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Brooks Peterson
Brooks Peterson's column is published Mondays. Brooks also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at petersonb@caller.com
Monday, September 20, 1999
Hey, Sherlock: Help us solve urban mysteries
You know what's missing from this column? (I mean, apart from restraint, insight, a sense of proportion and a few other odds and ends.) I'll tell you what's missing from this column: audience participation.
Oh, sure, I hear from some of you once in a while, and I genuinely appreciate it. Particularly the notes and calls that don't contain threats.
But enough of that. The point I'm trying to make here is that we ink-stained wretches are at something of a disadvantage vis-a-vis our colleagues in the trendier media. There, whether via radio talk show, TV phone-in extravaganza or computer chat room, two-communication happens. And it happens all the time.
Now, I have thought and thought on this. And I have concluded it is incumbent on me, being the trendy, happening kind of newscreature I am, to make a real effort to bring all you groovy guys and gals into the action. Cool, huh?
So here's the plan: From time to time, I intend to toss out challenges which you may or may not accept. If you do, fine. If you don't, at least I will have made the effort - and you'll have no grounds for complaining that I've kept you out of the action.
Today's pair of topics fits under the rubric of what have come to be called (by me) Urban Mysteries: puzzling issues which may be of little or no significance in themselves, but which linger in your cranium indefinitely, refusing to be driven out like some unwanted party guest who remains, scraping the last of the chile con queso dip out of the bowl long after the other revelers have departed.
Let's begin with . . .
The great wine cooler mystery: You know wine coolers, right? Rather insipid alcoholic confections, they trickled onto the American scene - what? 10-15 years ago? Boosted by the immensely successful Bartles and Jaymes TV commercials (the two resolutely un-hip, un-happening codgers sitting on the front porch - remember?), they enjoyed a considerable vogue, particularly among women, and they remain with us yet.
Except . . . they're not wine coolers any more. Check the label: I have. Now they're just coolers, period. And somewhere on the bottle, if you look for it, you'll usually see, in small print: "Malt beverage." You know what we make of malt, right? Beer. Way un-chic.
Now, what we have here is a for-sure mystery. To resort briefly to my Inspector Morse mode, I will postulate there are two possibilities:
(1.) There has been some change in the formula for these beverages: For whatever reason, the coolers that once were made from wine are now produced from a malt base. Why?
(2.) This is the one that'll appeal to the conspiracy theorists: Perhaps wine coolers never were wine coolers - were in fact malt-derived from the beginning. If that is the case, what forced the bottlers to own up to this?
I really look forward to hearing from you on this one.
Where have all the red ants gone? In this fire-ant-plagued age of ours, we tend to forget that these thoroughly unpleasant, ill-tempered little creatures are relatively recent arrivals on our scene, having journeyed hither from lands to the south of us.
Given the pain they can, and do, inflict, it's entirely understandable that we should be preoccupied with the fire ants . . . but what ever became of the regular ol' red ants of my boyhood? Notably larger than the fire ants, the red ants would bite, too - but at their worst such bites were a mere tap on the wrist in comparison with the itching, burning pain of a fire ant bite.
So: Where are the red ants? Used to be, there was a nice big colony about a block away from us on Taylor Street, smack in front of the old Florence Apartments (long gone now, alas - another casualty of Corpus Christi's determination to obliterate its architectural past). Haven't checked it lately, but I'm not sanguine about its prospects.
Did the fire ants do away with their larger but less combative colleagues? I wouldn't put it past 'em. Or did the red ants find themselves a new gig somewhere else? And where were all our Friends of Nature when the poor red ant was coming under assault?
C'mon: Inquiring minds want to know.
(Peterson can be reached by phone at 886-3772, or by e-mail at petersonb@caller.com)
Brooks Peterson
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