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Snake farm
Rene Torres’s commentary of Oct. 16 mentioned the Snake King Zoo and it brought back some fond memories. As a youngster I was privileged to visit this unique and amazing place many times.
For spending money, my older brother Eloy shined shoes in downtown Brownsville and delivered The Brownsville Herald. I, on the other hand, sold my wares to the owner of the zoo, Mr. King. For the heavy-set water snakes that thrive in our resacas and are more common and easier to catch, Mr. King paid me 25 cents per pound. Garter snakes, striped lizards and horny toad lizards, which were more elusive, fetched 25 cents each. Mr. King once paid me $5 for a rare 6-foot-long indigo snake. Mr. King, who admired beautiful snakes, was also very generous.
A hairless medium-size dog roamed the premises and to me the poor dog was quite mangy.
I opened the door and the buzzing sound of snake rattles chilled my spine. What chilled my spine more was a huge python stretched out on the wooden floor alongside the wall. The thing was so big it could squeeze the life out of me and swallow me whole!
“Why is this monster not in a cage?” I cried out. I didn’t wait for an answer. As I was getting the heck out of there, someone yelled, “We don’t yet have a cage big enough to hold it.” Hoo-boy!
On another note, a flimsy, thin rope separated the lion cages from the visitors. One day my friend Freddy Moates and I decided to slide underneath the rope and pet a sleeping lioness. We touched its tail and then moved up to its rump. When we were petting its back and she seemed to like it, I moved up to touch her neck. She had had enough. It was then that she growled and took a swipe at me with one of her enormous paws.
My thin arm was quick enough to escape her claws but in doing so I scraped my arm on the iron bars. Otherwise, the outcome would have been disastrous. I would have been dead meat for the lioness or I would be standing here today with only one arm.
As my dear mother would always say, “Valgame Dios! Yep! Yep! Yep! Memories!
Italo J. Zarate
Brownsville
Respect everyone
In border communities, discussions about migration can become loud and deeply personal. Families still have to work, shop, worship and get their children home safely while those arguments continue.
We can disagree about immigration laws without treating the person behind a counter or across a fence as less than human. No individual worker or parent is responsible for every failure of public policy.
As a Christian, I return to Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. The Samaritan did not wait for a political agreement before helping someone who was hurt. Compassion did not settle the law; it set a moral limit on how a stranger could be treated.
Officials owe residents clear rules and accountable enforcement. Neighbors owe one another restraint and basic respect. Neither obligation cancels the other.
A community’s strength is visible not only in the debates it can hold, but in whether ordinary people remain safe and welcome after those debates end.
Douglas Vandergraph
Fort Collins, Colo.
Stretching the dollars
The most honest sentence in the grocery store is printed in the smallest type.
It is on the back of the package, in the ingredient list, and it does not care how the front of the package made you feel. I managed a Natural Grocers store for two years, part of more than a decade in natural health, and I watched shoppers make careful decisions everywhere in life except the aisle, where the claims did the deciding for them.
Here is the whole skill: Ingredients go in order of amount. A claim built on the word support is an advertisement, not evidence. The price per serving tells you what the promise costs.
Border families stretch a dollar further than the marketing industry prefers. Reading the back first stretches it further.
Zane Sampson
Sioux Falls, S.D.
Buggy ride ban hurts New York
With the blessing of socialist-extraordinaire Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the New York City Council has decided to enforce a ban on horse-drawn carriages following the death of a teenager who fell off a carriage carrying his family, who were visiting from another country, when the horse accidentally bolted, putting them in danger but producing that same tragic loss in the process.
Because both Mamdani and the council have outlawed horse-drawn carriages (effective June 1, 2028) out of pure paranoia, future visitors to the city will not get a chance to experience paying for an equine-powered buggy ride that will take them on a tour of the Big Apple.
Will the controversial ban hurt New York City’s tourism industry financially?
Very badly, thanks to the same mayor who was elected last year by the city’s voting majority.
I can only imagine what Mamdani would do if he were elected as our nation’s next president. If one enlistee were to die (God forbid) in a minor accident during combat training, Mamdani would scheme his way to ban our military branches from their existence forever.
If we had no military forces to defend our country, we would all be done for. Am I right?
If there was one screw missing from the International Space Station, Mamdani would immediately shut down NASA for the life of planet Earth. As a result, our country’s space exploration program would no longer exist, thus denying future generations of astronauts waiting to make new discoveries in space.
As for the man who is failing New York City as its mayor, Mamdani may one day run for the presidency. The question is, will he lead our country to newer heights or run it into the ground?
God help us all.
Roberto Lopez
McAllen
Cruel cuts
Greg Abbott in his infinite non-wisdom ordered all state agencies to reduce their budgets by 3%. Texas Health and Human Services decided it would be easier to terminate the Children’s Autism Program because they don’t receive a federal funding match.
This needed program helps children up to the age of 21 with learning and healing therapies. It helps their parents treat their children at home too. It serves nearly 600 children in 16 regions and has 1,000 children on their waiting list.
Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition that is on a spectrum from mild to severe with cognitive, communication and behavioral disorders.
The children served by this program have no other resource to fall back on. If they have Medicaid many practitioners do not accept it. Private insurance is too expensive.
This program closure will mainly hurt low and middle- income families. Cutting this program while the state has billions in the rainy day fund is unnecessary and cruel.
Republicans pontificating about being for families and protecting children against transgender treatment while denying needed services to the most vulnerable population is pure hypocrisy and cruelty. It shows what they really care about is greed, lies to keep their base captive, and love of corporations above families and children.
Forget about Christianity, I know Jesus would not approve of their immoral practices.
Nancy Gutierrez
Rio Hondo
Political markets
Unfortunately, some people in this part of Texas don’t pay attention to the ups and downs of the stock market. Most say they could give a darn about the market because they don’t invest in stocks.
Please let me enlighten you. If you work for the government, state, county, city, school system or any company that has a 401(K) retirement plan, you are in the market. Whether you know it or not, your retirement funds are invested in the stock market.
As a stock market investor for more than 45 years, I can tell you that most of the time the market does better under a Republican administration than a Democratic administration. So if you vote Democratic, you vote against yourself.
G.E. Aguirre
McAllen
Wrong allies
Natividad Rodriguez must be confused. Democrats aren’t the ones cozying up to America’s adversaries.
Reporting shows Elon Musk restricted Starlink access for Ukrainian operations, undermining their defenses during active Russian attacks. At the same time, Donald Trump moved to ease certain Russian energy sanctions, a shift U.S. allies warned would strengthen Moscow’s hand. If we’re talking about helping America’s enemies, those actions deserve a hard look.
And the claim that Democrats “keep the poor poor?” The Valley’s poverty rates stem from state‑controlled funding formulas, revenue caps, low‑wage labor markets and decades of underinvestment — all shaped in Austin, not by local city councils. You can’t fix structural poverty with local promises when the state hoards taxpayer dollars for private charter networks, energy companies, border‑security contractors, corporate tax interests and privatized foster‑care vendors.
Before pointing fingers at Democrats, maybe ask why Trump keeps doing favors that make the Kremlin smile — and why you’re cheering from the sidelines.
Diane Teter
Edinburg
Socialism spreading
Socialism in America is spreading like wildfire, like an uncontrolled fungal infection. As long as we keep ignoring it, the more it spreads throughout our nation, unnoticed by most.
Our education system is the agent and source of spreading this agenda for America’s enemies, whose evil plan is to destroy America from within — slowly, unnoticed, and as painlessly as possible.
In this midterm election, socialism became bold and showed its ugly truth to America (“We are here to stay”), and America is buckling under their pressure and surrendering its freedom for socialism.
We see what socialism does to other nations like Russia, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela. Ignoring the facts makes you wonder about our very own society that wants to experiment with socialism.
To even consider something with a guaranteed horrible result makes me think about our very own mentality to even consider such an option. It is no different than contemplating suicide. It will come to our very own end.
And even considering it? I see a very dark future for our America; and the fact that I feel it to be an unstoppable train wreck makes it that much more painful.
Rafael Madrigal
Pharr
La Maquina is sputtering
I’m from Edcouch-Elsa and had a very successful football program.
We have fallen on some hard times in recent years.
I have worked all over the Valley and in the Corpus area for the last 40 years. People have asked me for the last five years: What has happened to La Maquina?
To me, the E-E school board has had a lot to do with the downfall of our sports programs.
Why would I feel this way? Sports programs are like corporations. The management that you put in place has a lot to do with the success of that corporation or failure. So whom they name as a head coach and athletic director has a lot to do with the success of those teams.
A coach has to motivate the players and make them believe in themselves and the system he has installed. The AD recommends the coaching candidates. The school board makes the hiring.
Our football program started seeing success when they brought in Gil Garza with Robert Vela as his defensive coordinator. When Garza left his successor was Vela, who became a very good head coach for E-E. Under him La Maquina was known for having some of the best defensive teams in the Valley.
La Maquina started winning the district title and more importantly, winning in the playoffs. People across the state started to notice La Maquina for playing great football reaching the quarterfinals in 1989 but losing to Gregory-Portland on penetrations.
When Vela left Cris Cavazos was named the head coach in 1997 and reached that same the quarterfinals but lost to Calallen. He left after coaching at E-E for one year. The next two years Juan Lopez was the head coach but with very little success. Joe Solis was named head coach and athletic director and led E-E to one of the greatest winning programs the school ever had. La Maquina broke the Valley’s 37 consecutive winning streak held by Port Isabel.
The problem with our school board has always been arrogance. They tried to remove Solis after he did not lose a single district game for five years straight. Solis was the head coach from 2003 to 2012. His record at E-E was 88-25. He is also, if I’m not mistaken, the only coach in the Valley to beat both Gregory-Porter and Calallen. They claimed any coach at E-E could do it.
After he was fired Joe Marichallar was named head coach and Christian Navarro the athletic director. During Marichallar’s 5-year tenure E-E went to the playoffs four times, reached the second round once and three times went three deep.
His only season not reaching the playoffs was his last year and he was let go. Since his termination E-E has only reached the second round once.
So if any coach at E-E can do what Coach Solis did why, then have we fallen on hard times for many years? Could it be because they stupidly and arrogantly fired the two head coaches, Solis and Marichallar? Not only them but how many assistants have we let go who held the program together during the years when we didn’t have talented teams but they overachieved?
Jesus Rodriguez
Elsa
Respect the flag
One of my favorite songs is “Respect” by the late, great soul singer Otis Redding! I’ve just seen two videos of basketball player LeBron James practicing his golf swing during the playing of our national anthem! Also, two WNBA teams left the basketball court during the playing our national anthem! Plus, I saw where protesters are burning our precious American flag!
I’m a 72-year-old man who remembers putting my hand on my chest during our national anthem when I was at Napper Elementary School in Pharr along with my fellow classmates.
When I see our American flag I salute it with so much pride in being an American citizen!
Ricardo Rosales
Pharr
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