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Texans Should Be The Best
I’m pretty sure if someone woke up after a twenty-year coma and looked around at all the social and technological advances we’ve made in the last few decades, one of the first things he might think is, “Damn, people really have gotten a lot smarter!” That is, unless he woke up this last week when we had some more-than-normal winter weather with all the ice and snow on the ground. Then he’d probably just shake his head and think, “Nope, nothing’s really changed…same old pinheads I remember from before.” I love Texas. I’m a fourth generation Lone Star Boy and proud as punch to claim this as my home state, and like most True Texans, when I see idiots on parade, I generally figure it’s just a group of misplaced foreigners. (Note: To a True Texan, the definition of a foreigner is anybody whose birth certificate doesn’t list a Texas city or town as their place of natural origin.) Unfortunately, it appears that when our roads get a good dose of ice and snow, and the idiot parade seems to be the majority, then it’s hard to blame it on the foreigners. First of all, what’s so hard about driving on slick roads? I mean really, if people in New York and Chicago and St. Paul and those other wintry places can do it, why can’t we? If we can claim the Dallas Cowboys and the Mavericks and NASA and Chuck Norris (Pssst…he’s really a foreigner too, but I think they passed a law that he can claim a Texas birthright if he wants to), then why can’t we figure out that you can’t slam on your brakes, or punch the gas, or drive the speed limit when the roads are icy? And no, I don’t care if you can bench press a Volkswagen and wrestle a full-grown Long-
by Dennis Hambright
www.dennishambright.com
horn to the ground, once your pickup truck has slid sideways and halfway back down the incline in the 7-11 parking lot, you can’t push it back up the hill while your wife redlines the tachometer and tries to spin the tires so fast they’ll melt the ice. Besides turning half our population into bad drivers, it also appears that the severe winter weather has infected a portion of our population with another embarrassing malady I’ll just call the I’m Too Scared Virus. Okay, I understand closing the schools, because if the parents can’t drive on slick roads, then there’s no reason to think our kids can do any better. But why is it that when I was out and around and trying to go about my normal routine, I found bookstores and good restaurants and even my local post office closed, but every fast-food joint and massage parlor and pawnshop and discount-dollar-knick-knack-store was open for business? Is that really what we want to show the rest of the country we’re like…when the going gets icy, all the good folks get scared and batten down the hatches and stay home? But if you want to clog your arteries with fatty food or get a happy ending or hock the family jewels or run out and pick up a sack of fifty-for-a-dollar party balloons, then this is the place to be? Come on fellow Texans… we’re better than that! Maybe we can all rent the movie Fargo and watch how those funny-talking northerners drive in ice and snow, and next time we get a winter blast, we can show them all that us Texans can do it as good as anybody else. After all, we’re Texans…we should be the best.
In the past month I have gone out and had dinner at two pretty nice restaurants with two very different groups of people. Each occasion there was at least one member amongst us who was a strict vegetarian or vegan. At the first dinner the vegetarian was totally cool and did nothing to draw attention to herself besides not having a main course that included the roast chicken or the mustard-crusted pork chop. She simply had the pumpkin ravioli and a spinach salad. The next dinner was not so peaceful. Now before I get into what vegetarian guy did at the second evening out I want to state that I have loads of respect for vegans and vegetarians. I get it that the veggie crowd think they are living healthier by avoiding the danger of bad cholesterol from red meat. I think it’s also a point of pride that they don’t contribute negatively to our shared environment by not eating meat. There is no doubt that the raising of cattle for beef is increasing in the world and rainforests in some cases are being chopped down for farmland. I have a private guilt at times when I eat some things, but it’s hard to break a lifetime of habit. Vegetarian guy at the second dinner made a point to make it known that he was displeased with the menu options. This was after we all had a drink when we finally sat down to eat. It was not too easy to just get up and try a different restaurant. So we ordered and had a not so pleasant dinner as
veggie guy ate the saddest salad I had ever seen. Somebody offered him a piece of pizza but because the pie had half with sausage he would not take a slice from the spinach and mozzarella side. Too close for comfort. Oh, please! That is when I got annoyed. We have evolved over thousands of years and eaten meat. We would not be the intelligent, dominant species in the world if we did not hunt and kill our prey. I don’t think lions are walking away from a kill wracked with guilt over killing a wildebeest. Look, vegetarian guy, I hope you know that the beer you are drinking may have been clarified with an animal product. Plus, there may be some animal fat at the origin of the pie you just had for dessert. What about the belt you are wearing or the soap you used to wash yourself with this morning? There is rendered animal fat in that, you hypocrite. Well, I actually did not say all that to vegetarian guy but I wanted to. The fact is I did not want to turn it into something more than it already was. It was a minor inconvenience that upset him more than me. However, it did make me think and I remembered to make a point of supporting my local farmers and when possible, eating grass-fed beef and avoiding nitrates. I may sit down and watch the powerful documentary, Food Inc., by Robert Kenner. There is a lot of good knowledge there and some tips on how to eat good and stay healthy without being a total pain.