[UA] Strangeness in Texas?

[Jonathan]

Lessee...I've been to Austin once, the Dallas airport,
and Houston about a hundred times (more like 15,
honestly) now.  Once, I drove from Kentucky to Texas. 

Weird thing that happened to me in Dallas--My wife
tricked me into going to TX and then suckered me into
seeing Rascall Flatts at the state fair (in Austin). 
Thus, I went to the fair.  The weird thing though, was
that our cab driver found out we worked for Social
Security Disability, went into a paranoid rant about
it, and then put us out of the cab fairly far from the
fairground gates because they had cops directing
traffic and he got paranoid and weird about them. Not
paranormal or anything, but just something that can
happen if they need a cab for any reason.

Next, if they're driving, Texas has fairly crappy
roads.  In other words, it seems like they don't spend
a lot of money on repaving the highway, and as I
recall damage has to be pretty bad before it even gets
a half-hearted patch job.  

Also, my personal experience has been that with almost
no exceptions, white people native to Texas are
hostile, arrogant, and generally obnoxious. I don't
know if that counts as a racist statement or not, but
there you have it.  There was a very clear class
distinction.  Oh, and as obnoxious as the regular
people are, the cops are even worse.  You can tell
they've watched a lot of TV to find out how cops are
supposed to act.

Texas cities are BIG.  Texas is BIG.  You hit the edge
of Texas and drive for five hours to get to Houston. 
Texas is a place that fosters anti-environmentalism,
in part because everything there is so huge that it's
hard to imagine that something could "run out." 

Freeways--Where I'm from, we don't have freeways.  In
Houston, you have the various interstates, which are
like a bajillion lanes across, and then to either side
you have a two to three lane freeway with people
jumping on and off the freeway and from there on and
off the interstate near constantly.  

Also, in ritzy neighborhoods, people knock down their
existing houses and rebuild new ones on the same
property. So you can (in some places) tell how the
neighborhood changed.  For example, near the hospital
in Houston, you have isolated little 1950's ranch
houses surrounded by McMansions...I assume the
property value has gone up so much that one could not
afford to sell one's house and then move to a similar
location.

And that's all I've got.

--- Wade Lahoda <wade.lahoda at gmail.com> wrote:

>   So, I've got a posse of players heading West from
> New Orleans and
> going into Texas in search of another group of
> weirdos who are running
> away from them.  I am about as far away from Texas
> as you can get and
> still be in North America(Western Canada, eh?). :)
> 
>   Anything I should be sure to include to make
> things feel like Texas?
>  Important regional distinctions?  Stereotypes to
> avoid?  Stereotypes
> not to miss?  And, of course, any ideas of the
> weird, the strange -
> local legends, strange true stories, and other stuff
> that might be
> interesting to drop on PCs addicted to the weird? :)
> 
> -- 
> "The whole problem with the world is that fools and
> fanatics are
> always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so
> full of doubts."
> - Bertrand Russell
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> 



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