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.

Signs

Wally Wash

Wet Willie's

Limp Willies

PeeWee Cray

Psycho Clown

“Go West, young man!” Works just as well today as it ever did. Once again, at a loose end, and with nowhere particular in mind, I decided that it was a while since I’d been west of Dallas. To the west lies Fort Worth (about 15 miles) and Abilene (about 300 miles). Interstate 30 takes you all the way to Abilene – I had no intention of actually going that far, but just in that general direction.

After several double-takes and back-tracks (to confirm what I had just seen), it became apparent that my mission for the day was to collect signs – not the signs themselves, you understand, but just photographs to prove that they exist.

So here I present just some of the ones that I saw. Would you wash your clothes at “Wally Wash”? Or go for a beer to “Wet Willie’s”? Or buy a SnoCone at “Limp Willie’s SnoBall Palace”? Or get yourself tattooed by the “Psycho Clown”? Or buy a car from PeeWee Cray? I think not (although, for PeeWee at least, there may be some reverse psychology involved – as I’ve noted before, Texans are not renowned for their subtlety, so I suspect that it’s just a gimmick).

Thankfully, once off the beaten track, Texas is not all like this. I stopped for lunch at the Sunday Creek BBQ in Santo – a BBQ beef sandwich, with onions and pickles, and lemonade. Their slogan, which all the waitresses sported on the backs of their t-shirts, is “Nobody beats our meat!” Remember, I’m only reporting what I see.

Then I headed north towards Palo Pinto on a minor road, and diverted again towards the signposted Palo Pinto Lake. The countryside you see here probably doesn’t coincide with the average (non-Texan) image of Texas. But, apart from the clump of cactus that is just visible at the bottom right, this could almost be an English country lane. It was difficult to get a picture of the lake itself, since, like everywhere else in the world, a small percentage of the population have effectively barricaded it off with their expensive lakeside second homes. What I did manage to see was very pretty.

I also collected a variety of wildflowers, still in bloom, that are at the moment sitting in the bottom of my hotel wardrobe, carefully arranged between sheets of absorbent kitchen towel, underneath several telephone books and my almost empty, but still remarkably heavy, suitcase. At my age, pressing wildflowers is merely eccentric. I think eccentricity is greatly under-rated.

Wildflowers

I30

Yesterday I went to the annual Arts Festival in downtown Fort Worth. It was much too crowded for me, and I was glad I’d only spent $5 on parking – although I did stay long enough to buy a wonderfully comfortable pair of handmade (by a father and son team from San Antonio) leather sandals.

Today I headed out on Interstate 30 towards Texarkana, into northeast Texas in search of wildflowers. They were plentiful, but you’ve seen enough pictures already. In northeast Texas, once you get off the beaten track, you’re in redneck country (especially as you get closer to Arkansas). How do you know when you’re in redneck country? Every town has a Dairy Queen, and it seems to be where the whole town gets lunch, so that the parking lot is always full of beat-up farm trucks; it’s often difficult to tell whether some of the houses are actually occupied, or gradually disintegrating around their owners; and most families cling doggedly to every truck or car they’ve ever owned, perhaps in the forlorn hope that the rusting hulks will one day be resurrected.

Once again, the weekend bikers are out. You can usually tell the weekend variety from the serious ones because no self-respecting hardcore biker would ever wear a T-shirt that said on the back: “If you can read this, the bitch fell off”.

Pawn shop

I went into a pawn shop for the first time, just out of curiosity. They’re everywhere here, and don’t seem to carry the same stigma as elsewhere. For me, it’s saddening to see the remnants of people’s lives up for grabs, knowing that they have probably been taken advantage of at a most vulnerable point in their lives. Pawnbrokers seem to occupy the same social strata as prostitutes, flop-house owners and fast food outlet proprietors: we’re glad they’re there to mop up the human detritus so we don’t have to, but we look down on them anyway. I’m sure they’re all very nice people. Society would certainly have trouble functioning without them.

I stopped for lunch at Sonic (how hypocritical is that!) and picked up a cheese Coney with onions and a vanilla shake (it’s ok because I had fresh fruit for breakfast). Shortly afterwards, as I was jotting down some notes, another car pulled up alongside me, and the driver wound down his window and asked: “Do you know how to get to the State Hospital from here?” As you know, I usually travel without a map, and so I replied, laughing: “I don’t know how to get to anywhere from here.” Fortunately, he detected my accent and saw the humorous side. A bit further down the road, I saw a sign to the hospital, and saw him making the turn in my rear-view mirror, so he must have made it.

Fate City Hall

I took a slight detour following the lure of a sign to the “city” of Fate. Where they get these names from I don’t know, but it was a tiny “city”, with one of the tiniest City Halls I’ve ever seen. I turned round in the parking lot of the “Fate Gas & Grocery Store” and got back on the highway, satisfied that I had seen all that Fate had to offer.

Finally, I had had to stop for a picture of a large model bull on a trailer, even though I have mostly become inured to such sights. I don’t know where he was bound for, but it’s the kind of thing you only see in America. I think subtlety must have fallen overboard during the Mayflower’s long journey to the New World.

The Chisholm Trail, TX

A couple of weeks ago I showed you a picture of the outside of the hotel I’m staying in. Thankfully, the inside is much nicer than the outside.

Embassy Suites outside ...

Yesterday I went to “Traders’ Village”, which is just a giant flea-market. It’s getting warm here, but luckily about half of it is under cover, so you’re not in full sun all the time. I wasn’t looking for anything in particular – rather just heading in the opposite direction to the Texas Motor Speedway, which is hosting a NASCAR event this weekend (and many of the participants and patrons are staying at the hotel: both the Jack Daniels team and the Jim Beam team, among others), so that the roads in that vicinity are naturally clogged with race-goers. But I still finished up with a nice leather belt and buckle – the buckle is inlaid steel, which the dealer let me have for $15.

... and inside

You’ve also seen the size of the car the rental company gave me this time – a Ford Explorer that I have to climb up into. Just in case you think this is big, I parked next to a truck outside the hotel yesterday. The best selling truck in America is a Ford F150; one step up from that is the F250; one more step takes you to the F350, pictured here, next to my comparably modest vehicle. One thing my car does have is a built-in compass. Armed only with this, you really don’t need a map. So today, I headed south – literally south. I just kept following roads that went south, to see where I’d finish up.

Ford Explorer

Barn sale

I took country roads wherever I could, because I’m still fascinated by the variety and beauty of the spring wildflowers (don’t worry – no more pictures!). I found a “barn sale” signposted down one of the roads, and found four delightful ladies manning a barn full of antiques and bric-a-brac. I bought two more belt buckles, at least as nice as the one I bought yesterday, for $5 each. So now I have a choice of belt buckles!

I stopped off at the Cotton Patch Café in Cleburne for some Texas-style cooking – meatloaf, mashed potatoes and black-eyed peas, washed down with a tall glass of lemonade. Meatloaf often gets a bad rap, but a good meatloaf is delicious – it’s all in the sauce!

Inevitably, I found myself back on Route 67, the old Chisholm Trail – I think I must have been a cowboy in a former life. I know this leads right back to Dallas. I was overtaken on the way by a biker in a furry crash helmet with large cow horns sticking of it, his long plaited hair streaming back in the wind. I tucked in behind him, hoping he might pull off somewhere so that I could get a photograph, but then Lucy called my mobile phone, and I lost him in traffic. But not before I pulled alongside him when the traffic slowed, and noticed he had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. And moments before we were barreling down the highway at 80mph! Pretty neat trick!

The Chisholm Trail