Texas in the the Spring

I've heard there's only steers and queers in Texas, but that's simply not true. I'm home now, but I wanted to tangle up some loose ends...

See any live music? Basically, no. I peeked at bands through the front windows of several bars on Austin's Sixth Avenue, and I also glimpsed bands playing at San Antonio's Fiesta and some other street fair in Houston, but I was never really in a live-music mood, and nobody I'm particularly interested in played anywhere I was, and I didn't bother seeking out anything else. However, I drove my rental car about 700 miles during the week, listening to lotsa Texas artists along the way: Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson, ZZ Top and the Butthole Surfers. I also listened to songs from the True Stories soundtrack, as I halfway imagined myself cruising around Texas like David Byrne (tho' my economy car wasn't a convertible, and I wore my M's cap instead of a Stetson).

What else didn't I see? I didn't see Bigfoot, even if many others have... I saw no actual Texas Ranger (except for maybe the law-enforcement guy who pulled me over for doing 64 in a 45 zone but didn't give me a ticket 'cause of my Jedi mind shit, tho' I couldn't tell)... I’m not entirely sure if I saw an armadillo -- I'd like to think so, but squashed critters are hard to identify at 70 m.p.h... I didn't see no Cadillac cars with hood-mounted horns (though I saw a pair on the cab of a beater pickup truck, and on the interior walls of multiple eateries, and I even saw a pair on the head of an actual steer in a field by the highway)... Saw no oil rigs, other than a few ersatz derricks promoting businesses along the highway... Sadly, I missed the New Braunfels Snake Farm and Houston's Beer Can House.

Is everything really bigger in Texas? Not my discount motel rooms. But Houston and Dallas/Fort Worth struck me as incredibly vast, sprawling mazes of pickup-clogged freeways (surprisingly, I didn't see nearly as many Hummers as I do in Seattle)... Also, both metropolises are served by two of the hugest airports I've ever been to, and each has relatively smaller (yet still relatively major) in-city airports as well.

Any other impressions? Everywhere I went was much greener than I expected, but maybe just 'cause it's spring?... It occurred to me is that Texas is the state with the most iconic, instantly recognizable outline, as it's incorporated into grills, pools, logos, food, etc. It's everywhere.

So, the Lone Star state gets seven stars... And that's it for Steve's Texxas Jam '07.