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why did I come back to Texas?
Please find your humble and yet intrepid servant outside the largest truckstop she has ever seen. My sherpa insisted that this was a mid sized “Buc-ee’s” But we will get back to that.
The first gift of retirement is that I can go where I want and when. This miracle began after the Preakness Stakes (mid May for those of you who don’t follow the Horses). Philip came into the front room and found a sad and sorry sweetie who missed her Triple Crown Mommy and Sister. So he said, “Why don’t you go down for the Belmont?” Down meant Sierra Madre and to the house on Canyon Crest. And so I did.
Thus it was that sometime in August I realized I could go back to Texas and see Sarah’s new place before Kathy and Jack moved back to California. Philip had to spend a short week in Cupertino for another training set and that week seemed perfect. A week, in College Station and Houston, in early September. What could possibly go wrong and am I mad?
The flight out to Hobby International Airport, Houston was sardine packed but I got a window seat at the back. This allowed me a wonderful view of Lake Powell as we flew over. It is not full yet but so much better than the last time I saw it. The skin of the Southwest is so beautiful and so complex. (Southwest Airlines really needs to improve their flight tracker to real time.) The window and my silly mystery got me to Hobby with no problem and thence to the luggage kiosk on the ground floor. For those of you who have not experienced the exquisite combination of heat and humidity that is Houston in September, allow me to elucidate.
You walk through the double doors that protect the interior, cool and unnatural environment of Hobby Airport and are slapped in the face by the real life of Houston weather. I had Kathy on the phone and she was taking another cycle round and was on her way to me. Now it must be understood that I did not ask when it might be convenient for me to visit my friends. I just said “I’m coming” and “Kathy, here is when I land.” Why these women put up with me I do not know.
It has been stated in this space previously that Houston is the ugliest city I have ever seen. (But I’ve never been to Moscow.) It took us a solid 45 minutes of travel to get out of the damn town. We traveled up Texas Highway 290 and thence to the 6 toward College Station. (Yes, I’m from L A, I put “the” in front of all road designations.) Finally out of the city we came to the flat, water-carved land. We went past Prairie View and with that name I realized that what I was looking at was prairie, the ocean of grass. As I tried to absorb the topology, the sky beckoned, emphatically. It might be helpful to address the weather in and around Houston, perhaps even all of South Texas. The sky is huge. No mountains or hills break two thousand miles of clouds. And clouds of every type, the celestial atelier had been hard at work. There on the right were the voluptuous gold tinted cumulus nimbus of Tiepolo and straight ahead were the grey washed horses tails of Boudin. But it was the wall of slate grey, picked out by lightning flashes on the left, that concerned me. In this griddle-flat country, the sky has either just done something to you, is doing something to you or is just going to do something to you. And so it did.
About 20 minutes outside of College Station, the sky let loose with sheets of water. Being from California I am not accustomed to this kind of rain. Each drop was about 1/8th of a teaspoon and there were so many that the wipers couldn’t keep up. If I had been driving I would have pulled over and waited till I could see. But Kathy was driving, she who has driven in the blizzards of Connecticut, and this downpour was not going to stop or even faze her. The squall lasted about 4 minutes and this Sierra Madre girl freaked out. (But Kathy is also a Sierra Madre girl so what does that say?) We got to Bryan and found Sarah’s place. It is on a pretty cul-de-sac. It shares a wall with another dwelling and she has covered parking. When you finally have a place of your own, after a hard life, is a source of great peace.
(Now I need to ask a question. Why, in South Texas, a land that floods, does everyone build their houses flat on the ground? Kathy’s house in Clear Lake/Houston and Sarah’s sweet abode in Bryan are both flat on the ground. No steps up, no french drains, no place for the water to go. I do not understand.)
We were greeted at the door by my other favorite tall blonde. When I first met Sarah, she had shiny light brown hair and was in the 5th grade. Now she is a blonde Texan, gone totally native. After the requisite hugs and greetings, Sarah welcomed us into her neat little home. We chatted and drank wine, agreeing to dine at the old hotel where Kathy and I were staying. Beautiful old downtown Bryan is everything one would want, restored to a fare-thee-well with plenty of on-street parking. The only problem is that it’s empty. Except for the hotel restaurant and bar, there is nothing going on. Odd. Our Sarah was slightly subdued that evening, it is hard to pick up friendships with so much time in between.
But joy came in the morning and breakfast was a chatty funny meeting of Sierra Madre girls. With hugs and declarations of love, Kathy and I headed back to Houston. As we drove back into the maelstrom that is the traffic of that town, the question became: what did I want to do?
A return to the Johnson Space Center and Galveston was necessary but what else? Kathy said “Let’s go to the Museum of Natural Science.” Now I have loved natural history/science museums since I was five and digging the dioramas at the old California Academy of Sciences SF. Nothing prepared me for the Houston Museum of Natural Science. It has had a total refit and is nothing short of glorious. Your first stop is the darkened atrium that contains a 3D map of the moon. It is two stories tall, lit from within and accurate as all hell. (The best view is from the second floor of the atrium, just outside the gem and mineral hall.)
This museum is so big and dense, one really needs to plan which exhibits to see. One cannot do it all at one shot. Our real destination was the new dinosaur exhibit. But first we were sidetracked by sparkly things. The gem and mineral rooms are also new (where is all this money coming from?) and the best I’ve ever seen. The rooms are quite dark with the displays lit up like something out of Tiffany’s. Minerals that glow in fantastic shapes (yes, like a fantasy) and the gems just left me speechless. There was an important Faberge show and Kathy loves Faberge. If you want to see opulent displays of jewels, go to Houston.
Once we tore ourselves away from the sparklies we entered the new dinosaur rooms. Laid out from the oldest to the latest, the curatorship of this collection teaches and entices. Although this collection is smaller than Chicago’s Field or LA’s Page, this stuff is real. Most dinosaur bones on display are copies, with the originals safely in the back room. But at HMNS all of the bones are on display. Yes there is filler but the bones are real. This matters a great deal, especially because of their T-Rex. One of the great things about this museums are real, live docents. They know their stuff and we attached ourselves to the comet tail that followed a tall, sandy haired and very smart young man who gangled. (And now, those of you who care about such things need to sit down.) After a very clear and rather funny description of the difference between hot- and cold-blooded dinos, and how you can tell, we came to Houston’s Thunder Lizard. The docent told us many things, including that there is a paper that is due out in December that will release the bombshell. This skeleton has, on the end of its tail, a piece of skin, T-Rex skin. And the skin has feathers. Just let that sink in for a bit.
Still reeling from the most important dino fact I’ve heard since the discovery of Utah Raptor, we walked out into the muggy air of Hermann Park. This is the nicest area of Houston, with lots of other museums and Rice University right close by. Here were the beautiful, tree-canopied residential streets of Houston. This is one of the areas where the money lives. We lunched there and spoke as women of what we had seen. My mind was blown and we headed back to Clear Lake. One of the things I wanted to do this time was get some real Texas barbecue. After much discussion it was decided by my darling hosts that we would go to a place that Nick, Kathy’s son (who now lives in Santa Monica) found. It was perfect. Through another dark Clear Lake evening, we came to a Western looking place. (Think the Longbranch Saloon rather than the Ponderosa.)
You walk into a large dining room and back to the counter to make your order. To taste Texas, one must eat brisket. So I got that and pulled pork, corn pudding and slaw. Trying to get unsweetened tea is a little difficult. The corn pudding was heavy and rather dull. The slaw was nice and the beans were very good. The pulled pork was good and the brisket was what all the shouting is about. I am so glad we went there.
Galveston is a necessity for my trips to see Kathy and Jack. This time she and I walked along the Strand, in the historic downtown. The sidewalks of the Strand are very high, perfect for getting out of and into carriages. But we were in a small SUV so it was a hoot to watch me get into and out of the car. This is how air conditioning works in Galveston/Clear Lake/Houston. Even if you keep your doors wide open, rather necessary for gift shops on a tourist street, the stores are cooler and the air is moving. I can’t imagine the BTUs needed to do that. I found postcards and sea-themed Christmas ornaments. (That took care of my sister’s birthday present.) We drove the inner streets of the town and found beautiful, restored Victorians and all of them were built at least half a story above the street. That was the original design and I can only ask again, why isn’t everything built that way there? At least Clear Lake has those canals dug into what was the bayou. And my darling, crazy friends rode out Hurricane Harvey (2017) at home and swore to me that no water got in their lovely home. But following that storm from Oakland took years off my life.
Finally we get back to Buc-ees. My flight home was in late afternoon and Kathy insisted that I had to go to her closest emporium of all things Texas to deepen my understanding of that great state. Tchotchke is a Yiddish word meaning a small object that is decorative rather than strictly functional; a trinket. So try to imagine a store about the size of a common Target filled with Texas tchotchkes, a food kitchen, a bakery and the good Lord only knows what else, everything is bigger in the Lone Star state. Restaurants, churches and even grocery stores are huge. Maybe it’s the flat topography of the place, the pure expanse, that makes them feel that large is necessary to make a thing seen. All I have seen of Texas is some of the Houston area and the place still confuses me. When I interact with the people they are just lovely, open, chatty and very polite. Their politics make me crazy but I’m a liberal Christian from California. Kathy and Jack are coming home to the Russian River and I doubt that I will return to Texas. But I’m glad I went.
