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Posted on Fri, May. 09, 2008

Florida debate on bumper ornament bill gets cut off

By BUD KENNEDY

Star-Telegram Staff Writer

Luckily for all Texans, our state Legislature is taking the year off.

In the absence of the usual zany antics in Austin, we have been forced to turn to Florida for entertainment.

Ending a debate that could have come straight from under the Texas Capitol dome, the Florida House has curbed a bill that would have fined motorists $60 for driving with "obscene decorations."

The bill was meant primarily to outlaw a certain popular metallic truck-bumper ornament.

Let's just say that it looks exactly like the bovine body part that separates the bulls from the steers.

Taking a sharp knife to a Republican's highway safety bill, the Florida House carved off and discarded a Senate amendment that would have outlawed displaying any image of "reproductive glands."

State Sen. Carey Baker, a conservative and a gun-shop owner from Eustis in Lake County, had convinced the Senate that police should ticket any driver with a bullish ornament hanging from a bumper.

The Senate had handled the matter gingerly through two days of debate, arguing about "glands" in front of a gallery of Florida schoolchildren.

Baker called the decorations obscene, even though the real thing is plainly visible in any pasture. Without a bull attached, the argument goes, the ornaments look more like something human that legally can't be displayed in Florida, not even on the beach in Key West.

According to reputable Florida newspapers, Baker actually said, "If we overlook the small obscenity, then it could grow into a larger one."

Another Republican state senator, Jim King of Jacksonville, debated Baker. King bragged about how he had one of the big bumper ornaments on his Suburban -- at least, until his wife complained. When men started honking and waving at her when she drove, she told King to cut the bull.

During the debate, King asked, "At what point do you say, 'Big Brother or big government are stepping in areas they shouldn't?'"

The idea of banning the bull baubles started earlier this year in Virginia, where a Democrat wanted motorists fined $250 for displays "resembling human genitalia."

State Rep. Lionell Spruill Sr. of Chesapeake asked, "What about the kids?"

He told a television station, "It comes to a point where there are certain things you just can't do." And hanging a bullish ornament from a rear bumper is "just too much," he said.

But other Virginia lawmakers declined to give law officers the added assignment of being the bumper-good-taste police.

This appears to be a Deep South phenomenon. In Texas, we don't ride around showing off those things.

We fry them.

Riscky's Steakhouse in the Stockyards inherited the legacy of Theo's Saddle & Sirloin. According to local legend, it was the first restaurant anywhere offering the chuckwagon delicacy gently called "calf fries."

Some original owners pass the restaurant twice daily -- not in trucks but as part of the real-life Fort Worth Herd longhorn cattle drive.

Riscky's serves an average of about 10 platters of calf fries daily, manager Charles Scott said.

"We always get people to try one first," Scott said. "If they don't know what they are, we ask, 'Have you ever heard of Rocky Mountain oysters?'"

Even squeamish visitors usually like calf fries, he said.

"They don't like hearing what they are," he said. "But they like them."

Texans don't waste time arguing about bull.