Friday, November 27, 2009

Fort Worth Mayor Moncrief Fails To Turn Trinity River Purple

I have watched a strange thing or two over the years in Texas and Fort Worth. I don't know, for sure, if this morning's attempt to dye the Trinity River purple was the strangest, but I am sure it is in the Top 10 Strangest Things I've Seen in Texas.

There was quite a large crowd assembled in Trinity Park to witness the spectacle of turning the Trinity River purple.

Fort Worth Mayor Mike Moncrief read an extremely long proclamation that ended with him decreeing that the purple section of the Trinity River was re-named Horned Frog River.

Before Moncrief's proclamation another politician spoke. A female. I've no idea who she was.

In the picture you are looking at Moncrief pouring a glass of purple dye that looked like grape Kool-Aid into the newly christened Horned Frog River.

Now, this was a bit of a pep assembly, so Moncrief's hyperbole could be forgiven. I guess. This was the first time I've seen Mike Moncrief up close and heard him speak, at length. I wish I'd thought to whip out my video camera and record the entire speech. Some of Moncrief's verbiage was shockingly ironic. I can't quote it exactly from memory, but he said something very Jesus-like, about Fort Worth looking out for the least among us. And being the #1 city in America. Or was it the world? Darn, I wish I'd turned on the camcorder.

As you can see, Moncrief is bookended by two TCU Cheerleaders. You can also see the Trinity River behind Moncrief. At this point in the proclamation he had not yet re-named the river. You can also see that it already looks sort of purple. When I first saw the river I thought it had already been dyed, plus there was a white froth on the banks that I thought might be dye related. When the actual dyeing did begin there was pretty much a collective rolling of the eyes watching. It was that bizarre.

Soon after Moncrief emptied his glass of purple dye into Horned Frog River a tanker truck on the other bank started spraying what looked like water. This was the dye. People started muttering. The tanker sprayed for maybe 5 minutes before there was no more dye to spray. The only change to the river was the effect of the spray as it landed. When the spraying stopped I could detect no color.

I asked a couple people if they saw any purple. They didn't. One lady told me her husband told her there was no way they could turn the river purple.

The crowd of hopeful purple river watchers quickly melted away after the tanker spraying stopped. The only purple I saw, besides on TCU people's clothes and the cheerleader's sign, was "GO FROGS" painted on the Trinity, I mean, Horned Frog River Levee.

Okay, now I've got to tell you the really weird thing that happened. Someone came up and asked me if I was Durango Texas. That has never happened to me before. Not in Texas. I've had it happen in Washington. I've sort of slightly had it cross my mind that this might happen and that the person might be cranky about something I'd said about their, I mean, my, beloved Fort Worth.

I asked the questioner why she thought I was Durango Texas. She said she read my blog, read what I wrote about the plan to dye the river purple and that I looked like the pictures on the blog. So, I confessed that I was the culprit. We exchanged a few pleasantries and then I wandered off taking more pictures.

A couple minutes later I sat on the river bank to listen to Moncrief. I was slightly paranoid, noticing a few people looking at me and not at the mayor. Maybe it was something behind me they were looking at. Like I said, I was slightly paranoid.

Anyway, I'm glad I watched the purple river spectacle this morning. I found it entertaining. And more so than before I'm appalled that 70% of 6% of Fort Worth's eligible voters voted that man to be their mayor. Like I said. Bizarre.

14 comments:

  1. We ARE watching you,yankee B-O-Y!!

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  2. It's not nice to fool Mother Nature or pretend to be Jesus, especially at the same time. Black Friday, indeed for hizzoner.

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  3. Don----
    Up close Moncrief bears no resemblance to Jesus. But he'd make an excellent Snidely Whiplash.

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  4. Anonymous---
    You are wrong. I am not a Yankee. I'm from Washington, which did not become a state til 1889, 24 years after the War of Northern Aggression ended. My ancestors never even made it to America til well after the Yankees socked it to the Rebels.

    But, anyway, thank you for watching me.

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  5. The definition of "Yankee" definitely includes Washington State natives around here, as I was informed. Even people from some states in the former CSA (such as Virginia and Tennessee) are Yankees. Even people from places like Canada are considered Yankees.

    This subject would make a good one for a future Durango posting...

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  6. Steve A---
    Yikes! All this time I've been in denial about being a damn Yankee I've actually been one? I'm thinking there are some Canadians who might get mighty riled to be called a Yankee!

    I must ponder about blogging about my newfound Yankee-ness.

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  7. Don't feel bad. Even born 'n bred Texans are considered Yankees if they don't tow the line and vice versa in shrub's case.

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  8. I had always suspected that the mayor "drank the Kool-Aid". Now there's proof of it--and that he's trying to get the rest of the community to do the same. At least this instance gave him some relief from seeing "green" everywhere in the city. And he was actully pouring something into the Trinity River (even if it's just color dye) rather than sucking the life out of it like his gasser buddies.

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  9. Now, had he died it orange, I might have been impressed.

    I wonder how many Thanksgiving dinners the mayor could have bought with the money wasted, er...uh, funded for the tanker truck and it's contents? Seems that Ft Worth is the home of boondoggles, or at least that what some "Damn Yankee" told me.

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  10. CT2----

    I thought you were in El Paso?

    I too wonder how much Fort Worth's latest boondoggle cost the city. The Star-Telegram is claiming the dye was donated. The Star-Telegram is a demonstrably unreliable information source.

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  11. I spewed a perfectly good mouthful of organic beer when I read Don's first comment.

    In whose world is FW #1 in anything?

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  12. TXsharon---
    Sorry about the loss of perfectly good organic beer.

    FW is #1 for all those FW people who have never experienced anything beyond FW's borders. I think I read in the Star-Telegram that it's something like 58% of FW citizens have never set foot outside the town. I may be remembering wrong.

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  13. Durango, didn't feel up to El Paso, stayed home and built a tree house for Annie instead.

    Had some really wonderful weather, but today...brrr

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  14. CT2----
    Building a treehouse with Princess Annie sounds funner than El Paso.

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