This is going to be one of the tougher things I will try to write. As they say, stuff is complicated. I’ve been in and around Texas ever since Berkeley, which is now going on nearly four decades. It sure ain’t 1980 any longer, when I left Philly as the City of Champions, not the Butt of Jokes. That’s where the current chapter really began. It is now at an end, but I’m not even sure where to begin. Few regrets, but then again, as Frank sang, too few to mention. Yeah, I did it my way. I’m not here to settle scores–that I will do privately. In the unlikely event that one of my admirers is reading this, you were warned.
I owe Texas a great deal. Things that were never going to happen in California happened here. We bought a home and had two lovely if obstreperous children, now a lawyer and a classical musician. In California, we learned the hard way that prestige doesn’t pay the rent and tends to attract false friends. We went broke, got disgusted, and left. It was our decision. And looking at the mess California has become, you’re not going to convince me we made a mistake–Nobel Prize parties and all. Even if Texas has changed in very unpleasant ways.
Not everyone can pick up and move. But we can, I think And so we are going. Back to the Motherland. Not Philly proper. But our to what used to be the Western suburbs. I always thought of Paoli was some kind of terrestrial Mars where the Main Line (the Paoli local train) ended. It is in Chester Country, if you keeping score which does not have the cachet of Montgomery Country or the fame or patois (dubious) of Delaware County. But it is green, a Hell of a lot cooler, temperature wise, and we can see old friends. It is also North of the Mason-Dixon line. We have had it with South. I don’t Demonize the South–it does a good enough job all by itself. Lots of Pennsylvania is admittedly not a whole lot better, but the part to which we are removing is a bastion of the world I grew up in. And thanks to the Disaspora, pretty good Mexican food as well. First things first. We checked. El Limon in Wayne is already a goto, and the waitress is from the state of Mexico. She was thrilled with my Spanish–desperation will do that to these poor guys.
Why has Texas changed? I don’t know. When we got here, Mark White was Governor and Lloyd Bentsen was US Senator, a far cry from the crap people here routinely elect now. My state senator is an imbecile named Donna Campbell, and Chip Ahoy aka Roy is my Representative. Both of them make me sick. About Hot Wheels, a term that even Texans use for Greg Abbott, the less said, the better. Go ahead, be scandalized. Reality has a way of reducing certain inhibitions. And it gets worse, but why dwell on it? I once listened to a debate in which John Cornyn, our Senator, took place. Corn Dog is also an idiot, although not really evil, as far as I can tell. Just stupid. It’s been a long fall from John Connally, as disgusting as he was. Nobody thought Connally was stupid. Quite the opposite. Repulsive, but clearly pretty bright. And a survivor. Literally. Remember 1963? I do. Which is probably why I am going home. I hate to see a generation’s worth of progress vanish. And have no desire to go back to the 1850s, which is where Texas is headed.
And in Texas politics,at least, that is what has changed. The current crop of Texas Republicans is utterly repulsive. And by and large, mean, lazy and stupid. They mirror the change in the Republican Party, which was once respectable, and for whose candidates I sometimes voted. Never again. I have plenty of problems with the pronoun-addled Democrats, whose seem to have lost the plot sometime around Reagan, as my older relatives started to peel away. I suppose Texas, which is now minority-majority, was destined to go the same way. Except the old majority really has nothing to fear from the new one. The Latinos vote Republican and seem to dislike Black people even more than the crackers do. American populism a beautiful thing. It works, even as it’s screwing people over. Not my problem, as they say. I fought the good fight and ran the good race. Now I will go home to enjoy–I hope–the balance of my time on this Earth.
Vicente Fox actually said this!
Many of my concerns are parochial. You don’t care if the University of Texas turns into a dung heap–again. And I guess I should not either. But you know, silence is consent, so we vote with our feet, loudly. Besides, as Texans joyfully remind us, there are plenty more Californians where we came from, and they’ll do just as well, if not better. Property ain’t as cheap here as it was years ago–better not be, because we have got to finance this errand into the wilderness somehow. But unless disaster strikes, we will survive. And if we don’t, well, life goes on don’t it? That’s the one thing you do find out sooner or later.
Nobody is irreplaceable.
Bye for now. More to come when I ain’t a feared of my neighbors up North. But as Concrete Charlie said to an opponent, “This Game is Over!”
Yesterday, August 27, 2025, really must be counted as one of the worst days of my life.
Because the Mets swept the Phillies? Honestly, I really couldn’t care less. Baseball, like. getting to the ocean, used to be one of the things that made Summer what it was. That hasn’t been true for some time now, so whether Keith “I snorted the first baseline” Hernandez thinks the Phillies are overrated is more amusing than anything else. Keith should know. He has a New York kind of nose for hype.
Because my alma mater, Villanova, is still recovering from some internet terrorism called swatting–I still don’t know what “gaslighting” is or how it differs from bullshitting, but small matter. Here I thought “swotting” was something Oxbridge types did before they covered themselves in Triple-Starred Firsts (“highly coveted” don’t you know). Nope. Nor Swatties, which is slang for the nerds who attend Swarthmore College (and, yes, We Wildcats salute you. Until lately, you were celebrated for a faculty that complained when your football team had a winning season. That was infra dig, right? Holy God, Weirdo. Get a Life.) So there is swat, swot, swattie. An irregular verb of the millenial sort. Got it? No? Well, me neither.
Because our Dear Leader, aka Agent Orange (a chemical herbicide used by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War (1962-1971) to clear vegetation and destroy crops, and it contained the highly toxic contaminant dioxin), reputedly syphilitic and feeble of mind, not to mention devoid of any redeeming human quality, decided to station National Guard troops in Our Nation’s Capital? And guess what–cut carjackings? Which the Democratic Mayor of DC was hard pressed to critique, although like Mussolini (who???), Trump will now take over Union Station and make Amtrak run on time. Yeah, fascism works if the rule of law is an inconvenience. And it is. Ask Hyman Roth and Michael Corleone, with whom Trump has certain affinities–other than brains. Getting into some identity hissy fit over fascism is really sort of lame when there are so many other reasons to detest it. Like 100 million people killed (a new estimate of civilian casualties proposed by Cormac O Grada with Princeton University Press, publisher to the stars, so how can it be wrong?) during the Wars to End All Wars. Aww, that’s DWM history and so boring. Quite. Here. Read a book. You know how to do that. Sort of like Betty Bacall teaching Bogie to whistle. But try not to move your lips.
Well, no.
Because of ANOTHER Mass Shooting (ho boy, here come the tasteless puns). Well, yeah, this one did sort of bother me. Because it involved Catholicism and kids and, apparently, gender confusion. Wait. Aren’t those synonymous? Ouch. You mean Fr McGillicuddy cavorting with brown-limbed acolytes behind the rectory? Again? No, not quite. But the stench of the scandal is somehow always there. Trust me. As a Cradle Cathlick, I’d know. And I can’t wait for some son of a Texas dentist to further torment the innocent with tales of how this was all just a hoax. Right? You know. Alex Jones. Sandy Hook. That sick bastard.
So many to choose from. The fact that children–for God’s sake–children were cut down at a Mass by some disturbed wacko with a gun is bad enough. This was precisely what made the abuse scandal so wrenching. You know, “Suffer the little children come to me for such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” Any murder of any number of any kind of people is awful. But here you were talking about 2d and 4th grade age kids supposedly giving God thanks for the opportunity to journey a little further, and not just in academic stuff, but in understanding what it means to be a community. In my youth, they said “People of God” and that didn’t mean some “Christian” bigot who paraded their virtue around, reeked of sanctimony, and could have taught the Pharisees a trick. Uh Uh. It isn’t about hate. It’s isn’t even about the Ten Commandments, which those sickos on the right have appropriated for their political use. It is about what Christ taught in the Sermon on the Mountain. Love one another.
That doesn’t mean you have to like someone or the principles by which they orient their existence–or if their values are different. But you do concede the same bundle of civil rights and duties to them as you do to anyone else. And as long as they observe the law (and the law is not inevitably lawful when it is trying to deprive people of their wellbeing–which we have to face in America) and don’t harm you, their actions are private whether you happen to like them or approve off them of not. I understand that these questions become horribly complicated in implementing in the real world, but for God’s sake, we try in good faith and with an open mind to do so. If not, YOU are the problem, not the dudes across the street who cohabit in some arrangement of which you do not approve. Is that so damned hard to understand. Isn’t that what Christ taught us?
So yeah, it was a very bad day. A terrible, horrible, bad day. It suggested to me that the moral rot at the heart of our political class is no accident. It is a reflection of what we do or do not value.
Cardinal Newman says it starts in small things. What are they? You’ll know. Start with a little civility in your daily life. Be surprised how far we’ve fallen. I don’t do politics. Fine. Do something nice for someone you don’t really like, or even a total stranger. We can start there. You can carry a Cross in public later. Christ started small too. He sweated the big stuff later.
Last night, I watched Syriana for the nth time. Maybe after n+1 times I will finally be sure I have figured out what the Hell was going on. And having Bashir from Deep Space Nine as an Emir really doesn’t help. I keep looking for Quark. Oh, well.
Looking for Quark. The Ferengi as metaphor for the Trump “Administration.” Why do I think USA Americans deserve it? Really, no one deserves this fascist humbug. It is, really, demoralizing. But meanwhile, consider the Ferengi. I’ll be damned, but they got it right, Don’t let their get-ups fool you. There’s latinum in them there lobes. You just got to think about it.
Never allow family to stand in the way of opportunity. That’s one of the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition (ROA). You never heard of them. Good God, Donald Trump lives by them. He could have written them if he were literate. Or coherent. Or lucid. But small matter. Like, consider his daughter, Ivanka, For someone whose nickname is Princess Sparkle Pony, she’s done pretty well for herself. Doing what? Damned if I know, but her net worth (not net of her putative squeeze, El Jaredo, thank you) is somewhere in the neighborhood of God knows. A shagload, as the Brits say. Mucho dinero. Some guesses put her up around a billion. I think that’s impossible, but I don’t know why. I believe in some stranger stuff, even before breakfast. Anyway, Ivanka has a lot of latinum. And she got it by being The Donald’s Daughter. Nice work if you can get it. Donald gets it. A lot of it, apparently. Remember. More is good….all is better. Another Ferengi pearl (ROA).
If you don’t know, by the way, the Ferengi were the inhabitants of a mythical exoplanet, Ferengar, where the First Beautitude is Screw Your Neighbor Before You Screw Anyone Else (ROA). The Ferengi are motivated by greed, plain and simple. They do what it takes to make money. And the rest, well, is integrity (, about which no one cares. Remember, a Deal is a Deal…until a better one comes along (ROA). The Donald couldn’t have said it better himself. Ask any number of countries trying to figure out US commercial policy. If it’s Tuesday, it must be Tariffs. Or not. say I am exaggerating? Ok. Here we go, in real-Trump Time
The Chronicle of Trump-Tariff Making
Nov. 25, 2024 – Less than three weeks after his election victory, Trump announced on Truth Social plans to place 25% tariffs on all imports from Canada and Mexico, citing an alleged failure to secure their respective borders with the U.S.
Jan. 20 – Trump signed a memo calling on Cabinet members to “assess the unlawful migration and fentanyl flows” from Canada, Mexico and China. Afterward, officials should “recommend appropriate trade and national security measures to resolve that emergency,” the memo said.
Feb. 1 – Trump ordered 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, as well as 10% tariffs on imports from China. The White House said the tariffs would take effect on Feb. 4.
Feb. 3 – Trump announced a one-month pause of tariffs on Canada and Mexico after reaching agreements with each country that included commitments to bolster border enforcement.
Feb. 27 – Trump affirmed plans to impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico when the one-month delay expires on March 4.
March 3 – Speaking at the White House, Trump reiterated plans to move forward with a fresh round of tariffs the following day. Within minutes, the stock market tumbled. The S&P 500 closed down 1.7%, its worst trading day since December.
March 4 – Tariffs on goods from Canada, Mexico and China took effect at 12:01 a.m. ET. A near-instant trade war broke out. China and Canada each responded with retaliatory tariffs, vowing additional measures. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum slammed Trump’s tariffs but said she would hold off on retaliatory measures until after a conversation with him.
March 5 – Trump ordered a one-month delay of auto tariffs after a request from the “Big 3” U.S. automakers: Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, the parent company of Jeep and Chrysler.
March 6 – Trump signed executive orders temporarily pausing tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods compliant with the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA, a free trade agreement.
March 9 – Canada selected new Prime Minister-elect Mark Carney. In his acceptance speech, Carney addressed Trump’s tariffs on Canada and the threat posed by Trump, calling the events the “greatest crisis of our lifetimes.”
March 11 – Ontario Premier Doug Ford threatened to impose a 25% surcharge on electricity from the province sent to U.S. customers in response to earlier U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods. In response, Trump threatened to double steel and aluminum tariffs specifically for Canada.
March 12 – The U.S. imposed 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports. Trump opted against doubling the levy for Canada after an agreement was reached and Ford pulled back his threat to impose the electricity surcharge. Canada announced retaliatory tariffs on about $20.7 billion in U.S. goods.April 2 – Trump announces “Liberation Day” tariffs, but Canada is excluded from a steep set of so-called reciprocal tariffs as well as a universal 10% tariff on nearly all imports.
April 3 – Tariffs of 25% on vehicles imported into the U.S. took effect. Mexico and Canada make up the top two U.S. trading partners for both finished motor vehicles, accounting for nearly half of all U.S. imports, according to an analysis of data from the U.S. International Trade Commission by Cato Institute, a right-leaning think tank. Carney slammed the policy, saying it signaled the end of a “system of global trade anchored on the United States.”
April 9 – Canada slapped 25% retaliatory tariffs on non-USMCA compliant vehicles from the U.S.
April 15 – In an effort to ease tariff-related business impacts, Canada issued a six-month pause on levies for U.S. goods that are used in Canadian manufacturing, processing and food and beverage packaging, as well as those used for public health and national security initiatives.
April 28 – Liberals won the most seats in Canadian parliament, cementing the party’s hold on power and Carney’s role as prime minister. In a social media post early in the day, Trump suggested that Canadians should vote for him in order for Canada to become the 51st state.
May 6 – Carney visited Trump in the Oval Office, telling him Canada is “not for sale” after Trump repeated his assertion it should become the 51st state.
May 28 – Two separate federal courts invalidated some of Trump’s steepest tariffs, including 25% tariffs on Canadian goods. The rulings centered on Trump’s unprecedented invocation of the International Economic Emergency Powers Act as a legal justification for levies.
May 29 – A federal appeals court moved to temporarily reinstate the tariffs outlawed a day earlier.
June 2 – Trump ratcheted up a tax on all foreign steel and aluminum from 25% to 50%.
June 16 – At the G7 summit in Alberta, Canada, Carney and Trump said the U.S. and Canada would reach a trade deal within 30 days.
June 27 – Trump said he would suspend the U.S.-Canada trade talks as a result of Canada’s plans to move forward with a tax on U.S. technology companies.
June 29 – Carney said trade talks between the U.S. and Canada had resumed after Canada retracted its plan to tax tech firms.
Now, look here. I’m trying to stay polite. And avoid obscenities. Try to run ANY relationship on a yes/no, she loves me-she loves me not system. Through darts at a board that is divided into On and Of. Use a random number generator. Meanwhile, your partner–in anything–is gonna give up trying to plan or to produce anything (sex, drugs, rock’n roll) because it takes time to get any nontrivial operation going, let alone to execute it well.You know, “Sent for you Yesterday, Here You Come Today….If You Can’t Do Better Well Just Stay Away.” (Johnny Mercer lyrics) Who the Hell knows what’s going on? We’ll just stop until the smoke clears. With Trump, the smoke never clears. A Deal is a Deal….Until a Better One Comes Along. You can’t run a hotel that way, let alone 17 trillion dollar economy.
Trust is the biggest liability of all. Dammit. Didn’t Elon Musk, sometime compadre of Trump, say “Trust no one. Even no one.” Now that I think of it, that weirdo Musk must have some Ferengi blood in him. Here’s what AI “thinks” (see, over 70 I am, but modern)
Imagining Elon Musk as a Ferengi running a government is quite intriguing! Ferengi are typically all about profit and capitalism, so it would be interesting to see how Musk’s entrepreneurial spirit would influence government policies. He might prioritize technological advancements and infrastructure, focusing on space exploration, renewable energy, and perhaps even a universal basic income funded by profits from his businesses.
However, given the Ferengi’s notorious rules of acquisition, there could be a lot of negotiation and deal-making involved in governance. Policies might revolve around maximizing profit for the state, and there could be a strong emphasis on privatization of services. How do you think the citizens would respond to such a government? Would they thrive under this system, or would there be pushback against the profit-first mentality?
For the answer, look at TESLA stock.
Whoops. Guess the Great Disruptor got his disruptors busted. Oh, well. The real world does tend to have its challenges, and magical thinking typically is not a good strategy.
When in Doubt Lie (ROA) Yeah, that’ll work. Works for Trump. Works for Elon. Works for the entire Republican Party. Just lie. Brazen it out. Do what a Ferengi would do. And remember, A Wealthy Man Can Afford Anything But a Conscience. (ROA)
Welcome to Syriana/Quark/MAGAWORLD.
And if it isn’t familiar, go back and watch DSN. Especially Little Green Men You’ll be just where you need be. Along with the other stupid Earthlings Quark swindles.
I live in San Antonio, Texas. It’s ok. Everyone has got to live somewhere. So why not here? But occasionally I wonder just what the Hell I am doing here. Today was one of those days.
I always admired the opening line of Mario Vargas Llosa’s brilliant novel, Conversation in the Cathedral (1969). “At what precise moment had Peru fucked itself up?” Let’s not beat around the bush, right? That would appear to be the Big Question. Not just for Peru, mind you. But for all of us everywhere. When did things get so loused up? Of course, in the United States, that’s $2,181,658.90 Question (in 1955, The 64,000 Dollar Question. I used Measuring worth (https://www.measuringworth.com/dollarvaluetoday/result.php?year=1955&amount=64000&transaction_type=WEALTH) and considered that beloved quiz show’s payoff as a prize (wealth)). You can call it the 2.2 million Dollar Question. I don’t know too many people who don’t look around at the current mess (choose one) and don’t wonder. Lord, when did things get so screwed up? Of course, someone out there will complain (probably some PhD) “it’s a process, not a moment” but I don’t really care. Today, driving around the Alamo City, it really hit me.
Why today? I’ve been here over 30 years. How to paraphrase, is this day different from all other days?
You got a minute?
Well, part of it is the Buc-ee’s lawsuit. Huh? Wait?
Ok. This is sort of Song of Bernadette territory: for those who believe, no explanation is necessary, for those who do not, well, va fungool. Buc-ee’s is a South Texas icon, a combination mega gasoline/pissoir/junk food/ apparel place that sells some concoction called “beaver nuggets.” Stifle yourself if you are from the Northeast because the beaver here is chaste, if not quite innocent. Oh, yeah, we know to those libtards, beaver means something durty, but we are God-fearing people here in the South, so praise the Lord. If you want the Bucc-ee’s story, here it is. https://buc-ees.com/about/ Read on, because it is worth it, I swear.
Anyway, the home of the Christian Beaver is suing some outfit in South Carolina (well, not Rhode Island) for trademark infringement of Buc-ee’s camo, rifle-toting underwear, or something. Now why in God’s name any sane human being would want to wear this crap is utterly beyond me. But it’s Texas, and yahoo, and MAGA and the South.. So there you go. If you want proof that Amurica is emulating Texas, look no farther. A Beaver will lead you. Swear to God. Follow the Beaver. And the money.
By touch and feel you will know trademark infringement
Yup. Touch and feel.
Forgive me, but I found this, well, disconcerting. Like, seriously? I know America was screwed up, but Buc-ee’s level screwed up? And just wait. Bucc-ee has expansion plans. To Arizona, Arkansas, Wisconsin, Ukraine. Maybe instead of Wawa back home in Pennsylvania, you visit Bucc-ee’s for ammo, beer, and some cool gear. Oh. Dear. God. Domine, ades me nunc.
But wait. As the Popeil’s Pocket Fisherman ad says, there’s more.
This is election season in Texas. Man, you ain’t never seen anything like an election in Texas, believe me.
The worst thing you can be in any Texas election–and I’ve watched more than a few–is a Liberal (pronounced: LiberOwl). You know, “Too Liberal for Texas” is the ultimate put down, like a candidate is some sort of squirelly pedophile who reads books and drinks white wine. And knows George Soros but not His Savior. And who gets outside money from California, New York, and other places where they spend too much time reading and ciphering and not playing football or other manly pasttimes. And hugging trees (cut ’em down) and loving criminal illegal immigrants (instead of DEPORT THEM IMMEDIATELY! as signs on IH 35 urge, which is basically the campaign slogan of some evil slug named Huffines) who inhales and defecates Bitcoin and is always running for something.
This is, however, not a statewide election. This is for The Alcalde of San Antonio–The Mayor. But why is that of any concern.
Ever since I got here, I could never really figure out what the Mayor of San Antonio did. Here’s what I can find
Emergency declarations
City-wide ceremonial duties
Signing documents like city charters
That’s it? Hell. Anyone could do that. Even me. The City Manager runs the city. The Mayor is window dressing. Why would anyone want the job? Search me. I guess if you are ambitious, you get some visibility and name recognition, but that isn’t always a good thing. When I got here, the Mayor (1981-89) was Henry B Cisneros, aka, The Aztec God. He had a taco named after him. He taught a course at Trinity for which he got a lot of money and for which he apparently never prepared. He couldn’t even be bothered to name Trinity when he was on the Today show. He called it “a local college.” The then-President of Trinity hit the roof and told people “We’re getting out of the Henry business,” supposedly. So the Aztec God lost the gig. Hey. He was lucky. Rumors abounded in the medical community that Henry C took a shot to the, uh, area of the family jewels administered by his spouse because was fooling around with a certain Linda Medlar. But Henry did end up Secretary of HUD under Bubba Clinton, who, God knows. never held chick difficulties against anyone. So, Henry, instead of climbing up the greasy pole of politics was defeated by, well, his greasy pole. But he was the first Hispanic Mayor here, which counted for a lot then. These days, no one would really care. Henry C is a back number. We’ve moved on. Progress! We now have an all Hispanic (Ortiz Jones is Filipina) field, I guess–at least the ones who matter, Gina Ortiz Jones and Rolando Pablos. And this, my friends, motivates my disgust. In a state that seems to glorify brainless slander as a campaign tactic, this one takes the pastel.
Ms Ortiz Jones is a former Undersecretary of the Air Force. I have no idea what that means. More importantly, I guess, she is lesbian. Why the Hell this has any bearing on her qualification for a largely symbolic job escapes me, but apparently it does. I have also seen her campaign signs defaced in a most creative way: Ok. Wait for it: “Vagina Ortiz Jones.” Childish right? Adolescent right? San Antonio right? Frankly, I don’t care about her perferences one way or another. But it is a big deal. It is a big deal because her opponent, Rolando Pablos, seems to play it that way. Pablos, a former Texas Secretary of State (God knows what that means) who is getting beaucoup money from all sorts of mouth-breather organizations, is a Republican whose slogan is “Family First.” Now what the Hell does that mean? Deport families first? Hey, these days, you never know. What does the Mayor of San Antonio have to do with families? Other than sign proclamations saying families (meaning?) matter? Big deal. Actually, someone suggested to me that this is Rolando’s way of playing dog-whistle politics. You know. A lesbian can’t have a family? Not like Rolando. Rolando also says he is a real Latino. Hmm. Like uber family-guy Henry Cisneros? Whose Spanish was not as good as mine at one point? And you wonder why I feel sick?
Pablos will win. Lots of money behind him. The mouth-breathers will win. God bless Texas.
Sick.
Look, dammit. This is your country going down the drain. And Texas is leading the way. I’d like to simply say nothing. I’d like to simply say “Hey, that’s what they want.” But I won’t do that.
This crap makes me sick. We have real problems here: widespread poverty, medically uninsured residents, a surfeit of interpersonal violence and a rapidly detriorating quality of life that’s made a once-charming place like Austin unliveable. Really. Why do so many people want to come to Texas? You tell me. Because right now, all I can think about is wanting to leave. When did this place get so screwed up? When did politics here start being about nothing other than horsecrap?
You tell me. I’m all ears. Does any of this matter? I don’t know.
Don’t worry. I’m not about to try to bask in Pope Bob’s reflected glow–although I may be one of a very few. I’ve had my differences with Villanova for fifty years. I studied there. I taught there briefly and then went on to greener pastures. I have occasionally suggested that they might be doing something wrong. And, in fairness, I have also said more than once when I thought they had done something very right (or is that Wright, as in Jay?). At the moment, I am laughing myself silly at Vanillanova’s good fortune (that’s what we called it in my time). Lightning struck, and damn, “tolle, age.” Fr President is all togged out as an Augie on national tv and people are falling all over themselves to climb on the bandwagon. Who, really, can blame them? Not me.
Leo XIV was just out of synch with me, but I can’t imagine he didn’t cross paths with a few teachers and friends. No one has volunteered yet, and, no, I did not teach him–although I did teach one former member of the Board of Trustees who clearly helped hook up Wall Street to Villanova, which is at the bottom of this story, really. Pecunia non olet, dude. That’s very old Italian for “show me the money”.
I went to Nova from 1969 through 1973, and turmoil was our constant companion. In those days, Villanova was a commuter school (and I was a commuter), symbolized by the huge parking lots on Route 30 where impressive Villanovarei are now situated. It’s quite a change, really. In fact, my Villanova, the Pope’s Villanova, and today’s Villanova are not at all the same. A lot of water under the bridge in 50 years and therein lies the story.
Villanova in the 1970s was probably not all that different from Villanova in the 1950s, the major change being the admission of women (nuns and sisters) as undergraduate students to something other than nursing in 1969 (Summer Sessions were coed back into the 1940s, as far as I can tell). There were still a lot of Augustinians around–although their numbers were by then already dwindling, but except for a few new facilities, like Falvey Library, notwithstanding, I guess it was mostly unchanged. The hideous Kennedy Hall had been thrown up in the late 1960s (it is now gone, no?), but you could still look out over Corr Hall across what one of my teachers called Via Rongione (insider joke) from the library, Corr being one of the original campus buildings from 1847. Nova was changing, but there was still a lot of the old place left–in spirit, in ethos, and in stubbornly pre-Tridentine outlook. Yeah, we sang Kumbaya at Mass (if we went, and many didn’t), but sleeping with a girlfriend was still a novelty–unless you had been together for more than the now requisite 25 minutes. But I digress. For once, I really don’t want to say much about the Church and sexuality. Oh, it was there, and a couple of priests were well into the “taste and see” style of Catholicism. One or two were particularly shameless about it, but it really was one or two (of whom you could be sure).
Intellectually, Villanova was hit or miss. You could get a fabulous education, or you could graduate functionally illiterate, especially in business. Now, now. This was the era of the Bartley Bums and Commerce and Frolics, and the business school, run in my day by “Pocono Phil” Barrett OSA. Here they are, just for reference, a holdover from the days when Villanova was an Augustinian fief, Fr. Bartley and Fr. Barrett. Not exactly great minds, but what the Hell. Who said accountants needed to know from James Joyce or quantum mechanics? Probably true, but Bus Ad was a standing joke. The Villanova School of Business (VSB), as it Six-Sigma proudly styles itself
lay well in the future, and I never got to know Al Clay, its first secular Dean, until I taught there in Economics from 1978-1980. My impression is that the standing of the program rose with the S&P in the 1980s, which would make plenty of sense. I think you’d have to do some serious digging to come up with pre-2000 Endowment figures, although my impression is that 1980 was a break point of sorts. As late as 2024, the University’s financial statements listed about 1.4 billion in investment assets. In 2005, that number was only 241 million. From what I can see, Villanova (yay!) still basically runs off tuition and fees, and all I can think is that that had to be even truer in the 1970s, let alone before. By contrast, Notre Dame (boo!) has over 20 billion in what it calls “endowment pool” and makes a point of stating endowment income provides more revenue than student fees.
So, not to put too fine a point on it. Notre Dame has the money, but we got the Pope. My guess is that Villanova wants both the money and the Pope, so you can be damn sure they’re gonna be out callowly realizing the value of the Sacred Asset faster than you can say Santo Subito. I know. Such a cynic. Guilty. Villanova’s stash is growing by leaps and bounds, but bets that Pope Bob really adds incense to the censer?
Villanova in the 1970s was a sort of microcosm of middle class Catholic America. There were the antiwar types, the hardcore Nixon Republicans, the strivers, the upwardly mobile wannabe, the intellectuals, the frat kids, some lower middle class types, the jocks and every possible permutation thereof. We had some wonderful teachers and scholars, a lot of them in the humanities, and our share of very dead wood, but, who doesn’t? Lots of social justice warriors and a lot more just trying to get through. Aspiring pols and an oddball contingent. It was tranquil, for the most part, but creative people can never leave well enough alone. David Rabe, in his pre Jill Clayburgh days did “Pavlo Hummel” and “Bones” in the Veysey Theatre. He always struck me as some kind of dour oddball trapped on a campus of conventional people, but he was a name. I had a philosophy teacher, Jack Caputo, who became a world reknowned Heidegger scholar. He was amazing, and the same philosophy class included Bill Atkinson, who is up for canonization. Yeah. Me in the same room with a posible saint. I know. Not likely. And there was track and field with the Irish flyboys, going back to Ron Delany and Don Bragg who took the Gold in the Rome 1960 pole vault. I’d see Marty Liquori training and Davey Wright working in the library. But for all that, there was a downside. Villanova was a wannabee in an educational oasis of Penn, Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr and Haverford. We might have been a King of the Big Five, but those insufferable bastards were always the Big Four where the Smart People went to think. Villanova? Forget it. And they let you know it. Villanova was, for them, I think, a glorified high school. Honestly, they really weren’t wrong, but give it a rest, why don’t you?
Penn may have been the best Ivy League school in Philly, but it was, like, serious, in a way Nova was not. Why? Hey. When I went to Nova, there were still books in the card catalog (I’m old) stamped “On Church Index.” How the Hell could a Catholic university be serious? “You don’t believe all that stuff,” a Harvard graduate once said to me? “Stuff” like The Resurrection, or, Hell, some Ontological Proof out of Aquinas? Or, yuck, that Guadalupe fable (no, in fact, not that one). Surely, you’re joking. Never mind that I had to translate Cicero for some schlub when I was in grad school at Princeton. Villanova was “priest ridden.” And, by extension, so were you. A chip, you say? Yes, a rather large one.
I once was talking to a fairly well known faculty member from Bryn Mawr about a reading list in history. She seemed a bit astounded that I had read anything (I was already Nassau-certified by then…..). “But,” she sputtered, “have you discussed them?” No, I thought, I only look at the pictures. That crap never really stopped. A faculty member from Penn’s history department basically ignored me whenever he saw me until I got a job at Berkeley. All of a sudden, I became a person. And the source of an announcement to his seminar. Tacky, right? And then a guy at a place in Connecticut (a Swarthmore alum) who told me he and his homies would go over to Nova as an “infra dig”–white boy talk for slumming. He said that with a knowing smile like, “we all know, right?” Yeah, we certainly do. There’s more, especially from Belichick’s alma mater, but they now could spend their time explaining him and his barely-legal girlfriend and not insinuating that Catholicism must be some sort of genetic intellectual disability.
Look, we can do this crap all day. Now that Nova has had Rhodes scholars, respectable alumni in every walk of life from investment banking, to politics, to the military, I assume it will no longer be necessary. Hey, I went to grad school with someone who is a Dean there, and I know how smart she is, and Princeton-educated too. Until Leo XIV comes out and says he’s not going to ordain women (all by hisself, right?), and then it will all start again anyway, right? Hell, I’m not sure even the Pope could do that motu proprio, but I am not a canon lawyer. But then again, that has never seemed to stop a torrent of mind-bending ignorance from people who should know better, so why should it now?
Hey, it doesn’t really matter, does it. Leo XIV is Villanova ’77.
When I was a little kid–oh, oh, here we go–we made do with the “toys” that Mother Nature gave us. Since I was a little kid in an urban environment, 66th and Haverford in Philly, toys were frequently trees, hills, pot holes, walls, dog defecating grounds, abandoned beer bottles, and various swearing neighbors, usually male Italo-American, who referred to us as ” you goddamma kits.” We’d scheme up new ways to combine these objects into some sort of race game, usually, sometimes accompanied by violence and kidnapping, but often just a lot of screaming and shouting until it got dark enough to get called home. Or just knew it was time. We usually had colorful nicknames for people and objects, especially oddly shaped characters with names like Hotsy, Ax-Face, or Monkey-Mother. By their markings you would know them, sort of like Lumpy in “Leave it To Beaver.” They all made sense, and even if hurtful by contemporary standards (what wasn’t), beat Hell out of Alexander, Julio, Donald, or Leonard. “C’mon Hotsy, you dimwit! Your ugly sister is calling you.” Cruel, but, alas, efficient. “Mr. Man, you left your car door open,” usually shouted to some poor shlub half a block away as some subset of vandals made off with some what were otherwise worthless possessions. The fun was in watching the guy turn around and come sprinting back toward us, whereupon we’d drop his stuff in the street and scatter. I don’t recall anyone getting nabbed, or, Thank God, any coronaries. There were always vaguely older adults (probably in their 30s) red faced and shouting, usually some novel obscenity which we rapidly appropriated for our own use. This was how street kids got educated in profanity. I’ll spare you details.
There were two principal forms of diversion, only one of which veered into the truly dangerous. That involved Suicide Hill, about which more later. The other was the around the block opposite-way relay, which was a killer too.
Picture 55 Buicks and two-tone Pontiacs. Here you have Suicide Hill. Stopping is optional
Suicide Hill (aka Media Street): Stopping is Optional, Dude. Photoshop in a ’55 tu-tone Buick and you are there. The Overbook IADC was to the left. Triangle Park and St Callistus are at the end of the line.
The Parcourse for Working Class Kids: A Stitch in Your Side is Better Than a Knife in Your Back
Let’s start with the round the block opposite way relay. Normally, this involved two kids who detested each other. The starting point was usually around 66th and Haverford, although it could be on Haverford Ave itself. Somebody with a cap gun was the starter. Bang! You’re off. Now, the two reprobates proceeded in the opposite direction, usually, stupidly, at full clip. The idea, of course, was to see who got back to the starting point first. Whoever lost got beat up. Now Media Street, if you observe the photo above, was a bit of a hill. So naturally, the kid running up 66th Street and hanging a left on Media got the benefit of the downhill. The other kid was screwed. Mostly, you picked the fat out of shape kid to get screwed so you could wack him when he lost. Nice, huh?
The run along Edgmore Road was flat, Democratic but absolutely disgusting. A good part of it ran behind the Overbook Italian American Club (no longer in existence, since they all became Republicans with Reagan). There were bocce courts up there, and the old Sicilians used throw their Di Nobili cigar stubs over the wall, where they came to rest as sort of turd-like objects. At the same time, every dog in Haddington used the same stretch as a toilet. And, finally, the club stacked its empty beer bottle cases out there behind a fence.
Now, you know, this delightful blend of stuff sat out there all day, just cooking away in the hot sun attracting flies. Man, even if you had gotten the downhill boost, you had to confront this stuff–no one ever thought to detour into the street, probably because you would have had to dodge traffic. Anyway, if you were the kid condemned to the uphill climb, you had to negotiate the picturesque wasteland of Edgemore Road. On a hot day, in the the Summer, in the evening, the stale beer, dogshit and Di Nobili cigar butts made for a cloud of gas hanging there that could have violated the Geneva Convention against the use of chemical weapons. You were running, so you couldn’t really hold your breath. And if you inhaled, well, you probably wanted to hurl because it stunk to Kingdom Come. So you’re running along, probably hot and sweating, with the urge to wretch, only to confront the uphill portion of Suicide Hill, where you’d probably get a stitch. Where you either stopped, cried, threw up, or continued down 66th Street to the finish line. There you were probably greeted by the other runners runner yelling “You lost, Suckah”. No shit. Then a hail of fists, rocks, dirt bombs and God only knows what else came raining down on you.
And you wonder why that neighborhood produced a lot of recruits to the Marine Corps? Even the winner had been lucky to survive, and if you were all having a great day, a Red Car cruising up Haverford Avenue (Philly’s finest) would slow down to observe the festivities, maybe hurl and insult or two, drive away laughing. Why would anyone do it? Look, you think you had a choice: if you lost you got beat up. If you refused, you got beat up. I always figured you got beat worse if the other hoodlums were fresh, although they could get pretty stoked waiting for the loser to appear. I must admit, I was the loser more than once. I knew what was coming and usually picked up a board or a bottle or something with which to defend myself until some adult came screaming out of one of our homes yelling we were all going to end up in Reform School. Right. In my case. Presentation BVM and Devon Prep. Bonnner and Tommy More were worse.
But the real “fun” began when we had “race day” on Suicide Hill. To this day, I have no idea how someone didn’t get killed or seriously injured–or if they did, I managed to miss it. Now, none of us had bikes, I think, but we had wagons, those scooter things with two wheels, and a few other cobbled together contraptions with wheels. You got up to the starting point at 66th and Media and aimed down toward Triangle Park. If you had surplus kids, you stationed them to do watch duty at the Stop Signs at Media and Edgemore, which would basically give you at shot at the Haddington LeMans race if they waved you through (there was this one homicidal kid who went to Dobbins Vo Tech who routinely tried to wave people into oncoming traffic. I remember hearing he didn’t make it though Nam, which didn’t exactly surprise me. He probably got fragged).
Honestly, I was usually too damn scared to race down Suicide Hill, but others weren’t. Oh. My. God.You either got shoved forward shoved at the top of the Hill or kicked off yourself and you were off down Media Street. Everyone screaming, kids running into each other (or into parked cars), or flipping when they hit a crack in the street (or a not-quite level manhole cover). Since the turn out for this was usually sort of akin to a pre-adolescent drag race, kids from as far as Lansdowne Avenue would come and watch. Join in, sometime halfway through the race. If you had to suddenly stop at the stop sign, chances are you got creamed, because you had to head for a curb or a car, or a hydrant or some damn immovable object. I do remember one occasion where a couple of the participants ended up in Saint Callistus Parish parking lot where I think they took out a couple of Knights of Columbus who retaliated rather swiftly. No sense of humor in a 1957 Catholic Pillar of the Church. I think I remember a bunch of kids getting in hot water for that particular misadventure, but since I just stood around and waited, eh….
Now, imagine trying to pull that off in 2025. This was nearly 70 years ago. No supervision. No safety equipment. No Neighborhood Watch. I know some kids got banged up sometimes, but I broke MY ARM playing football in grade school, not racing down Suicide Hill. Think about it. You were safer involved in disorganized city mayhem than you were in organized CYO football.
Are you surprised? It figures. We had our own skins in the game. The wannabe “NFL Coaches” didn’t. And, of course, the Catholic Church watched over us benignly.
Normally, I figure the best way to explain anything in economics is to reduce it to a level that I can understand. As I’ve been repeatedly reminded by former students, that’s generally not worth spending time on.
But my former colleague Shana McDermott has written a piece on this DOGE nonsense–at least the public goods aspect of it, that is so clear and compelling that I want to let her, as they say in Mexico, tener la palabra. This is from her substack site, and yeah, I hope the link to it works. I think it does. Because, honestly, it explains in plain English what I suspect most people, including many alumni of Econ 101 classes, don’t get from this dogmatic “let the market sort it out” stuff. Shana is, from what I could say, probably a bit more conservative than I am, but she’s certainly a Hell of a lot better trained, holding a PhD in Environmental Economics from Wyoming, which is an absolutely top program in the field. And it shows. Please, please spare fifteen minutes to read Shana’s piece. It is crystal clear and shows why this Trumponomics is tendentious nonsense–and typically an excuse to do something that has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH EFFICIENCY.
This is the way it worked in the former Soviet Union, believe me–and to an extent it happened in Mexico as well. You want to reinforce the oligarchy, or just create one? Well, Trump is the blueprint with Musk. But I don’t think most Americans get it. And they are throwing away an enormous stock of physical and intellectual capital so that a few people can make a fortune off it. But you have to read her carefully, because she gets into the weeds. You know: how this really works.
So, if you cannot link to her site, write me, and I’ll get you the link. It’s that important, and that good. Professor McDermott has the floor.
Ok. Now that I got my daily dose of filiopatriotism out of the way, we can return to more serious stuff. My faithful readers (hello?) know that I am sort of hung up on the history of Haddington (West Philly) and Penn Wynne (Montgomery Country, just outside the city limits). I grew up there and, to a lesser degree, in South Philly, so even after 45 years’ absence–that’s just hard to believe–the pull is still strong. Every time I run into something new, an artifact that gets me to see something a bit differently, I sort of go crazy. So here we are again.
I recently found a 1937 atlas-map of Penn Wynne, very detailed, and, I think, not entirely accurate, but it made me realize that I hadn’t really understood how that particular streetcar suburb came to be. In all honestly, to do this right, I should be there, where I can look at deed books in Norristown and go bugging local institutions for stuff they have in their basements and attics (like Lower Merion township, but that isn’t going to happen today). Maybe someday someone will write a proper book using the new materials and techniques (like GIS) with which we are now blessed. But for now, another incremental contribution.
I of course knew that Penn Wynne-Overbrook Hills was carved out of what had once been farmland and substantial estates. All of Philadelphia, more or less, had developed that way. And even in my youth, I could see the process at work in Northeast Philadelphia, Elkins Park, Springfield, Broomall, and any number of other of postwar developments. My family visited many of them in the 1950s when we were just starting to move away from our extended family in West Philadelphia, and I remember tramping through model homes in muddy developments with garish real estate signs (SPANO, all yellow and red) or jingles (“Parkwood Homes you’ll agree are maintenance free, easy living for everyone”)
She’s Low Maintenance, Right?
I generally assumed a developer came in, bought up a chunk of land from whomever owned it, and built away, on suburb at a time. Well, in the 1950s and 1960s, that may have well been the case with Parkwood Manor or Levittown, PA, but it was not the case with those suburbs that started up in the 1910s and 1920s, developed piecemeal, and were interrupted by the Depression and World War II. Penn Wynne was one of those places. The first clue should have been the homes. They were not uniform. Some were brick, some were stone, and some were frame and masonry or shingle. And it often varied from block to block. They were different because they were built at different times. But to a kid living in what was an essential finished area (a few fallout shelters notwithstanding) in the 1960s, this was a fait accompli, and not a cause for reflection. Other people had history. You had a garage or a basement.
I apologize in advance for the amateurish graphics, but, as you’ll see, they serve a purpose. If you look to the black box at the bottom, that was basically what became the hood. Look above the box and you’ll see a purple box called Penn Wynne School, which was built in 1930. Go North and East down what is labelled the Route 30 bypass (aka Haverford Road) and you will see above purple box called Convent of the Sacred Heart, which went up in the early 1920s. Welcome to my Montgomery County in the 1960s–those were about the boundaries. If you wonder why I ever say “How did I end up in South Texas?” now you know.
Like most kids, I assumed that where I was had been there for ever. Which, of course, it was, albeit in considerably different form. Penn Wynne, well, I’ve done some digging, but the more you dig, the more you realize you really did not know. Most people will not care at all if I assumed that the neighborhood we were in had once been part of the estate of a certain Elizabeth Arnau. I now think that was wrong by half a mile or so, and, that around 1900 or so, the land belonged to the estate of a certain Hannah Russell. That’s a bit of a problem, because while I had managed to figure out a great deal about Ms Arnau, Ms Russell is a bit of a mystery. She clearly had a few bucks, because she shows up on excise tax lists as early as 1865, but that’s about it for now. And if you had an estate, like, who did not know you were rich?
What I had not suspected, to repeat, was piecemeal development, and the importance of a number of financial institutions in Philadelphia in it. Two that show up prominently on this map are Provident Trust and Provident Title (they were two sides of the same coin) and became Provident National Bank (PNB) which got merged out of independent existence in 1983. PNB was once famous for its colored weather forecasting sign on the downtown Philly skyline (old style), but its successor bank, PNC, took it down because it was aging dangerously. Right. Like me. But Penn Wynne was clearly a big part of the Provident Trust project. Provident Trust was an old Quaker bank that dated to the 1860s, and featured a long list of heavy WASP hitters on its various boards with names like Wistar and Longstreth as decoration. Now, what this tells an old Phildelphia hand was that Penn Wynne was part of an elite creation, sort of a poor man’s Main Line Annex, the Main Line being where the real money was. It’s hard to suppress the thought that the old money figured that you had to put the hoi polloi somewhere, especially the ones who were starting to staff the department stores, public schools, law offices, and other service sectors of Philadelphia’s then enormous industrial sector. Where better? It made sense at the time, although, as Richardson Dilworth, a progressive Philadelphia politician in the 1950s and charter member of the Social Register would say, the white suburbs would become a fiscal noose around the city. Honesty, as Dick learned, would get you booed out of office (he was particularly big in South Philly, which he thought of as a dumping ground for parking lots, stadia and other NIMBY-shit that my Italian relatives took big exception to). Anyway, if you know how to read the names and such, all of this makes a great deal of sense. And, as I said before, Penn Wynne fit the profile (https://thisgameisovercom.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1534&action=edit), eventually attracting even some of the less desirables to the area.
You’ll also notice “Overbrook Manor.” Heh. When I was a kid, this was the ritzy part of Penn Wynne, otherwise known as Greenhill Farms, or something similar, where the uber-cafone Italian Americans and Irish Americans lived and lorded it over the mere peasants on the other side of Haverford Road. Little did I know those folks were literally to the manor born, Overbrook Manor on this map. It was never intended to be for just us folks, see
The vision for the neighborhood began in 1892 with financier Anthony Drexel of Drexel & Co. and a group of investors known as the Drexel Syndicate. The Syndicate purchased the 171-acre John M. George Estate, later adding the Wistar Morris Estate (present day Church Road and vicinity). Drexel engaged the noted developer partnership of Herman Wendell and Walter Bassett Smith, who also developed the Pelham District in Northwest Philadelphia and Wayne in Montgomery County.
Anchored around the first (and oldest) stop on the Pennsylvania Railroad’s famed “Main Line”, Overbrook Farms represented an ideal in suburban, healthy living for those desiring a retreat from the grit of Philadelphia in its industrial heyday, whose breadth and vigor earned the city the nickname “Workshop of the World”. Modern sewers and clean water supply, generous lots and sidewalks, proximity to the lush Morris Park, as well as its own dedicated Overbrook Steam Heat Co. and Overbrook Electric Co. (both now defunct) were among the amenities offered in the early days.
Many of the various architectural styles that were popular in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are represented in the district. Although there are over twenty styles represented in the neighborhood, the majority of houses are Colonial Revival or Tudor Revival. Other styles from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in the district include Arts & Crafts, Dutch Colonial Revival, Gothic Revival, Queen Anne, Prairie, Romanesque, and Shingle.
The residents of Overbrook Farms initially were mostly middle to upper-class families, including artists, politicians, merchants, bankers, lawyers, industrialists, and academics, many leaders and innovators in industry and social welfare. Today, Overbrook Farms retains most of the qualities of life for which it was designed, but has become decidedly more diverse with regard to race, religion, age, race, and identity.
Oh, yeah, decidedly more diverse, although I’d hate to tell you what I thought of the kids from the right side of the tracks. It’s actually kind of intriguing you know. Snobbery was baked into that area, although the original snobs would not have been real thrilled at the contractors and ambulance-chasers from Philly who succeeded them. I know I wasn’t. Dedicated steam company. Right. (the stuff in blue is from some modern tout)
Also notice if you will, the John H McClatchy plan in the far Northeast corner. Another big time developer, but this guy did his best work in Upper Darby, which is technically, I guess, where I was born. (https://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/PA-02-DE31) This guy, unbeknownst to me, had spread some of his joys on the other side of the Convent of the Sacred Heart, where you may recall I served mass and watched girls as an altar boy. That convent school was famous in those days, and the Mexican writer Elena Poniatowska actually went to school there–back when the Church was THE Church. I sort of wonder whether her family had anything to do with the Institute of Our Ladies of the Sacred Heart, which was also news to me. Turns out they got diversity now too, which was not the case when only blonde goddesses roamed the grounds, and the one Italian American girl I knew there was never quite in my league either. Sigh. My how the world has changed.
I know. You’re going to ask me if I think the world was a better place when Penn Wynne was mostly an investment for the trustafarian class of Philadelphia? All them Social Register types who thought they were slumming it when they stooped to admit refugee Italian-Americans from Penn Wynne into the Ivy Halls of Princeton and Penn? Or How ’bout Hermann Hessenbruch who had a 19 acre estate (“Waldeck” as in Weimar Germany) on what is now Remington Road. No, he was born here, silly, and he was a successful Philadelphia tycoon whose family gave generously to Lankenau Hospital (which used to be the grounds of the Philadelphia Country Club) and, yes, Princeton! To whom she donated a vacation home for use of the faculty! Damn! Who knew? Oh my, a rising tides lifts all boats, unless it’s the Titanic.
Check out the NYT link for details. It’s is to a 1962 obit, and I dearly hope you can access it. Makes me proud to have spent some time around Penn Wynne and its tonier environs. Waldeck included.
See. And you didn’t think that wealth ultimately had a trickle down effect in America. You know, land of the free and home of the brave? Where Anyone can grow up to be President!!! And does.
You just never thought Donald Trump would be the ANYONE who proved the rule. Nobody ever said Democracy was always going to be fun, did they? But then Andy Jackson came along…….
Fly Eagles Fly.
PS Thanks to James Maule, I have another graphic data point with which to work–around 1915. There was, of course, no Penn Wynne, and the land is marked as Continenal Trust and Title (Philadelphia). There is one farm shown as the “Heritage Farm” probably up around Remington and Haverford. No idea.
This is really not so much of a blog post as the start of trying to work out why Mexican independence got off to such a shaky start in the 1820s and 1830s, although, really, it is mostly confined to thinking about what went on there in the mid-1820s. And, to be even more specific, it is a kind of draft of some observations on what happens when your former colonial master has his (or her) hands on your vitals–I’m being polite here. I’ll dispense with footnotes and stuff for a later version that I inflict on some “scholarly” journal. This is more in the line of why didn’t most of this occur to me before? Well, the honest answer was because I really wasn’t paying attention–and because history of this sort has fallen so far out of favor with my erstwhile professional associates that there are times you say, “Why bother?” Well, the reason for bothering is my own clarification,and if this does end up in the hands of a critic, friendly or no, so much the better.
I think it’s pretty much safe to say that the old kind of imperial history–the sort of thing that my teacher Stanley Stein did–is not so much in vogue any longer. In fact, when he published what was to be (unfortunately) the last volume of what could be loosely called the merchants and monarchs project in Spain and New Spain, the time had long passed when some of Stanley’s younger colleagues could be bothered to make much sense of it. I distinctly recall one reviewer in a major journal calling the volume “old fashioned.” I won’t say Stanley was hurt by this kind of offhanded dismissal (as some of my readers know, he could take care of himself) but he did tell me he felt “deflated.” Yeah. Falling out of fashion to some callow hotshot is never fun, particularly to one who clearly has not bothered to make much of an effort to understand what a scholar is doing. We’ll leave odium scolasticum to those who have nothing better to do. God knows, there appear to be more than a few of them around.
Ok. Here we go. I have been working on and off for years now on a group of people known as “The Lizardi Gang.” I am not a particularly fast worker anyway, and this project has been interrupted by a few other ill-advised adventures for which I have mostly myself to blame.In any event, it is story that begins in the mid to late eighteenth century with commercial and political upheaval in the Spanish empire and in the rest of the Atlantic world, events that would ultimately require more than a century (at least) to work themselves out. To the extent that they were part of the process of economic globalization, not a few people may think we are still working out their implications. Fine. Not my tempo, as Terence Fletcher said in Whiplash. Haven’t seen it? Grad school set to rhythm changes.
In ant event, the Lizardi Gang came to rest around the port of Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico (yes, Virginia, the Gulf of Mexico), where they ultimately made large quantities of money through (among other activities) international trade, Spanish empire style. Because of the peculiarites of Spain’s relationship to Mexico, the tenets of mercantilism, and the economics of highly risky enterprise, a sort of select few were ultimately enabled by the powers that be to play this game. Veracruz was the single largest Atlantic port that was open to Spanish merchants trading to Mexico (not to say other flavors of merchants who wanted to trade with Mexico–French, Dutch, English, North American, what have you, whop managed to slip in) and given Mexico’s geography and topography, Veracruz became a kind of commercial chokepoint, or what the Spaniards called the garganta (the throat) of Ibero-Mexican trade. This is essential fact Number One. If you controlled the port of Veracruz, well, you had your hands on Mexico’s family jewels, because a lot, if not most, of the Atlantic trade moved through there. Now hold that thought. It was not exactly a straight shot from Veracruz into the core of New Spain, but it was the yellow brick road. And you followed it.
Around the same time that the French and the Anglo-Americans began to rethink their core ideas of popular sovereignty and political power, so too did the Spanish empire. The stupefying welter of details need not concern us–only that colonial revolution came to Mexico in 1810. And when it did, well, it was a doozy. Lots of violence, bloodshed, death and patriotic gore that lasted from 1810 into the early 1820s, and which ultimately severed the colonial bond between Spain and Mexico. But not all at once, and with lots of detours along the way. And Veracruz played a not insignificant role in the festivities.
Veracruz had long been a fortified port (San Juan de Ulua), you know with one of them hulking castle-armories-barracks-naval facilities that are so impressive to modern eyes, like El Morro in Havana, Cuba. Here. Who in their right mind would attack these behemoths? Don’t ask. Plenty tried. Mexico on the left, Cuba on the right.
In the case of San Juan de Ulua, as the peninsular Spaniards (there were Mexican Spaniards who confusingly get called creoles) yes-and-no decamped from Mexico, a garrison under the former governor of the, well, province of Veracruz (there are other names and some different administrative limits assigned to it, going back to the colonial government), a guy named Garcia Davila, decided he wasn’t going anywhere. This was because, unfortunately, the government he recognized in the peninsula (up for grabs too, to make matters worse) did not recognize the independence of Mexico, which had been negotiated by a liberal viceroy (curiously named O’Donoju….yep) whose liberal government disappeared in Spain, and to make matters worse, who then died of pleurisy even as Mexico became a de facto independent state (excuse me, Empire) under Agustin Iturbide, Emperor, some wit (maybe Simon Bolivar) called “Emperor by Grace of God and Bayonets”). Anyway, Agustin I (Emperor to You) had a pretty rough ride in his new Realm and only lasted until 1823. He suffered a fate no worse than death (you can still see his bloody shirt in a Mexican archive, cause they wasted the guy–long story: they always are), but even as The First Empire in Mexico (yes, there would be a Second forty-some years later) ended, Spanish intransigence did not. As far as the King in Spain was concerned (Ferdinand VII, 1814-1833), Mexico was still not an independent country. Yeah, yeah, the United States recognized Mexico in 1822 and Great Britain in 1825, but Spain held out until 1837. And in San Juan de Ulua, for the time being, so did Garcia Davila and the garrison, which was resupplied from Cuba, which remained faithful to Spain because it was scared to death of its own people, many of whom were African slaves bent on slitting their masters throats. Confused yet? Just wait. It gets better. And don’t worry. I can’t keep it straight without reteaching myself this episode every damn time I run over it.
So, here you got this fortified Spanish garrison sitting sort of sitting there cheek by jowl with the city of Veracruz. So far from Spain, so near to Mexico. And not going anywhere.
Oh, it was armed. I’m not exactly certainly how many cannons San Juan de Ulua had (I need to look that up) but one was quite enough. And you can imagine that relations between the Spaniards holed up in the Castle, the troops loyal to Mexico that were in Veracruz, and the merchant community were not exactly cordial. A sort of uneasy truce held for a time, but by 1823, tempers were running short. The Mexican historian Juan Ortiz Escamilla who has waded through all the details of this mess–and believe me, it was a mess–has uncovered a lot of startling detail, none of which I’ll provide here. Suffice it to say that once the Castle began to shell the city of Veracruz, matters took a turn for the worse. From our perspective, a lot of this had to do with trade through Veracruz, which had all sorts of knock on effects.
Ok. Some dubiously Geek-like stuff that has to do with the budget of whatever you want to call Mexico’s newly emerging central (not state or local) government. It was strapped for cash. This was a self-inflicted wound, but when the Mexicans kicked out the Spaniards, they sort of wanted to make sure that that no central government, theirs or otherwise, could fiscally savage them the way the Bourbon Monarchy in Spain did (another long story that had to do with Spain’s complicated relation to France after the War of Spanish Succession ended in 1713). Oversimplifying to the point of caricature, the Mexicans cut taxes so much that they reduced the fiscal capacity of the state by more than 50 percent in nominal terms. You can’t run a country on love–or pay an army, which is bad when you are still at war with your former colonial masters. So where was the money going to come from? This was a big problem all over the former Spanish colonies, but Mexico really got a dose, so by 1823, funding the central government was an issue. Yup, oversimplified, but close enough for Mexican history.
The obvious candidate inevitably, is you tax trade–especially imports. In Mexico, they also tried to tax some exports as well, such as silver, which initial was subject to a 15 percent duty, but later reduced–I believe–to 5 percent. It didn’t matter whether the silver was coined or not. You could export ingots, and this was going on in 1824. The Lizardi (and their associated kin, such as the Echeverria) were actually sending silver to Madrid to be coined. That sort of gives you an idea that this was more or less capital flight, and it was obviously a big business. If you figure that liquid purchasing power was flowing out of the country in 1824, it will give you some idea of why there was a lot of complaining about lousy markets–amusing that the same merchants complained about both, you know, who me? Also, if silver was shipped out of Mexico to be coined, it paid no mint tax in Mexico, which was another source of government revenue. So there was a fiscal dimension to this outflow as well. Finally, the presence of the Spaniards holed up in Veracruz played holy Hell with normal import traffic, much of which had to be moved to outlying islands (at the port, such as Sacrificios in the map above) That was not efficient, obviously, and Heaven only knows how much “leaked” out of the revenue stream. So customs revenues dropped which meant that the central government had less to spend. And, in Veracruz, tobacco planters had been traditionally substantial recipients of government money for what was known as the “tobacco monopoly” which required (in theory) planters to sell their harvest to the government who then used it to make tobacco products (think of the opera Carmen!). Well, that. clearly loused up demand in the region as well, so if you guess that places like Veracruz were hurting big time and off to a very bad start as independent states or provinces, you are probably right (at least I think you are). And there was still a hangover of guerilla activity from the Insurgency of 1810, and if nothing else, it raised the risk to merchandise moving and sometimes blocked it all together. If you are beginning to get the impression that Mexico was off to a possibly shaky start as an independent country, well, join the club. You want numbers? Good luck. So do I. You take what you can get. My dif-in-dif colleague seem a bit obtuse when you raise the issue. So, generally, I don’t bother any longer. The historians don’t care and the economists get annoyed. Which is why doing the economic history of Mexico the right way is the wrong career move.
And if you don’t think this stuff was costly, well, guess again. Mexico, mostly out of sheer desperation, started borrowing in the London market between 1823 and 1825. The initial nominal total was about 6.4 million pounds sterling, but astoundingly, Ortiz Escamilla, who pays attention to these things, concludes that the explicit military costs of getting the Spaniards out of San Juan de Ulua actually exceeded what the Mexicans had borrowed on London. Think about that for a moment. The Mexican foreign debt was a very big deal in the nineteenth century, and this part of it was not settled until the 1880s. So Mexico’s ability to get into the capital markets–presumably one of the benefits of independence–was seriously impaired from the get go. The actual beneficiaries of the borrowed funds are pretty hard to figure out, if you try to get beyond the broker dealers, of whom my friends the Lizardi were a part. Yeah, they made a killing. But it was blood money. Sorry to spoil the fun, but sometimes, to end well, things have got to start out well. Believe me, in Mexico in the 1820s, this was far, far from the case. While the United States was out there making “internal improvements,” Mexico was getting its clock cleaned. Sorry, but that’s scarcely an exaggeration, even if it is an oversimplification. Economists call this “falling behind.” Yeah, this what happens when the hidden hand of the market delivers a sneaky punch (I think the economist Shane Hunt said that when I was a grad student at Princeton in the Dark Ages. Smart guy). Latin American economic history for dummies. Like me.
This Game Is Over, Salvucci Sez 