Texas and other things

Everytime I read my Texas Monthly, I miss Texas. I miss the vastness, the country-friendliness of the people, the big cowboy hats, the big hair, the spread of the blue sky, the diversity of the state (from forest to desert), the Friday night lights, the small-town newspapers, the church pot-lucks, the gorgeous scenery just down the road from everywhere, the state high-way system, the goofiness of the Texas Legislature and governor (Tennessee comes in second here), the
frontier mentality that almost anything is possible, the ranches and cows down every country lane, the bluebonnets and firewheels, the blooming crepe myrtles in Abilene, the West Texas Fair, the strong UT enthusiasm, (that's University of TEXAS), cosmopolitan Dallas, friendly Fort Worth, the sense that there is still a frontier to be forged, and that important things can be done in our lifetime, the Texas emphasis on wind energy, the good schools that still make things happen with all kinds of students, schools where few riots, guns, and violence appear, (especially in West Texas), and the Texas go-for-broke attitude toward problems.

However, the current state in my life is Tennessee which is where my son and his family live, and I would not give that up for another stay in Texas. Too precious!

Yea and hallelujah! Otter finally has a new worship minister. It only been 9 months since Brandon months. One could have a baby in that time! Murray Sanderson and his family are moving here in October. A very good choice.

Texas, My Texas

Although I love Nashville, there are things I miss about Texas. In the film, No Country for Old Men, Tommy Lee Jones has an opening soliloquy that made me very homesick. The language and the rhythm of the speech was so Texas!

I found this poem in a collection by Naomi Shihab Nye called Is This Forever, or What, Poems and Paintings from Texas:

In Texas, every podunk town
has a Dairy Queen,
where old men in Stetsons
or John Deere caps
gather between naps, burgers fat as Bibles
dripping grease in their laps.

They stare at a landscape lit
like an overexposed photo.
Sunlight glints off windshields
till every eye turns inward
to the kinder light of memory.
Their lives tick like combines cooling;
their stories, old ropers
worn thin.

But it's comforting here
where the waitress has hair as big
as her heart, and flirts
as she refills their coffee.
Finally, the black cups cool
and the old men hoist their bellies up
from the booths, crank their frames
out to the parking lot.

And one hand waving
and one foot in the car,
They pause to watch a strange wind brew
as a dust devil scampers up from the field,
grabs their hats and runs.

Beverly Caldwell, a Texas poet from Fort Worth

After my mom died, my dad spent a lot of time at the Dairy Queen, sitting in his Stetson hat drinking coffee and eating burgers. And when we visited, we went there and ate beef fingers with gravy--yum. Nobody makes better gravy than Dairy Queen. I miss it.