(HOST) Commentator Willem Lange recently spent some time about as far from Vermont as you can get – and still be in the lower 48.
(LANGE) Vermont is a blue state, Texas one of the reddest. So it’s with trepidation that I board flights for Houston or Dallas, where Red Sox caps give way to Longhorns sweatshirts. I dread being asked where I’m from by a seatmate wearing boots and holding his hat in his lap. I disguise my effete elitism by wearing only Carhartt work clothes.
So imagine my surprise to see so far not a single pair of boots here in Tyler, about an hour’s drive east of Dallas; as different from the hills of west Texas as is the Northeast Kingdom from the tourist strips of Manchester. And in spite of the current news of global economic downturn, Tyler seems to be booming.
Mother and I are visiting our son, his wife, their two daughters, and their new dog, Phoebe. Phoebe’s an anomaly in Texas: clearly a mix of Siberian husky and Labrador retriever; you can’t get much farther north than those two origins of species. And it’s been so long since we’ve had kids around the house ourselves that it’s been a trip down memory lane – musical instruments, dances, and homework. But now there’s texting. These girls can do it under the table, without looking!
Tyler is named for a president who was in office at the time of Texas’ annexation to the Union. It calls itself the Rose Capital of the World, and raises about half the rose bushes sold in the United States. Located on the edge of what’s called the Big Thicket, it’s really lush: oak trees supporting a million gray squirrels; Confederate rose trees; pecans; and bananas. Not a maple sugar in sight.
Very much like New England in September: the afternoon sun low in the sky, kids in school, football teams practicing on green fields, temperatures in the low sixties – which the locals declared uncomfortably cold.
A man in a coffee shop scattered stuff all over the floor. I helped him gather it up and congratulated him on what he hadn’t said when it happened. "Oh," he said, "I used to talk like that, but then I received the Lord into my heart, and now I’m a changed man." He was about to continue, but I sidled away. My son told me I was about to be asked if I’d yet found a church home. It’s a common opening here, where membership is assumed, and there’s a local yellow pages of businesses owned by the Redeemed.
We capped our visit with a pep rally. Football’s the other religion here, and there seems no irony in a team named after Robert E. Lee made up of half African-Americans. Tomorrow they’re headed west a hundred miles for the playoffs, with a huge band, squads of athletic cheerleaders, and an armada of family cars and trucks. Mother and I’ll be sitting in an airliner, headed northeast and peering out the window to see where the snow line begins.
This is Willem Lange in Tyler, Texas, and I can’t wait to get back to work.