Texas

My friend, Alissa, sent me Texas Monthly today in a package of goodies from home. It is the issue where people from Texas write about what Texas means to them. Many of the people no longer live in Texas but will forever call it home. A lot of the people talk about what they miss or what they remember. So, that’s what I am going to do right now. I am also going to end with a big resolution to get to know Texas even better when I get back.

Floresville. When I think about small town living, I think of Floresville. It is where my parents dumped me on the weekends with my grandparents. My grandma owned a convenience store located next to her house. By the age of 5, I could wake up by myself, dress myself, and walk next door for breakfast- a Butterkrust honey bun that I always microwaved for about 5 seconds. I didn’t eat chorizo as a kid but I did eat beans and cheese tacos. NO ONE had better refried beans than my Mamo. The day would go on with me hanging around the store, watching endless amounts of TV, taking outside showers with the hose (she had indoor plumbing but how cool to shower outside!!), and eventually turning in by watching the lottery numbers and the 10 o’clock news with a bowl of Blue Bell ice cream. As I grew older, the routine also included Archie comic books.

The cousins. Floresville was its most fun whenever my two aunts and my mother all decided to dump us on our grandma for a week or two during the summer. Those were the best days of hide and seek, exclusive clubs, trampoline, water fights, raw cookie dough, sneaking endless amounts of candy and cash from our grandparents and their store (shame on us). We went to the local library and ventured out to the grocery store when we finally got older. Summer stories include: the “pardon me” story, “Leticia’s cheese pizza” story, capture the puppy played by beating each other with tennis rackets (oh yeah Fville had tennis courts my oldest cousins pretended to know how to use), taking Papo Church’s chicken and honey biscuits at the Ranchito, eating Cow Camp ribs (for most of my life just a business run out of a shed), “meetings” with Papo where we appointed a chaplain, a president, and alderman and other worthless positions, trips to the Dairy Queen in the back of Papo’s truck, and of course praying the rosary many, many times. Summer in Floresville was amazing. I love the sound of the cicadas during the scorching hot days and the clear, endless blue skies. Most of all I loved those summers with my cousins. I swore when I grew up we would live next store to each other and our kids would have summers like us.

My cousin Leticia and I would correspond by letter during the year when she went back home to St. Louis. We got so into the idea of pen pals. She took it a step further one year and got us on a ton of different pen pal chain letters. People from all over the States were on these. And then one year it got crazy when somehow I got on a chain letter in Croatia and for a year or so tons of kids from Croatia practiced their English by writing to me. It got to the point where I was actually selective about who I wrote back to. I am so sad I never kept up the correspondence looking back and hope one day I find some of those old letters stored away somewhere if only for proof that I am not making it up. I could kick myself now for not seeing how cool that was back then. Oh the days before internet.

Ranchito. My grandparents own a piece of property just south of San Antonio by Calaveras Lake. As a child, it was home to my grandpa’s ever-growing junk…I mean, antique shop. It was also home to various illegal immigrants over the years whom passed through helping my grandparents maintain the grounds. Growing up, I never could talk to them since I didn’t speak Spanish. Visits to the ranchito included feeding whatever type of animal living there at the moment. It wasn’t until PC that I remembered at one point they had like 500 rabbits when I was in elementary school. The ranch was where we barbecued, did Easter egg hunts, had sandia fights where my Mamo would launch the black seeds at me and, of course, taught me how to as well. The ranchito was just another part of life to me.

Amarillo. Every year my sister and I got to spend one or two weeks in Amarillo with my dad’s family. Occasionally, we went Southwest but most always we did the nearly 10 hour drive. Usually, my dad would drive us to Sterling City(the best halfway point I guess) and my grandparents would meet us there. We always met at the Dairy Queen where we would eat lunch then follow my dad and grandpa out to the municipal 9-hole golf course next door. (By now, I am starting to see a reoccurring theme of DQ in my life and all over the State.) Dad and grandpa always played the holes while my sister and I caddied. We were usually the only ones on the course and really I am sure most people of the town never golfed there or maybe even considered it a real course. It was always in pretty shabby condition and usually solicited some comment from my Grandpa who played golf weekly. After they wrapped up, we said good-bye to my dad and made the rest of the trip to Amarillo always passing by Bryant Blvd in San Angelo and always convinced it was named after a distant relative. In Amarillo, we always did one thing and that was make lots of cookies. We spent hours baking cookies with my grandma who one year when we were little bought us our own baking kits that we LOVED. For most of our childhood, we were the only grandkids. When I was eleven, Elizabeth was born but still too young to really get in on the cooking-making action.

Amarillo is cow country and never lets you forget it. The place is flat, dry and smells like a cow ranch. We went to church, we ALWAYS went shopping and hid the bags from Grandpa, we always did an awesome family trip to Wonderland, we watched lots of TV, and we always had Grandpa’s famous shrimp nights. Grandma’s house looking back now is more like home to me than any other house on earth. It is the one stable place in my life that is still in my family. I can honestly say now that my love of politics and political debates came from that house as I listened to my conservative family talk politics around the kitchen counter. I love going “home” to Amarillo still. I make it a point to stay there for at least a week, once a year even now. It’s not because Amarillo is beautiful- it’s not. It is because of my family. Seeing them all in the kitchen laughing and arguing is heaven to me. In fact, I am foregoing the only UT game I can make it to this year in order to be at Thanksgiving with them. THAT should tell you just how much they mean to me.

Resolution. As I get older, I find that there are so many parts of Texas I have yet to explore. I am constantly told by my Lousiana-born and bred bf that he "knows" Austin better than me. Thankfully, my friend Daniel has agreed we will engage in major Texas travelling and camping when I get back. I want to see ALL the state parks we started to see one year when my mom decided we needed a season pass and proceeded to see 3 out of God only knows how many. We will do it and YOU are invited.