The Brownsville Beacon

  By Diego Garcia III | Editor of The Brownsville Beacon When I was young, I was fascinated with television. I was fortunate enough to live in a home that had cable. Cable was a relatively new technology in the early 80's. Before Spectrum gobbled up Time Warner Cable, I remember our cable was provided by a company called Heritage Cablevision. The channel lineup was an interesting amalgam of different programming including a channel from the Atlanta area and WGN, a channel from the Chicago area. I watched WGN religiously. I have memories of watching The Bozo Show, Chicago Cubs games, and commercials advertizing the Lincoln Park Zoo. Among all the English programming, there were also several Spanish language channels. If you stayed up late enough, you would watch what could be generously described as "B" movies; low-budget action movies that were sometimes filmed in Brownsville. My grandparent's dog even made a cameo appearance in La Mugrosita , one of these low-budget ...

  By Diego Garcia III | Editor of The Brownsville Beacon Forrest Sherman class destroyer USS Barry, DD-033 Another former U.S. Navy warship made its way through the Brownsville Ship Channel Thursday. The former USS Barry (DD-933) was a Forrest Sherman-class destroyer. She was launched in 1955 and spent over 25 years in the fleet, spending the majority of her service in the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. She saw service during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam Conflict, where she earned two battle stars. The former USS Barry joins an entire fleet of commercial vessels and warships that have made the Port of Brownsville their final resting place as they meet the cutter's torch. Shipbreaking and metal recycling are big businesses out at the Port, where a handful of companies have operated since the early 2000's. She was the third U.S. destroyer to be named after Philadelphia native Commodore John Barry, an officer in the Continental Navy during the Revolutionar...

 By Diego Garcia III | Editor of The Brownsville Beacon State Senator Eddie Lucio, Jr.  Jerry Jones bought the Dallas Cowboys in 1989. Almost immediately after buying the failing football team, he fired legendary coach Tom Landry, replacing him with University of Miami coach Jimmy Johnson. Johnson would build a team that would go from 1-15 to back-to-back Super Bowl victories in 1992 and 1993. As a reward, and due partly to Jerry Jones' large, bruised ego, Johnson was replaced as head coach of the Dallas Cowboys by Oklahoma coach Barry Switzer. Switzer would not be the strict disciplinarian Johnson was. The Cowboys would fall to the San Francisco 49ers in the NFC Championship Game in Switzer's first year as coach, but would bounce back to win the Super Bowl for the final time in the team's history in 1995. The Cowboys have been on the hunt for their elusive sixth Super Bowl championship for the better part of a generation. The Cowboys weren't coached particularly well i...

By Diego Garcia III | Editor of The Brownsville Beacon MJ Hegar Ready To Fight MJ Hegar is ready to fight. Last night, United States Senator John Cornyn debated Major Mary Jennings (MJ) Hegar. Hegar is challenging the Republican incumbent for one of Texas' two U.S. Senate seats. John Cornyn attempted to portray Hegar as a Democratic puppet who would be beholden to the Democratic leadership in the Senate, often referring to people other than Hegar during Friday night's debate held in Austin. Despite Cornyn's best attempts, Hegar refused to take the bait. Hegar seemed more like the seasoned incumbent rather than a politician with one failed campaign under her belt (she unsuccessfully challenged John Carter for Texas' 31st Congressional District in the United States House of Representatives, losing to the incumbent by only three percent).  She was professional, she was measured, and she rebuffed Cornyn's misdirected attacks by reminding him he was running against her, ...

By Diego Garcia III | Editor of The Brownsville Beacon If a Texan is anything, he's opinionated. Sit him down and he'll give you his opinion on anything and everything from politics, to sports, and everything in between.  If you ask a Texan what his favorite hamburger is, you'll inevitably get to the classic argument about Whataburger being the best hamburger in the state. Sooner or later, you'll even get a California transplant who will bring up In-n-Out Burger.  Whataburger isn't bad. I don't think it's the rock the Texas hamburger cathedral is built on, but it isn't a bad hamburger. Personally, I wish they'd bring back the A1 Thick and Hearty burger — a point I never fail to make when I am on Facebook and I see a Whataburger ad pop up in my news feed. I have some breaking news for you. In case you didn't know it, your phone listens to your conversation and mines your data. The other day I was messaging a friend about a US Cavalry Stetson hat, ...

  By Diego Garcia III | Editor of The Brownsville Beacon The smart ones will always get you in trouble. I am not the smartest person in the world. However, I am smart enough to know there is no such thing as one, all-encompassing, universal measure of intelligence. Intelligence comes in all ways, shapes, and forms. There are people who are commonly referred to as "book smart." If you were inclined to put me in a category, this is probably the category I would fit into. I went to college and I received a bachelor's degree. I wore a couple of honor cords when I walked across the stage on the South Lawn of the University of Texas at Brownsville in 2008.  The piece of card stock with my name embossed on it hanging on the wall doesn't make me smart. I've always said people who have college degrees aren't smarter than people who don't; all it means is you went to school longer than other people did. I've worked with plenty of people who have master's deg...

  By Diego Garcia III | Editor of The Brownsville Beacon When I was in 7th grade, my Texas History teacher, Michael Lopez, made all his students send off to receive The Handbook of Texas. It was a small encyclopedia that talked about all the different regions and cities of Texas. It had blurbs on different places and historical information on them. I was fascinated with the book. You can now look up the Handbook of Texas online. It is maintained and published by the Texas State Historical Association, but the internet and an online database wasn't something that was available in 1988. I spent hours reading through the handbook. It was definitely one of the things that influenced me and encouraged me to study local and Texas history. I have always been interested in ghost towns and abandoned things. Among my library is a book called "Ghost Towns of Texas." The book mentions a place that I first learned about when I was flipping through the Handbook of Texas; a town named I...

  By Diego Garcia III | Editor of The Brownsville Beacon It was the final debate of the 1980 presidential election. Incumbent President Jimmy Carter faced off against former California Governor and film actor Ronald Reagan. Reagan had thrown his hat in the presidential ring before. He had been mentioned as a presidential candidate before, but he had lost to Gerald Ford in 1976. He now faced off against the Democratic incumbent, and in the final debate turned to the camera and told the people to ask themselves one simple question. He asked, "are you better off today than you were four years ago?" Reagan would go on to win in 44 states and secure a 489-89 electoral college landslide. He would serve two terms as President of the United States. With the general election 31 days away, you have to ask yourself the same question. Are you better off today than you were four years ago?  Are you happy with the job the incumbents have done? Have they represented you faithfully? Have the...