Traveling to College Station, Texas from Boulder was an all-day mission. Around 10 we caught the bus from Boulder to Denver airport, where we breezed through security and then had hours to fill in before our flight – better early than too late. We were flying with Frontier Airlines, which is a budget airline that has branded itself as “green”, with policies like encouraging people to pack light to reduce weight in their planes (charge an arm and a leg for any luggage – an under-seat item is free but even a carry on costs like $50), and allowing people the freedom to choose their own entertainment (no seat-back televisions). It did work for our needs – we brought only a small backpack and the tickets were cheap.
Flying to Texas to visit Grandma and Grandpa was quite a ways out of our way, and would have been a stretch on our limited budgets. We had therefore agreed that if Grandma and Grandpa wanted us to come visit, they would pay for transportation and lodging, which they generously agreed to do. Most generously they reserved a suite for us in the retirement home, which happened to be just down the hall from them.
Once off the flight, we rushed to catch an earlier shuttle than we had originally booked. In our hurry we left the food zone of the airport and found ourselves waiting for the shuttle, starving. A vending machine supplied some overpriced but appreciated snacks that sustained us through the 2 hour shuttle ride. Once we arrived at the retirement home, Grandma and Grandpa ordered us a pizza, which we gratefully polished off.
The next morning we went down to breakfast, where Grandpa always eats with his “harem”, a collection of women who are quite lovely and interesting characters. Grandpa has a condition that means he has lost feeling and use of his hands and feet to the elbows and the knees, and his “harem” takes care of him, getting him coffee and breakfast. One lady, Linda, loves to cook for others and made some delicious orange rolls with honey butter and blueberry butter. Breakfast conversations are always very interesting and often last several hours, covering topics from ecology to human biology and sexuality, philosophy, history, you name it. Several times the conversation strayed into territory that had them saying “now you don’t really want to hear your grandparents talking about this”. All I had to say to keep the conversation from becoming boring was “you know I’m Brian’s daughter”, and everybody would laugh and the conversation would get weirder. I got to hear lots of stories about Brian as a child – evidently he was quite a handfull to raise. For example, he had a boa constrictor named Hugger, and when he was about 10 he would charge his classmates 25 cents to come watch Hugger eat live chicks.
That morning Grandpa and Travis and I went on a drive around College Station, and Grandpa showed us where he used to work at the university, the big field where they used to have big bonfires (including one that killed several people when the pyre fell), and the house my dad grew up in. As we were driving down a big 5 lane road, he said at several points “there used to be nothing here, just a dirt road”. When they moves there when my dad was 5 in 1967, the town had about 2000 people (if I remember correctly). Now there are almost 300,000 people living in the Bryan College Station conglomerate. When asked, along with stories Brian has told, there was actually a lot of scrub that was teeming with wildlife. The urban sprawl has consumed everything in its path, and the results are devastating. Grandpa predicted that soon the town would be part of the urban sprawl that extends all the way from Houston, the nearest major city, 2 hours away. Before moving to the retirement home, Grandma and Grandpa used to live out near a lake. Grandpa, who was a Professor of Entomology at Texas A&M University, told us that when they moved there, in the morning the garage wall would be nearly black with insects who had been attracted by the light. By the time they moved out, there were almost none.
Grandpa, a self-professed lover of snakes and other wildlife who regularly gives talks at the retirement home and tells other residents that they don’t have to be scared of snakes as long as they just leave them alone, told us several stories about the snakes on his property. In Texas the prevailing mindset seems to be “kill first, ask questions later”; when several Copperheads moves into the woodpile he had placed by the door, he killed them – can’t have them that close to the house! One day, he found a rattlesnake there, and after subjecting it to the same treatment and sending a picture to Brian, learned that it was a protected species. Additionally, beavers that moved into the lake were shot because they ate the trees. Grandpa is a highly educated man, and it baffles me how someone can be so aware of the state of the world, literally seeing the writing on the wall because the insects no longer cover it, and not be moved towards trying to halt or at least slow the urban sprawl and extermination of animals on a larger scale.
That afternoon we went on a hike to one of the few remaining protected areas, a local preserve called Lick Creek Park. It took us about an hour and a half to walk almost all the trails – it was tiny. Texas is about 98% private land, and this was one of the few public places left. We saw a couple birds and insects and maybe a lizard. It was February but already incredibly hot.
Now I haven’t talked too much about Grandma so far – Grandpa is a lot more social and Grandma prefers to stay in more. One thing Grandma does a lot of is quilting – she is an incredible quilter who has made dozens of beautiful quilts. She told me that she had made a quilt for each of her granddaughters, which she originally intended for them to receive when she passed away. However, she said, since I was there now and might not be back for a while, so I should take it now. She had shown me this quilt before and said that she thought about me the whole time while she was making it, and she was spot on – I think it’s truly the most beautiful quilt. It is made with batik fabrics that make a rainbow gradient contrasted with a black background fabric that makes them pop. One problem was that we only had under-seat items for the flight back – how would we fit a massive quilt? I came up with an ingenious solution to wrap it around myself under my jacket; I could be much bigger than I am and the airline can’t really complain. That was not necessary, however, because by moving some of Travis’s things to my bag it was able to fit in his without a problem. I am so excited to have this quilt on our bed when we get back to New Zealand – a bed is such a large visual feature of a room and a quilt can make it a piece of art.
On our second day, Grandpa and Travis and I spent the afternoon at the Bush Senior Memorial Library, which is basically a museum about his life and presidency, along with an archive of many documents from that time. I didn’t know much about him and learned a lot. Although I’m sure the exhibit was skewed to represent him favorably, he truly seemed like a beacon of decency and competence compared to what is going on nowadays.
On the last morning we went down to breakfast with Grandpa before catching the shuttle back to Houston. Breakfast conversation that morning was lively as always, but turned to an especially interesting topic that morning: intersex people, which are people that have both male and female body parts and/or chromosomes. There are many ways of being intersex, and there are many ways intersex people choose to identify. Now, we were in Texas, which is in general quite a conservative state. For example, performing an abortion, (committing an abortion, as it’s called there), is a felony, and there is a monetary reward for anyone who turns in a doctor who has performed one. There are also anti-trans laws and sentiments, and intersex people, who don’t fit neatly into one gender or sex box, are generally lumped in there. Back to our breakfast conversation: Linda had been a school teacher, and told us about a student she had named Daniel. One day the principal pulled her aside and told her that there was another set of school records in the office under the name Danielle – his parents had requested them to be made so that Daniel could decide later what he wanted to be, and there would be a set of records to match that choice. This was in the 1980s. Grandpa told us about a kid in his class who always went to the bathroom by himself – something was different but it was never an issue. That was in the 1940s or 50s. This conversation almost brought tears to my eyes – we are exposed to so many scary stereotypes about people on either side of the political aisle, and told that the younger generation is generally more open to LGBTQ+ identities and issues. But queer people have been around forever, and every generation has found creative ways to accept them just as they are, including old people living “deep in the heart of Texas”.
There are a few more things to talk about before I end this post (there could be many more but these stood out to me). The first is just an interesting observation about how historical patterns still play out today – nearly all if not all the residents at the (very fancy) retirement home were white (and wealthy because it’s very expensive to live there), and many of the servers and other people working there were People of Color, many Latinx and Black. They were treated very kindly by the residents from what I saw, and treated the residents very kindly, but it doesn’t change the observable pattern. The second thing that stands out to me, as always when visiting older relatives, is the difference having a social life makes. Although Grandma and Grandpa were reluctant to move out of their house by the lake, the ability to connect with other people on a daily basis has had a positive impact on their cognitive abilities, probably lengthened their lives, and definitely maintained their quality of life. Although Grandma didn’t want to move, even she enjoys some of the activities. Legend has it she is an unbeatable Bridge player, and she has been able to continue quilting.
The last thing that stuck out to me was the fact that Grandpa is still driving, even though he probably shouldn’t be. However, public transit is almost non-existent there, and without a car freedom of movement is severely restricted. Even essential things like doctors appointments become very difficult. The retirement home does have a system set up where they will call you an Uber, so it’s not impossible to be without a car, but it definitely is a transition. Car-centric cities are so very convenient, until, for whatever reason, driving a car isn’t possible. In the absence of public transit services, the most vulnerable people – people with disabilities, the elderly, children, and poor people – are thereby made dependent on caretakers or private services, which are often expensive – definitely more expensive than public transit would be. This is a classic instance of American capitalism; where there is the ability to make money off of people who don’t have any other choice, public services are minimized.
In summary of the visit: I really did enjoy being able to visit Grandma and Grandpa in Texas, introducing them to Travis, and learning more about their life now and in the past. For me, Texas exemplifies many of the things I dislike most about America, but the people are what makes or breaks an experience, and there are some wonderful people there that we had the privilege of meeting. I know have also been quite forward in this blog, and I hope I have not offended anyone too badly – Grandpa did tell me he wanted to hear what I had to say about Texas. And to all Grandma and Grandpas friends reading this blog, especially Bunny, Linda and Kathleen, a special hello from New Zealand (where I’m now publishing this from)!
