194

"I got so drunk last night, I nearly lost my mind," sang the poet Langston Hughes. "Drunk some bad liquor that almost made me blind."

I knew the feeling as I stumbled downtown from one bar to another until I deposited myself at El Hueso de Fraile. "Delta" Dave was playing. His regular appearances have made him downtown's house band. Besides, Dave and I go back to 1977 when he joined me at The Brownsville Herald as my assistant sports editor.

We covered six varsity football teams that fall. We were pitiless in our coverage as it was another disastrous year for the Brownsville public schools. The head football coaches were threatening to kick our asses if we appeared on their campuses, but we remained unrelenting in our criticisms and by the end of the season they were begging for mercy. We relayed to them the Oakland Raiders' owner Al Davis' famous line: "Just win, baby."

When the dust had settled, four head coaches were fired, three in the bloody Thanksgiving Day Massacre. Dave and I laughed all the way to the Palm Lounge where we celebrated yet again that the pen was mightier than the sword.

In 1981 and 1983 Dave coordinated precincts for me in my unsuccessful runs for city commission and then mayor. At my behest, Dave followed me into the BISD where he earned the distinction as one of Brownsville's most favorite teachers for almost three decades.

I had many thoughts roiling through my besotted brain when I staggered into El Hueso and spied two of my favorite politicians. We covered the usual topics when the subject of the BISD School Board monopolized the conversation.

"I'm only a little bit corrupt," I conceded. "If all these half-wits are going to run, I'm going to run. I remember when 'Mad' Tad Hasse ran against Treasurer David Betancourt and said that he was going to dissolve the office if he won. I'll run on the platform that I'm going to dissolve the board. Our teachers and students are undermined by a history of greedy board members."

Neither of the politicos opposed my candidacy, but neither did they agree with the no contributions/no compromises approach.

"If you are serious, you have to spend money," one of them told me.

Fortified by tequila, whiskey, wine and beer, I shot back, "I will be a cold day in hell before I waste any of my hard-earned dollars on a campaign."

Next morning, sober but nursing a hangover, I reminded myself, "It will be a cold day in hell before I ever run for a political position."