Texas: Where Men Are Men And Women Are Girls

I used to love Texas.  Back in the mid-80s there was a brief, heady period when British companies were buying American companies and I was employed as an industrial “marker researcher” to ferret out potential acquisitions.  I had occasion to visit Texas and was tickled by the courtly manners and generosity of Texans.  I distinctly remember the first time I landed in Dallas.  After living in Paris, London and New York for several years I realized how much I missed a vast horizon, and Texas had that in spades.  Plus cowboys.  

I mentioned my cowboy proclivities in the first TTMama blog, surprising a fair number of people.  But I spent my formative years on horseback in the mountains of Victoria, first as a customer, paying for the privilege to round up cattle, but graduating to assistant camp cook by the time I was 18.  Aussie cowboys don’t wear the same hats or sound the same as American cowboys but they sure do ride the same and walk the same.  

It was no surprise to me that Dan has Texas in his background.  His Latvian great grandfather settled in Jefferson TX in the 1880s and his six children were born and raised there.  He traveled the state in a horse drawn cart, selling pots and pans and fixing broken bones, thanks to his mail order medical degree.  I like to think he wore a cowboy hat as he made his rounds.

Anyway, I used to feel at home in Texas and I had some good times there.  I learned the Texas Two Step at the Round Up Saloon in Dallas, the first gay cowboy bar I ever went to - okay, the only gay cowboy bar I’ve ever been to, but I can’t imagine there’s a better one anywhere - and there’s a deeply embarrassing photo somewhere of me riding a mechanical bull at the Stockyard in Fort Worth.  

I had that same feeling of being able to finally relax and breathe deeply when we crossed the state on our first road trip west in 2010.  It was the opposite of New York, all “land, lots of land and the starry skies above” and I loved it.  

Today though, Texas makes me sad and angry.  Its lawmakers’ attitude to women’s reproductive rights is disgusting and shameful.  How effing dare they.

We are blowing through the state as fast as we can - not easy when it’s over 830 miles across - and we do have a couple of stops to make.  

We entered the state at its westernmost point.  I know an Interstate Highway is not going to show off a town’s best side but El Paso seemed an awful place, big and spread out, smugly looking across the modest Rio Grande at Mexico, mere yards away.  No sign of that dreadful wall, just giant chain link/razor wire fences, so the view of dirt roads and dilapidated houses clinging to the side of the hill was unimpeded from the eight lane interstate.  Except for the smog from oil refineries or chemical processing plants which seemed to blanket mainly the Mexico side of the border.  It smelled just like the New Jersey Turnpike though, and made my eyes sting.  I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

About 20 miles out of town we encountered this.

Everyone on the Interstate had to go through a Border Patrol checkpoint.  The truckers were waved through.  Not likely to be harboring illegals apparently.  Some car drivers had to open their trunks, some had to hand over ID.  We were just asked if we were both US citizens and didn’t have to show anything.  Racial profiling is alive and well.  We passed several Border Patrol buildings in the middle of nowhere and clusters of BP vehicles on the side of the highway. Unsettling.

We had to stop overnight in the town of Van Horn, well on its way to becoming a ghost town until a member of the Billionaire Overcompensators Club showed up and bought a few acres.

Not much of his vast Amazon fortune has been spent improving the town however. In the sad little RV park we stayed in were several full timers who worked at Blue Origins but couldn’t afford any other housing.  Nice one Jeff.

Restrooms for Mens and Girls only in Van Horn.

We have high hopes for our next stop though, a small town that’s been on Dan’s  bucket list for a long time.  With any luck there might even be a cowboy or two.