More Notes from the Road: September 25

More: Notes from the Road

Howdy y’all! This is second (of three) installments of notes from the road. I am still in Princeton, Texas visiting and I plan to be here until Oct. 3 or 4.  Then it’s back to Nebraska until Oct. 10 and then on to NYC.

Last week there were some tense times for me trying to get an apartment in NYC. My son, Austin and his GF Rebecca did the footwork looking for an apartment. They found one, a beaut on the Upper East Side. A ground floor apartment, with laundry in the building etc. but I didn’t get it. Why not?

I had to do a short sale on my “titanic at 2am” condo a year ago and the resulting lower credit score cost me. The owner of the building (landlord) just believed no one should do a short sale. So having his pick of potential renters he said no to me. However,  I did get one on 81^st street (Upper East Side and a ground floor as well) because that landlord thought it was a smart move on my part to short sale a property 95K underwater and especially because at my age there was no hope of it coming back (in my life time). You know the good money after bad concept. So there is the tale of the tape right there. To some people a short sale is a smart move very much like getting off a hopelessly lost, sinking vessel before you drown and to others the honorable thing to do is to go down with the ship or be made to go down with the ship.

Texas is hot but not like California hot. I can’t explain it but 95 here feel(s) like 86 in California. I feel scorched in California when it gets to 95 but here I don’t feel scorched. Can anyone explain why this is the case? I do know every one; every last person has A/C and good A/C. You just do here every day what Californians do the end of August and all of September, go from A/c at home to A/C in car to A/C at work. I will try to add a picture or two of how asphalt roads have been deformed (buckled) under the intense heat.

Texans it seems are slowly dropping their regional dialects, their drawls. I hear the occasional “y’all” or “howdy madam”,  or “purdy” (pretty), “pool” (pull), “pill” (pile) “drank” (drink) “mine” (mind), “hair” (here), “grain-kids” (grandkids) but not like it was years ago (or so I am told). 

Here is how the twang works:                      

“Howdy, y’all, ya shore luk purdy taday lil lady, and I don’t mine y’all pilling that thar sodee rail high. Just pill it up thar, and I’ll drank all aftanoon long. Y’all gat a rail nice place hair”! "Your grainkids will luv et"!

Seems that there are more immigrants, a desire to not stand out in the real world (businessmen traveling etc.) and in many cities and towns there is gentrification going on. Many don’t want to sound like old school Texans; they see themselves as more cultured. This is especially true with younger people. The older folk’s twang away unabashedly.

Texans are real considerate. When Rebecca’s (different from my son’s GF) van blew a tire and was on the expressway she called her mother and me and we went to rescue her and her two kids. So while I was standing there waiting for the AAA tow truck to arrive no less than 4 separate people stopped to see if we needed help. In California people don’t stop (as a rule). To be fair it is more dangerous to try and stop on California freeways what with very narrow shoulders. Still people will help you in this state and no one here has picked on me or given me a hard time about having California plates.

Friday night football is king here. I will try to enclose a picture of Allen HS football stadium which was built for 48 million dollars. Allen is a school of maybe 2400 students, and they have a 48 million dollar stadium. Even schools of less than 1,000 students have state of the art football stadiums. Football is to people in Texas what cabs are to New York, what corn is to Nebraska, what high gas prices are to people in California.

These personal narratives will end once I get to NY. Then it’s back to the acerbic social commentary.

In Texese:

"So much has pilled up thar to wret bout. I can’t wait ta sink ma computer kays inta that Akma fella from

I ran."

"Notes From the Road"

Notes from the Road

So someone tried to break into my car in Gallup, NM. They were so dumb they saw me going into the market at the gas n stop place but didn't wait till I got inside and so when my alarm went off I turned around and looked at them and they threw up their hands and ran to their junk-filled car and lumbered off. My windows were up and doors locked so they would have had to break the glass. Dumb ass!

I stopped at a restaurant in Albuquerque called the Waffle House. How bad can a Waffle House be? When I walked in every eye turned towards me and I could see there were more tattoos in the room than waffles. It’s was a mangy, rough looking bunch of curs the likes of which I haven’t seen since that all-teacher (staff) meeting in 1990.  I was eye-balled the whole time and of course being the white bread, non-tattooed, no-greasy haired suburbanite that I am, I couldn't have stood out more. A cheeseburger to go later I breathed a sigh of relief getting on the road. The burger had more grease in it than a 68 Ford Pinto. I had 2 bites and then I threw it back into the bag and felt my arteries hardening while I drove on in search of real food.

Aunt and Uncle talked my ear off. I do love them (my favorite relatives) but they each acted like they hadn't seen a person in five years. Pictures, hobbies, truck trips to show me the latest in Farm Equipment, more pictures, stories, medical reports (I didn't want to hear). Ai Ai Yi

After three years my aunt and uncle were finally were able to get over the loss of Shorty. (Son...no, field-hand...no, friend....no, neighbor...no) a dachshund. (He really was a "shorty"). Shorty was so beloved by them that they buried him in their backyard complete with an engraved headstone and they keep fresh flowers on the grave.

Well, they got another dog: a Yorkie, rat-terrier mix. BAD idea Donna and Jerry.... a very bad idea. First of all, Yorkies are attention deficit disorder, hyperactive, yappers that pee every time the doorbell rings and Rat-Terriers are bred to be put in buildings with rats because they are so aggressive they will root around, over and under things to get to every last rat and kill them.

So "Frisky" is an attention deficit disorder, piddling, yapping, aggressive little “Hitler-Dog" He ran around biting my ankles, pissing on my shoes and on one occasion went for my crotch. Had he bitten my "frisky" it would have been the last thing their "Frisky"  would have ever done. Then there would be 2 headstones in the back yard and my aunt and uncle's flower budget would have doubled. They were smart enough (my aunt and uncle I mean) to keep Frisky away from me as best they could. I like dogs......I didn't like “Frisky”.

Later, I told Karla, my sister, that if I had wanted to be bugged by attention deficit disorder, aggressive, yappers I would have stayed in full time teaching.

 Now I am a refereeing between my squabbling sisters and their kids.

"She owed me a hundred dollars for watching their yappy, pissing dog but only paid me eighty"

"We only owed her eighty because we had to cut short our vacation because she said she was going to put “Snoozer”  out on her doorstep the next day tied to a tree” Rather than have “Snoozer” tied to a tree outside (for God’s Sake) they drove 12 hours straight.

So let me see, you don't like each other for 2 years over 20.00 and a yappy, anorexic dog named “Snoozer”. That makes sense, let's not have it be over something big like calling each other petty and dumb......noo.......lets' not do that.

I offered to pay Karla 20.00 and to kill the dog to end the feud.....she just stared at me.

I told you before; weird events gravitate toward me like BS to a politician.

Who knows what happens on my way to and in Dallas the end of this week.