For Thanksgiving in November 2004 we flew down from New York to Texas to visit family and friends. We saw Houston, Austin and Dallas. We spent a day or so in each. Dallas was the best of the three.
Texas is big, flat, hot and has few trees. Snow is so rare in Houston that they stop school so everyone can go out and see it. It last snowed there eight years ago. January and February in Texas are no worse than October and November in New York. In fact their trees still have their leaves, which only now are turning colours – almost two months behind New York. Their grass is still green and even growing. No one sells road salt or snow tires, so ice and snow brings their cities to a standstill: the police turn back New Yorkers foolish enough to leave their house to drive in the snow.
Austin is the most like what we are used to: it is at the edge of the plains of south-east Texas, next to hill and lake country. It has a computer industry: Dell, IBM and the University of Texas, one of the top ten computer schools in the country, are there. It has even drawn in people from Silicon Valley. IBM is designing a new computer chip there. Because it is the place in Texas where people from New York and California prefer to live, it has the bluest political views – a blue patch in the middle of the red Bible Belt.
Houston is as flat as a pancake and vast. It has more kinds of Spanish music on the radio than I knew existed. They were playing Daddy Yankee’s “Gasolina” to death. Houston is right by the Gulf, so its summers make you sweat under your clothes, but for the same reason, they barely have a winter. Of the three, Houston is easily the biggest, about the size of Philadelphia from the looks of it.
Dallas reminds me a lot of Atlanta – just flatter and warmer and with much fewer trees. It is much bigger than Austin, but maybe only half the size of Houston. It has hot summers, but it is a drier hot than Houston. The summers in Dallas are bearable so long as you have air conditioning.
The houses in Texas are way cheaper, but they have little land and few trees. Of the ones we saw, most have just one floor with a high ceiling. An attic, no basement. Because of the heat, most houses are built of brick. You have to look at the roof to tell how old a house is. Some houses have what is caled a game room – a play room with three walls and no door. Four bedrooms are rare. Bigger houses have a media room, a room just for watching television.
Of the people we know who moved down there from New York and Philadelphia, none of them are sorry they did it – they just wished they had done it sooner!
See also:
Abagond 
Could you see yourself living down there, Aba?
What’s the racial/ethnic makeup like (from your eyes) of the cities you visited?
Texas is actually one of the few Southern states that I’ve never visited. Weird.
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Houston is heavily Latino, but there are plenty of blacks there too. Dallas seemed the blackest and Austin the whitest of the three. That is the way it seemed – the census might not bear me out.
I would live there if I had to, for family reasons or whatever, but I would rather stay in or near New York.
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Abagond I live in Dallas and your thoughts on the ethnicity make up are accurate. However, I would like to add that the Hispanic population is increasing in Dallas as well.
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There are more hispanics in Dallas than on the whole entire island of Puerto Rico.
Dallas is pretty much that way, did you visit the suburbs or dallas proper. In the suburbs you will see a bunch of McMansions. I live in a four bedroom, one story house, with a gameroom, and high ceilings.
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Wow! a writing by agagond that doesn’t involve race. Maybe there is hope for world peace after all !!!
Oh wait, I take that back. I just reread it and you mentioned “latinos” and “blacks”.
I feel bad for you abagail.
You need some LOVE in your life!!!
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*** KEEP ON TRAVELLING ABAGOND ***
-and writing more about your travels.
I liked this piece. I love to travel and have been in almost all the U.S. states, most of Europe, parts of the Middle East and Brazil. (as you know, lived there as Brazilian)
Ironically, I’ve never been to the Caribbean or Mexico! (Though being in Miami now will certainly change that.)
Quote: “The World is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.” ~St. Augustine
Quote: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” ~Mark Twain
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“Of the people we know who moved down there from New York and Philadelphia, none of them are sorry they did it – they just wished they had done it sooner!”
I moved from Dallas to NJ and have lived in 2 places in NJ, currently Jersey City and firstly Parsippany.
Last year I met a couple presumably from TX. I chatted them up, and they had moved from NJ to Dallas – when I told them I did the opposite, they said, “You moved the ‘wrong’ direction!”
Agreed.
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I live in texas and its so funny to read how where i live is described by someone from a different place, but you are so true on the descriptions.
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You must’ve visited lily central Austin. Once you cross IH35 going east, it’s almost solid latino and black.
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Don’t spend much time in austin, but dallas is pretty black, most of us live in oak cliff, pleasant grove, and southern suburbs, I’m kind of an odd ball bc I live in the north western section of the metroplex. There’s a “healthy” amount of self segregation here, be it black, white, asian, hispanic, gay, etc. I can ramble on about life in dallas, but in the interest of time, I’ll shut it down here,….Nice post abagond
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Thank you. When I was there I was mainly just in the southern suburbs because that is where I knew people. Only later did I understand that that was no accident, that it is highly segregated.
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