LAST WEEK I SPENT A YEAR IN DALLAS AND A DAY IN AUSTIN

By: Jim Cheney -- 4/25/05

As part of my increasingly silly day job, I spent the majority of last week in Dallas, TX. It's an odd sort of place, located at the junction of Godfear and Future-Crushing Commerce. The residents love their country, love their Cowboys, and love their Lord. Every other radio station is programmed by the Book of Revelations. Every local news weatherman refers to passages from the Old Testament when reporting hail and ice storms. Despite one meteorologist’s assertions, the plague of frogs never arrived on Wednesday, just scattered boils and locusts.

Texas, for all its big talk about being a big state of big personalities and big oil, is somewhat flat and pointless. Dallas is a bore; a massive strip mall/office park where people go to lunch at 11 AM and eat dinner at 3 PM. Sounds crazy, but you’d eat dinner at 3 PM too if you had to wake up at 4 AM for your office job.

After unsuccessfully searching for the Grassy Knoll, I decided to drive to Austin to see the tower Charles Whitman made famous (That’s Whitman as in sniper, not sampler.) On my way there, I found myself fearfully gripping the wheel of my 2005 Dodge Fallapart. (I can’t imagine anyone has ever actually purchased this model. It seems as if it was designed to provide salesman types and cheapskate vacationers a greater appreciation of life, grateful to arrive at their destination after having the car shake their bones and rattles their soul.)

My reason for the steering wheel death-grip was due to an unbelievable cross wind, sweeping across the flat and empty plains of West Texas. Semis and trailers were visibly slanted by the gusts. Suburbans and the like (the personal vehicle of choice for many of the state’s residents) were inadvertently changing lanes -- not in the drinking-while-driving fashion I was expecting, but in jerky movements brought on by the good Lord’s hot breath.

The radio station kept issuing alerts for those driving “High-profile vehicles.” While I briefly thought they were referring to the General Lee, Herbie the Love Bug, or the Partridge Family school bus, it became obvious that they were letting truckers and soccer moms know they could be blown over at any moment.

Speaking of the radio, I came across one of my absolute favorite programs ever. I spent two hours listening to something called the Benjamin Dover show. Between chuckling every time a caller referred to the host as “Ben,” I managed to learn that this state’s culture is far different then the Great Northeast. The subject, as I assume it often is, was guns and self-preservation. “Ben” punched up caller after caller who revealed their preferred weapon (the Glock .40 Caliber was the overwhelming firearm of choice), whether or not they had a carry permit, and what they planned to do when confronted by an intruder.

One nice woman, who we’ll call Betty, told “Ben” that she was confined to a wheelchair, customized with a holster attached to the side for her 9mm Glock (evidently the .40 Cal was a bit too much gun for her). Betty then informed listeners that if someone entered her home, she wouldn’t hesitate to “blow their head off.” It was inspiring; a tale I hope is repeated at Rights for the Disabled rallies around the country.

Arriving in Austin, I noticed that this was a far different place. It was older, filthier, less polished and all around more charming. There were no sports bars or neon-signed houses of worship, very few glass-encased office buildings, and even less restaurants promoted by a catchy jingle, or a “no-diarrhea guarantee”. Austin is a smaller, simpler place where people actually seem to relax, carrying a work-to-live rather than live-to-work ethos.

I saw state lobbyists, stopping to hand spare change to panhandlers prior to bribing state legislators into funding casino gambling initiatives. I saw moneyed old women strolling the streets in large yellow hats and parasols (no joke). There were no blindly posted symbols of American freedom; no flag-draped eagles holding peacemakers to be found. It was a comfortable place where people went about their business without bothering anyone else. This was not my idea of Texas, but certainly my kind of town.

While I didn’t query any locals on their opinion of the former governor, I got the feeling that they were fairly ambivalent. They eat some barbeque, listen to some music, have an ice-cold Lone Star or two, and occasionally watch television. Basically though, they just live their lives, not caring much for the goings on of state or national government. For what is essentially a one industry town, no one seemed all that involved in the city’s main product. If the power brokers were there, they weren’t flooding the streets.

As nice as it would be, I’m not being compensated by the Austin Tourism Committee to say these things. Despite having lived most of my life as a sheltered Northeasterner, my generalizations and perceptions of other parts of this country have tended to fall on the true side of the fence. I’m happy to admit I was wrong about Austin, but far more pleased to say I was dead on with Dallas.

I now know what the “D” in Big D stands for. If Jesus saves, maybe he can work that pointless city into his schedule.

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