Wonders of Texas unique, incomparable

By Logan Beck     10/1/09 7:00pm

There are things about Texas that are distinctly and exactly "Texas," that are only Texas: our little Alamo, filled with men beset with love for their great endless brown land; the 10-gallon hats and snakeskin boots that you don't see enough of anymore; the lone star, white against blue and red, unabashedly whipping 100 feet above car dealerships lining the interstate; the ridiculous "heavy-duty" trucks people insist on; Friday night football; real ranches with guns, cattle, spit, moustaches and beehives; signs on the roadside that say it all with three letters: BBQ.Jarritos, pecan pie and those mammoth, cool avocados we've got most of the year; brisket sandwiches and baked potatoes smothered in soupy hot barbeque sauce; Willie Nelson, salsa verde and the big bottles of Sol you can barely wrap your hand around; big hair, big "y'alls," big space and big, earnest Texas-sized smiles to fill it.

There are things you may or may not learn to love about this place, but they are things which deserve to be loved nonetheless: the shimmering of the heat in the summer; the saccharine refuge of the air conditioner on those days; the sweet-sick smell of gasoline in the humid, seasonless air; the line the Rio Grande makes; the slopping of fresh hot grease in the taqueria; the one-and-only smell of carne guisada tacos on a Friday afternoon together with the one-and-only feel of the cold sweat on the Tecate someone just handed you; the gallop to Austin and back with that tree on 71 that shoots out of the earth like a fat broccoli planted between two endless grey lines skipping off into the horizon.

Bayou City, Space City, Clutch City, by whatever name you call it, is still and always Houston: driving the loop at night; the view from the top of Chase Tower; canoeing on the bayou where the Allen brothers landed and birthed our city not too long ago; better yet, canoeing down the street you grew up on after the floods; the orange sky like a night light after a Texas rain; the stucco walls stuck so temporary into our wet clay earth, our relentless swamp; the genuine trueness-to-self felt every time something gets torn down and built anew; bungalows in the Heights; white linen nights, all those happy yuppies filled with wine floating down 19th like ghosts; the smell of popcorn and fried twinkies at the world's biggest rodeo; the Astrodome, the Coliseum, the Summit, the nostalgia of battles won and lost; the stillness of downtown late at night; Adickes' statue on I-45 of our sweet city's guardian and namesake, his shoulders rising like a giant's through the trees, his proud stance telling us softly yet sternly: This is Texas.

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There is a feeling you can only get in Texas, a feeling I long for when I am not here: the feeling that says there is nothing that is impossible and if I need to I can skip like a stone over to Marfa, or fall straight down into Mexico, or rumble easily over to New Orleans, or plunge into Galveston, the city that will simply not give in - rebuild, rebuild, rebuild!

A feeling that says although some may dream of bagels and subways, there's no reason everyone can't have room in their dreams for the eternal Texas summer or hot tortilla soup on one of the few cold days we'll be soon having.

A feeling that says there's no reason mesquite and magnolia are less than maple and evergreen. A feeling that says there's no reason that this place isn't worth a different sort of love than wherever you call home.

A feeling that says there's no reason to shy away from loving Texas, because, as the song goes, "Texas loves you anyway."

Logan Beck is a Hanszen College senior and Thresher photography editor.

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