Beyond Texas

We were in exercise class. As we sat on our chairs, nine old ladies waving our arms about and making circles with our ankles, we talked about beautiful places we had been. Daisy took a cruise to Alaska. Renee had seen the mountains of New Zealand. I told about my day on the mail boat going up the Sonja Fjord in Norway.

Nellie is the most enthusiastic member of our group, the one that stretches her arms towards the ceiling, the one that kicks highest. Nellie said, “I don’t want to go any place beyond the borders of Texas. Texas is the most beautiful place in the World.”

Of course Nellie, at age 75, has never been beyond the borders of Texas. She refuses to think there could be any place better.

Nellie and I are both “children of the Great Depression.” That was a time when everyone was poor. Daddy worked at the First National Bank in Fort Worth. It did not pay much, but he was lucky to have a job. With 20% unemployment among other workers, he had a job with two weeks of paid vacation!

Usually our family spent my father’s vacation at my uncle’s ranch on the flat plains of West Texas. Talk about beautiful Texas! I hated the ranch, surrounded by endless sands with no other human habitation within sight and a house with sand on my pillow and no electric lights in the bedroom, no water in the kitchen sink, and no indoor plumbing. As a child I dreaded going to the outhouse, where there was a very real possibility of rattlesnakes and coyotes lurking in the dark.

In 1938 we took a real vacation. Daddy piled us all into the old Hudson, and we headed east into Louisiana. My brother Lyle, 8, and myself, 9, poked at each other and bickered in the back seat, while in the front seat our little brother Don, 2, sat on Mother’s lap or stood between Mother and Daddy. (In those days no one imagined a law requiring buckling children into kiddie carriers.) Every time we saw water, Don begged to go “twimming.” As we headed south from Shreveport we saw lots of water.

All afternoon on the bumpy, two-lane road, I admired beautiful blue flowers standing proudly among dark green leaves, completely covering the waterway beside the highway. Such a lovely sight! Later I learned water hyacinths were a pest, chocking and destroying all the bayous, swamps, and tributaries along the South Coast. This was my first experience in learning to look behind the obvious, to question everything I saw or heard for unexpected or hidden consequences.

Then we came to New Orleans. I was enchanted by the French Quarter with its quaint streets and elaborate iron railings and balconies. People told me New Orleans was a European city in America. I determined to go and see the original template for myself in France.

At nine years old I discovered a different World beyond Texas.