The Long Way Home, plus "I Know I'm in Texas when..."

Oh, the places you’ll go. If you can stand to drive there. We had an uneventful trip to Mansfield, where we’d picked up Jodi. Sunshine, bluebonnets in the fields, and cows.

Halfway there, Jodi called to give “full disclosure”. Her 7 year old was up a good portion of the night with abdominal pain, and she had gotten very little sleep. Okay, oh well, we’ll probably just have to stop when we’re tired and find a hotel.

We drove through some open country on smaller roads to pick up Jodi and kids. We met her sister and brother-in-law at their beautiful home, which is in a neighborhood on the edge of suburbia, just like the neighborhood I moved into in Plano in 1980. Open fields meet seas of fenced-in new houses. Everything is new and exciting, with lots of young families for the kids to get to know.

When we moved into our version of that neighborhood, I was the only almost-teen for miles around, as far as we could see. Lots of transplants to Dallas were desperate for a babysitter. My mom had my 11-year-old self put little fliers at every house advertising a dependable 12-year-old babysitter. Strangers called from the blocks surrounding, picked me up and brought me home to be in charge of their children. I had zero experience, but I was alive, and I didn’t charge too much. I made a fortune. Raising us in Cutlerville, Mich., seemed to have left mom a tad naïve about what possibilities awaited a young girl in a stranger’s home, but for me it just meant getting to watch cable TV and shows that I wasn’t allowed to watch at home. Not that I condone such behavior.

I digress. Jodi and I headed north. The afflicted one was doing pretty well, with short bouts of discomfort, but mostly entertained. Sometime after dinner that started to change. Around 11 p.m. he got pretty miserable, and he was very tired. In the end, Jodi had him in her lap in the front seat for about four hours while I drove. This was fine, if illegal and unsafe, but I’d been driving since about 9:30 a.m. aside from one 2 hour stretch, and I could only go for so long. There was no way the little guy was going to want to sit on my lap while Jodi drove. Around 2:30 a.m. we hit St. Louis, which was sort of our goal; if we weren’t going to make it all the way home, we at least wanted to minimize the driving for the next day. We stopped on the east side of St. Louis at a string of hotels. The lady at the Drury Inn told us that they were full, and she had a list of all the nearby hotels. Only one had rooms, and they were singles. Huh. Apparently a soccer tournament and a scrapbooking convention had left no room in the inn.

It turns out we’re not so much sticklers for the law. Jodi laid her boy untethered upon the floor (which is basically how we both traveled throughout our childhoods) where he was more comfortable, and she took over the driving. We switched off whenever the one driving couldn’t safely drive further, and somehow we made it home! The kids were amazingly patient and accepting of the situation, and even seemed to have fun sometimes. I won’t say that Jodi and I had “fun”, but it was tolerable and we were happy to get home.

With 2 days of multiple-hour naps under my belt, I’m ready to come up with my trip-end list.

I Know I’m In Texas When…

1. Bluebonnets spring up next to the highways. The bluebonnet beat out the cotton boll to become state flower in 1901. Lady Bird Johnson was a huge fan of wildflowers, and she helped send out bluebonnet seeds to residents to help beautify the state, expanding their presence.

2. The waffle iron at the free breakfast of my Comfort Suites makes waffles in the shape of Texas. Where are the Michigan-shaped waffle irons? I mean, we have an actual shape for goodness sake. Time to up the ante, Mitten State.

3. Everything’s bigger. The malls, the churches, the houses. Not so much the people. See next item.

4. An older cowboy gentleman will look at a 44-year-old woman who has several inches on him, and surely several boot sizes, and call me “Little Darlin’.”

5. BBQ restaurants abound. As Jodi’s sister says, “Texans are serious about their barbecue.” I tried to get my kids to eat at the BBQ institution, Dickey’s Barbecue Pit, but they refused to eat at a restaurant with a sketchy name like Dickey’s. Sheesh.

6. My accent starts to come back to me. My kids find this entertaining, because I've never been able to fake it--it's either there or it's not. Y’all is the first thing to make an appearance. I swear it would only take about 3 months to get back to full drawl. I’m fixin’ to make it happen.

7. Animals get put into the cone of shame. Okay, I know this happens all over the world, but we really wanted to put in this picture of the dog who lived next to our hotel.

8. I see armadillo roadkill. They are known in Texas as speed bumps. Not too fast and not too smart. Except I didn’t see one the entire trip—kinda disappointing.

9. Everyone is very friendly. And polite. “Yes ma’am” and “yes sir”—I know this most of the south, but I identify it with Texas. I’m convinced it’s our northern European heritage that has us all saying “yeah” to everything in the Midwesta, a watered-down version of the Dutch or German “Ja.” No such tradition in Texas.

10. The Alamo is a symbol of Texas pride. But to those of you who wondered, no, there is no basement in the Alamo, and PeeWee’s bicycle is not there.

 

11. There are almost as many Mexican states represented on license plates as US states. Just check out the SeaWorld parking lot.

11. I can buy suckers with scorpions inside. Think that says it all.

Until next time, Texas. I'll miss you.