Gun Barrel City, TX

75 miles is a long way to go for “Goo-Gone”, but if you love your wife, you have to do these things.

I’ve probably lost you already, so I should explain. “Goo-Gone” is a product that “removes grease, gum, stickers, crayon and tape”. It also has “Citrus Power” and “Scientific Technology”. In spite of that, it’s actually very good, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it also deals with cockroaches and feminine-itch (but don’t try this at home). Anyway, Amy took our bottle (I didn’t ask her what she needed it for …), so we need another. That’s the first part.

The second part is that I needed somewhere to go on a road trip to get out of Dallas. You know how they put up the weather map on TV, and every day it has the names of different local places on it, presumably to appease the natives (ooooh, look, Tiverton’s on the telly). Well, on Thursday, the local weather map showed Gun Barrel City. I’m sure if you’d been here, you’d have had the same urge that I had to find out what a place called Gun Barrel City might look like.

So I set off to Gun Barrel City for Goo-Gone (not going too fast for you, am I?). Since the car has GPS, I went the back roads. A couple of weeks ago, an editorial column in the Telegraph newspaper referred to Dallas as “arcadian”. Even colleagues (one of whose father had sent the clipping to him) who have lived here for many years burst out laughing. Either this guy has no clue what the word “arcadian” means, or he’d been smoking something. My trip took me through the ethnic suburbs of Dallas, and “third-world” is the adjective that springs more readily to my mind. The derelict shopping plazas, closed down restaurants (and I use that word in its most liberal sense), gas stations with several black guys on dilapidated chairs drinking beer, are very reminiscent, for me, of the poorer areas of the Caribbean, or even Los Angeles. (As an aside, there was a recent slight brouhaha about an American journalist who had made negative comments about the President of Brazil’s drinking habits; a Brazilian journalist on the radio made the very good point that there is a certain cultural difference between the two countries, and that we always view different cultures through the lens of our own; I mention this only because the observations of the Telegraph columnist, of an American, and of a Dallas native – and indeed of myself – are likely to be somewhat divergent).

And you definitely know what kind of area you’re in when you come across places of worship named “Lighthouse of Praise Church”, “Fountain of the Living Word Church” and “Church of the Living God, the Pillar and the Ground of the Truth”.

I did find a “real” flea market, unlike last week’s plastic Crap-o-Rama, and bought an old-ish copy of Milles Borne (the French card game – very good, if you’ve never played it). And I found a lot of places that I wouldn’t eat in if you paid me. Oh, and Gun Barrel City (pop. 5,204)? It has a Sonic burger joint, a MacDonalds, a WalMart, a Home Depot … not unlike many other Texan cities, in fact, but I’m sure this was Gun Barrel City. Yes, I’m pretty sure that was it.

Traders Village, TX

I usually wear my shirts for two days when I’m away, to cut down on washing (unless it’s been a particularly hot and sweaty day). So this morning, after my shower, I put on yesterday’s shirt, and it still stank of rodeo. It went straight into dirty laundry. Incidentally, you can find out all about the Mesquite Rodeo at www.mesquiterodeo.com.

Mesquite Rodeo

Tim asked me this morning if it was all for real, or staged (like the wrestling). Looked pretty real to me. Certainly quite a few of the riders finished up hobbling off, and the bulls and broncos look pretty mean – I don’t think you can train them to fake it. One of the sections was simply called “Jack Daniels Cowboy Poker” – I had no idea what to expect. They put a table and four chairs in the middle of the arena. Four cowboys sat in the chairs, and the rules are simply that the last one to leave his chair is the winner. Sounds easy enough, until they let a very large, and very mean, bull into the arena. The bull was not at all amused, and was definitely in attack mode. Its horns were “rounded off”, so that it could do no permanent damage, but it had no problem tossing the cowboys, complete with furniture, into the air. So, yes, I think it’s real. But, if I were to go again, and I would, it would be outdoors, where the unmistakable smell has a chance to dissipate.

Today I thought I’d stay a little closer to the hotel, since I didn’t get back until after 11 last night. I went to “Traders Village” – a large local flea market. Most of the stuff was fairly uninteresting: cheap socks, t-shirts, knock-off perfumes, lots of eateries. But I found a bookstall (of course), and on the periphery were more of the kind of stalls that we associate with car-boot sales. I didn’t buy anything (well, ok … just one book – but it’s not for me!), but I did find a couple of interesting stalls.

Graffiti Artist

One was fairly makeshift, and featured a (presumably) reformed graffiti artist. A large crowd had gathered around to watch him layer spray paint onto a cardboard canvas, and then use a variety of tools, from carefully shaped pieces of cardboard to plastic knives to scrunched up pages from a glossy magazine to coax amazing textures from what looked initially like a plain-colored surface. The secret, I suppose, is in the layering of color and the etching technique.

The other stall was selling fresh fruit and vegetables – always interesting in different parts of the world, because you realize just how diverse (and often unknown) is the plethora of edible stuff. This one had cactus leaves, so, of course, I had to ask. They’re common in Mexico, where they’re called “nopalito”. You clean off the spiky bits, boil them as you would potatoes, and slice them thinly, after which you can incorporate them into salads, or rice, or whatever. They taste, apparently, a little like okra or green beans.

And this brings me to a final bit of social commentary, which you can ignore if you wish – it is, after all, personal opinion. We always hear so much about the black culture, both in the US and England, but if you look at the statistics (which are very different in the two countries), Hispanics slightly outnumber blacks in the US (and are gaining ground). Yet there is very much less “noise” from the Hispanic culture. At the market today (where most of the signs were either in Spanish only, or in Spanish and English), I sat under a shade tree, and “people-watched” for a while. The Hispanics are very family-oriented, despite the “gang-culture” that the media exploits. The people that I spoke to were friendly; the children, for the most part, obedient and outgoing. My personal feeling is that Hispanics (or Latinos, as they seem to prefer currently) may very well eventually dominate. And this may be no bad thing.

Las Colinas, TX

Sonic

I wish I could say I've had a great road trip today, but in fact it was very boring. North on 35 to Sanger. Nothing there. Further north to Gainesville. Nothing there (except that I could get a chocolate milkshake at the Sonic burger joint). South west to Decatur. Nothing there. So back to the hotel - on the old Chisholm trail again (something seems to keep calling me back to that road).

Once you get outside the major city complexes, the smaller "cities" all seem to suffer the same fate. The big supermarkets and DIY stores open up outside town, servicing the ever-sprawling suburban environs so that all that's really left downtown is City Hall and some gift stores, with the odd coffee and doughnut shop. So they call it the "Nothingsville Historic Center" and leave the paint to slowly peel off the buildings. Always makes me feel slightly sad to see this happen, because people seem proud enough of their suburban homes to keep the lawns carefully manicured, but not proud enough of their community to do the same for the public buildings (unless, of course, they're related to sport in some way). I suppose the main reason this doesn't happen so much in England (though it does happen to a lesser degree) is that we have less space to play with. Toby and Hannah: the fate of our towns is in your hands (though I'm sure not as much as you'd like it to be).

Mustangs at Las Colinas

The highlight of the day was that I started out locally, at Las Colinas, which is really part of the Dallas/Fort Worth "metroplex" area. In a large square in the middle of Las Colinas there is a beautiful bronze casting of mustangs crossing a river. This is almost more impressive as a photograph than in real life, because the water around their hooves is "frozen" in time, making it look even more realistic. I'm reliably informed that the casting was done in High Wycombe, in Buckinghamshire (by a Brit work colleague who comes from High Wycombe - he supports Wycombe Wanderers football team, though he refers to them by a slightly different name that also begins with W).

Las Colinas, being part of the Metroplex area, is well maintained. It surrounds Lake Carolyn, from which they've extended a network of canals, complete with water taxis, so that the area has an overall feel of a cross between modern red-tiled roofed Mexican hacienda and Venice. Full points for trying, I think.

Oh, and on a side note, the latest fast food trend here is "Atkins friendly" reduced carbohydrate meals. Even the burger buns are reduced carbohydrate. A friend came across "reduced carbohydrate" orange juice. Having a bit of a scientific background, he was curious how they might do that, so that he looked at the list of ingredients. They'd replaced 50% of the orange juice with water. What can I say ...

Canton, TX

Sunday turned out to be warm and sunny, after several days of cool-ish weather and rain, so I decide to head about 90 miles out of Dallas to Canton, where I'd been told the "mother of all flea-markets" (car-boot sales) was on this weekend. All I knew was that it was in Canton, which was somewhere on Route 20 heading east.

So I put in my new CD (Mondo Soukous), wound down the windows, and cranked up the volume. I don't understand how the African continent, with such a troubled history, is able to produce music like soukous, which is so joyous and uplifting it always makes me want to stop the car, get out, and dance on the verge. Anyway, with sunlight and a warm breeze streaming through the window, soukous belting from the speakers, settled down at 70 on the Interstate, it feels good to be alive.

Knowing how good the average Texan is at giving directions, I eventually chicken out and pull off at a gas station to buy a map, just in case I'm headed in the wrong direction - this is purely a precaution, and I'm bound to need the map sometime anyway - right? As I enter, the checkout girls are speaking Spanish to each other, but, as I approach, they seem to sense that I don't, and address me in English. I fork over my $5 for the map, but take the opportunity to ask if I'm on the right road for Canton. "Ay, Maria, do ju know where is Canton?". She doesn't, and clearly neither of them has ever heard of it. I'm rescued by a scrawny, scruffy guy in the next checkout line.

At this point, an aside: this guy has on a black T-shirt that says something like "Reality is for people that can't handle drugs", and a black baseball cap that says quite clearly "POLICE". I have no reason to doubt that this is true, and here's why: in the States, there are several layers in the police hierarchy. At the federal level, the best known "police" are the FBI - they're obviously the cream of the crop; at the state level, you most commonly encounter State Troopers, who despite often being quite malicious, are impeccably turned out; then at the city level are the local police, who are responsible only for one particular city; below them are the township police, whose bailiwick is a single town within the city limits. Notice we're going down the food chain here, with IQs and dress-sense to match. So this guy is very likely to be an (off-duty) township policeman.

"Yeah, Canton", pronounced totally differently to the way I said it (my glottal stops obviously way out of whack), " - take twenny east, s'about exit five hunnerd twenny sump'n, 'bout thirdy mile". I thank him, and take him at his word. The map sits unopened on the passenger seat, and I'm back on the highway watching the buzzards cruising the central reservation. Think about it - there's a 30 yard wide grass-covered patch that's hundreds of miles long, containing a trapped microcosm of rodent life. The choice is buzzard-food or road kill.

Just before I get to Canton, and apart from yet another camel farm that doesn't phase me any more, I come across the "Billy the Kid Museum". But hold on, Billy the Kid is New Mexico, not Texas. Of course, I can't resist. It's $1 for adults, and completely unstaffed. A little cheesy, but it claims that Billy the Kid actually lived until a ripe old age and died in 1950. If you don't believe me, take a look at http://www.billythekid1950.com. For such wide open spaces, there sure are some creepy corners in this state.

Canton flea market is truly big - 5 acres of stalls (that's faaahv acres, which is a lot of crap to sift through to get to the good stuff). But I succeed in finding some good stuff (well, I think it's good stuff - whoever threw it out probably doesn't agree), including a pen for Gerry and gifts for the kids, and head back to the hotel.

On the way, I stop off at "Kiss My Ribs", a real Texas BBQ place. It's just a roadhouse in the middle of nowhere, really, advertising "BBQ + Elvis + Ribs + Blues + Pork". I don't normally stop at these kind of places, for fear of coming out with more than I went in with, if you get my drift, but I'm glad I did. I explained that I'd never had real Texas BBQ before, and asked what I should order. I was the only customer in the place. I had iced tea from a big plastic urn, potato salad, coleslaw, beans, and almost more pork ribs than I could eat for $8. The meat simply fell off the bone, and was delicious. Vickie serves behind the counter, and husband Mike cooks the ribs - the secret is in cooking them veeeeeery slowly. I said I'd come back, and bring my wife, and then remembered that Val is now a veggie. "Don't worry about that", said Vickie, "we also do baked potatoes, with or without meat - we'll fix her right up".

Dallas

I'm a Hertz Gold Club member (which is only right, since I spend more time in their cars than I do in my own). One of the benefits of this is that I get an automatic upgrade to the next level - I usually book a mid-size car, and get upgraded to a full-size, like a Ford Taurus. Last time I was here, some of the other IBM guys told me that when they booked a full-size, they were upgraded to a Jag or Volvo. So that's what I tried this time. What do I get? A Crown Victoria. Think boat, but with wheels. I call it, affectionately, Das Boot.  It's ok at the hotel, because they have a guy with a paddle in each hand to guide me into a parking space, but it's difficult at work. And when you lock it, the damn thing honks, drawing attention to itself. It's the kind of car old men with white hair drive. Wait a minute ... I AM an old man with white hair - I've gotta change this car.

Anyway, in a moment of what I suspect must have been a flash of literary genius, I penned the following:

   Cruising down MacArthur in my beautiful Crown Vic

   Trying to look really cool but feeling like a ... old man with white hair.

Do you think it's worth trying to flesh this out a little? I've attached a piccie of the car - I put a quarter on the hood so you can get an idea of the size of this thing.

Today's road trip was really only half a road trip. For a start I only went to Dallas, and I didn't really do all of it (unlike Debbie, if you remember those halcyon days of movie-making). So I have to reserve final judgement until I've seen the rest of it.

First a couple of facts about Dallas from the guide book. Population over 1 million, 3.5 million if you include the MetroPlex area (and I think that Fort Worth is probably condescendingly included). Eighth largest city in the US. "Top leisure visitor destination in Texas" (which I think says more about Texas than it does about Dallas). More restaurants per capita than New York City (I think we've covered this before).

So I start in the historic downtown area, which coincidentally is where JFK was shot. I've attached a piccie of the memorial. It's big. And it's concrete. This seems as much of a raison d'etre as anything in Texas needs, and probably symbolizes Texas more than it does JFK.

Downtown is just a collection of tall buildings, like many American cities. The architectural dissonance never seems to bother anybody. Some cities are a joy to walk around - New York, London, Paris. And some are not, which is a shame. Cities like Dallas and Los Angeles really need you to drive to an area, walk around it, drive to another area, walk around it, etc. Anyway, after seeing downtown Dallas, it was on my list, together with Toronto, as most boring city in North America (incidentally, I believe Toronto is going for the the world championship this year, having already won the North American round). I know I'm hard on Toronto, but I really have walked all around it, and can assure you that there's nothing to see. In its favor, it's the only city I've ever been to that labels the gay area on its tourist map, and that takes guts.

I had lunch in (or rather, outside) an Italian restaurant downtown, and it didn't take long before Stanley identified me as an easy mark for a quick sketch. In fact, he was very amusing, and I have great respect for someone that is prepared to do something in return for funds, rather than just asking for it. When I gave him money, I told him it wasn't for the picture, but for his time, because he took a good deal of time trying to get it right, in his own eyes.

Then I headed towards the Farmers Market. On the way, I noticed Dallas's answer to the problem of having more police than cars - give them bicycles. The Farmers Market was amazing - mahogany furniture (from Mexico?) at unbelievable prices, and every kind of fruit and vegetable imaginable.

I headed towards Deep Ellum "a hotbed of jazz and blues". I don't think it's fair to judge Deep Ellum on its daytime appearance. I suspect that, at night, the sidewalk probably vibrates under your feet, but it's pretty dead in the afternoon. I think I would like to go back there in the evening, because it looked as though it had the potential for being pretty lively.

On the way back, I passed what looked like a film set. I asked one of the technicians what they were filming, and he told me it was a Chuck E Cheese commercial. He had to agree with me that it was "different".

So I still have to see the "Arts District", "Uptown", and the "West Village". I'll reserve judgement until then.

Crown Victoria

Me

Stanley

JFK memorial

Dallas cops