Dear Editor,
I got a kick from the part in Sam Karas’ piece about the BOB battery where she mentions the “Thank you, BOB” song.
I wrote the song as JR and I (The Border Blasters) were driving from Fort Davis to Presidio to play for the inaugural ceremony. I had in my head something in the vein of 1960s trucker songs or Junior Brown, and that’s how I sing it. How did you hear about it?
I played it at our shows every once in a while for a few years, but it was just a fun thing, not a great song, and few understood what it was about anyway. Maybe I need to add a verse to update it, lol.
Here are the entire lyrics:
Thank You BOB
(T. Jagger – ASCAP, J.R. Harrell – BMI)
It’s hard being here at the end of the line
Where the power cuts out just any old time
The cooler in the window rolls to a stop
The temperature rises and it gets real hot
But now we have BOB
Thank you BOB
It’s a big ol’ battery on the edge of town
Keeps the lights on when the grid goes down
Computers are hummin’
We can cook on the stove
And we don’t miss a minute of our TV shows
Thank you BOB
It’s big as a house, weighs more than a tank
To ET Texas we give a big thanks
Cuz the swamp cooler’s blowin’, working all night
Keeping us cool, feeling all right
Thank you BOB
The baseball diamond is bathed in light
So the whole town can see every home run and strike
‘fibrulater’s charged in case you need jolt
So you can go on home instead of ending up cold
Thank you BOB (“clear!”)
It’s a big ol’ battery on the edge of town
Keeps the lights on when the grid goes down
Bug zappers zappin’
Drinks are ice cold
And we don’t miss a minute of our TV shows
Thank you BOB (“American Idol”)
We got BOB (“Honey, think I could Dance With The Stars?”)
Thank you BOB (“Heck, if Tom Delay can do it…”)
Thank you BOB
Todd Jagger
Fort Davis
Immigrant misinformation
In a recent newsletter, U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales touted his role in House passage of the “Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility” (SAVE) Act which was rejected by the U.S. Senate. The bill claimed to “stop foreign interference in American elections” but had nothing to do with “foreign interference.”
The key point was to restrict voting by citizens who don’t have ready access to their birth certificate. That could include citizens born in the U.S.A. who never had a birth certificate and those for whom obtaining the certificate is so difficult they never got one. The bill was based on a lie that there are many non-citizens voting in our elections. That’s extremely rare and here’s why: The Texas voter registration card reads, in part, “I understand that giving false information to procure a voter registration is perjury … a crime under state and federal law. Conviction … may result in imprisonment up to one year in jail, a fine up to $4,000, or both … I am a resident of this county and a U.S. citizen,” followed by a signature/date line.
With penalties more severe than the penalty for being an undocumented immigrant, if you knew you were not a citizen would you sign that just to vote? Of course not. Other anti-immigrant lies pushed by Republicans are that the U.S. is seeing a crime wave (violent crime is going down), and that immigrants are committing those crimes (despite isolated instances, undocumented immigrants have a much lower crime rate than citizens). This anti-immigrant sentiment is modeled on worldwide authoritarian movements that stoke irrational fears to build political power. Let’s seek the truth from our elected leaders –– every legal citizen should vote against these lies and the lyin’ liars that tell them.
Mary Bell Lockhart
Alpine
To the Editor:
Re: “From Marfa to the Moon” (by Abbie Perrault, July 17, 2019)
Saturday, July 20, is the 55th anniversary of the Apollo 11 crew landing on the Moon. In 2019, The Big Bend Sentinel highlighted Marfa’s link to the phenomenal event. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and several astronauts visited our region, studying our geology and perhaps exploring somewhat of a rehearsal space for their February 1969 walk on the Moon. Apollo 11 laid the groundwork for subsequent trips to the Moon, and in 1971 Apollo 14 launched. On board were containers of hundreds of tree seeds which, upon return to Earth, were germinated by The United States Forest Service (USFS). These seedlings came to be known as Moon Trees and were planted at the White House and throughout the United States, as well as presented to foreign leaders in Brazil, Switzerland and Japan.
These unique and novel events will become intertwined with Big Bend once again. In 2022 NASA revived the Moon Tree program, carrying seeds aboard the Orion spacecraft as part of the Artemis I Moon-orbiting mission. I’m happy to share that, out of thousands of applications to NASA, and with the support of nonprofit organization Leadership Big Bend, we have received a Moon Tree for our community. Announcements on a publicly accessible planting location in Alpine as well as informational programming and stewardship plans will be shared once confirmed. USFS chose to provide a sweetgum tree, and I invite Chihuahuan Desert ecosystem experts to be as generous with their curiosity as they are with their criticality, taking to heart that this effort is experimental end to end. What a journey this seedling has already been on! Practically speaking, Big Bend will have one more attraction for students, locals, and visitors. And, once our Moon Tree takes root, it will be reasonable to say past, present and future will share our landscape.
Kendra Jones
Leadership Big Bend – Board of Directors
