Texas never sneaks up on you. When you cross the border, you start seeing lone stars embedded in the concrete on freeway underpasses, state flags flying everywhere and an inordinate number of businesses and services with Texas in their names. What the Northeasterners in our reading audience know as EZ Pass, an automated toll-paying system, is called Texas Tolls down here. My favorite is the license plates – in every other state, there’s one form of plate for all vehicles, but here, if you drive a pickup truck, your tag says you have a Texas Truck.
So there was no doubting where we were when we rolled into Texas last week. We drove through Arkansas to get there, stopping not in Little Rock to see the (temporarily shut-down) Clinton Library but in Hot Springs, a nice little spa town that’s not far off the main highways.
We got a mini-Clinton fix by visiting Hope, the President’s birthplace, where his childhood home has been restored.
We did brief side-trips to Louisiana and Oklahoma, meaning that by the time we arrived in Texas, we had visited 46 of the lower 48 states.
We headed for Dallas sooner than planned so we could see Pete, who was in Fort Worth to do his latest round of simulator training.
We even got to do a brief simulated flight and were able to avoid any simulated crashes (thanks to some rapid-fire instructions from Pete when I nearly stalled us out).
Although he’s been flying for quite awhile now, we’re still mighty proud of Commander Noel.
We braved Dallas rush-hour traffic one morning so I could have a nice visit with my former boss, AT&T’s General Counsel David McAtee. He’s a true gentleman and a class act.
Only a few blocks from AT&T’s headquarters is the Texas Schoolbook Depository and Dealy Plaza, where President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. The top two floors of the Depository (the sixth floor was Lee Harvey Oswald’s sniper perch – the extreme right pair of windows in the next-to-top floor in the pic below), now are a museum, and include a chilling perspective of where history happened.
We caught a minor break while we were in Dallas. The George W. Bush Presidential Library is located at nearby SMU. Unlike the other libraries, it’s open during the government shutdown because it’s staffed by SMU employees instead of National Park Service workers, so we paid it a brief visit. Brief. I’d already seen it a couple of years ago, and after visiting the place where the Era of Camelot ended, it was hard to get in the mood to hang around President Dilettante’s digs again.
From Dallas, it was off to Houston. Even though the GHWB Library (in nearby College Station) was closed, this was a must-do stop. When we visited my Uncle Lee in Durham last November, it inspired me to reconnect with one of Lee’s sons, my cousin Andy, who lives in Houston. We had a delightful dinner with Andy and his lovely wife Katie.
I also stopped by the office of one of my former clients, the AT&T SportsNet in Houston. It was great to see old friends David Peart, Jim Colasanto, Janice Schmader, Murphy Brown and the perpetually cheerful and helpful Sharla Watkins.
We’ve spent a lot time in this blog talking about all the great sights we’ve seen. In the interest of candor, we should report on a clunker, too. That would be the Johnson Space Center in suburban Houston. It’s mostly a series of kid-related exhibits – not much history, although the mission control console from Project Apollo is pretty cool. Plus, courtesy of David Peart, we got the address of Neil Armstrong’s house from when he was training for Apollo 11 and did a drive-by. The neighborhood is depicted in the movie Apollo 13.
Also courtesy of Mr. Peart, we went to the Rockets-Lakers NBA game at the Toyota Center Saturday night, which ended up being an exciting come-from-behind win for the home team. Before the game, we got to lift a glass with my old Sig-Ep brother Scott Wynant and his splendid bride Nancy – Go Ducks!
From the largest city in Texas, Houston (the fourth largest city in the country and closing in fast on #3 Chicago), we headed to the fastest-growing city in the country, Austin (#11 and growing at 20% per year).
On our way, we saw a jarring reminder that we’re in Texas.
Austin has a reputation for having a cool vibe. We agree!
Sixth Street is home to the local music scene.
What we discovered, however, is that there are two parts to Sixth Street. After walking past all the nightclubs and honky-tonks, then crossing the Main Street where the state capitol building is, there’s a string of great restaurants, featuring Cafe Josie, a farm-to-table spot that’s flat-out one of the best restaurants we’ve ever enjoyed.
We also scraped the rust off of our hiking muscles and enjoyed a long amble through the Barton Creek Greenbelt, only a few minutes from downtown.
Austin is only about 80 miles from San Antonio, so we did a day-trip there to tour the Alamo and enjoy the River Walk, an oasis in the middle of downtown.
Why do we remember the Alamo? The story is ironic in this day and age.
After Mexico achieved independence from Spain in 1821, it had trouble attracting settlers to its northernmost state, Texas. That led the Mexican government to offer incentives to Anglo-Americans to settle there. By 1830, there were so many white settlers in Texas that Mexico passed a law severely restricting further immigration. (Is this starting to sound familiar?) The new Mexican immigration restrictions didn’t work (ahem). By 1835, Texans were in open rebellion against Mexico, seeking independence (uh-oh, don’t tell Trump about an immigrant uprising in the Southwest!).
Texas declared its independence from Mexico on March 2, 1836. Four days later, 200 Texas nationalists who were occupying a small military garrison at the Alamo Mission, a former Spanish religious outpost, were massacred by a Mexican army led by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. “Remember The Alamo!” became a rallying cry for all Texans. Seven weeks later, a Texas army led by Sam Houston routed Santa Anna’s army at San Jacinto (present-day Houston), solidifying the Texas Republic’s status as an independent nation. Texas joined the union nine years later.
After San Antonio, it was time to head west, first to West Texas and then to California. We’ll explain our remaining itinerary more in our next post.
(Sorry this post is longer than usual. Call it Texas-sized!)
Wow!!! Texas is larger than life.