CAN WE GET ON THE SAME PAGE ABOUT ANYTHING?

NOTE: This post has nothing to do with being gay. It probably has nothing to do with growing older either, other than the fact I may sound like a stereotypically grumpy old man. This is just a chance to recover from some of the culture shock I seem to experience every time I find myself in the “great” state of Texas.

 

They’ve been saying it for decades. Everything is bigger and better in Texas. Is it pride or arrogance? Likely both. But when you boast, you leave yourself open to criticism. 

 

I lived in Texas from 1978 to 1989. I told everyone (in Texas) I left because I couldn’t handle the heat. But there was more, of course. I didn’t like the politics. I didn’t like living life in the closet. I didn’t like how Texas leaned too much into tradition as an excuse to not change over anything. 

 

Driving from Dallas Love Field Airport two hours east to Tyler where my parents live, the “bigger” was constantly in view. My rental car was average-sized, a Nissan Altima. It might as well have been a clown car as I was surrounded on the interstate by oversized pickup trucks, SUVs and semis. There was no way to see over or around the other vehicles as I drove the 70 or 75 miles per hour speed limit. It had me wondering how much harder the drive would have been if I’d driven my Mini Cooper from Denver. (I did not spot a single Mini on the highways going to or from Tyler.) In my mind, bigger was clearly not better.

 

I made a pit stop along the way to use the restroom. I pulled off at a Buc-ee’s, one of a growing Texas-based chain of massive roadside convenience stores. My parents rave about it so I’d stopped there on my last visit as well. I didn’t get it then, but I thought I’d give it another try. Maybe I’d been a bad mood. Maybe I’d been too anti-Texas. Maybe I just needed to lighten up and immerse myself in good ol’ American consumerism. 

 

I will concede that the restrooms were very large and remarkably clean, as they are reputed to be. But everything else about the place seemed unnecessarily big and just plain unnecessary. I bought nothing. I didn’t even slow to a browsing pace. The restrooms are situated in the middle of the store, intentionally so, no doubt, so you have to pass the maximum amount of merchandise no matter which side of the store you enter from, but just like the duty-free shopping spaces between the security screening area and the departure gates at airports, I was not wooed to reach for my wallet. 

 

Buc-ee’s, schmuck-ee’s. Big—massive even—but not better. Still, I may speedwalk through the centre aisle yet again on my next visit. There is something to be said for being able to stand at a urinal without having my shoes in a puddle of urine.

 

So “Big” Texas did not impress me. What about the “Better” part? 

 

Sorry, no signs of that. Instead, I found myself frustrated by what seemed like a hell-no-we-won’t-change attitude. Like many a red state, Texas has shifted from conservatism to denialism. Climate change? Hogwash! Environmentalism? Hooey! Let gas guzzling big vehicles dominate the roadways. Let oil and gas continue to be Texas gold. I suppose I expected that. (My parents curse wind turbines.) What surprised me, however, was the lack of change in terms of how things are packaged and consumed. 

 

My parents live in a three-building condominium complex. There is no recycling. Apparently, recycling is optional instead of required. In order to have a recycling program, there needed to be two volunteers in each building to take on the responsibility of pushing wheeled recycling bins to and from the curb once a week. Two people volunteered in my parents’ building, but no one stepped up in either of the other buildings. Lack of full participation meant there would be no recycling at all. I spent my five-day visit being hyper aware of all the recycling materials getting chucked into the trash can. (I packed my paper recycling to take back to Denver.) What’s more, when I parked on a residential side street to go to a café to write, I noticed that each home had only one disposal bin. Everything would be bound for the dump; no separation of goods required. (Incidentally, the café had no indoor seating. As was the case with so many businesses I came across, the drive-thru ruled. Why stop a vehicle from idling? Why park and walk thirty feet from one air conditioned space to another? Let the gas and emissions continue uninterrupted.)

 

I will admit, I’m obsessive about recycling. I consider the packaging before I put items in my grocery basket. I avoid things that strike me as excessively packaged or come in non-recyclable containers. It just feels like the right thing to do. Imagine then my discomfort during the couple of times I went out to eat with my parents. Plastic straws (which I first viewed as an unnecessary waste in 1992) come with every drink. My parents, both in their eighties, are not big eaters anymore so they always need a to-go package to take home half their meal. In Vancouver, in Seattle, in Portland, in Denver, the to-go containers are made from recyclable materials and are themselves recyclable. In Texas, they still use Styrofoam and give you a large plastic bag to carry two tiny boxes. 

 

Better? Not a chance. 

 

Be better, Texas. Be sustainable. Be willing to change. It’s so discouraging to live in areas where people are genuinely trying to live more responsibly when there are large areas in North America that refuse to adapt. I hear a lot of people say they make changes—or sacrifices—to be kinder to planet Earth on account of concern for what things will be like for their children and grandchildren. I have no offspring. It would be easy for me not to care at all. I could go to my grave not giving a hoot about the future to come thereafter. But I actively seek ways to leave a smaller environmental footprint simply because it seems the right thing to do. I can’t come up with an argument for opting out. Climate change or not, I’d rather err on the side of planet Earth whenever possible. I wish Texas would get on board, too. 

A DIFFERENT WORLD

Okay, I survived my visit to Texas. My family relations are intact. Still, there were parts of the trip that mystified me. Why, for instance, does a chopped-up highway, much of it under construction, have a speed limit of 75 miles per hour? Just keeping with the flow of traffic as I navigated a parade of semis felt like taking my life in my hands. If Texans can’t drive 55, how about 60…or even 65? (“There’ve been lots of bad accidents on that road,” my father said. No kidding!) 

 

Next time, I might take the connector flight from DFW to my parents’ local airport.

 

My parents live in a condo building with oversized units. Theirs is about three thousand square feet, including a walk-in closet to die for. Texas likes things supersized from vehicles to homes. (My nephew, an exception, lives in a “tiny home” near Austin.) I jogged all through their neighborhood which was full of monstrous homes that made me wonder, Who lives there and what in the world do they do with all that space? Do days pass when they never see another family member? Do they sometimes skip meals because the kitchen is too far? 

 

Fortunately, we did drive through some older neighborhoods where the homes had character. Some houses might even have been described as bungalows. Lovely. This also got us off The Loop which circles Tyler and is dotted with strip malls, gas stations, fast food outlets and car dealerships. Yeesh. Zero charm anywhere along the way.

 

One of my takeaways from my visit is the notion that Texans don’t like change. This includes denying a changing world (e.g., global warming) if those changes mean they have to do something differently, however innocuous. Going out for meals, I realized Texas—or the places we went, at least—wasn’t doing anything to consider its environmental footprint. People drank from paper coffee cups even as they stayed and finished their drinks in the restaurant. Everyone had plastic straws. They automatically came with every cold drink. Doggy bags were Styrofoam containers. Can’t remember the last time I’ve seen Styrofoam. Later, as I asked at my parents’ home where to put some recycling, my mother explained (to her chagrin) the condominium complex voted down recycling. No one wanted to haul a big bin out for weekly pickup. I hadn’t realized opting out was an option. How is it people are still resisting recycling?

 

All of this was extremely frustrating. In British Columbia, we go strawless (or use admittedly icky paper straws). Food containers and to-go utensils are made from recyclable materials and are compostable. I know the focus needs to be on what we do as individuals, but it’s mighty maddening knowing that large swaths of the planet are doing nothing. There are easy fixes but Texas won’t go there. To change would constitute a nod to the possibility of climate change deep in oil country. Why have any regard for environmental impact?

 

And so I segue into the political/religious milieu of what I experienced in Texas. To be clear, I did not have conversations with strangers. I did not mention the orange dude’s name and, thankfully, my ears didn’t prick up with others talking about him. Whew. Things were more subtle. On Sunday, I drove along The Loop, stopping at a dozen gas stations and drugstores, on a quest for a copy of The New York Times. Nothing doing. I can only conclude that Tyler, Texas does not carry that paper. Why would it want something representing that dang “liberal media”? Why would it want another point of view? 

 

As I knew would be the case, my parents watched Fox News each night… “but only the broadcast with Bret Baier.” A balanced journalist, as my mother asserted. I tried watching. On a segment about the government shutdown, all their interviews and quotes were from Republicans except for one Democrat whose aired soundbite wasn’t even a full sentence. Sorry. Nothing balanced about that, no matter who the news anchor is. I did not point this out; instead, I went to the guest bedroom and did a Wall Street Journal crossword.

 

At the coffee shop where I wrote on a couple of mornings, there was a Bible quote from Luke covering a full wall. I don’t recall the quote as being particularly polarizing; I’m just not used to having anything biblical in my face as I have my oat milk latte. Stranger perhaps was when I returned my Hertz rental car at DFW. As I got out of the car and greeted the attendant with a friendly, “How are you?” she responded, “I’m great because the Lord Jesus Christ is still my Savior.” Um. What? Is that even allowed from an employee to a customer? Of course it is. It’s Texas!

 

Sheesh.

 

Perhaps the most bizarre moment came during the last twenty minutes of my stay at my parents’. While my father was in his office space, giving away personal information that might well have been part of a scam (“I hung up before I gave away too much.”), my mother entered the living room and began a monologue of news items of the day, each piece delivered with a distinctly skewed conservative bent. Don’t respond, I told myself. But how could I read my novel while she continued to rant? 

 

My mother knows very well how radically different our views are. As she rattled on, I wondered if I had done anything to bring this on. I couldn’t recall making a single political statement. I’d duly admired churches (“nice architecture”), strolled rose gardens and obligingly sampled egg salad for dinner. I can only assume that slipping out while Bret Baier finished his newscast the night prior had left my mother thinking I was missing out. 

 

I really wanted to keep my head down, to stare at the paragraphs of my open book. That would signal I was otherwise occupied. But then I also knew this would be interpreted as ignoring my mother. Guilt trip to follow. I made occasional eye contact, doing my best to keep my facial expression neutral. My mother surprised me with an out of left-field (er…right-field) Margaret Thatcher quote about socialism. Please, I thought, Let this command newscast come to an end. 

 

But not soon enough. I finally had to interrupt. “I’ve had a really nice visit. Can we please not end it on politics?” One more political comment and that was a wrap.

 

Later at DFW airport as I waited for my flight to depart, I scrolled Twitter as a break from writing on my laptop. My eyes caught the name Margaret Thatcher. I stopped scrolling. By god, it was a Fox News tweet—how is that in my feed?—with the exact quote my mother had spewed that morning. And yet she claims she’s not beholden to the network. It was a disappointing ending to the visit. I did my best to shake it off, trying not to think how much a single news source was shaping her views.

 

Oh, Texas. What have you done to my parents? After forty-seven years of them living there, they are most definitely full-fledged Texans. They have always been conservative. Just not so unabashedly so. Still, I feel a sense of triumph. They will not change; rather. Instead, it is up to me to change. I kept my mouth shut for once. I’d like to think they will have nicer memories of my visit. In the end, that’s what counts.

 

CROSSING THE BORDER

It’s still five days away but already my mind is in Texas. It’s not about longing. No, the Lone Star State looms. 

 

Texas is a Red State with a lot of personal history. I lived there for eleven years, from tenth grade through university and four years of teaching. But I left thirty-six years ago. I headed to L.A.—Malibu, specifically—and thought I’d never look back. 

 

Well, not exactly. That’s personal history rewriting itself. My years at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth had been particularly good times. I left Texas but many of those friends didn’t. At least, not at first. Back when George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton were presidents, I’d make an annual trip to see friends and family. Politics had no bearing on travel decisions within the U.S. 

 

My, how that’s changed…

 

As far as I can recall, I’ve only returned twice in the last fifteen years, once for my parents’ fiftieth wedding anniversary, the other time for my niece’s wedding. (My niece now lives in Colorado.) 

 

Yes, my parents still live there. I sound like a heel since I haven’t visited. They’ve been living in a condominium for many years and I’ve never seen it. (My mother reminds me of this often.) But I do see my parents. I used to anyway. We would see each other every summer at the family cottage in Ontario. A few times I saw them at my sister’s place in Colorado. They’ve come to Vancouver as well, often connected with one of the many cruises my father loves to plan. 

 

For the past two summers, my parents have not gone to the cottage. They’ve said they won’t be going anymore. Navigating airports and flying have become too much for them. They’re not driving to Colorado either since the higher altitude negatively impacts both of them. And so, In 2024, I visited them in Gulf Shores, Alabama where they drive to spend a month each fall. It wasn’t so bad. I walked the beach, I biked a marshy area, I wrote by myself in a café. No politics. (Headphones can be glorious.) I don’t remember what the news of the day was but it was two weeks after twice-impeached Trump was elected president once again. (WTF?) My parents’ candidate had won so they probably felt like victors, too. Why rub their son’s face in it? (We’re not that kind of family.) I watched morning news with my parents. Safer viewing. More talk about the weather than anything else. I tracked down a New York Times while my parents read The Wall Street Journal. Politically, we coexisted without any two-track debates where our arguments never converge. This news-related ceasefire was a rarity for us.

 

But now it’s a much belated return to East Texas, the city of Tyler, two hours from Dallas, forty-five minutes from where I went to high school. 

 

East Texas.

 

This is a central hub for Red State thinking. This is the state that wants to put up the ten commandments in every classroom, for god’s sake. This is a state that smiles smugly as it proudly busses and flies immigrants to New York. It’s not an anti-gay, anti-trans leader like, say, Florida, but you can bet they’re on that bandwagon. I do everything I can to block from my mind whatever it is that Texas does politically. I don’t need the agitation or the aggravation. 

It would be easier to visit if my parents weren’t such news junkies. News is on morning and night. There are two newspapers delivered each day. My father comments on many of the news items, his opinions highly skewed. I hope to read, write or time my exercises with some of the newscasts. Anything to minimize the chances of an argument. As it is across the entire country, no one is going to change anyone’s mind in my parent’s household. All I have to do is shut up, even regarding topics about which I care deeply.

 

Repeat: No one is going to change anyone’s mind. 

 

Quite frankly, the news scares me. I don’t want to hear what’s being said on Fox News, nor do I want to hear what Texans are telling Texans. I don’t want to have a better understanding of what books are being banned, what anti-gay and/or anti-trans bills are before the state legislature or have recently been enacted. I don’t want to hear the political banter when I write at the café my mother tells me she thinks I’ll like. 

 

Must. Wear. Headphones.

 

In between newscasts and football games (which I also can’t bring myself to watch), let there be times to chat and connect. Let there be an occasion when I can hop in my rental car, drive to a state park and walk among the pine trees where the flora has no political opinions whatsoever. Let me get through this trip, family ties intact.