabitants all liked Mexican food (a documented fact), which is almost similar in a different sort of way. Shoot, that was exactly the answer!!! Davy rounded up a couple a dozen of his closest business associates, and they high tailed it on down to San Antonio – still a part of Mexico -- to set up the first international pork palace. "Hot digity, we gonna make it big now!!!"

It just so happened, though, that at this very same time a Mexican visionary was also workin’ on a food chain idea of his own. This sometimes Presidente and Generalisimo and all the time business opportunist, a Mr. Santa Anna, was fixin’ to launch a nationwide chain of taco stands. In fact, he’d already had a bunch of tee shirts made up to promote the grand openings, and they were bein’ shipped in from Taiwan at that very moment. Anyway, this Santa fellow (no record of him ever being jolly or anything) had what folks in business circles like to call ‘leverage’. In his case this basically meant unlimited backin’ from the national treasury plus the national army for an errand service.

Predictably, when he got wind of what Davy and his bunch were up to, this formidable competitor got plenty upset. He double-timed it up from Laredo, where he’d been ridin’ around all day with a realtor, and now he figured to use his business leverage and such to back them boys from Tennessee down. Davy and Santa had a big showdown meetin’ that actually started off well enough, but then took a nasty turn for the worse. Santa, without ever realizing the horrible faux pas he was committin’, slandered all BBQ generally and Davy’s Q in particular. Legend holds that the gasps from Davy’s associates could be heard throughout the entire town!

Up until then they’d been negotiatin’ fairly reasonably, with them mostly dividin’ up the towns between each other and agreein’ not to trespass in the other’s territory. Santa had just announced that the next town he wanted to claim was Liberty, Texas, when he unknowingly fired the ‘gaff heard ’round world’, and that’s when ol’ Davy stiffened his neck. "Nosir," he blurted with fire in his eyes and indignation in his voice. With the quickness of a cat Davy sprang to his feet and pointed a trembling finger squarely at the bridge of Santa’s nose. He then issued his solemn ultimatum, "Give me Liberty or give me death!" Santa immediately obliged him, and then started to convert the Alamo into a taco emporium that very day.

Tempers were scalding hot when Sam Houston, himself a born southerner, read aloud the dispatches of Santa’s cavalier attitude towards BBQ. "We’ll just show that dude a thing or two…" Later that night, seventeen patriots disguised as banditos slipped aboard ships anchored in the harbor and threw overboard all them advertisin’ shirts just in from Taiwan. To this very day, Texans still celebrate the famous Galveston Tee Party.

Now Santa was seriously provoked, and it was his turn to get even. "What’s with these Americanos, anyway? No matter, I’m gonna get rid of this BBQ nonsense once and for all!" Poor Santa, he had no idea of the volcanic rage erupting in the hearts of those Texans -- camped in the cold near present day Houston in a little place called Valley Fork -- just up the east fork of the San Jacinto River. Well, when Santa showed up, Sam and his outfit did what good ol’ boys’ve been doin’ for countless generations whenever the sanctity of BBQ is impugned: they kicked some butt!

Stories like that send chills up my spine. Maybe I’ll go stalkin’ bugs again tomorrow and see what else I might need to ponder…