By Dan Bodine

 

There’s more’n a few Texas oldtimers in a little bit of a shock, surely, learning Fort Worth ISD recently has been taken over by the state for low student performances. Ain’t that a kick!? Has Dick Tracy signed off on this dastardly thing yet?

I think a blowback argument, too, could be made using the Cowboys’ mediocre performances so far this football season. Argue Fort Worth is too close to Dallas. The Dumpster Fire’s “Smoke Blowover Effect” at work, it is. All these years. Hee, hee! Dem Cowboys awful, yes!

But jokes aside,TEA monitors temporarily calling ISD shots is not a Sky-Is-Falling moment!

For a community struggling to better educate its young, its narrowing focus can be a positive thing for a nerves-on-edge district. And is a better overriding message, too.

Presidio, my old adopted, former home on the border in Far West Texas, i.e., survived this ordeal once with a sole state monitor. And is better off for it, is my thinking.

There’re much more happier and good learning days ahead for such districts, veteran observers washed with the process are too tempted to predict.

It sure galvanizes focus — from the start — that’s for sure. In Presidio’s case it was, most certainly in adults. And with singular community focus on goals, comes improvements later, right? Natch!

So, to parents, students and district staff members alike in Cowtown, don’t die on your sword over temporary loss of the word Independent in your title; this all-hands-on-deck battlecry can be your new attitude, too, i.e. Get the tepid conservative fuss out of the way of the benevolent liberal thrust! Get on with it!

I’m thinking that way, anyway. And I’ve been through enough of Life’s hard knocks to know… Yeah, let’s just admit it: We’re all co-dependent upon each other  (e.g., in need of each other) for success — in one way or another, to say the least!

Indeed, any Presidio people, i.e., on the grapevine here remember when the state’s hammer came down on our little ISD back in the early ’90s, I think it was?

Lot of wailing and gnashing of the teeth then, too, it seemed! But it turned out better for the community, was the general feeling I’d picked up. Despite minor wrinkles here and there.

—

I hadn’t long come into town then as a reporter to write for Presidio’s community newspaper, The International, and covered this takeover as best and as compassionate as I could.

Ran into bad, unrelated hiccups personally with the newspaper in the latter years of all this, seems like the going-back-through-and-catching-the-few wrinkles-left part, it was.

The paper’s owner and his wife had soured on their own publishing project’s future, it was. Affecting me, of course, as an employee. My glancing guess then was advertising revenue had dropped big-time. And it scared ’em!

A concurrent or washed event, maybe this is I’m remembering. Toward or maybe even after the state’s part of it.

They were a Morman family — this married couple’s newspaper ownership was — with a brood of 11 children total (some off with families of their own, of course).

And to their credit, they hadn’t been afraid to wade into the unpredictables of a small but historical bordertown such as Presidio — which is the western entrance to the greater Big Bend area of Texas — to start up this new weekly newspaper, The International Presidio Paper. 

But maybe a year-and-half later — with me aboard, yes, e.g., my salary as a new weekly expense — and this was a full-blown, I’m sick-‘n-tired-of-sleeping-out-on-the-ground-at-night-being-eaten-alive-by-mosquitos moment for ’em! And I wanna go back to my nice, comfy home in New Mexico somewhere. And BE SOMEBODY again!!!

And sure ’nuff they sold the printing presses in the blink-of-an-eye, it seemed; had the tin, metal building they operated out of up for sale, too; and started shutting the paper down, also.

“And what about me?” I’d somehow dared to get around to asking, before they’d hit the exit road. “Just another done-‘n-over-with employee?”

Oh, Dan!

“Oh, we’ll make you a special deal to buy the newspaper if you’d like to stay, and continue with it!” mas o meno was the reply. (And then the added dangling participle for sure, paraphrased:)

“You realize though, with the presses already sold (and the pre-fab, metal building itself in the negotiating process to be sold, too, and used as another business), you’ll have to drive the paper’s made-up pages to Pecos each week (3-1/2 hr. one-way drive, it was) to the newspaper there to get all of ’em printed!” was the summation.

“It adds a bit of a new problem, it does. But if you still want to buy it, we’ll be glad to sell it to you. Computers and subscriber mailing lists, it is!” (Implied mention, too, of surviving without an office!)

Jethro, my alter ego I’d slowly learned to quickly consult before making any rash business deals like this, almost instantly was shouting “No, you fool, damn it!!!“)

For hell’s bells, this meant I’d have to turn from employee to a full-time owner/debtor/employee also; in what seemed an overnight swirl of heavy, weight-lifting duties dumped onto my shoulders immediately, admittedly.

But… After that initial hesitation (Are uncertainties the biggest monsters beneath our beds?) — I signed onto the dotted line a day later, and bought the paper’s note — e.g., “Just to save my job, mainly! To hell with tomorrow’s torpedos!”

And a Where’d ‘ya be if’n ‘I didn’t?!” was the retort to Jethro. He’s scared of his shadow! I think sometimes.

Now this note-signing hadn’t been exactly at gunpoint, no, but in no way did I want to be back on Hwy. 67 a singing “On The Road, Again” either!

Two traumas in bed with each other, and both whistling Dixie!

How I survived it was with a good staff, and God’s Mercy. Big time! It seems like there are angels sometimes who tag along with us just to help us in dangerous situations — i.e., paying bills and eating. Are these from God’s Special Forces crew?

—

Reflecting back at this switcheroo moment, indeed, it hadn’t been but a couple or three years, maybe — as I recalled — since my late pardner and I’d folded that small, weekly newspaper chain in Alvarado into corporate bankruptcy back up in DFW, e.g., almost 600 miles and a different culture away.

Was this new owner/publishing venture going to be an Everclear-and-orange juice chaser for that? Solely for me this time, natch!?

In the Southwest Times deal in DFW, a wealthy millionaire friend with prominence, Don McNiel, had been our corporation’s president then. I’d signed on as vice-president and publisher, responsible for content of the publications.

But could I’ve looked out for his end better, though, explaining more clearly, say, how far up-in-the-air the inflated value of the principle newspaper we were buying in Alvarado was, from its actual realistic worth?

Well over five times, my argument was! I’d put its value at only $15K; Don, with plenty of wealth, though, and wanting the publicity for a Congressman’s job, too, said, Let’s go ahead with it! [At the highly inflated price, e.g.; he’d had no problem in paying attorney fees to protect himself personally.]

So, I’d ended up muddying my hands with ink print throughly those few years publishing it, despite knowing from the get-go it had all the markings of an overt pipe dream being sucked into bankruptcy!

But with all the high hopes and publicity with which we’d launched our venture — and him looking for some political gain from it, too (ran for Congress unsuccessfully against Jim Wright those times, he did, yes) — I’d simply failed to convince him how difficult it’d be paying off the former owner’s note with so much indebtedness on it. (Unless he wanted to donate to a worthy cause (e.g., me, my salary)? Which he didn’t, of course!)

And that was still the crux of the issue years later that plunged us as a corporation into bankruptcy.

And jettisoned me to Presidio after noting a classsified ad in the Texas Press Association monthly’s journal a little after this, in October, ’89.

Living and Learning lessons about Life, they were? And People? Ah… And the black eye from all of it? The stigma’s embarrassment!?

Ah…You learn when minimalized to cope as best you can — e.g., remembering, constantly, that you’re worth more than that (public image value)!

So I’d soon load my pickup full with personal possessions, the same vehicle with an overdue note payment on it, too; and said what I was hoping was a sweet goodbye to my past. By going down U.S. Hwy. 67 a ways!

But including, first, driving over to my recently divorced ex-wife’s home there in Cleburne, to bid her a final adieu. And to leave well wishes for her two children I’d just spent 10 years helping raise.

So then, rough ends in our relationship assauged some, I drove back up on U.S. Hwy. 67 and headed toward Presidio — way down yonder almost 600 miles away — in a desperate, last-bid effort to survive… Albeit still in newspapers, my mind was then.

Old journalist fools just don’t go out quietly into that night either; give ’em access to a typewriter and they’ll write on!!! Ghosts in the nights?

A Different Reality

Surprisingly, once in “The Onion Capital of the World” — the fertile land and best acreage yields the Presidio Chamber of Commerce had used to crown the historically rich community — I’d really thought this time it would be much different.

The Presidio paper’s co-owner and founder, along with his wife, had appeared content in what would be best described as a temporary situation for them, too.

Either that or they’d inhaled too many old fumes themselves of this quietly fading but once magical smell of newspapers — I’d soon realize after I got down there.

They were Mormans with 11 kids, i.e., whom they were hoping to leave some financial gift to in life.

An inheritance? Or true-Life lessons of coping while on the ropes financially, possibly?

Whatever, my life had been different than their’s.

I’d been blown in like some almost lifeless tumbleweed, left to reroot (if possible) near the Rio Grande bridge going to Mexico.

I’d come in, afterall, merely on this stranger’s simple word over the phone — e.g., that he had a city editor’s job open then at his and his wife’s small, English weekly. He’d advertised it earlier in a state press association journal I’d read.

Which, too, the way that October ’89 ad was worded — in hindsight now, yes —  sounded like a 3-alarm dumpster fire in ways. More or less stating, e.g., “Owners seek editor who can take the fastest growing weekly in Texas, daily!”

Hee, hee! These are clearly fools-rush-in moments, dear readers! Hooks!The kind that can make a wild-eyed drunk sober, too. Which is what finally happened to me, yes.

With quick, back-end promises to God that If’n You can see the way to let me escape this one particular situation, I promise never to touch my lips with this here ol’ rot-gut whiskey again! Ever! Oh, Lord! Po-Leeze!

Indeed, all one needed to know to see the light of day in this ad was to look on a map; do a little research.

Presidio was only 4-5K population, at high mark, remotely located in the mountains of Far West Texas, on the border with Mexico. And probably 85 percent Latino.

But a community with some of the best people in the world, I’d eventually learn.

And then, also, it was directly across the Rio Grande from a Mexican community of about 50,000 mostly good people, too, but — e.g., just willdly guessing here — out of that number, also, there were no more than 4 or 5 % of it’s population who could read English fluently! Their language was Spanish, afterall!

And that was the wannabe gold market of overly hopeful English publishers who thought they’d already had the fastest growing weekly in the state, The International!

And their wishful thinking was taking a small weekly DAILY, with no more readership than that?! Sheesh!!!

But I minded my P’s & Q’s throughout this awkward, difficult phase — little more than surviving, it was — until the JP job came open in Presidio County. What a lifesaver! The extra income, it was.

In a community where job openings weren’t daily talking fodder, yes, this one caught people’s attention. Especially being a stable one with the local county government as an employer!

And in Texas, let us not forget, one doesn’t necessarily have to be a licensed attorney to be a justice-of-the-peace judge. Nor a community’s municiple court judge either, which I’d later tap into also in Presidio as an extra revenue stream, working three jobs.

But to open these doors, and just get inside for the opporunity to perform…Thankfully, Pct. 3 County Commissioner Juan Muníz started it all by agreeing to nominate me to the JP slot.

I was the best educated of the candidates, yes, an M.A. in Political Science. And I’d made some good friends in Presidio, too; while I’d kept my mouth closed and hadn’t made any hard political enemies yet either.

So, I got the job! February ’92.

First thing I did that evening was telephone Mom and Dad.

“Your son’s a judge!” I told them. “Thank-you.”

They’d given me the tools to be a survivor.

—

And I still remember, too — e.g., concurrently, or maybe post, past this critical school district state monitoring period being over, by maybe a few months, with its pins-and-needles atmospheres/semi-atmospheres — that something really strange occurred, concerning a student who was a preacher’s boy who got carried away with a brand-spanking-new high school’s suspended ceiling tile in one of his rooms, if’n I’m remembering correctly.

And wanted to offficially launch it (or christen it) on its journey of looking out from above for Presidio students!

Within weeks certainly — e.g., just after the new Blue Devils’ High School was completed, for sure; maybe even first day of classes for it — I clearly remember one of the assistant principals a huffin’ and puffin’ and a draggin’ a non-cooperative student into the JP office one morning.

“Put ‘im in the slammer, Judge!”

Hijole!!!

“Had he brought a gun to school and shot someone?” may’ve been my second thought…after things momentarily had calmed some.

“Well, no…”

“What happened?”

And what a moment to be well-remembered, too! Certainly by me. And probably the court clerk then, too. It’d been a solo “Christening” moment!

It was a first-of-its-kind vandal act at any of the district’s schools for this new school year, that I was aware of, at least at the time, certainly at this new high school.

A psudeo Destruction-of-School-Property offense?

The kid had no interest in education at all, it seemed. He’d become fixated, instead, on the “newness” and “freshness” of the suspended classroom ceiling tiles.

And proceeded to leave his mark on one — e.g., to “christen it” —  setting off on this new journey of overlording activities below by throwing his writing pen up at it.

And sure ’nuff, it stuck! And dangled…Pseudo dangerously. Before falling.

Instructor then got all over him!

Boy was taken to the principal’s office for discipline.

“We can’t allow this!” surely the first shriek had been!

“Oh, and this is a new school!” seemed much of the emphasis had been; a backhanded slap at taxpayers, it was — e.g., the thinking had been on the damaging thrust of the evil pen.”Everything’s new!”

The referral had been he was deliberately attempting to destroy new school property!… That’s a serious offense!!!

Then…And yeah, I’ve since thought a lot on this case. There’d been a lot of anger in that office meeting, I’d sensed. Before someone’s thought drifted to a court.

This kid had crossed teachers’ wires before! my thoughts were. A lot, I think.)

“Judge Bodine! Somebody needs to take him to Judge Bodine! He’ll fix him! was the decision made in the school principal’s office.

And with that, the beginning of the deed’s punishment had begun.

Now in old age, I’ve lost some of my memory of this, yes. And I simply cannot remember how it was handled once it was moved to my office.

Surely, I did a referral to Juvenile Probation Office, the County Judge’s office in Marfa.

Let County Atty. Teresa Todd and (late) County Judge Jerry Agan worry about it! Juvenile Court ain’t (wadn’t) my bailiwick!! And supervising a probationer, neither. (Dina Jo!!?)

But out of all this, I do dare guess a special point for Fort Worth ISD is:

Fear not! Nothing brings “adults” together more in a community than for some outside, overranked stepcousin (like the State) to come in and tell ’em they’re doin’ an unsatisfactory job educating the kiddos!

And thus: “We’re taking over the job for you!” becomes their message. “For you can no longer be trusted as an independent!”

“Malarky!” always is the first reaction, to the contrary. It just grates on the conscience, it does! Precipitously. Like being put in the same jail cell as your sister! Or, your recently slobbed husband/wife!

But, too, small, involuntary changes do start happening, though. Sure ’nuff!

Soon, like a new day’s sun, “knotted inflexibility” throughout the district relaxes into something flexible. Love and cooperation is seen if not everywhere, than much more often than before!

Things difficult become less! Like something’d passed over the district with a magic washing cloth! Cleaned, things are!

But don’t tell the State that; eventually they’ll leave.

And left behind is a new you; a new district.

And you knew it’d be like that all the time! E. g., nothing to give up beer over!

 

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