Opinion

Dear Rusty: I am a new AMAC member and have an important question for you, and your answer will be greatly appreciated. My question is: Is the new DOGE effort going to help us, or hurt us, all those living on Social Security and receiving Medicare benefits? Please let us know soon. Regards: Worried Senior 

When I introduced this weekly column more than 22 years ago, my stated goal was to provide amusement--even if corny and outdated--largely for readers dealing with bodily wrinkles, waistlines, aches, breaks, bends and assorted other groans associated with later life. Sometimes I’ve tried to make lemonade when negative topics tempted.

Last week, I shared negative thoughts, promising additional details later. Here they are, my ire modified, even if not fully mollified.

Sunlight is starting to break through at the Capitol in the final month of the Texas legislative session.

Open government measures have won passage in the House of Representatives with bipartisan support, and more House votes are scheduled on legislation championed by the broad-based Texas Sunshine Coalition.

However, this transparency legislation is still waiting to be heard in the Senate. 

Action is needed soon in the upper chamber to protect Texans’ information rights before the Legislature adjourns June 2.

The St. Louis World’s Fair may have been the first time Ad and Plinky Toepperwein performed in public as husband and wife, but the couple from the Lone Star State wowed the matinee audience on May 13, 1904 with their trick-shot artistry.

Born in Boerne during the post-Civil War occupation, Adolph Toepperwein was raised by immigrant parents in Leon Springs on the outskirts of San Antonio. With a gunsmith for a father, the boy became proficient with firearms at a very early age. 

When one nitpicks, there’s no end to it. We’re all frequently guilty, and I admit to being among chief sinners, particularly since the term’s initial usage began in 1956, the same year I finished Early High School. Sudden thought: Maybe I’m the guy who first justified the term. 

Like heat surging from “simmer to boil” on the cook stove, I’m revealing current “nitpicky” items that might confuse and confound, but reasons enough for me to expand and expound. 

Three years after holding Texas’ first state fair, Henry L. Kinney was indicted in Philadelphia on May 4, 1855 for plotting to invade Nicaragua. The ex-smuggler and shady founder of Corpus Christi was, as always, up to no good. 

The Pennsylvania native was 18, when he visited relatives at the Irish colony of San Patricio in 1832. He wandered back to Texas five years later and set up shop on the western bank of the Nueces River, where it empties into Corpus Christi Bay. 

Dear Rusty: I am writing to ask for your advice on when I should sign up or enroll in a Medicare Plan. I have submitted an early retirement application to request benefits to begin 30 days after my 62nd birthday, in April 2025. I am a single lady with no dependents and currently rent my residence. Please advise. Signed: Approaching Senior Citizenship 

It’s got to be a borderline miracle when Eastland--a town with fewer than 5,000 people--can lay claim to not one, but TWO “facts” worthy of the Guinness Book of Records recognition.

“Facts” has quotation marks for a reason. It’s not certain that a horned toad named Ol’ Rip actually hibernated for 31 years in the Eastland County Courthouse cornerstone and found alive--sharing space with the Holy Bible and a bottle of whiskey--when the current courthouse construction began. 

On April 23, 1926, Bessie Coleman made the last payment on her new airplane and arranged for the second-hand Jenny to be flown to Jacksonville, Florida, site of her next air show.

“Brave Bessie” was born in 1893 less than a dozen miles from the Arkansas border in the northeast Texas community of Atlanta. Her father, who was three-quarters Cherokee, returned to his reservation roots around 1900, and her mother, strong-willed daughter of a freed slave, settled in Waxahachie south of Dallas.