DOWN HOME: Five signs that ‘the end’ is near

Here are some signs, in ascending order of shockability:

• Temperatures in this part of Texas still range well into the 80s.

That’s not a super-unusual climatological event. But you know it’s a weird Halloween when Trick-or-Treaters ring the bell for ice cream and sports drinks to ward off heat stroke. I hear it’s so hot that radio host/professional skeptic Rush Limbaugh dressed for his Halloween party as a big blue-and-green ball engulfed in flames and called himself Global Warming.

• The Dallas Cowboys have replaced the blue star on their helmets with a red “L.”

Not so long ago, when the temperature was just a few degrees warmer, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and the Dallas-Fort Worth sports media speculated about the ’Boys becoming the first team to host and play in the Super Bowl simultaneously. After “America’s Team” occupies their Arlington stadium all season, the NFL will have to open the roof and fumigate JerryWorld before it can play The Big Game there.

• The Baptist General Convention of Texas is meeting in McAllen next week.

Believe it or not, we’ve never held an annual meeting in the Rio Grande Valley. ’Bout time.

• The nationally ranked and bowl-eligible Baylor Bears ran onto the football field to do battle with the unranked Texas Longhorns.

The last time this happened, none of the players on either team was alive. That was the fall of 1986. OK, so maybe a still-eligible grad student or two might have been born by then, but they would’ve been babies. Baylor won that long-ago matchup, 18-13.

This season, the TCU Horned Frogs, once the scruff of the old Southwest Conference, and Baylor’s Bears may be the finest football teams in Texas. (Well, maybe the Houston Texans are better than the Frogs.)

Wouldn’t a Baylor-TCU Cotton Bowl be fun? And if the Bears win, the students could tear down the goal posts, and the alums could shout, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus!”

• The Texas Rangers made the World Series.

If you have faith the size of a grain of mustard seed, you may be able to cast a mountain into the sea. But that doesn’t mean your baseball team will win the pennant.

Five years ago, folks across Texas cheered when the Houston Astros played the Chicago White Sox for the world championship. That was wonderful for the Lone Star State. But many Texans wondered if we’d live long enough to watch the Rangers compete in the Series. So, whether you’re from Abbott or Zephyr, Bovina or Yorktown, a Texas team in the finals is a big deal.

All this doesn’t portend the Second Coming, of course. But just in case, pull your rapture robe out of mothballs.