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. 

RE-ENTERING THE RED ZONE

There’s an unofficial understanding that, as a Canadian, I am not supposed to be travelling in the United States. I have a few friends who have refused to cross the border for many years, probably dating back to Trump’s first term as president. To them, the U.S. seems like a scary place or, at least, a place that is extremely foreign compared to Canada where citizens seem to be considerably more tolerant of differences and much less inclined to discuss political opinions. We express our views at the voting box (or via mail-in ballots), not loudly at a table at a local café. The “unofficial” avoidance of going to the U.S. officially began around the time of Trump’s second term when he started taking pot-shots at Canada, stating it should be the 51^st state and rushing to impose tariffs on one of what are traditionally the closest allies of the U.S.

 

A year and a half later, Trump still occasionally mentions the 51^st state thing to rile Canadians, distract Americans and be a commonplace menace. Many Canadians continue to choose other countries to visit.

 

I don’t have a choice. I go to the U.S. because I lived there for sixteen years from 13 to 30. My family continues to live in Texas and Colorado. I’m the only one who decided to return to Canada. My boyfriend, whom I met in Seattle in 2022 during Biden’s presidency, also lives in the U.S., currently Colorado as well. I’ve viewed visiting American friends as a luxury and have thus avoided trips to Boston, Cedar Rapids, Tulsa and Los Angeles, but I will not end my relationship with Evan just because Americans put Trump back in the White House. A president will not be the end of us. So, yes, hello again, Colorado.

 

It used to be that my parents would fly to Vancouver to visit me and I would fly to the family cottage in Ontario to fit in a second visit with them. But all that changed a couple of years ago. My parents, now eighty-six and eighty-nine, are done with navigating airports and flying places. They also can’t handle the altitude in Colorado so they’ve stopped visiting my sister and their granddaughter here. 

 

In order to see them, I must do so on American soil. I can no longer avoid entry to Texas. This is an early Father’s Day visit, five days in completely air-conditioned spaces because outside temperatures rest in the thirties (in Celsius, not that Texans or Coloradans or other Americans, for that matter, know anything about that scale). Basically, it’s going to be very, very hot for the entire time I’m there so I’ll find “relief” immersed in very, very cold artificial indoor conditions. 

 

Oh, if only temperatures were the only significant adjustment for this Canadian.

 

My parents voted for Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024. My mother purports to be an “Independent” but, when I ask if she’s ever voted for a Democratic candidate for president in the forty-eight years she’s lived in the U.S., the answer is no. (She did once vote for third-party hopeful Ross Perot.) 

 

Over the years, we’ve had some heated phone calls when anything political comes into conversation. I think the only issues we’ve ever agreed on are gun control and Queen Elizabeth II had ugly purses. There is no other common ground. 

 

This wouldn’t be so problematic but for the fact my parents are news junkies. When I step out of the guest bedroom in the morning, a news program is on. It may well have already been playing for an hour and it will continue for at least another hour. I sit in a chair in the living room, ostensibly to be social, biting my tongue every time either parent adds their own commentary about the news. I have a rebuttal at the ready, but I’ve learned it’s better to search for new Instagram followers instead and “like” the latest photos from Lake Bled in Slovenia and the striking landscapes of the Lofoten Islands in Norway.

 

All is well as my parents step out onto the balcony for breakfast and I take my rental car to a local café to write, the one with a biblical quote from Luke taking up a whole wall. 

 

Evenings are dicier. My parents tune in for another hour of news, first on Fox News—yep, that network—and then on CBS. My mother always chimes in about fairness of Fox, especially when it comes to her favoured news anchor, Bret Baier. Typically, I sit through one Fox newscast per visit. I’m genuinely curious about what biases it is feeding my parents. (The days of unbiased news coverage officially died when Trump first campaigned for president, the final nail in the coffin coming when Kellyanne Conway repeatedly talked straight-faced of “alternative facts.”)

 

After my first sit-through of Fox News, I retreat to the bedroom for subsequent broadcasts of the evening news. I read the news as presented by CBC (the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) and scan the headlines on CNN’s website. I’m as up on the news of the day as much as I want to be. 

 

Given our striking differences in almost everything political, my parents and I have reached an unofficial détente whereby we don’t engage when one of us expresses a political view. This came to be a few years ago during my parents’ last trip to Vancouver. As I popped up to my parents’ room after dinner in the hotel restaurant, my mother stepped into the bathroom and, by the time she stepped out, my father and I were yelling at one another, my father insisting that Hunter Biden was wholly relevant to the assessment of Joe Biden’s presidency. I was incensed that he would see things that way and he was equally incensed that I didn’t.

 

After decades of no-win political disputes, enough was enough. Under no circumstances would my parents change my opinions and the same applied to my own impassioned arguments. The impasse would always be. 

 

The dynamics can be tricky in a newsy household as it’s two against one during my visits. I tell myself that, when my parents express a political view, they are conversing with one another, not me. I don’t ask them to turn off the news or to even watch a little less. I will always be the guest now on visits. It’s their home. They have their own habits and make their own choices about how to be informed and entertained.

 

It's only five days. I’ve got this. 

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.