Texas
1973 - 2004
Welcome
to Texas! This is always one of my favorite parts of a road trip: entering
a new state, especially when Laurel is along… Seeing the Texas sign
is even better, it being the land of my birth and where five generations
of blood and bone are laid to rest. It is a land that I dearly love and
where I feel most at home. While I choose to live somewhere else for a
time, in the end I want part of my ashes scattered there and a marker
placed just off the Old Vandalia Highway in Red River County…
A
west Texas sunset. Laurel pulled over on the highway and snapped this
shot as the last rays of light that day filtered through the clouds.
I
searched and searched the sides of the highway during the entire trip
for either a road-kill armadillo or even better, one that had been “culturally
modified.” Growing up there one would often see a deceased armadillo
on its back along the shoulder of the road clutching a beer can or a bottle
of Lone Star Beer. It was so prevalent that Lone Star Brewery (the beer
is swill) started using a thieving drunken monster armadillo in its TV
spots. Laurel couldn’t wait to see such a thing, but no matter how
many miles we covered or how hard we searched there were no beer mascots
to be found. Finally in a gift shop outside of Amarillo we found the stuffed
model pictured to the left.
The
Big Texan Steak House is the home of the “free” 72oz steak.
Free if you can eat it and all the fix’ins! That is 4.5 pounds of
meat, fat and gristle + lots of carbs. No thank you!! We stopped there
to eat and to get the whole steak house experience. The steaks were great,
the sweet tea was perfect, and the service was very good.
People
drive VERY friendly in Texas. If you are in a hurry and get behind someone,
they most often will pull off to the shoulder and let you pass, waving
hello and safe journey completely sincerely. However, it one doesn’t
drive friendly, it is quickly called in and that person will find themselves
staring at a Texas state trooper’s mirrored sunglasses, holding
a very pricy ticket/reminder to be nice in their grubby little hands.
They take being polite and friendly VERY seriously.
Camels
in Texas, who knew?!? I glanced over at a truck parked on the opposite
side of the road as we were heading down I-40 and thought I was hallucinating:
There was a camel and the truck’s driver was standing about two
feet from it. I had to see this for myself! We made a U-turn at the next
exit and hauled ass back to the camel. As it turns out there was not one
camel but twenty-five camels.