I become (briefly) a Winter Texan - part three

Well, it’s nearly time to come home, just as I’m getting used to temperatures in Fahrenheit. The forecast says 80 or so today.

I’m also getting used to orange juice more or less off the tree. Here’s Don picking my weekly supply.

I drink – very nearly eat, as the pulp is so thick – my juice while listening to KTEX, ‘South Texas Country’. I’m becoming quite fond of the morning DJs – Jo-Jo and the Patchman. Bit different from CBC. KTEX contests include ‘Are you smarter than a Fifth Grader?’

Here’s the link and you can listen live to KTEX should CBC’s Canadian earnestness pall:

http://www.ktex.net/main.html

Speaking of country music, there’s plenty here at the park. Weekly jams are held a short walk from my holiday home.

One need not go hungry. The park has coffee and cinnamon rolls at dawn, ice cream some afternoons and evenings, and frequent community lunches and dinners. My pork tenderloin sandwich at a nearby restaurant illustrates the infamous size of American portions.

Oversized or not, I ate ever last bit … and enjoyed it.

After recovering, Jode persuaded me – kicking and screaming – to come to the stained glass class. I haven’t been in an art group since school, but, with much sympathetic assistance for an obvious duffer, somehow produced this.

The park is within a short bicycle ride of some of North America’s best butterfly and birdwatching centres. 175 butterfly and over 300 bird species have been seen in the area. So, we set off to one of the parks. Don and Jode are riding recumbent bikes that Don made.

Other than cursing Toronto’s self-satisfied and thoroughly irritating Canada Geese, I’ve not had much to do with birds. Apparently birders must craftily sneak up on their quarry …

… and have very big camera lenses.

I don’t have a huge lens, so this is the best I could do. And, no, I don’t know what sort of bird they are.

The area is also known for killer bees. This was where they first crossed into the United States in the early 1990s, a fact commemorated by 'the world’s largest killer bee'. I LOVE roadside Americana!

An hour or so from Don and Jode’s is South Padre Island, at this time of year destination for thousands of university ‘spring breakers’. The front page of The Monitor (‘Serving the Rio Grande Valley Since 1909’) featured a colour photo of five bikinied students posing on the beach. We decided to venture over for some cycling along the miles of sand.

Sadly, by the time we got there, the bikinis had mostly gone back to lectures. However, some Wisconsin students had left a beer can sandcastle as proof of their higher education.

It was a wonderful day. Here’s Jode.

At this point, I will digress. I have done a little bicycling. In 1975, I cycled from John o’ Groats to Land’s End, the far north of Scotland to the far southwest of England, 874½ miles. Here I am, young and reasonably fit at the end of my expedition.

Thirty-five years later, somewhat worse for wear, here I am again. What can one say?!

Thanks to Don and Jode, I enjoyed myself enormously in South Texas. Who knows, if I promise to wear a baseball cap, T-shirt and shorts, they might let me come again.

I become (briefly) a Winter Texan - part two

Before coming, I had somehow thought that ‘Rio Grande Valley’ meant a pleasantly pastoral Texas vale with a few cattle posed picturesquely on the hills. In fact, the area is as flat as an unfilled tortilla.

It does, however, have the requisite horses, windmills and cacti.




Mission, the town closest to Don and Jode’s, has touches of the frontier. As recently as 1915, there were Old West shootouts on this street.

One of the town’s claims to fame is as birthplace of Tom Landry, celebrated in the States as the highly successful late coach of the Dallas Cowboys. He’s commemorated in a mural usually blocked by traffic. Fortunately I got here on Sunday when, unlike Toronto, most residents seem to be in church.

When not in church, natives – and visitors – may have a drink or two. Not surprising with margaritas at $1 each at some local bars. Or they might choose to drink at home after seeing one of the many ‘Driving While Intoxicated Kills’ wrecks scattered beside the roads. Texans believe in being blunt.

Rio Grande means ‘big river’, but near Don and Jode’s it’s not much wider than the Don River in downtown Toronto. Here’s my first sight of the river from the U.S. side.

Don spotted this inner tube – handy for a quick swim into the United States – floating near the Mexican bank.

The river just about sums up the state of the border – fluid.

Reynosa, the Mexican city closest to Don and Jode, is a major drug town and the local newspaper for the American side of the Rio Grande Valley regularly reports on killings. Further up the river, three people connected with the U.S. Consulate in Ciudad Juarez have been murdered during my stay.

Winter Texans don’t cross the border as much as they used to. However, one small Mexican town – Nuevo Progreso – is considered reasonably safe - and that despite a recent main street shootout. In December, soldiers and gunmen exchanged shots while tourists ran for cover. No visitors were hurt, but it's thought two Mexicans may have died. Mexican authorities are often vague about fatalities.

Past the Mexican soldiers and you’re into a dusty little place largely subsisting on Americans and Canadians looking for inexpensive dental care and duty free liquor.

The shot below gives an idea of what's on sale.


Bar the Pope, rather like another border town, Niagara Falls.

Here’s one last look at the border. There’s Mexico on the far side.

This is a quiet little place called Los Ebanos and, unless you swim, crossing means taking what may be the last hand-drawn ferry in the United States.

Not what I had expected on such unsettled and often violent frontier.

I become (briefly) a Winter Texan - part one

This orange tree is just outside my living room door. Actually, ‘my’ is a misstatement; the living room is actually in the guest home of my friends Don and Jode. I met Don and Jode a few years ago while sailing on a tall ship from the south of France to the Caribbean. Another time we sailed from Panama to Tahiti. Here’s one of my favourite pictures of them.


Don and Jode live in northern Michigan, but winter in Texas.

I was last in Texas for the 1998 Dallas Marathon – 42 kilometres of somewhat limited sightseeing. But previously I’d got to the LBJ Ranch outside Austin (by the way, one of the late president’s daughters used to live in Toronto) and to San Antonio to tour the Alamo. However, I’d never been to the state’s deep south, the area along the Rio Grande, the border with Mexico.

So here’s my temporary home.

Not only is this my first mobile home, it’s my first experience of having the U.S. Border Patrol on – or, at least, over – my doorstep. Don and Jode’s winter retreat is a couple of miles from the frontier. I’ve frequently spotted or heard the patrol’s helicopters and often seen officers waiting for the inevitable illegal immigrants.

Here’s the guest home living room, furnished in what might be termed ‘comfortable rec room’.

Don and Jode recently bought the place – about twenty years old and a short walk from their own mobile home – to encourage her parents to visit. I feel particularly safe because the former owner plastered it with police decals.

This is what I can see from one living room window.

And here’s the view from ‘my’ porch – the community’s shuffleboard area just below the flagpoles.

The resort has space for eight hundred and fifty RVs and semi-permanent mobile or ‘Park’ homes.

There are tennis courts, pool tables, a computer room, small library, various art classes, exercise room and two pools – one indoor, one out.


Coming from an ethnic grab bag of a city, the place stands out as curiously white, meaning ALL white. I'm inevitably reminded how much, in my time, Toronto has altered. I'm not implying this resort is the last bastion of 'white flight,' just that, despite all the social changes in the States since the 1950s, some pockets appear untouched. I'm reasonably sure a black, Asian or gay couple, for that matter, would be politely, if cautiously, accepted. Whether they'd want to be here is something else.

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Many of the winter residents are Midwest farmers. But I’ve also met retired truckers, corporate executives, television producers and former, fairly senior, military officers. A onetime Royal Canadian Mounted Policeman told me there are eight Mounties here.

As well as cops (I've cycled with a former Chicago policeman) turns out there are lots of other Canadians. This licence plate suggests the demographics.

Okay, I’ll admit it. Having never been in a mobile home resort before, the concept wasn’t high on my list of places where I thought I’d feel comfortable. Only my affection for Don and Jode persuaded me to give it a try.

Superficially, it might not always be to my taste. For instance, I’m a frustrated lover of pickups and South Texas is a pickup lover’s paradise. But even I don’t see myself in a Maple Leaf pickup.

However, Canadians take second place to no one in – how shall I delicately put it? – a super abundance of imagination. This home belongs to a Canadian couple who I don’t think I met. Click on the picture for the full ... er, effect.

I suspect some here embellish their abodes in ways they would never up north. Or, if they do, they don’t live in my condominium. To be fair, though, most of the places look quite normal. Here’s Don & Jode’s.

Putting aside my, no doubt to some, baffling and/or irritating views, I’ve been generously welcomed. I was loaned a bicycle; neighbours share their daily papers and I’ve been invited to any number of social events. Many have shown me through their RVs and mobile homes. From group bicycle rides to street parties, I’ve been made to feel included.

I’m a downtown person, but even I was taken by what is, in effect, a cottage community, a low-key winter suburb without the usual suburban downsides. Streets are so quiet that most walk, bike or use golf carts. Residents sit out on their verandas and wave at passersby. People stop to talk and there are frequent gatherings under the ubiquitous car ports. There are no irritating teenagers, no graffiti, no loud music and – I was told – doors are often left unlocked.

Towns once barred trailer parks - seen as sub-standard housing for poor people with suspect morals; now, affluent ‘Snowbirds’ or ‘Winter Texans’ with RVs and mobile homes are embraced for their substantial contribution to local economies.

So, what’s there to do and see? That’s coming up in part two.