Trying to muster a little enthusiasm for this "tactical Friday", as we used to call them in the Air Force. Tomorrow we drive to Nashua, and then on to Andover to spend Thanksgiving with the Reeve-Stickley clan. Although I'm sure there will be a few billable calls as we snake our way through Binghamton, then past Albany and Pittsfield on our way to New Hampshire, tonight is basically our Friday night because there'll be no 5:45 alarm to get Peg moving toward that day's parade of patients.
It's sunny and 24 degrees out there. Even in this warm house, in a set of flannel pajamas, I can't seem to shake the cold.
And they're calling for a little snow later in the morning. Whether the calendar agrees, winter has arrived in the Southern Tier, and will hang around into May. Felix needs to finish the condo so we can escape to a little warmth as this season drags on.
The New York Times this morning entered the business undertaken by so many click-baiting publications over the last few years--answer a few questions, and the Gray Lady will help you find your dream community.
Of course, the questionnaire reflected the value system of its creators. Do I care about racial diversity? Nope. Gay bars? Nope.
No questions about religious life. You can tell them you want to live around a number of ethnic groups, but Caucasian wasn't a choice.
The computer screen did ask how I felt about hot summers. Don't like 'em. Not one bit. And even less so as I age.
So the helpful algorithm gave me a list of towns that should suit me, including Binghamton and Norwich, both just down the road from here.
Alongside the exercise in finding one's dream community was a lengthy essay by a Californian pondering a move to the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex.
Ah, the Big D. Know it well. Left when I was sixteen determined never to return, and then my folks moved back there to retire and I spent my kids' childhoods driving back and forth between the panhandle and the north Dallas suburbs, right around this time of year in fact.
So why in the hell would a writer from San Francisco consider following the herd of Californians that seems to be flocking to Dallas and Austin and Houston?
In a word: housing. The average single family home in southern California goes for over $800,000.00, and that's not going to get you a view of the Pacific or much of anything besides a stucco clad tract home. For less than half of that, you can find a brick 4/2 in Frisco, Allen or McKinney, maybe even with a community pool.
I thought his observation that north Texas seems resilient to the effects of climate change was a little naive. Sure he's leaving behind wildfires, but have you ever endured two-a-days in full pads in Plano in August? And the whole system relies for its water on an ancient aquifer that drops by the year as more and more people try to keep their lawns green or their pools filled. They're feverishly building reservoirs to support the booming population, but the lengthy drought cycles leave the new lakes looking pretty empty some summers.
He also observed, surprisingly, that politics is a draw, at least in the urban areas. Texas is turning from red to deep purple, and the cities and suburbs have become quite blue, to the horror of folks like my father who sits in front of his TV watching OAN and railing at the Marxists.
The Times article makes the argument that this political diversity makes for a better environment for the exchange of ideas than the echo chamber of a place that went 75% for one party or the other in the last election. Perhaps that's so, although Republican gerrymandering seems to set the stage for one-party, minority rule for the foreseeable future. We'll see how much those center-left California transplants like the Lone Star State when the system is rigged to ensure their votes don't count.
But what our NYT author appears to find most hospitable about the endless Dallas sprawl is that it looks like pretty much any other suburban landscape in any other American megapolis. I wrote about it the other day, flying into Arlington past miles and miles of curving subdivision plats and endless strip malls. A homesick family from San Jose or Anaheim can find the same monotonous Starbucks or Olive Garden or Best Buy as back home. There's comfort, at least to some, in feasting on that same Applebee's Sysco Foods canned glop there on Eldorado Parkway in McKinney as you'd find in Laguna or Alpharetta or Naperville. It's all identical, interchangeable, so moving doesn't have to be a culture shock.
Of course, that notion of "culture" was what led me to decide, when I flirted with the idea early in my legal career, not to pull up stakes and move to Texas to be closer to family. My time in north Florida has taught me to love woods and water, to cherish being out on the boat or up in my shooting house napping with a book in my lap. Up here Peg and I look forward to exploring the diverse little towns that dot the upstate, and when the weather's fine hiking mountain trails. We like being able to drive less than an hour to ski. Our notion of fun involves a heavy dose of the outdoors, and of empty spaces devoid of other footprints.
Plano offered none of that. It occurred to me that, even if the schools would've been much better for the boys, there's nothing to do in Texas except shop, watch TV, eat out at one chain restaurant or another, and gradually watch oneself get old and decrepit. That's what has happened in both of my folks' houses, and once you can't partake of shopping and eating in restaurants because you're too sick or immobile (and living and eating that way seems a sure recipe for becoming sick or immobile), the only benefit of that stretch of bland, brown Texas suburbia is that you'll get really great medical care as long as you keep passing your wallet biopsy in triage.
Nope, not for me. The country girl I married doesn't seem too keen on those places either, having seen her beloved family farm plowed over and replaced with featureless "Knox Boxes" where families go about their lives never knowing that there was horseback riding, or idle days reading in the hay loft, or a pasture full of black angus where now they're clustered around the television watching The Voice or an NFL game while mom heats up spaghetti sauce out of a jar. Might as well be in half a hundred other soul-less bedroom communities, turning life into income into stuff until you're dead.
That's a choice, I guess. Looking back, I don't regret resisting that temptation, although I wonder if the boys might've benefitted from better schools and more diverse classmates. Then again, at least one of them knows how to drive a powerboat and to sail, how to drag a gold spoon in front of a redfish, and where to aim when that big buck steps into the clearing. Those are rare things these days among that generation, and I suppose his life is better for it.
Time to get to work--lots to accomplish before we hit the road. Did I mention it's only a two-day work week?
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