Thoughts on Houston

I read an article in the Houston Chronicle about my hometown and thought I would share it here, with my commentary, of course (my thoughts are in parentheses)! Original articles by Lisa Gray.

25 Random Things About Houston

1. Houston, as a city, often feels random — which is to say undefined, unpredictable, hard to grasp.

2. Clear Lake is neither clear nor a lake (I did a triathlon here, so I swam in this "lake" and I can attest that it is anything but clear!)

3. It is possible to drive north on the South Freeway, and south on the West Loop (Yes, very confusing)

4. Mount Houston? Oh, please. We are flat, flat, flat.

5. Mountains or oceans or big, rushing rivers give other cities shape. But we are left to sprawl.

6. Try to picture a map of Houston. Don’t worry. Nobody else can, either. The city proper — all 600 square miles of it — is a wiggly, hole-ridden splatter, like syrup spilled on the kitchen floor.

7. The best that most of us can do is to picture the freeways — the U.S. 59/I-45/I-10 triangle, the 610 Loop, the Beltway. If anything defines us, it’s those freeways. Most cities are destinations. We’re a journey.

8. Nobody, it’s said, dreams of moving to Houston to retire. We’re a city where people come to work. (Agreed - but with a lower cost of living, one can afford to travel!)

9. More than 90 languages are spoken in the metropolitan area. (Including Texan!)

10. The freeways define not just our physical world but our psychological one, too. We are constantly on the move, more interested in speed than reflection. At our best, we’re a fast-moving, git-’r-done city. At our worst, we move fast, but without much idea where we’re going. The future is whatever is up the road.

11. Houston, moving fast, rarely looks in its rearview mirror. The past is an inconvenience.

12. The Astrodome — once hailed as the Eighth Wonder of the World and recently voted Houston’s most iconic building — now stands empty and is considered endangered.

13. One inconvenient fact: We were never really a cattle town. That hasn’t stopped us from making our annual rodeo one of the biggest on the planet.

14. The oil industry means that we’re a city full of geologists. Which is funny, really: all those geologists convened in a city notably low on rocks. We have no boulders, no quarries. When you dig in our clay, you don’t hit bedrock. The ground under our feet is shifty stuff.

15. Our signature drug is codeine cough syrup, the rappers’ “drank” that fuels the slowed-down H-Town sound. It seems like self-medication: a calming agent for a city prone to moving fast.

16. Drivers here often wave you into a merging lane in front of them. When shop clerks urge you to have a good day, they seem to mean it. We may be rushing into the future, but we will go there politely. (Not sure that I agree with the politeness of the drivers ...)

17. Sam Houston, hero of the Texas Revolution and the first president of the Republic of Texas, was as rowdy and hard to grasp as the city that bears his name. He lived for a while among the Cherokees, who called him “Big Drunk.” A slaveholder, he opposed the expansion of slavery. While Texas’ senator in Washington, he was known for chasing women.

18. Larry McMurtry, the novelist who’s made maybe the best attempt at grasping this city, considered moist, oozy Houston an essentially feminine place, and his best Houston character — Aurora from Terms of Endearment — seemed to embody the city itself. He once said he liked her because she was “wildly selfish, wildly irresponsible; crazy, demanding, kinky, arrogant and yet an extremely endearing and lovable woman.” Maybe Houston has grown up since 1975, when he published that book. Maybe not.

19. Our port, and the refineries that go with it, are tucked away east of downtown, part of the city where many residents never go. It is our industrial id.

20. Most American gardening books don’t work here in subtropical Zone 9. Cold-hardiness, so fetishized in other places, matters less than heat tolerance. It’s easier to grow lemons here than apples.

21. In school, though, our kindergartners learn a seasonal model that would make sense in Maine: winter brings snow, autumn involves colored leaves, and summer is a wonderful time to play outdoors. Observant children soon recognize that the world is askew, that Houston stubbornly refuses to conform to the Way the World Is Supposed to Be.

22. But sometimes, just to confound you, Houston behaves the way it’s supposed to. Pears once grew in Pearland, and buffalo once roamed Buffalo Bayou.

23. Even the Heights sort of deserves its name: It towers inches over the rest of Houston.

24. Newcomers often don’t intend to stay in Houston. But the place sneaks up on them. After a few years, its randomness begins to make sense. And it’s other places that seem off-kilter.

25. “Houston gets in your blood,” a friend once explained. She paused, then finished: “Like malaria.”

26. By Anne - Home.

Doug was not fond of this article and when I searched for the article on the Chronicle website I found a follow up that I will post below as well. It appears as though Doug was not alone. Why did I like the article? Numbers 24 and 25 really hit home. People may not understand Houston, but it very quickly becomes a place that families want to stay and I am proud to call Houston home.

Follow up article:

A Dozen Happy Thoughts About Houston

Commentary from the author --

Last week, in “25 random things about Houston,” I argued that this city is more random than other places — that it’s hard to figure out, hard to explain, hard to define.

I got lots of e-mail after that. Opinions of the column were spread all over the place, with no clear pattern emerging — a lot, I thought, like the city I attempted to describe. About half the writers loved the column. The other half — and in some ways the more interesting half — came from people who were furious. “Find another line of work!” urged one. “MOVE!” commanded another. (Doug fell in this contingency)

The angry contingent complained that the list was negative. “Please consider all the positive things around us,” a gentler soul urged.

And so, by popular demand, I’m writing another list. A warm, fuzzy, happy one. Valentines for H-Town. Chicken soup for the Hou-stonian soul.

1. Indisputably good things about Houston: live oaks; the weather in February (heck ya!); the comfortable diversity; Discovery Green; Dixie Friend Gay’s bayou mosaic at Intercontinental Airport; the Knittas; Lightnin’ Hopkins; Lights in the Heights; Workshop Houston’s Chopper Shop; the Bellaire Chinatown, biggest in the U.S.; art cars in nighttime parades; the Ocean of Soul; buckyballs; the bats under the Waugh Street bridge.

2. Houston, one of my correspondents assures me, is a city where you can play golf year-round. He also notes that, “as the Aggies say,” you can bowl year-round here, too. (You can easily run, bike and swim as well)

3. The bayous and air are cleaner than they used to be. Hermann Park keeps getting better. Lynn Wyatt and Stump the Sussex spaniel look fresher every day.

4. Stuff that makes us nostalgic: the Astrodome; the River Oaks Theatre; Leon Hale; the El Dorado Ballroom; AstroWorld; Michael DeBakey; the Buffs; Cactus Music; Gilley’s; the Axiom; the giant neon cockroach on U.S. 59; the Love Street Light Circus; Marvin Zindler; “Houston, the Eagle has landed.”

5. We Houstonians are a hardy breed with finely honed survival skills. “There is no such thing as a dangerous high-speed chase in Houston,” cracked one online reader. “We all drive like that.”

6. Hurricanes bring out the best in us.

7. Beautiful places: the Rice campus; the neighborhood surrounding the Menil Collection; North and South boulevards; and (in a strange way) the Beer Can House.

8. Free chips and salsa are a Houstonian’s birthright. (Heck yeah!)

9. Stuff that makes us unique: our lack of zoning; the oil business; a medical center the size of other cities' downtowns; the Ship Channel boat tour for tourists. (Always good to live in a city with a nationally recognized medical center)

10. In these dark times, our economy remains relatively healthy. “I have always been able to work here,” wrote one man, “whether I wanted to or not.”

11. We know how to pronounce difficult street names: “Bissonnet,” “San Jacinto,” “Kuykendahl.” That prowess shines brightest when compared to New Yorkers, who mangle the simplest word in the world. “How-ston” Street, they call it. (Kuykendahl is pronounced Kirk - n - doll)

12. That irks us. It also irks us that New Yorkers don’t understand the vast gulf between Houston and Dallas. Sometimes it seems that the rest of the world doesn’t know we exist — or, worse, knows only the bad stuff. (Do we have to claim R. Allen Stanford? Can’t he belong to Antigua?) We desperately want the world to appreciate our city — but first they have to understand it. And for us to explain it, we have to understand it ourselves.

More author commentary --

That’s a tall order. Houston is anything but simple. But we’ve already learned how to drive north on the Southwest Freeway. We’re used to putting on sweaters before entering air-conditioned buildings. We understand that sodas don’t always get free refills but that iced tea always does.

A little complexity shouldn’t faze us.

Anne's closing thoughts:

It seems likes some of the best things in life are just hard to explain and Houston is one of those things.