HERE TO HELP -- A SIGN ON A HOME'S PORCH IN IKE-RAVAGED GALVESTON

This large banner is not hanging from the gallery of an Episcopal Church.  It's hanging on the front porch of one of Galveston's famous 19th Century Victorian homes, a private home that has survived many hurricanes. 

And it came through one more time as Hurricane Ike totally ravaged more than fifty percent of the homes, businesses, schools and hospitals on Galveston Island.  Many residents -- some educated estimates are one-third of the population -- have left and promised not to return.

Interestingly, the home in this picture is the private residence of The Reverend Ronald D. Pogue, D.Min., who is the pastor of Trinity Episcopal Church, a church that is over 150 years old.  A church that was one of the very first congregations established when Galveston was furst settled in the 1830s.

When the famous 1900 Storm came through and killed thousands of Galvestonians, it took down the entire south wall of Trinity.  (History) Even though members were overwhelmed by personal circumstances, the parish immediately took on rebuilding the wall and raising the entire building several feet to help protect it from future floods.  The church continued to serve without missing a beat for the next 108 years.

And that seemed to work fine until Ike came along.  Ike flooded the huge Gothic church with many feet of water, and probably did, when all is finally added up, more than a couple of million dollars worth of damage.  While fully insured, nevertheless, the policy has a 10% deductible clause. 

So parishioners, most of whom have suffered huge amounts of damage to their own homes and businesses, must also raise the money necessary to cover the church's part of the repairs.  Nevertheless, dried out and with temporary power, Trinity has resumed its Sunday services. 

With all of that going on, as soon as residents were allowed to return to the island after Hurricane Ike had huffed and puffed and blown houses down, Fr. Pogue and his wife, Gay, had this banner painted and hung it on their porch.

They set up tables with telephones and computer lines on their porch so that anyone who wanted to could get in touch with relatives, insurance companies and the like.  And they added big ice chests of drinks and pots of coffee.

They are still available today, and no doubt will be until full service has returned to the Island.

Several times Gay has cooked up huge pots of gumbo, red beans and rice, and the like, and invited the CITY to stop by and join the Pogues for dinner.  Free.  No charge.  And not on the church's dime either.

Others whose kitchen appliances were working, have chipped in as well, and brought casseroles and pies and cakes and salads and soups.  Some were Episcopalians, but probably most weren't.

The Episcopal Church was truly there to help.  And it still is.  And of all of the clergy members I've known over the years, representing many denominations, no one has every topped Fr. Ron Pogue's organization skills and his ability to minister to the masses, especially in times on extreme need.

He told me once that he's always thought of himself as a minister, even before he went to the seminary and was ordained....at least ever since he was in junior high school, and that's been more than forty years ago. 

An amazing testament, quite frankly,  to the Glory of God.  But then Galveston's Trinity Episcopal Church has always shown extraordinary leadership.  Thank goodness Fr. Ron and Gay were there to make sure it did it again.

BILL CHERRY, REALTORS

DALLAS

Our 44th Year Selling America

214 503-8563

HOW ABOUT THIS AUTO MANUFACTURER BAIL OUT PLAN? 

The auto manufacturers have the idea we should give them a bunch of billions of dollars to keep them solvent until they can reorganize their royally screwed up finances.  Who's to say they can or will?

I'd rather the US give the manufacturers X thousand dollars for every vehicle they sell to a U.S. citizen in, say, 2009-2010.  So the production will resume, workers will keep their jobs, and we'll see just how clever management really is, or isn't.

BILL CHERRY, REALTORS

DALLAS

OUR 44TH YEAR SELLING AMERICA

214 503-8563

One of the primary contradictions of a democratic society with a free-market is that to survive, we can’t allow most business monopolies.  When one company gets the upper-hand, it likely destroys its segment of free enterprise.

The United States did a pretty good job of balancing this, at least it did for a couple of decades after the end of World War II.  We had anti-trust laws with teeth in them and legislators watching over them because the public demanded it.

But that has changed, and it has changed almost exponentially in recent years.  Huge banks controlling billions of dollars in customer deposits and loans.  Carpet mills sucked up by others until now when almost all of the carpet used in America is manufactured by just three mills.  Brokerage houses, once general partnerships, turned into stock companies so that they could grow to gargantuan size, and those running them not have their own entire personal wealth on the line.

The economic trouble the United States is in today is primarily the result of lax anti-trust laws that allowed monopolies.  And those laws became lax and monopolies grew because our system doesn’t see anything wrong with having paid lobbyist influence and often times write our legislation.

So here’s where we are. 

What should Americans do?  What Americans should do is find one or more good locally owned, locally managed commercial banks…ones whose business don’t take place at counters in grocery stores, and move their accounts there.  And no aggregate of accounts should exceed the maximum federally insured total.

I thought you might find this bit of sociology interesting and worth pondering.

At Thanksgiving in 2000 the book I had written comprised of historical stories about Galveston, Texas was published.  It was a trade paperback -- that means a regular hard cover book-size paperback -- and it sold for $19.95.

Nevertheless, since Hurricane Ike hit the island, apparently there has been a re-surging interest in my book by the public.  Add to that that they are in short supply.

I noted today that according to amazon.com, used copies of the book are selling for over $40 each.  New copies are as high as $80. 

That does not feather my nest.  I still receive the same per-copy royalty.

BILL CHERRY, REALTORS

DALLAS

I am one of those who thinks it would be best for America if congress were to let the U.S. automakers either swim, float or drown, and let them do it all by themselves.

If the bankruptcy laws are as I understand them, by being forced into bankruptcy the exculpatory contracts between the companies and their executives, unions, and on and on could be reviewed and renegotiated.  And those reviews and renegotiations would be in front of the court and require the court’s approval.

Executives and unions are at the base of the financial problems.  It isn’t the owners, who are the stockholders, and no one has spent anytime looking after them.

For a CEO to earn, say, $15 million a year plus other expensive benefits and bonuses and it was under his administration and direction that the company cratered, is just unacceptable to reasonable people.

Here’s the chance to stop it. And to let the executives of other industries know they may be next.

EAT THE WORLD -- A GOOFY NAME FOR A DALLAS CAFE

posted 1 minute ago, updated 1 minute later

EAT THE WORLD -- A GOOFY NAME FOR A WONDERFUL CHEF'S RESTAURANT

If I were going to post a photo here, it would be of a huge man with a trimmed goatee and mustache in a Paul Prudhomme flat-top chef's hat and Bermuda shorts. And when I say huge, we're talking about mega-hundreds.

The guy's a cooking genius and he owns and runs a place in a shopping center near our Dallas Lake Highlands house called Eat the World. Don't ask me where the name came from. I kind of find it a bit disgusting if I roll it over in my mind for very long.

The huge fellow with the trimmed goatee and mustache in the Paul Prudhomme flat-top chef's hat's name is Toby O'Brien, and he's one of Dallas' most talented chefs.

O'Brien was the visionary who was behind the famous Yegue Creek brewpub on Henderson in the 90s. After it closed, he moved into catering, and in no time, his catering business far exceeded the ability of his home kitchen.

So he rented a goofy-looking worn out ex-convenience store, threw in some good commercial kitchen equipment, added Salvation Army decor in the adjacent dining room, and began preparing every kind of take-home casserole imaginable. Which is not to say you can't eat there, too. Don't expect candle light tablecloths and starched white napkins. And there's no strolling violinist. Remember, that's not why you're there.

On Fridays he has a barbeque extravaganza, and you've never eaten better barbeque -- ribs, chicken, pulled pork, beef, tamales stuffed with barbeque brisquet. The whole nine yards.

And he cooks circle-cut hams and turkeys right there, nothing frozen or sent down from a commissary in Paramus, New Jersey. He recoils at the sound of the name "Sysco."

So with Thanksgiving coming, I thought I'd tell you about this gem -- Toby O'Brien and his Eat the World Cafe. You can order all or part of your Thanksgiving dinner there. Patty says his dressing is better than mine, so she's ordered a quart for her and a quart for her friend Cindi' and her family.

EAT THE WORLD

9850 Walnut Hill Lane at Audelia Street

214-340-3663

His neighbors are a nail salon, locksmith, Mexican grocery store, mail center and a bunch of vacant store fronts. Don't let this distract you.

This past week, delegates of the Episcopal Diocese of Fort Worth, Texas, representing its 19,000 members, voted to remove the diocese from the 2.1 million members of the mother church.

The Right Reverend Jack Iker is the bishop of the Ft. Worth diocese.

That makes the fourth diocese -- following San Joaquin, Calif.; Pittsburgh; and Quincy, Ill. – to leave.

The major disagreements are about how the seceding dioceses feel the mother church should treat homosexuals and women.  They opine that the scriptures lead them to believe that homosexuals and women should not be ordained and that the church should not participate in or acknowledge any same-sex unions.

The problem is that the mother church, the one that represents the many other dioceses, the church that totals the 2.1 million members isn’t so sure about those issues. 

What cannot be overlooked is that the four seceding diocese are not willing to follow the somewhat democratic canons of the Episcopal Church.  Instead, they want to pick up their marbles and go home, and plan to do so taking the name and the assets of the diocese with them.

I would think that those of us --- most of the 2.1 million they are leaving behind – feel they are starting their own denomination, therefore, they should leave Episcopal out of their churches’ names.

They also should leave their church buildings and other assets behind, and start from scratch.  Raise the money necessary to start their new denomination. 

For not only are they in opposition to the mother church, but they are speaking for the dead, those of the previous generations whose money and dedication built the Episcopal Diocese of Ft. Worth to what it is.  And neither side can know for sure how those faithful would have voted had they been faced with the current issue.

BRENNAN'S OF NEW ORLEANS AND HOUSTON - MEMORIES

I'm sure that the first fine meal I ever had in New Orleans was at Brennan's on Royal Street, and that was before the family bought Commander's Palace in the Garden District.  So to be on the safe side, I'll say that was 1954.

And then when I was a student at Tulane (circa 1958) and hosted a radio program, "American Airlines Music 'til Dawn" from a nearby Royal Street furniture store window, I made friends with one of the restaurant's captains.  A fellow named Bill Porter.

It seems that loads of people would order escargot to show off -- snails baked in garlic butter -- but when the dish was served, they wouldn't do much more than dare their dinner guests to try one.  Few did. 

But I loved escargot then as much as I do today.  So this dare benefited me.  Here's how.

Before 9 PM when my show would air, I would stop by the kitchen door...it was right there on Royal about 30 feet from the restaurant's main door.  One of the kitchen staff would tell Bill I was waiting.  Within moments, he would grab a still hot but untouched plate of escargot from a guest's table, and serve them to me out of the kitchen door along with a loaf of French bread and the left overs from a bottle of expensive wine.

There I would sit on a car fender at the curb, in my tux, eating my escargot and hot, crusty French bread, and sipping what was left from the bottle of wine, white dinner napkin in my lap.  Life couldn't possibly get any better than that for a broke college student.

Move the clock forward at least thirty years.  My lifelong friend, Victor Damiani and his wife Judy, and Patty and I came up with what would become one of our foursome's traditions. For birthdays and during the Christmas Season, we would dress in our formal attire, dine at Brennan's of Houston, and then go to a play at the Alley Theater or a performance of the Houston Symphony.  What nice celebrations!

Brennan's of Houston for most of its years was managed by Alex Brennan-Martin, and while our friendship was at best described as casual, I had known his wife, Jane, for a number of years.  They really made a handsome couple.

So you can only imagine how hard it hit me when I learned that during Hurricane Ike, Bennan's of Houston caught fire from a gas leak, burned to the ground, and seriously injured three of the staff who had stayed behind to look after the place during the storm.

It appears it was totally destroyed.  Two months later, I have not been able to learn whether or not the restaurant will be rebuilt and reopened.  I can assure the Brennan family that it would be difficult to find a solitary soul who ever ate there who isn't praying for its return.

I'm one of those.

BILL CHERRY, REALTORS

DALLAS

Our 44th Year Selling America

214 503-8563

800 314-7110