Pharr South

This afternoon we went to Pharr South to dance to Randy Dougherty. Pharr is one of the string of cities that form the "Rio Grande Valley" area where Winter Texans flock to get away from the cold winter weather further north.

After the dance, Ken wanted to spend more time at Best Buy checking out tablets. He dropped me off at the Pharr City Library to have fun meanwhile. I talked with the people at the desk and found that anyone can get a library card with a driver's license and some recent mail sent to the address on the license. Several of the local cities have reciprocal agreements, so a card obtained at Pharr can also be used in Mission and McAllen and several other libraries. However, McAllen is the only one that circulates eBooks, and for that you must have an actual McAllen library card. So our next step is a visit to the McAllen library.


This evening I read an email from a former colleague at Paramount Petroleum Corporation, which was bought by ALON USA in 2006, the year before Ken and I retired. After wishing us a happy Thanksgiving, Ron went on to mention that ALON has announced plans to close the Paramount refinery and use the property as only an asphalt terminal.

This will be a serious blow to the local economy and probably to many of the workers, although some may move to the Bakersfield refinery. I had been thinking about my friends at Paramount recently, because we have started to notice ALON branded service stations. Previously ALON had been operating under the Fina and 7-Eleven brand names.