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By chris Date: 2003 Jun 15 Comment on this Work [[2003.06.15.08.14.24333]] |
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One of my best Texas memories is also one of my first. In early September of 2000, Misti and I were on the road. We were making the 1800 plus mile road trip down from where I had lived for all of my 27 years - New York's Hudson River Valley - to what would be our new home in Austin, Texas. In a matter of days we'd gone from the land of the Yankee - where autumn was already coming on - to Dixie, where not only did it seem that the Civil War had just ended (if it ever ended at all), but that summer wouldn't be ending anytime soon either. The places we passed along the way were magical - Winchester (birthplace of Patsy Cline) and the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia; the long stretch through Tennessee including Nashville and Memphis (Elvis); Prairie County, Arkansas (a name on maps that I'd wondered about through long, dark New York winters); then Tahlequah (Cherokee Nation), Muskogee (Merle Haggard, the "Okie From Muskogee"), Tulsa (oil), and the broadening Midwestern plain as we neared Oklahoma City. But as compelling as all this was from the perspective of a tourist, it didn't feel like we were nearing home until we crossed the Red River and entered Texas. ("Welcome to Texas," the sign along the highway read. "Drive Safe, Ya'll.") I remember well eating dinner that evening at your house in Bridgeport. Spread out on a red and white check tablecloth were pork chops, chicken-fried steak, white cream gravy, cornbread, pecan pie - new and exotic things to a Yankee freshly arrived. It was all wonderful. I felt welcomed, felt I belonged. Genuine hospitality and warmth were my first real impressions of Texas - this is something the travel brochures don't exaggerate. Looking out the kitchen window at the pasture and watching the sun set through the oak trees, I couldn't think of a single other place I would have rather been at that moment. After dinner I discussed with Pop the best route to take to Austin the next day. He recommended a road that would take us slightly west, through Hico and Lampasas - out of our way but better than the hurried and congested madness of I-35. "The real beginning of the Hill Country," he said. And he was right. By the time we neared Austin, though, it was getting dark and the weather was turning increasingly ominous. Through the windshield, illuminated by frequent lightning strikes, I could intermittently make out some of the country around us - hardscrabble ranches, rocky, haunted, canyons, tangles of rusted barbed wire, drought-withered clumps of prickly pear. And somewhere out there in the darkness were those hills. We reached Austin in the middle of the night. I was exhausted and relieved that the trip was as at its end - glad that we would finally be staying somewhere for more than two days. We remained in that curious city by the Colorado for just about five months. Leaving it didn't bother me much. In fact, in the back of my mind during our time in Austin, I couldn't help but think we'd made a mistake and that we belonged somwhere back up near where we'd spent out first night in Texas - near that house on Cuba Road. I now know that it wasn't a matter of geography at all. It was a matter of where home is. And home is not just a place you love - but where you are loved in return. Happy 50th Anniversary, ya'll. I wish so much Misti and I could celebrate it with you. We may be in the desert now and in a different city by a different river but, believe me, we're there. With love, Chris |