Its Own Kind of Crazy
by Ali Cahill
I recently did the typical post-grad, visit-home-with-the-parents thing, for my parents who just moved into a house in The Middle of Nowhere, San Antonio. The visit was supposed to be a vacation and also a celebration of my graduating (into the worst economy since the Great Depression), but there's no such thing as vacations in Texas (although there is a lot of celebrating).
We landed in Houston at 6 p.m. By 7, my brother and father had already left for San Antonio, after a three-hour flight from Philadelphia. After sitting on a plane for three hours, then driving an hour home from the airport, the last thing I could possibly imagine doing was sitting in a car for another three and a half hours driving to a house in The Middle of Nowhere. So my mom stayed in Houston with me that night so I could see the few friends I have that are home for the summer. We left the next night around 7 p.m.
The drive to San Antonio is three and a half hours on I-10, the interstate connecting everything worth seeing going West or East. The highway is like a personal gift from God to Texans; it's seven lanes wide in populous parts and its speed limit is 70, but if you're only doing 70, you're sure to get passed, flicked off and possibly shot at by the other drivers. I-10 then whittles down to two or even one lane in The Middle of Nowhere, San Antonio, where we were headed. San Antonio is also the Hill Country, Texans will say with pride. For someone who grew up in Houston, where everything is pitifully flat and hills and bumps are artificial or merely an illusion, the Hill Country is great. It offers variety for the passenger, not just the same flat landscape of trees, sky and cows. Oh, and it's majestically beautiful.
The roads in the Hill Country actually twist and turn, and my favorite road in particular is called Devil's Backbone, for the way it twists through a steep area surrounded by sharp declines on all sides that would land a driver not familiar with the territory in a river. But for Texans, who are expert drivers, the road is amusing, which is how my mom described it to me. But the road is dangerous, and ultra-religious Texas does not take naming a road Devil's Backbone lightly.
There's a lake in this part of San Antonio too, not just treacherous roads, and that's the main attraction of the area. The lake is huge, formed from the damming of the Guadalupe River, which people also float down on inner tubes while drinking beer (which I sadly did not do) and is the other main attraction of the area. But the lake is crystal clear and has multi-million dollar houses that sit built into the rocky hillside that surrounds it, like something out of Italy.
The thing about Texas is that everyone drives everywhere, so God's other gift to Texans, specifically Texans who drive on 10, is a rest-stop that is even more in The Middle of Nowhere than my parents' house, Buc-ee's (yes, that's really how it's spelled). They have more than 10 locations, all of which are located in the good ol' Lone Star state. It's like a Wawa and a supermarket (which no one reading this can truly understand until he sees a Texas supermarket) and a gas station and a Walmart all in one huge building off the side of the highway. It's complete with wacky gifts—like the shot glass I bought my boyfriend that has a gun going through it and proudly says: Don't Mess With Texas. Seriously, don't—wood chimes, guns, gun racks, smokers, and some big black contraptions whose identity or use my dad and I still cannot figure out. They'll also happily refill your propane tanks. About halfway between the two cities, this thriving Mecca of capitalism and Texas pride flourishes.
During the past five years I've lived in Philadelphia, I've become very adjusted to walking everywhere I have to go, or taking public transportation. No place that I visit is ever more than an hour away by car. My parents regularly make the three and a half hour trip to or from Houston and San Antonio. They think it's normal. They're insane. When I was home for Christmas break, they drove me up to San Antonio to see the land (before the house was even there), and then drove back in the same day. That's more than seven hours in a car.
Unfortunately, my little brother has been brainwashed into this Texas car-lust and also commutes 45 minutes from the house in The Middle of Nowhere to downtown San Antonio where he has an (unpaid) internship this summer. Then he drives back. He drives to Houston on Friday nights, and returns Sunday night for work. My dad, who is older and thus a little more insane, works the opposite schedule, leaving San Antonio for work in Houston at 4 a.m. on Monday mornings. Then he leaves Houston Friday after work and drives straight to San Antonio, arriving around 11 p.m.
My mom, who I think is the most sane of the three, is the most fed up with living in The Middle of Nowhere, and refuses to drive back and forth between Houston and San Antonio. Then again, she has a dog, two cats, and five fish tanks to take care of in the wake of my dad and fish-crazed brother, who has a fishtank in every room in the house, not to mention some in Houston as well. But the 25-minute drive to the grocery store—and not a very good one, either, by Texas standards; it doesn't even have a Starbucks inside it—frustrates her, not to mention the 45-minute drive to the nearest shopping mall, which is all outdoors in the 110-degree, 100%-humidity San Antonio heat.
The thing about Texas is that everyone there is crazy, and when you leave and come back, you realize just how crazy everyone is. But if you stay there, you get pulled into this black hole of craziness, and you start to adjust. And then, before you know it, you're crazy too. That's why I had to get out.
This is why my parents think it's perfectly normal to drive back and forth between two cities that are 150 miles apart in one day, and why my brother, who is only 20, commutes 45 minutes to work an unpaid internship and has five fish tanks in a single house. And why, when I return home for "vacation," I'm too busy trying to fend off the crazies to actually enjoy myself.
The thing about Texas is that it's impossible to explain how vastly different it is from everywhere else, how there's endless space, endless cars and endless roads to be driven. How everyone there is an over-achiever, how it warps your mind into thinking a certain way, how it probably could stand as its own nation, although no one there really wants to secede. The thing about Texas is that it's just crazy; everything about it is crazy. But it's also kind of fun, if you let the craziness sweep over you. It's a land of truly endless possibilities, because the whole state is its own world, completely accessible by I-10 and fiercely guarded in the middle by Buc-ee's.
