valley

cristina and i made the long drive down to the valley yesterday. breezed through austin and san antonio and then the southward stretch toward the tip of texas, interrupted only be a few small towns.

when olga and i drove to dallas last january, heading north on I-35 we started to see less of these bumperstickers:
Four More Wars!
Somewhere in Texas, a village is missing its idiot
Mission NOT Accomplished
Buck Fush

and more of these:
W The President
Bush Cheney 2005

not very creative, those republicans.

the land seemed to grow more arid and flat. i noticed that with each stop we made to gas up, each starbucks break (there was only one!), the speech of the people around us grew slower and thicker.

i'm a californian. i confess that i have a lot of preconceived notions about texans. big trucks. texan flags. gun racks. i imagine that they don't fancy brown people too much. i know all about those meskin-lynchin' texas rangers.

so i started to get a little nervous.

of course nothing happened. we arrived safely in a suburb north of dallas, where we stayed with olga's family. but i was happy to get back to austin.

the drive to the valley was just the opposite. south texas is lush and green. the farther south we ventured, we encountered more billboards in spanish. our stops to gas up or for a dairy queen break (only one!) were met with people whose speech fluidly mixed english and spanish.

we sat across from a mother and father whose 8-year old little girl was already a deep brown-red from the sun, her black hair short and shining even under the indoor lighting. all at once, i remembered how much i loved summers in bakersfield, in the sun, at the pool. my mother squeezing lemon in my hair to bring out its red highlights even as i grew more brown.

what i'm saying is that, for no particular reason, south texas feels like going home.

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