By Michael Shook
Against all rational judgment, my wife and I again traveled. One would think our journey to France last spring would be enough to put us off of it for a few years, but it was time to visit friends and family in the GREAT STATE OF TEXAS! Which is kind of how lots of folks down there say it, or if not saying it, think it (though it’s by no means true of all residents – it’s more diverse than one is led to believe).
But, they do love their state. One sees the Star of Texas – a five-point star in a circle – pretty much everywhere, on trucks, cars, houses, businesses, and clothing. I’m sure many sport a star tattoo as well, but I wasn’t interested in asking strangers about it.
I had never been to Texas before meeting my spouse, a native thereof. But Texas and I are forever linked, since my paternal grandfather, Levi, was born there in 1861. His parents had traveled west to get out of the worst of the war, which did not stop my great-grandfather, William, from joining up with the Texas 5th Partisan Rangers Cavalry.
From what little history I could find, they spent most of the war in Oklahoma territory, fighting here and there, or were used to round up deserters.
But, back to Texas. I’ve been there three times now, and can testify with certainty that it is one amazingly flat place. What’s called a hill there we would not even notice. And it is large. Owing to the flatness, one can gaze for miles in just about any direction, and it just keeps going, and going, and going. Also, it’s hot. Way too hot. We were there in mid-October, and the temperature in Houston was 95 degrees.
It does have some mighty pretty trees, though. In Houston, I nearly swooned to see and touch huge old live oaks. They have wonderfully thick branches, often swooping gracefully down to the ground twenty feet from the main trunk. Noisy long-tailed grackles, resembling fancy crows with their plumage, hopped about in them. And Loblolly pine, tall and graceful, wearing light green, feathery needles, trunks clad in vigorously plated red bark. (Sadly, neither tree will grow here.) There were also crape myrtles, shrub-trees with five to seven or so multi-trunks displaying soft grey, tan, and brown exfoliating bark. Lovely. (Crape myrtles will grow here, so they’re on my “to get” list now.)
Houston’s highways look like so much overcooked spaghetti, whirled and thrown over acres of flatness, many roads suspended 75 feet or more in the air, on supports decorated with, yes, the Star of Texas – but there’s miles and miles of it, so it didn’t feel too awfully crowded. At times, it was a challenge to figure out which spaghetti strand to take, since the signage was subpar, but we managed.
Other than the Houston area, roads were mostly straight. And of course flat. And everyone drives 80 mph, at least. Which is good, because as mentioned, Texas is huge, so even driving 80 or more, it still takes a while to get someplace. Fortunately, to accommodate all that fast, long-distance driving, gas is about $2.75 a gallon. Fill’er up, and put the pedal to the metal!
The best part of driving in Texas, in addition to the speed and cheap gas, is that they love their roads. Texas roads are like silk. Our roads are like something from an automobile’s nightmare, imbued with potholes, patches, spalled concrete, jarring bumps, all pervaded by a sense of slow decay. Additionally, they are so overcrowded that I fully expect my brother’s traffic theory to come true someday; one more car will try to merge, and that will be it, the entire highway, freeway, on-ramp, off-ramp, feeder street mess will come to a dead halt, locked like a puzzle, all up and down the state, possibly into Canada, and California, transforming the system from a series of roads into a vast, glittering parking lot. Not in Texas, though!
Before we left Houston, we had lunch at Katz’s Deli. Oy, to have such a deli here. The sandwiches, stacked high with pastrami, were superb, the matzoh ball soup to die for, and the desserts! I finally met my match in a huge piece of seven-layer chocolate cake – of course it was huge, this was Texas – with some kind of frosting that was from heaven, or a place nearby. I could not finish it myself. Just could not. It felt like a reckoning with mortality, the first time in my life of 71 years that I’ve ever pushed away a dessert (a chocolate one no less!) and said, “No mas.” A poignant moment, life catching me up after all, but I can’t complain. I’ve had a pretty darned good run, for years eating my fill of whatever I wanted.
We then made our way east and north out of Houston, headed up by Sam Rayburn Reservoir to the brother and sister-in-law’s lake house. Still flat. Still hot. But a fun drive, lots of other kinds of beautiful trees, and of course, plenty of exceeding good flatness to enjoy.
Like the rest of the state, the lake too was huge – its surface area is 112,500 acres – and, as lakes will be, also exceeding flat. Much of it is absurdly shallow, in some places only 15-feet deep, though at full capacity some parts go down 80.
Since it was so hot, I thought some alligators might be about, but no luck, though we made a couple of excursions in the pontoon boat to look for them. No snakes were to be found either; no cottonmouths, no copperheads. I was disappointed. I’m not often in an area inhabited by potentially deadly reptiles, and was looking forward to having a gander at some. Still, we had a good time. Family, friends, eating lots of ribs, and cornbread, and peas. And when we got back to our hilly home on the Sound, it was 56 degrees, and raining. Hallelujah!
