Between Texas and Hell; In Summer, It's Hard to Choose

When I was a kid, there was this joke: "If God owned Texas and hell, he'd rent Texas to his worst enemy and go live in hell." Now, as a native Texan, and a na¯ve teenager, I never understood that joke; I mean, sure it was hot in the summer and the mosquitoes were as big as bombers and as nasty as Brahman bulls, but that was just the way it was.

Fast forward forty years, and I got the meaning of that joke driven home solidly. Here's how it went.

It was June 2006, I was working at the University of Houston, and it was just getting into summer. Summer comes early in south Texas; that February we'd had temperatures in the 80s, and as you can imagine, by June you could fry an egg on the sidewalk at mid-day. As bad as it was in Houston, it was worse farther south in the Rio Grande Valley where temperatures were already nearing triple digits on some days. As luck would have it, I was asked to go to Edinburg to speak at the University of Texas '" PanAm, and dumbly decided to drive rather than take one of the commuter shuttle flights.

The drive down wasn't too bad; I took the road along the coast, through Corpus Christi and Kingsville, and the breezes off the Gulf kept temperatures in the livable range. Edinburg was hot, but the classroom where I spoke was air conditioned, so it was no big problem. The problems started when I headed back to Houston. Like an idiot, I decided to take the inland route, northwest to San Antonio and then east to Houston, out of curiosity. Things went okay until I neared Pleasanton, which turned out not to be too pleasant.

The engine of my rental car overheated; no Gulf breezes that far inland; and I was a long, sweltering two-mile walk from a service station. Soaking wet with sweat and dog-tired, I got a tow truck to take me back, tow the car in and fix the radiator, which had sprung a leak. Got back on the road again, and found myself playing tag with five semis, who, bored by the long, hot drive, were weaving from lane to lane, running up behind smaller cars and blaring their air horns, and cutting close in front to make people jam on their brakes. I decided I didn't want any of that, so I swung into the outer lane and floored it to get past these idiots. Bet you can imagine what happened next. I blasted past them and was widening the distance when I blew past a Texas highway patrol car sitting in the median.

The trucks all tooted their horns as they passed me sitting there getting a speeding ticket from a statuesque, blonde, blue-eyed cop who, despite her beauty, found no amusement in my zipping past her radar gun going 110. Trying to explain that I was trying to get away from the stupid trucks that had just blown past us, barely doing the speed limit, only got me a little sympathy, and a $175 ticket. Then, when she handed me the ticket, with instructions on where to send my check if I didn't want to go to court, she saluted and said, "Ya'll have a nice day, hear? And slow it down."

The fact that I had been speeding was small comfort; it was hot, I'd spent nearly a hundred bucks on the radiator, been nearly squashed on the grille of an 18-wheeler, and now had to shell out nearly two hundred more. If I owned Texas and hell, I'd be tempted to rent Texas and go live in hell '" can't be too much hotter, can it?