Confusing My Mythical Texas Towns
I saw that someone arrived at my blog by searching for Quirksville. Somehow I got confused and was thinking of Brimbaw. For the record, Quirksville is not Brimbaw.
Speaking of Texas towns, there is a non-mythical town in Texas named Dido.
And, of course, the true stories from Virgil, Texas are based upon Weekly World News articles. What goes around comes around. Circle of life and all that.
But this didn't happen in Texas:
When Dido was five years old she stole a recorder (a flute-like instrument) from school. Dido didn't end up behind bars, but a year later her recorder practice helped land her a spot at the Guildhall School of Music in London, England. Dido was quite a musician - she played the piano, violin, and of course the recorder, by the time she was 10.
Returning to Texas, I just learned a few unusual things about Ross Perot:
In 1969...Perot attempted to take control, through a stock swap, of the Collins Radio Company, an Iowa-based CIA and military contractor....Perot approached Collins with merger plans that called for Perot assuming control of any combined company. Arthur Collins, the company's founder, was strangely determined that Perot not take over his company....Within weeks, Collins feared that the only way to prevent the takeover was by merging with, it seemed, any other company but Perot's....In 1971, after talks with TRW fell through, North American Rockwell (which later became Rockwell International) finally stepped in with an investment offer that was finalized in September. Despite its initial promise to keep Collins management intact, Rockwell replaced Arthur Collins as president at the end of the first quarter of fiscal year 1972. Collins resigned January 14, 1972, and started a new company. In the end, he lost control of his thirty-nine-year-old company. After a three-year struggle, Collins succeeded only in saving it from Perot....
[I]n the early 1970s, Perot met a young Marine officer whose name would later become infamous in the minds of most Americans. Oliver North wanted to come to work for EDS, but Perot convinced him to stay in the Marines, which led to his later becoming the main villain in the Iran-Contra scandal. It would not be the last time Perot and North crossed paths, however....In the early 1980s, Perot became a member of Ronald Reagan's President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB). The PFIAB is a little known, very powerful group of presidential appointees whose approval is required for all U.S. covert operations worldwide....It was while serving on the spooky PFIAB that Perot again met up with Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North, who by this time was on the National Security Council staff. North asked Perot to help finance the rescue of U.S. Brigadier General James Dozier, who had been kidnapped by the Red Brigade in Italy. The mission succeeded before Perot's $500,000 was used....Perot continued to established himself as someone who could bankroll Oliver North's off-the-shelf adventures. These involved more rescue attempts, many of which failed. They included the 1985 attempt that resulted in the murder of William Buckley, chief of the CIA station in Lebanon. Perot's money often ended up in the hands of foreign terrorists and drug dealers with nothing gained in return....
Meanwhile, there's always Paris...
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