SCHIZOPHRENIC TEXAS

I celebrated my exit from Texas this morning with a one finger salute to my rearview mirror, accompanied by a matching expletive. Each time I'm in Texas, I try to like the place. Once again, I failed.

Some of the people, such as the guys I came here to visit in Houston, are great. The first Texan I encountered was a rancher who stopped his pickup next to my parked car on a back road, to see if I needed directions. I stepped out to talk with him, then looked up to see a thousand sandhill cranes circling us, croaking their ancient rattling calls. The state has its charms.

One of the next Texans I encountered, however, was an officer with the Texas Highway Patrol. "You were doing 70 in a 65," he explained, after his flashing lights pulled me over in front of an Exxon station.

I'd come over a hill into a reduced limit and had missed the change. A perfect speed trap. Even so, I knew that he didn't stop me for doing five over. He stopped me because my Oregon plates made me a likely smuggler of marijuana. It happens.

He wanted to know who, what, where, why, when? I treated him as if he were merely a person curious about my life's story, not a guy with a badge and gun looking for the slightest excuse to tear apart my car (and life). After carefully peering through my SUV windows at all my stuff, he wrote me a warning ticket.

"Drive safely for the rest of your trip," he said, handing me my paperwork.

"Thanks for not ruining it," I said, that being as close as I got to passive-aggressive.

I pulled in for gas, and as I started the pump, the trooper pulled back next to me with lights again flashing. I thought, Now what? He stepped out and handed me my driver's license. I can't recall if he apologized.

It's that kind of stuff that has soured me on Texas. I understand the trooper was just doing his job, but I don't have to like it. Then there's the state's wind, dust, heat, humidity, pollution, religious fanatics, hurricanes, ugly landscapes, Ted Cruz, traffic, and sprawl. There's that time I hit a pig and got stuck in Pecos and El Paso for weeks. And when I buried my Harley in a Texas mud hole, long ago.

I discovered that my Houston friends live right across the street from Joel Osteen's mega-church. Too bad for me I was there on a Monday, missing my chance to be a better me by one day.

While being graciously hosted for the night by Chad and lifelong Houstonian, John, I rudely confessed that Houston was my least favorite city in the entire country -- especially its lack of any urban zoning.

They then shared with me some of their city's graces, such as world-class medical centers and fine museums. But mostly, they shared with me their sense of community. We joined a dozen of their closest friends for Monday Margarita Night. If that sounds like a crazy night of drinking and dancing -- well, hardly. Instead, it's a 30-year tradition of friends having a quiet dinner together at a Mexican restaurant.  

It's hard for me to imagine being part of a community, like John and some of his group have been, for 30 years. In some ways, I envy people who have lived their entire lives in the same place, with some of the same people, with their family nearby. I'll be seeing on my road trip a few old friends who have done just that, including Charlie, a high school chum in Flint who I've not seen since then. We're talking 1964 -- nearly 54 years ago.

Just before leaving Texas, I pulled into a wooded rest area to fix breakfast. White-eyed vireos and Carolina wrens -- avian virtuosos -- serenaded nearby. That's one of the crazy things about the state. For all its concrete and refineries and oil wells, it also has some of the most fabulous wildlife refuges, and incredible birding, in the world.

Two billboards on I-10 this morning captured the state's schizophrenia. The first bragged, "Childhood obesity is going down." The second, just 500 feet down the highway, an ad for the upcoming State Fair, featured a humungous, yellow corn dog on a stick.

Day-before-yesterday: HOMESICK BLUES