West Texas

It’s always interesting to come and visit Texas. The last few trips have been either just-passing-through or to one of the larger cities, i.e., Dallas, San Antonio, or Houston. I believe this is my first long-term stay in West Texas. I’ve noticed a few things which I can share with you.

• This has to be where our country is storing our national reserves of “flat” and “empty”. They’ve got an awful lot of it out here.
• There’s a primary election coming up. It might be different in other areas of the state, particularly the cities, but out here, there are only two types of candidates: ultra-conservative and ultra-ultra-ultra-conservative.
• The frontage road thing next to every freeway is just weird. I’ve said it before and been berated by ex-pat Texans who believe it’s the most logical and sensible thing in the world. I must be pretty dense then, because I’m just not seeing it. Why build four lanes of interstate highway when instead you can build four lanes of interstate highway plus four more lanes of one-way frontage roads (two on each side) running parallel to the highway plus making your on and off ramps an order of magnitude more complex?
• Different cities have different “art themes,” where they have dozens or more identical fiberglass figures which are then painted bizarrely and auctioned off for charity. Right, you’ve seen this? Angels in Los Angeles, cows in Kansas City, “hokie birds” in Blacksburg, VA, mermaids somewhere (Norfolk or Virginia Beach?). Here, they have jackalopes. (Google it.)
• If the angst, mudslinging, and level of general nastiness in the TV political ads is this bad before the primary, I wouldn’t be watching television here during the months leading up to a general election.
• I needed dinner, and Yelp suggested a place on the way to the hotel with really good ratings, indicating you could get sandwiches and burgers there. “Twin Peaks,” apparently a chain, advertises food and drinks with “great scenery.” Okay, I was a little slow. If you’re familiar with one of these places (it’s a chain, apparently), you know what’s coming. It’s not really a food place, it’s a bar where you can actually get food. (The green chili meatloaf was really good.) The “great scenery” consists of the “twin peaks” on the chests of the extremely scantily dressed waitresses. Compared to these women, the waitresses at Hooters might as well be dressed in robes.
• There’s a mall here in Odessa, widely advertised, that has both an ice skating rink and a huge television studio in it. The ice skating rink is apparently where the local low, low, low minor league hockey team (the Odessa Jackalopes) practice. The television studio is for CBS7, and the news room set has a glass wall so that you can stand there five feet away from the on-air talent while they’re on air. I guess the news anchors either get used to it, or maybe the inside of the glass is coated so that we can see in but they can’t see out, but it must be like working in a very large fishbowl.
• Do you want one thing to show how different West Texas is from California? I’m seeing ads for multiple candidates which not only go to great length to declare their hatred for Obamacare, but ads that flat out say, “I’m supported by the Gas & Oil Company PACs,” “I’ll work hard to get rid of as many environmental restrictions as I can,” and “I’ve got the endorsement of the NRA!”
• You know you’re in Texas when the two-lane, undivided, county highway leading three miles from the airport to the interstate has a 60 mph speed limit. And if you’re foolish enough to be travelling at 60 mph in your unfamiliar rental car, you will be flipped off and passed by pick-up trucks doing 80+ mph.
• Those young women working at the Twin Peaks? It’s quite obvious that they’re very, very healthy. It must be something in the water, because I’m pretty sure it’s not Obamacare…
• The other predominant campaign ad theme is, “My opponent only says he/she is a conservative, I’m the real, hardcore, uber-right-wing conservative!”
• There are oil wells everywhere here, apparently functional and active. I even saw one in the parking lot of that big mall. Typical mall parking, acres of white-striped blacktop and lightpoles, only here there’s about a 50×50 dirt patch with a moving oil well in the middle of it.
• The aforementioned Odessa Jackalopes are not doing very well, being solidly buried in dead last in the league. Tonight they played a game to a HUGE crowd of empty seats. (From the coverage on the news, I’m guessing maybe 100 people, 200 tops, in an arena that might seat four or five thousand.) That’s gotta be a tough gig.
• The final observation about the political ads is that they’re running well over half of the total ads, probably pushing 65% or 70%. The local news is on now (the one from the “fishbowl” in the shopping center!) and of the 15 or 16 ads shown in this half hour, at least a dozen have been campaign ads. (Okay, just paid attention to the block of commercials at the bottom of the hour — eight ads, five of them campaign ads. Another was for a gun show.)
• You know you’re in Texas when you’re on the freeway where the speed limit is 70, you’re doing 80 to avoid being rear-ended and killed in a horrible, flaming conflagration, and you’re being passed (and flipped off) by fully loaded, double, gravel hauling semis doing 90+. If only I were kidding or exaggerating. I’m not.
• High school sports is huge here, and it’s not just football. I think that this local newscast gave absolutely no coverage at all to any international or national news – but we got almost fifteen minutes of high school baseball, boys’ basketball, and girls’ basketball, with extensive video highlights of four to six games for each sport. You may have seen Saturday Night Lights, but you have to be here to believe it.

It’s definitely an interesting place, and about as diametrically opposed to California as it can be in a couple dozen different dimensions. That’s neither good nor bad. I’m having a great time here. (Especially at the Twin Peaks! Ba-DOMP-bomp! *rimshot*)

But it sure as hell isn’t Los Angeles.