[Author’s note. This is an edited reprint from an April 2007 post]
I went to Best buy looking for a DVD. Nothing looked particularly appealing so I walked out into the parking lot and looked around. The day was still young, it was early afternoon and I had no plans. As I found myself on Highway-6 and Westheimer, for no particular reason I went West.
It was 2 PM, it was a Sunday, the sun was shining, Westheimer was practically empty of traffic and I was in a Dodge Charger. Out past Highway-6 Westheimer is all fields and new subdivisions.
It’s the outskirts of Houston, but the housing developers are working hard to change that. It has changed so much since I got to Houston back in ’76.
It was once all cattle and oil wells, the stereotypical view that non-natives hold of Texas. Now its $300,000 houses, SAAB dealerships, TGI Fridays, and Best Buys.
If you follow Westheimer long enough it curves past the grand parkway. The future third beltway around Houston. Out here 25 miles from downtown Houston, a gleaming 6 lane highway that will push the boundaries of the suburbs out even farther.
I keep going farther not really knowing where I was going, just going.
45 MPH reads the speed limit sign. Well Westheimer IS technically an FM (a farm to market road). I take the speed limit sign as a general suggestion, not a requirement and press down on the accelerator.
Fulshear, a sleepy little town that refused to grow up. Two old men sitting under the front porch of the Fulshear market talking about whatever it is old men talk about on Sunday afternoons.
Even out here there’s development. Early development that is. Tractors and back hoes out leveling the rolling hills. Making everything flat as possible for the builders to lay out yet another cookie cutter subdivision. The drainage ditches full of muddy water as another field full of topsoil washes away.
A pest. Some yuppy in a GMC Suburban, one of those turbo Suburbans that GM built for those that really want to waste gasoline. I’m doing 60, he wants to do 65 so he’s right on my tail. I look in the passenger seat and I see why. His wife (or girlfriend, but I rather think a wife since you don’t impress a girlfriend with a turbo Suburban), blonde about 30ish, him about mid to late 40s.
I could be nice and get on the shoulder and let him pass…
Screw it. He’s obviously got money and he’s got a wife younger than I am. No need to be nice here. I lightly press the pedal and the Charger lives up to its name and bolts ahead leaving that plodding hippo in the dust.
Brookshire, the real outskirts of Houston. I’m on I-10 and the sign says 37 miles to Houston.
The developers are just getting here, eyeballing it seeing if its worth developing yet. The open pastures are still mainly untouched.
Next to the road is a field that rises at least 6 feet over the road. Someone has cut into the side of the bank of earth and exposed it. Deep dark soils, Mainly Clays with just enough sand to allow adequate drainage. You gotta remember that I’m an Aggie, and all Aggies regardless of what they majored in or what they do in life still have a little bit of farmer in them. I wince thinking about all this lost farm land.
I start back into town. Everyone must have had driving on their mind today. There’s a Pontiac Solstice, a Mazda Miata, a Corvette, and of course the nemesis of the Charger, the Mustang.
The speed limit is long forgotten. Some guy towing a trailer full of lawn mowers is doing 75 for Pete’s sake! Anyone with a decent vehicle is doing at least 85.
The Charger is happy. I can tell. Driving in stop and go traffic every day is death to it, and going all out with nothing but highway is a dream. It needed this even more as I did
The journey back is too short and soon we’re back in town. Back where I started. The car’s hungry for more but its time to get home. Maybe next weekend.
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