AstroCat 9000

Friend to Humans and Animals. Native Texan. Prepper. Occasional Bad Memer. I am not a cat, but my cat is. #McGrewCrew 🎙️ #TeamStacks 👽 (backup account)

[AstroCat 9000 @AstroCat9k]

@jackie1321_67 @PlanetOfMemes 🤔

[AstroCat 9000 @AstroCat9k]

@tedlieu Bro, did you fart?

[AstroCat 9000 @AstroCat9k]

@BTCBreadMan @StevieStacks84 Right on.

I buy that lemonade, too.

[Traces of Texas @TracesofTexas]

A very happy baby in San Antonio, 1897. A whole world of possibilities and potential. I wonder what became of him or her.

[AstroCat 9000 @AstroCat9k]

@skscartoon @Yo5niper 🤣

[AstroCat 9000 @AstroCat9k]

@Donnahpiranha @jackie1321_67 🤔

[AstroCat 9000 @AstroCat9k]

Well, how-deeee.

What happened? 🍺😸🪱

[AstroCat 9000 @AstroCat9k]

@TrumpsMustache @RepDougCollins

[AstroCat 9000 @AstroCat9k]

@malonebarry Did you just fart?

[Mindy MF Robinson 🦄 @iheartmindy]

I don't know why more people don't wear velvet....it makes me feel magical.

🔮🦄🩷

PS It is hawwwwt outside today, even for me.

[AstroCat 9000 @AstroCat9k]

@iheartmindy I want a Velvet portrait of Kenny Rogers.

Yes, I'm that weird. 😹

[AstroCat 9000 @AstroCat9k]

@iFightForKids

[AstroCat 9000 @AstroCat9k]

@DebraMilam6 @jackie1321_67 😹🪱

[Traces of Texas @TracesofTexas]

The Texas Quote of the Day shows how crazy things were in Galveston during the Civil War after the Battle of Galveston in 1863: "The war would wind on for another two and a half years, but the Battle of Galveston was the end as far as islanders were concerned. They felt badly used by both sides, and abandoned by mainlanders. The federal blockade resumed, of course, and Islanders made good use of it, setting up an extremely profitable blockade-running trade.

General Magruder fortified the island with enough artillery to prevent another federal invasion, and spent the rest of the war trying to maintain discipline among his mutinous ranks. Some units hadn't been paid for weeks. Their rations were so vile that on one occasion soldiers marched through the streets carrying the rotting carcass of meat intended for their dinner, and buried it with great ceremony. Some deserted for Mexico. Others stole from merchants, tore down fences and shacks for fuel, and in one case, lynched a businessman. The lynching took place when soldiers from the 21st Regiment of the Texas Cavalry hauled a saloon keeper who had shot a member of the regiment from his establishment at 27th and the Strand ---- an area of joints and brothels called Smoky Row ---- and hung him from a wooden sign above the front door of his own business.

Soldiers frequently threatened to kill their own officers. Magruder himself was almost blown up when 500 soldiers with two artillery pieces surrounded a house where the general and his officers were being entertained by some of Galveston's ladies ---- perhaps the same ones who brought cakes and pies to the JOLO in better times. The general appeared at the front door, his 6 foot 4 inch frame looming above the mob. A spokesman shouted that there was no time for "feasting, fiddling and dancing," not while their own children begged food in the streets and the nation bled. The General appeared sympathetic. He promised to look into their complaints, then called out a regiment to disperse them and went back to the ladies."

---- Gary Cartwright, "Galveston: A History of the Island," 1991. I highly recommend this book.

Shown here: Confederate General John B. Magruder

[AstroCat 9000 @AstroCat9k]

@DebraMilam6 @jackie1321_67

[AstroCat 9000 @AstroCat9k]

@SammyJoCooks4U I been around, just not here.

I'm here again, though. 😹

[AstroCat 9000 @AstroCat9k]

@jackie1321_67 I still need to get that cup 😹

[AstroCat 9000 @AstroCat9k]

@StevieStacks84 Hey, bud.

Been a while.
I'm back.

👋😸

[Traces of Texas @TracesofTexas]

The Arcane Texas Fact of the Day:

In 1888, Austin civic leader Alexander P. Wooldridge proposed that Austin construct a dam across the Colorado River and use water power to attract manufacturing. The town had reached its limits as a seat of politics and education, Wooldridge said, yet its economy could not sustain its present size. Proponents of the dam won political control of Austin in 1889. Empowered by a new city charter in 1891 that more than tripled Austin's corporate area from 4 ½ to 16 ½ square miles, the city fathers implemented a plan to build a municipal water and electric system, construct a dam for power, and lease most of the waterpower to manufacturers. By late 1892 the sixty-foot-high Austin Dam was completed, impounding Lake McDonald behind it. This photo shows last granite block going into the first dam in Austin in 1892. But it turned out that the dam produced far less power than anticipated, manufacturers never came, periodic power shortfalls disrupted city services and Lake McDonald silted up.

Sadly the dam was lost on April 7th, 1900, when the Colorado River easily destroyed the 60-foot tall, 1200-foot long granite structure. Several dozen people were also killed in this flood. Here's a quote from the Austin Statesman:

"At 11.20 a.m. on April 7, when the lake level had reached a height of 11.07 feet above the crest of the dam, the dam gave way at a point ... about 300 feet from the east end of the dam. Observers [at three different points] all agree in their testimony that it first opened [at the point about 300 feet from the east end of the dam], and as though the mad current had simply pushed its way through the structure. Sooner than it takes to write these words the two sections ... each about 250 feet long, were shoved or pushed into the lower positions ... about 60 feet from their former positions in the dam. There was not the slightest overturning. ..."