Part 1: Encounters
You're at a social event in Houston. The people there seem cool and friendly. The conversations are humorous, intellectual, and smooth. Then, one interesting stranger asks you, "So, where are you from?"
You answer, "Texas."
The stranger looks both persistent and puzzled. "No, really. Where are you from?"
"Texas. I've lived here most of my life."
"Huh."
"What?"
"You don't act...seem...talk like you're from here."
"Um, okay."
You're in the Legislature building in Edmonton, Alberta, for some reason. Standing in the rotunda, you look up and see a bunch of ferns or palms whose branches and leaves are draping over the balcony. Interested, you find the guest services people. The two people there say that the palms are about 83 or 84 years old, and that no one knows why they are there. You suggest that there should be a YouTube show, where politicians discuss matters of importance to the Province, with the palms in the background, like the YouTube show about two guys between two ferns.
The guest services people love the idea. They encourage you to write to your "MLA."
MLA? Time to break the news: "I'm an American."
They keep smiling. "Write to them anyway!"
"Uh, so, um, I'm not sure that is a good idea--"
Almost in unison, they respond: "Anyone - anyone! - can write to their MLA! Welcome to Canada!"
They still haven't said what an "MLA" is. You suggest writing to the Canadian ambassador to the U.S.
These two would not stop. They say, again almost in unison, "You're an ambassador to Canada!"
You're speechless.
Walking outside the Legislature building, you notice two people struggling with a folding wheelchair. You ask if they need assistance. They agree. One takes your arm, and asks to be walked down the steps. Acting as her crutch, we walk down all 30-ish steps of the Legislature building. There were two landings, so it wasn't 30-ish straight down with no steps. When it was done, the two ask you if you live in Edmonton.
You're at a bar in Whitehorse, Yukon, because it seems like a good idea. After the bartender brings you a beer, he asks, "So, where you're from?"
Sigh. "I'm from Texas."
"Huh. Never would have guessed."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. I thought you were from a
suburb of Toronto."
You are in a bar in Amarillo, Texas, because going to bars is what you do now. The trend is becoming clear. A bar patron expresses interest in you, proceeds to show off their ignorance, insults your body language, and uses everything they've learned about you as fertilizer for beratement.
You are among friends and friendly strangers in Houston. The conversation turns to accents and "where are you from," so you pull out the "
Comma Gets a Cure" passage from the International Dialects of English Association (IDEA). After you read it out loud, no one thinks that you're from Texas. One person guesses which part of the world "where you learned to speak English." He hedges his guess in terms of geography, but he's the only person that has correctly guessed "where you learned to speak English." You ask him how he knows. He says that it's in the vowels. "You have a rolling bass."
Part 2: So, you want to move to Houston
That's it. You've had it. No more ice and snow! You don't care about the Packers! The Midwest is so boring! These smug complacent losers can shove their cheese where the sun don't shine! Enough of Badger This and Badger That! Enough with all the beer, beer, more beer, and liquor sold at gas stations! Forget the fish fries! Hunting is a barbaric exercise practiced by the rural elitist gentry! From the de-industrialized wasteland of Milwaukee to the uber-progressive social justice nightmare of Madison, there is only one solution!
Move to Houston. I mean, duh. Why wouldn't you? *
Beyonce plays in the background*
Houston is good in many regards (see the
Day 500 blog post). The point of this write-up is to provide a constructive advisory about relocating from Madison to Houston. This post was written be someone who lived in Texas for most of his life, and most of that was in Houston. It is worth mentioning that I've met Wisconsinites in Houston, and most preferred living in Houston than in Wisconsin. But, I don't know which city or village they came from. Arguably, you are better off living in Houston than in a violent, de-industrialized town with few job prospects. At least in Houston you can find work easily, and feasibly arrange your life to mitigate most of the downsides of living in Houston. This post frames the argument from the perspective of "given competing job offers..."
Before you pack up the truck, there are certain things you need to know about Houston:
While most people are mostly friendly most of the time, Houston does not have as high a level of trust that Madison has. Crime is higher. There is more theft, and more fences and walls. You are more likely to hear people talking about "hating" their neighbors. If Chicago or New York City frighten you, then bear in mind that for a Houstonian, New York City and Chicago are merely "bigger."
The weather is hot and humid. Imagine the worst summer day in Madison. Now, make that day last about four months. The low temperature in the summer varies between 76 and 80 degrees. The low temperature. The winters average between the 40s and 60s, so mosquito season never really ends. Air conditioners largely cycle on-and-off for most of the year. This results in Houston being the kind of city were lots of events are held indoors. You can do things outside, but you'll be sweating in a few minutes. There's a 20% chance of rain every day. Over fifty inches of water fall from the sky per year.
The worst evenings are hurricane nights. That is, the weather before a hurricane hits. The air is stiller, more humid, and even warmer than usual. It's like an awful summer day, only at night. Then the hurricane shows up...
...and after the hurricane leaves it's like the Gulf of Mexico tried to annex your neighborhood. In 2008, Hurricane Ike knocked out power to much of the city for weeks. I had to temporarily live with a friend until the power was restored to my apartment. For some reason, the office buildings had power, so much of the office worker population resumed life as best they could. Which meant driving miles through stop-and-go traffic. The stop lights weren't working, so every intersection was a four-way stop. The food and fuel logistics were disrupted, so office workers faced a choice when driving home: buy food or gas, because the stores and stations would close early. One time, I arrived at an
H-E-B a few minutes too late. Closed. The workers there said something that I thought I would never hear in these United States: "Sorry. We ran out of food."
The smell of refineries moves with the winds. Many of the refineries are in an adjacent city called Pasadena, which the locals often refer to as "Stinkadena." When the east wind blows, the smell reaches all the way to the Galleria, west of downtown. When the northwest wind blows, bringing cooler temperatures, the smell reaches the NASA/Clear Lake part of town. The smell of stagnant water in bayous, and of mold growing hither and on, meanders throughout the city. Even the wealthy areas have trouble avoiding the swampy smell.
The terrain comes in two flavors: flat and flatter. I'm not joking. Houston for the most part is quite flat, though as you approach Galveston the land somehow looks even flatter. There is nothing to look at this part of the world except buildings, billboards, freeways, and large pickup trucks. The flat terrain means that drainage is an ongoing project, with ever more land allocated for channeling or collecting or retaining excess water.
Galveston has what passes for charm and history in the region. It is a city on a barrier island, with a monument and placards that memorialize the Great Storm of 1900. The beach requires sand to be dredged up from the Houston Ship Channel. The water has the quality of an oil slick. New Jersey has nicer beaches.
Houston driving is more aggressive than Madison, and is more typical of that found in Phoenix, Denver, Washington, DC, and so on. In other words, Houston is a big city. A big, sprawling city. Unless you are so fortunate as to live close to your job, the "good" grocery store, and wherever your friends live, you will do a lot of driving. You can put 15,000 miles on your car every year with little effort. Ideally, you live as close to work as you can possibly afford, taking in mind proximity to refineries, airports, railroad crossings, freeways, and flood zones. The wealthy tend to live several miles away from refineries, usually due west or southwest of the city.
Maybe I've had bad luck, but workplaces in Houston tend to be awkward-at-best and hostile-at-worse. In a large enough company, you can find cool co-workers. But, for most of the employers I had while in Houston, the bosses were either (1) angry at everyone, and at one time violent, (2) liars
and bad at business, (3) rude to their employees (one boss called me ugly to my face, and recommended that I seek the services of an image consultant), or (4) "part of the family." The cool co-workers tend to quit (and often leave the region, hint hint), leaving you behind with people who may or may not be related to company owners through blood, marriage, or alumni networks.
Life is more expensive than you would expect. For years, if not decades, boosters trumpeted the low cost of living here. While $40,000 can buy you a condo (with a monthly fee of at least $280), you're buying into a neighborhood where more than a third of families live below the poverty line. What if you want the Houston version of Madison's Edgewood College/Monroe St/Regent neighborhood? The Houston version is the Greater Heights/Shady Acres area, which costs about the same as the Edgewood College area. What if you want a suburban four-bedroom house built after 1980? Several cities and towns around Houston offer attractively-priced houses. A newish $300,000ish house in a Madison suburb will cost about $200,000ish in Houston suburb.
The advantage largely ends there. The property taxes are about the same as in Madison, and depend a lot on which school district you're in. I've not yet bought a place in Madison, so I cannot speak from personal experience. However, I did buy a place in Houston in the Clear Creek Independent School District (ISD). Taking into account Clear Creek ISD taxes (which are called out as a separate line item), my property tax rate was about 2.5% the value of the property. The sales tax in Houston is higher (8.25%) than in Madison.
But, wait. There's more. Insurance for both home and auto are far more expensive in Houston than Madison. For homes (and apartments), the major cost drivers are flood and windstorm. Traditional home insurance (also known as "fire insurance" or "hazard insurance") does not cover damage due to floods (rising water that comes in through the door) or windstorm (wind and hail damage). Getting "fire insurance" for a house near the coast is tricky in itself. By "near", agents have refused to quote me a policy because the property was within 30 miles of the coastline. On the one hand, I agreed that living within 30 miles of the Texas coastline was bad idea due to hurricane risks. But, my employer was about 1 or 2 miles from the coastline (depending on what exactly you call a "coastline"). The risk of a hurricane + the cost of insurance in that region was less than the risk of getting in a car crash while paying to drive 30 miles to work every day. See above about living as close to your job as you can possible afford and tolerate.
Ultimately, in 2016 the insurance costs for an owner-occupied 1980s townhouse in southeast Houston were about $600 for "fire insurance" + $750 for "yearly condo insurance" (which I think covered windstorm) + $250 for flood. Back when I was a renter, I paid about $200 per year for renter's insurance, which did not include flood. I didn't buy flood insurance because I reckoned that any storm that put a foot of water in the apartment would be so catastrophic that the apartment (and the employer's office building) would no longer exist. If the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association (TWIA) can be believed, the average yearly cost for windstorm insurance is
$1600 per year.
If you move your vehicle from Madison to Houston, expect your car insurance to double. Fifty dollars per month is cheap. $100 is common. Why so expensive? See above about aggressive driving, long commutes, and high crime.
Oh yeah, and vehicle inspections are required, which take about an hour or two of your life every year. Inspection stations may offer to sell you windshield wipers, etc., in case they decide that your wipers, etc., need replacing. The cost of inspection + registration in Houston is about the same as registration + wheel tax in Madison.
Oh yeah, and lately most of the new freeway construction comes in the form of toll roads.
In my experience, any tax advantage to living in Houston vs Madison was heavily reduced by the increase in total insurance costs. When I attempted to calculate an "all costs" comparison between the two cities, Houston was cheaper than Madison. By $30 per month.
Stepping away from the economic analysis, there are other reasons why Houston and its surroundings can be so off-putting. When Houston is "at its best," it comes across as a humid, flat version of what I imagine Los Angeles to be. The skyline and suburbs are like a mini-Chicago. When Houston is "at its most Texan," it comes across as an exercise in aesthetics or an indulgent delusion. The big draw at the Houston rodeo isn't the animals or the buck-riding, it's the concerts. The rodeo is a music festival with horses on the side.
While almost no one will say that education and learning is a poor investment, you should see the high school football stadiums. The enthusiasm that parents have for the game is remarkable. The passion trickles down into middle school. I've driven past middle-school football players, soliciting donations from passing vehicles. Players would hold the football helmets upside down, to hold the money that generous drivers deposited.
Finally, in a city where wealth is flaunted in its own way, much of the place looks charmless, if not terrible. Light industry is scattered throughout the city. While productivity is essential for prosperity, there is a lot of sketchy development along major and minor thoroughfares. Mold and hurricanes prevent the development of patina. The "nice" parts of Houston can be named as follows: the Inner West Loop (including the Rice Univesity-area and River Oaks and all in between) the immediate Galleria-Post Oak area, the Woodlands, Kingwood, Clear Lake (except El Dorado blvd between Highway 3 and I-45), Friendswood (mostly), Pearland (the newer areas), Katy (mostly), Cinco Ranch, Cypress-Fair (mostly), Spring (much of it), southeast Pasadena, League City, Sugar Land (mostly), and pretty much any area that is not affordable.
While that seems like quite a long list, bear in mind that those communities exist within a region of nearly 6,000,000 people. Imagine there being 14 or so good suburbs or "parts of town" in the
entire state of Wisconsin.
Yikes.
But, Houston is not the worst city in the United States. Far from it. It is worth repeating that Houston is good in many regards (see the
Day 500 blog post and the next paragraph). Again, the point of this write-up is to provide a constructive advisory about relocating from Madison to Houston. Not to sound like a broken record, but this post was written by someone who lived in Texas for most of his life, and most of that was in Houston. It is worth reminding you that I've met Wisconsinites in Houston, and most preferred living in Houston than in Wisconsin. But, I still don't know which city or village they came from. Again, you are better off living in Houston than in a violent, de-industrialized town with few job prospects. At least in Houston you can find work easily, and feasibly arrange your life to mitigate most of the downsides of living in Houston. This post frames the argument from the perspective of "given competing job offers..."
So, why move to Houston? If you like large, sprawling cities with hot, humid weather, then Houston may be the city for you. If you are accepted to Rice University, then that is a compelling reason to come. If you want to work in oil and gas, and are willing to sit in an office or work in a refinery filled with alpha-bros, then Houston makes a lot dollars and sense. If you want to work at Johnson Space Center, particular in Mission Control or any of the science or materials research teams, then go for it. If you want to work in a particular field of medical research, such as artificial hearts or neurology, then the Texas Medical Center is the place to go. But, if you just want to be general practitioner (family doctor), work in corporate/big law, or be a dentist, then I'm not sure what Houston would offer you that a nice suburb of Chicago or Dallas wouldn't.
Part 3: So, you want to move to Madison
That's it. You've had it. No more hurricanes! You don't care about the Texans or the Cowboys! Texas is so full of itself! These pushy arrogant losers can shove their tacos where the sun don't shine! Enough of Lone Star This and Lone Star That! Enough with all the restrictions on when and where one can buy beer and liquor! Forget the rodeos! High School football is a barbaric exercise practiced by the shallow suburban upper- and middle-class! From the polluted swamps of Houston to holier-than-than-Houston Dallas to holier-than-everyone Austin to looking-for-tacos-where-the-sun-don't-shine San Antonio, there is only one solution!
Move to Madison. I mean, duh. Why wouldn't you? *
Prince plays in the background.* Wait! Stop! He's from Minnesota! OK. How about the guy who sang about Lake Superior? The one and only
Gordon Lightfoot! WHAT!? He's Canadian! Fine. Then the guy who had a couple of hits in the 1970s and 1980s:
Steve Miller! Oh, he's from Milwaukee? Hmm. Then that leaves *
Jump Around*
Madison is good in many regards (see the
Day 500 blog post). The point of this write-up is to provide a constructive advisory about relocating from Houston to Madison. This post was written by someone who lived in Texas for most of his life, and then moved to Madison. I've lived here for over two years. It is worth mentioning that I've met Texans in Madison, and most don't seem to miss Texas. The people I've known who have left Wisconsin tend to go to Chicago, the Twin Cities, or the West Coast, not Texas. Nonetheless, you are better off living in Houston than in a violent, de-industrialized town with few job prospects. At least in Houston you can find work easily, and feasibly arrange your life to mitigate most of the downsides of living in Houston. This post frames the argument from the perspective of "given competing job offers..."
Before you load up the moving van and go to a Badgers game, keep the following in mind:
Madison, Wisconsin, the Midwest, and pretty much everything north of I-40 is cold by Houston standards. Imagine the coldest day you remember in Houston. Make it
even colder, and have it last for three months. The average yearly low is in the mid-30s, and the high is in the mid-50s. The "average" Madison day is colder than a Houston winter.
As annoying as Houston summers can be, Midwestern winters can be deadly. Ice is fun for skating on, but not fun for driving on, or walking on, especially where it occurs in patches. The first snowfall of the season is accompanied by people re-learning how to drive in winter conditions, and there are lots of collisions. The slipperiness of the roads catches you off-guard. The only advice I have is to drive even slower than you would think is reasonable.
To reduce the formation of ice on roads, and thus reduce crashes, counties and cities sprinkle/pour/dump salt on the pavement. This is remarkably effective. It's also effective at causing your vehicle to rust. As soon as temps climb above 35F, you should drive to the nearest car wash, and pay the $1 extra to get the undercarriage wash. When shopping for a used car, it may be worth your while to buy one in a southern state and drive it north.
Unless you are so fortunate as to park your car in a garage/carport/barn, you will spend many winter mornings brushing the snow and scraping the ice off of your car. Once or twice a year, there may be a rather thick coat of ice on the vehicle, which is much harder to remove than you might think. A good idea is to start the car, turn on the defroster, and start brushing and scraping. Did I mention this happens in the morning, before you head to work? Maybe you've had coffee, maybe you've hadn't. Maybe you're already late for work, maybe not. No pressure.
The food scene here is only okay. Sure, if you live here, you will find the good breakfast place, the good Indian place, the good sushi place, and so forth. But, most food up here is not much to write about. It tastes fine, but is ultimately a forgettable experience. I can recommend some bars and taverns to visiters, but there is no real equivalent to Whataburger up here. What? What about Culver's you say? Fine. Go to Culver's...in Dodgeville, which is about an hour west from Madison. It's the only good Culver's I've been to. Chicago most likely has better restaurants than Madison, but that's quite a ways to drive just get something good to eat. Learn to cook.
The road system here is somewhat unforgiving to newcomers. Madison-area roads don't really follow a grid system away from downtown, and there are three or four lakes that get in the way. There are few legal U-turns. Most of the roads have fewer lanes than in Houston, and are surprisingly busy. Making legal U-turns usually involves a series of left turns at stop lights, or driving around a large suburban block. Madison hasn't grown quite like Houston, and lacks the Houston-style streets-with-a-median pattern that makes U-turns widely available. There are fewer master-planned communities. Sprawl has generally followed US highways and county roads, not I-39/90/94. The interstates largely bypass the city. Driving into downtown nowadays is probably much like driving there in 1950: you just drive on surface streets, and the buildings get taller and taller.
Madison is more progressive than most places, and has grown slowly compared to Houston, so urban design and infrastructure fads come and go faster than actual construction. Currently, there is little enthusiasm for new freeways. Instead, there is enthusiasm for traffic circles. At best, there is a selective increase in road capacities, making roads that are freeway-ish, but not actual freeways. Three- and four-story apartment buildings pop up even in smaller towns.
Speaking of small, if you have lived your whole life in cities at least the size of San Antonio or Milwaukee, then you are spoiled by something that people in places like Beaumont or Madison don't have: large airports. By "large," I mean "Southwest Airlines goes there" and "You can fly to Mexico and Canada from there." Currently, Dane County Regional Airport offers direct flights to Dallas, but not Houston. Even though Houston is a hub for United Airlines, they fly directly from Madison only to Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Newark (New Jersey), San Francisco, and Washington, DC. Visit the MSN Airport's website for
a current list. Southwest does not serve Madison, so the price floor is established by one of the other three airlines, with concurrent iffy quality. It's often a good idea to take a bus to Milwaukee and fly Southwest, especially if you can get a non-stop flight.
That's just the airport situation. Maybe you want to buy a new Audi. Where do you go? If you live in Madison, the nearest Audi dealership is in...Milwaukee. You want a selection of tailors? Milwaukee. Custom Fedoras? Milwaukee. Maybe one of your Houston bosses had a point about using an image consultant. The nearest one? Chicago.
There is a
friendly-but-conventional vibe to Madison and the surrounding areas. Maybe it's the small cities and villages. Maybe it's the widely scattered population across the state. Whatever it is, there is a lingering sense that other, larger cities have more action and better stuff. Other cities are going somewhere.
Maybe that lingering sense is the realization that Madison has two types of people (speaking very broadly here): Transients and the settled. The transients consist largely of university students and
Epic workers. Universities tend to have deadlines or end-state conditions: graduating with a degree. Based on what I've heard, Epic has a rather brutal travel and work schedule. The hours are long, but the pay is great. Maybe working 60-hour weeks is fine when you're 23. It's probably getting old by the time you're 26. Especially if you have trouble making time to date and start a family.
The settled consist largely of people born-and-raised in Madison, Wisconsin, or the Midwest in general. Most native-borns I've spoken to describe their grandparents as living (or had lived) in Wisconsin. Think about that for a moment. Wisconsin has a lot of fourth- or fifth-generation (or more) Americans. People up here also tend to be more introverted or reserved compared to Texans. Furthermore, individuals tend to favor people they grew up with. That may not seem unusual to you. The relatively insular social scene bothers not only people from big cities, but also people who moved to Madison from some other part of the Midwest. I've heard from other newcomers that everyone else tends to socialize
only with the friends they made in high school. You often feel like the permanent guest star in someone else's soap opera. Present, with some influence, but nobody thinks of you as a major player in the one-and-only-plot-in-existence. I've met men in their 60s who moved to Madison in their 20s and describe the place from a distant perspective. Don't be surprised if most of your friends are immigrants...from some other Wisconsin city or village.
So, how to assimilate, and Win Friends and Influence People? One local resident advised, "Drink with others." Find a bar or tavern, and become a fixture. Go to card game or board game meetups. Learn which beers you like. Monitor the Packers, even passively. Drink brandy old-fashioneds, not the whiskey version. Learn to hunt. Drink Spotted Cow in public, and keep your secret shame of liking Bud Light to yourself. Join a volunteer organization; I recommend becoming an EMT.
Did I mention beer? All the beer? So much beer you wonder if the Wisconsin food pyramid has a special slot just for beer? Texans may brag about how much they like to drink, and all the other states (save Utah?) will roll their eyes. But, Wisconsin elevates drinking to a popular pathology. There are more bars than grocery stores. Villages might not have a grocery store that sells fresh tomatoes, but will have a liquor store, plus a gas station or two that sell liquor. Imaging walking into a gas station, and seeing a full display of Jameson Whiskey before you get to the chips.
Within two years, I knew of two people that I have never-or-very-rarely seen sober. These are people that I've seen in more than context; they are not random whinos or drug-addicts in the street. Don't take my word for it. Other people have described these individuals as "always drunk." I confess to having lived in a rather sober bubble in Houston, but in fifteen years I never encountered such an inebriated population as in Madison.
To make matters, um, different, the drunk-driving laws are less stringent than in Texas. You can look up and compared the laws yourself, but just to get you started, first-time drunk-driving offenders in Wisconsin do not get jail time (notwithstanding other convictions). Texas offenders do (supposedly). The fines are lower in Wisconsin, too.
Finally, the cell phone coverage stinks. I had AT&T (or Cingular, going way back to 1990s and 2000s), and dropped them in 2018. While service was acceptable in cities, it wasn't in the village where I'm a volunteer EMT, in areas where I look for wolves and deer, at Tyrol Basin, and so forth. People said that Verizon or US Cellular had better coverage in rural areas, though the coverage varied from valley to valley. US Cellular is slightly cheaper than Verizon, and allows for hotspotting at its highest data plan. So far, so good. Then you find out that US Cellular's network spans from Milwaukee to Madison to Iowa, and then there is spotty regional coverage all the way to Wichita Falls, Texas. It is the only cell phone company that still has "roaming" as a factor in its coverage. I've not had roaming since...2005?
That's why, my Texan family and friends, I cannot receive your group-texts until I get back to Wisconsin. But, aren't you glad that people can buy a box of Spotted Cow beer at the Milwaukee airport, and bring it onto the airplane? You're welcome.
Madison is good in many regards (see the
Day 500 blog post). Again, the point of this write-up is to provide a constructive advisory about relocating from Houston to Madison. It is worth repeating that this post was written be someone who lived in Texas for most of his life, and then moved to Madison. I've lived here for over two years. It is worth mentioning again that I've met Texans in Madison, and most don't seem to miss Texas. The people I've known who have left Wisconsin tend to go to Chicago, the Twin Cities, or the West Coast. Nonetheless, you are better off living in Houston than in a violent, de-industrialized town with few job prospects. At least in Houston you can find work easily, and feasibly arrange your life to mitigate most of the downsides of living in Houston. This post frames the argument from the perspective of "given competing job offers..."
So, why move to Madison? If you want to live in a city big enough to have two Costcos (and not much bigger), and you want your winters to look like winters, then Madison is the city for you. If you've been accepted to the University of Wisconsin - Madison, then go. If Epic hired you, congratulations! If you want to work for a state government, and you're fortunate enough to get a position in Madison, then accept the offer. If you want to work in the medical devices industry, then Madison has more than one company to which you can apply. But, if you just want to be a general practitioner (family doctor), work in corporate/big law, or be a dentist, then I'm not sure what Madison would offer you that a nice suburb of Milwaukee or Chicago wouldn't.
Part 4: Enough
Texans are self-conscious about being Texan in a way that Midwesterners aren't about being Midwestern. That would be fine, even admirable, though one may wonder what Texan culture offers that other cultures don't. Someone from Oklahoma once said, "Texans make a lot of hay about being Texan, but they don't seem that different from Oklahomans." Pity the fool that doesn't play along.
I often felt that if I weren't "posing" or "posturing" as a confident, macho, self-absorbed dude, then people would see me as an emasculated skinny weakling. Masculinity has a relatively narrow definition in American culture, and in Texas it seems even narrower. In university, people were surprised how hard it was to beat me at arm-wrestling contests. I won only once, but every challenger had to struggle harder than expected to win. "You're stronger than you look."
And, in Houston, looks matter. Success is supposed to be visible or even ostentatious in the local manner. Big trucks parked at big houses sitting on big lots of land (or in an apartment complex). I looked at how much I was paying for insurance, gas, and maintenance for a 10-year-old Japanese sedan (being driven 15,000 miles per year) and wondered how so many other people could afford 3/4-ton pick-up trucks. I looked at how much it cost to keep a townhouse cool (and insured), and wondered how people could afford to keep a 3000 square-foot free-standing house cool (and insured).
If your research leads you to cultural beliefs and economic decisions different from your fellow Texans, then you will probably not be celebrated for your independent thinking. This is most likely true for humanity in general, but I can speak only to Houston in this regard. If you don't get onboard with oil and gas, trucks, big houses, high school football, the rodeo, being political (pick either of the two tribes for instant connections), and being either obese or muscular (naturally skinny people need not apply), then you may spend at least a decade trying to find and build a local social circle. It took me 15 years.
It's exhausting. When every other place (San Antonio, the Yukon, New Jersey) seems more charming than Houston, you begin to wonder what you're gaining from living there. Ultimately, the only reason I could fathom for living in there was for the job. A charitable or constructive perspective on feeling like an outsider is that you in a small way are contributing to the diversity of thought and character. You become resilient by waking up each day to make the right decisions and be a trustworthy person. You ignore the insults, the beratement, and the reckless drivers (to an extent).
Then there comes a series of moments.
After driving to the Arctic Ocean and back, the first really bizarre and unwelcome social encounter is at a bar in Amarillo, Texas. While talking with a coworker about plans for the future, and he says that he's looking for work outside of Houston. You ask why he would do that. He responds, "There're too many other places to live." You're grumbling about your job and Houston to another coworker, and he asks, "Why do you live here?"
You explain that you're in Houston for the job. He replies, "That's it? Your job? You're in Houston for your job? Quit. Just quit. You can work anywhere."
"But, don't you think that being in a challenging, even unfriendly environment, builds resiliency?"
"Don't confuse resiliency for callous indifference."
Joel Garreau wrote about how you know you're in your Nation. After a long road trip from Houston to the Arctic and back again, returning to Texas overall and Houston in particular did not feel comforting or nice. There was too often a sense of being threatened, or being someplace unpleasant. The relaxing sensation of return, and looking forward to being home did not occur until
2017 when I was driving a moving truck across the Mississippi River into Wisconsin. In the dark and the rain, I saw a sign for Platteville. I let out a sigh, and smiled.
Whenever I fly back to Houston, I look out the window of the airplane. The houses, freeways, and industrial areas seem to speak of opportunity, despite the appearance of slumminess. Houston does not feel so much like "home," but instead "a familiar place." It feels quite strongly that I could have done so much there. The way career progress was understood was that of moving up, changing the rules, or finding a new niche. After spending eight years in aerospace, there appeared to be no up and no better alternatives. Instead, only stagnation and dead ends. When an opportunity presented itself, I made the move: to Madison.
.jpg)
