November 26

I was hoping that Texas would be a place I could better relate to. I've been dealing with Texans since I was about eleven years old, and I'm comfortable with 'em, despite our differences. Hell, some of my best friends are Texans. I've even had some of 'em over to the house for dinner. Well, I'm sixty miles into Texas, and it hasn't worked out that way.
First, I immediately ran into the rural poverty I'd been expecting in the deep south, and had not seen until today. Obviously decrepit and barely livable houses surrounded by industrial junk, dogs, and trash. I had been wondering why I had not seen this, ever since I left Richmond, Virginia, and had nearly convinced myself that there has been an improvement in living standards in the rural South. Now I'm thinking that I haven't seen such poverty because Adventure Cycling avoids that kind of adventure: the poverty I have seen in Texas has been interspersed with outfits that are much better off.

Second, I've ridden on two kinds of roads: narrow, without paved shoulders, where the speed limit is sixty five and is exceeded by everyone, specially logging trucks, and four lane highways with wide, smooth, safe shoulders and heavy traffic. I did two samples of twenty each of the types of vehicles speeding past me on US 96 south, about 40 miles north of Belmont. In the first, there were thirteen pick-up trucks, two commercial trucks, and three SUVs. Two cars. In the second there was one SUV and four cars, the rest were pick-ups. Gas guzzling sons of bitches.

Third, most of the people I deal with in convenience stores, restaurants, and motels are from Cambodia and India. Nothing wrong with that. I was expecting Texans, There are many Texans around, but they are fellow customers, and not ready to relate to an old fart in shorts and weird shoes. Sixty miles is 6% of the distance I could travel across this state, so things could change, but I kinda doubt it.

Yesterday afternoon in Merryville, Louisiana (I'm not making this up), I waited in line to purchase my Budweiser behind a young fellow, tattooed and bearded, who was buying his groceries on credit, in yet another gas station-convenience store. The clerk was a man about forty-five or fifty, dark-skinned, probably of sub-continental origin, but without any discernable (to me) accent. As he totted up the young guy's purchases they were talking about Chicago. The young guy had gone up to Joliette to do some work. The clerk said, "Well, if you didn't get past Joliette, you didn't see Chicago."

"Joliette was Chicago enough for me," the young guy said. The clerk shrugged, finished their transaction, and rang up my beer.

"I lived in Chicago for four years," I told him.

"Oh?' Where did you live?"

"On Ashland. 7070 North Ashland."

"Seventeen North Ashland?"

"No, Seventy seventy. Up north, almost to Evanston."

"I lived at Ashland and Touhy," he said.

"I lived a block south of there."

"I spent all my life there," he said. There were other customers, the sun was beginning to set, and I needed to cook my supper by the remaining daylight. I would like to find out more about that man's life.