Texas Landscape

It’s July 4^th weekend. Everyone’s enjoying the long weekend, as July 4^th falls on a Monday this year. The temperature is around 100ºF (38ºC) and humid – too hot for most people to be outside. For some reason that I don’t know, East Texas is at its hottest around 5pm; it’s different in West Texas, where the desert doesn’t retain the heat in the same way.

As I look out of my hotel window, I see the flatness extending for miles, punctuated only by the water towers that are a feature of everywhere in America that I’ve ever been, and the occasional high-rise building – usually confined to downtown Dallas and Fort Worth. The electrical power plant behind the hotel, eight floors down, is the nucleus of single-file marching armies of pylons that stretch to the horizon. Despite the apparent, from ground-level, “concreteness” of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, large clumps of green foliage are visible in every direction.

Because it’s a holiday weekend, the parking lot is mostly empty. The participants of yesterday’s wedding have left. But a large camper occupies two opposing spaces, and a graffiti-ridden dumpster sits in the middle. What few cars and trucks there are, are parked in the shade of any available tree. Larger, articulated, trucks are parked behind an adjacent shopping plaza that is otherwise empty.

In the grounds surrounding an adjoining apartment complex, a barbecue is set up. Occasionally, somebody comes down from a third floor apartment to check on its progress. The metal barbecue tongs, having been sitting in the sun, are too hot to pick up at first, and the guy drops them quickly, and manoevres them awkwardly into the shade, where they sit for a few minutes before he can pick them up.

In the parking lot, a man is pacing backwards and forwards, but always keeping within the shade of a tree. He’s clearly troubled. He stops, and raises a hand to his brow, possibly wiping the sweat from his eyes. For a moment he seems to forget about the heat, and keeps walking into the full sun; suddenly he realizes, and moves back into the shade. He looks back towards the hotel, and stands with his hands on his hips. Then paces again. As he leans back on a parked car, still within the shade, a car pulls off the main road and stops alongside him. He gets in, and they drive off.

Our lives are often such a casual brush with our fellows. And this is part of the reason why, having just seen “War of the Worlds”, I’m so disillusioned with “Hollywood blockbusters” that seem to think you can replace emotions with special effects; and also why I will never regard Tom Cruise as an actor, but rather as one of the relatively new genre of “celebrities”. Laurence Olivier was an actor, Johnny Depp is an actor, Judy Dench is an actor, and there are many more. Tom Cruise is not one of them.

Oh, and while I think of it, somebody should tell “Sir” Bob Geldof that he couldn’t sing when he was with the Boomtown Rats, and still can’t. Power to him – just don’t sing!

A Summer's Day

The temperature today soared to a blistering 80°F. Old people are dropping like flies; the St John’s Ambulance Brigade are stationed outside Tesco’s to revive shoppers emerging from the air-conditioned comfort to the merciless furnace outside. ☺
 
Oh England, your pleasures are simple, your demands few: a rainless day with sunshine dappling the path through the canopy of the trees, and all’s well with the world. 

Scooby

A morning working in the garden culminates with a very satisfying bonfire. With my clothes still smelling of smoke, I take Scooby down to the river for a swim, crossing the fields on paths freshly cut through the tall grass. Walking along the shady banks of the River Taw, Scooby chases every stick I throw, splashing gleefully through the shallow water, swimming in the deeper stretches. In the distance, I can hear the hourly train on the Tarka Line clattering by on tracks that still go “clickety-clack”, bound for Exmouth. The fragrance of wild peppermint hangs in the still, warm air.And afterwards, a cool pint outside the pub while Scooby dries off, lying, still panting, on his side in the shade.

Ranch House Barbecue

It’s a little late for lunch – after 2pm – but I pull off Route 67 in Glen Rose into the Ranch House Barbecue. It’s a typical Texas barbecue roadhouse: a plain building, set right at the roadside, with parking in back.

The waitress suggests I sit inside, where it’s cooler (it’s around 90°F, or 32°C), but I decide on a table outside, where it’s quieter. She leads me to the table, hands me a menu, tells me that soda is inside, iced tea outside by the entrance, onions and pickles behind me. Before I sit down, I walk round the corner, and pick a huge polystyrene cup from the pile by the entrance. As usual, they have two urns of tea: one sweetened, the other unsweetened. I half fill the cup with ice from the cooler chest between the two urns, and top it off with sweetened tea.

My table is on the porch, on the side shaded by a huge old pecan tree. Every now and then a puff of wind causes the pink-flowering hanging baskets to sway gently, and is a brief respite from the heat. The table is covered with a plastic red checkered tablecloth, adorned only with salt and pepper shakers, a bottle of ketchup, and a roll of kitchen towel. A small speaker attached to the roof above my head broadcasts a local country music station: “I’m gonna hate myself in the morning, but I’m gonna love you tonight.”

The waitress returns to take my order, and I settle back, sipping my iced tea, and listening to the throaty exhausts of passing Harleys. A little later in the year, it will be too hot for all but the most stalwart bikers. At the edge of the porch, a banana tree is in its first exuberant flush of life, and at its base, a somewhat scrawny white cat is lazily sprawled.

My food arrives on a plastic plate – the kind that’s divided into three compartments. One compartment has a generous portion of sliced brisket, slathered with barbecue sauce; one contains pinto beans; and the other, a large dome of potato salad, served with an ice-cream scoop. The cutlery is plastic. You will understand by now that Texas barbecue is all about taste, and not presentation. And I know I will not be disappointed.

As the waitress leaves, I am joined on the other side of the table by the white cat, miraculously spurred into action. It stares cautiously at me while I unpack my cutlery, sniffing occasionally at the air. As soon as I start to eat, it puts two front paws on the table. Gently, I ease it back into the seat. This happens several more times, with a few minutes interval between each attempt, until the cunning cat changes its approach. Edging down the bench seat to the other end of the table, it crosses the tabletop and sidles up to me. Now that this relationship has been established, it tries to sneak under my arms to get to the plate. Needless to say, I don’t allow it; also needless to say, I save a small piece of meat until the end of the meal. The cat devours it gratefully!

Not Lufkin

This morning, I was determined to drive to Lufkin, TX, because (according to http://www.craptowns.com/html/us/texas.html):

“No beer; grass growing in the streets; twitchy curtains; freakish alcoholics banging on your motel room door in the middle of the night; gas-station attendants who look at you with derision and disgust when you ask where you can get a beer; crewcut gap-toothed yobs in camouflage fatigues who do the same; a Walmart with more brands of cigarettes and crap processed cheese than you've ever seen in your life and yet no alcohol and no cigarette papers because they assume anyone who has any use for them is a drug-taking commy hippy panty-waist lowlife who'd best just move on. Which is why the highway out of Lufkin is lined with dilapidated corrugated iron lean-tos, crudely daubed with commands such as 'Git Yor Likker Here'. It's also not far from Jasper, where a black man named James Byrd died while being dragged behind a pick-up driven by three young racists.”

Sounds like one of those places you just have to see for yourself! And I would have done, had it not been for the sign on a major highway indicating simply “Bridge Out!”, and pointing to a diversion. As usual (and I’m sure this is true of almost any country in the world), the “diversion” signs petered out at the crucial moment, and so I never actually made it. Instead, I picked back roads, and tried to find my way back to the hotel by as devious a route as possible.

Drive-in movie theater

This always makes the journey more interesting,  and I stopped on the way at a Czech bakery for lunch (the “Czech Kolache Depot”): sausage, egg and potato, and blueberry, kolaches (that’s two separate kolaches!). Imagine a kind of cross between a doughnut and a croissant, and you’re close.

I also discovered a drive-in movie theatre within easy reach. Not only that, but they were showing recent movies, and also had 3 screens – this actually translates to 3 fields, with a screen at the end of each. I haven’t actually watched a movie there, but it’s definitely on my list (and, at $6, a very good deal).

Beer Barn

I passed through Mildred, Eureka, Frost and Italy, and near Wortham passed by a drive-through beer barn. In a way, this is very representative of the “bible belt” – they know that people drink alcohol, but prefer to keep the fact hidden away. In a similar vein, I came across two advertising hoardings within a few hundred yards of each other: “Forget porn; be reborn: Jesus” and “24 hour Adult DVD Megastore: Left at next exit”.

I passed through Corsicana, which sounds romantic; but I can tell you that the most historic thing about its “historic downtown area” is that it’s falling down. Thank you Walmart, Pizza Hut, Whataburger, Sears, JC Penney, etc. I don’t doubt that they are well intentioned, but I suspect that “they know not what they do”.

Farm store

I stopped at what looked like a friendly local farm store to see what fresh produce they had for sale. It operated on the “honour system” – that you leave payment for what you take. I bought a basket of plums for $3 – it was lucky I had the correct change, because a Mexican employee that wandered in grunted something to the effect that I had to provide the exact amount. Kinda ruined my “rural farm stand experience”, but I got my plums (oh, and I like the hours (if you can read it on the door): “Can until Can’t”!). At this time of year there are plenty of tomatoes, plums, peaches, apples, citrus fruits and beans. The corn stands about as tall as me, and will be available soon, I’m sure.

It might not be Lufkin, but, as always, it’s interesting. And Lufkin isn’t going anywhere.

Hoardings

Memorial Day weekend

It’s Memorial Day weekend – supposedly the official start of summer. But it’s grey and wet – not only here, but all over the US, the weather is weird. The traditional barbecues may be curtailed, and it certainly looks as though road-trips are not likely to be much fun.

So instead of the usual report, here are some observations on the American view of life.

Only 25% of Americans own a passport. This isn’t particularly surprising, when you think that an American can travel throughout the USA (including Hawaii), Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean (with the exception of Cuba – how come nobody is yet willing to admit that this policy isn’t achieving the desired results?) with just a driver’s license. The problem now is that the government (as part of the Department of Homeland Security) policy is now that passports are required. Since a passport costs $97, this has the foreign tourism industry worried, to the extent that they propose, in a number of cases, to pick up the cost of the passport.

Did you know that 1 in 50 Americans are considered “extremely obese” – more than 100 pounds overweight? I noticed a couple of weekends ago, as I stopped at Texas Burger for lunch, that a woman waddled in and walked straight up to the Blue Bell ice cream counter and ordered the biggest ice-cream cone I’ve ever seen. If you work behind a bar, you’re allowed to refuse service to someone who appears drunk; I think there ought to be a similar law about obese people: “I’m sorry, madam, you seem to have had enough already.”

40% of Americans claim to be regular church-goers. I imagine that this figure is slightly optimistic, but, judging from the number of churches, it may not be far out. I don’t know what the corresponding statistics are for the UK, but my guess would be that they’re far lower. Of course, there are some wacko churches here, so it may just be that a larger proportion of the population is unbalanced. Either way, it doesn’t look good for organized religion in the UK.

Of the total American population, around 75% are white; 12% are black; 12% are Hispanic; 4% are Asian; and 1% are native American (no, the numbers don’t add up to 100, due to rounding and overlap). In the future, it is predicted that Hispanics and Asians will increase most rapidly, to the extent that the white (and non-Hispanic) population will be only 50% by 2050.

While searching the internet on a totally unrelated subject the other week, I came across a web site (http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Zone/3746/Scarf.html) that included the statement “Tom Baker's original multicolored scarf was 13 1/2 ft. long in Season 12. However, between the filming of Sontaran Experiment and The Ark in Space … a section of blue-gray was removed on the beige/purple end of the scarf.” A colleague pointed out the obvious parallel between ourselves and the Roman Empire, when they also had too much time on their hands.

Maybe it’s time to start learning Chinese.

Blighty

One thing I’ve learnt about Americans, and about Texans in particular, is that they’re very patriotic. This is much more evident in the south than in the north (Texas regards itself more as “West” than “South”, but the geographic distinction still holds, I think). For Texans, Texas comes first, then the USA – and if I had cast disparaging remarks about anything to do with Texas to a Texan, I would need to take cover. Not so with the Brits. We are so self-effacing that we almost apologise for other people’s mistakes, and only stand up for our country when sports are involved.

If I had said about Texan wildflowers what I said about British wildflowers a couple of weeks ago, I would have been severely taken to task. But none of the Brits to whom I sent email stood up in defence of our wildflowers. It’s true that Texas wildflowers are more abundant than ours, but they spend huge amounts of money in making sure that they are; we are happy to let our wildflowers be truly wild.

And so it was that I noticed, in walking the dog (Scooby) from our house to the nearby River Taw, and to the field where Bob (the horse) lives, I saw bluebells, white and pink campions, daisies, primroses, buttercups, marsh marigolds, cuckoo-pint, dandelions, wild garlic – among others. So for all of you that sat back without comment: shame on you!

I should add that neither the name of the dog nor the horse was my idea. Sometimes life just thrusts these things upon you, and you have to grin and bear it.