There's a crazy heat in Texas

Spontaneity hasn’t been my strong suit. But with this past week being the fifth week of the month, I decided it would be a good time to head south to visit the wife.
I hadn’t been down there since our honeymoon in 1993 and, to be totally honest with you, it doesn’t seem that Texas has changed that much to me. The homes are all ranch style with crawl spaces at best. Deliverance is not a shot too far away.
It’s quick to note here that these people like property and they typically don’t like homes and structures taking up the space. They like grass and clay and big, hairy bugs that walk across the carpet like they own the place.
A thing called a cricket spider joined in the bathroom one morning by crawling under the door.  I swear this thing ducked to get in under the door. I let it get close and then grabbed it up in some rolled up toilet paper and flushed it. I think I was a little scared to be honest.
They say Texas is hot. And it is. I think Texas is closer to the sun, but just enough to not boil your skin. Yes, it’s closer to the equator so physically it literally is closer to the sun. And you can feel that. The sun is just hotter and the clouds, when they show up, are closer to you, too. Maybe it just seems that way to me.
And there’s no height in rural Texas. Most homes are one to two stories as are the retail outlets. Palestine has a loop highway that you get on, and it interconnects the town of 19,000, but not too much unlike a round-a-bout, it can take some time to get on. It’s not atypical to sit at a stoplight for more than five minutes but that just could be because they know I’m from Iowa and we know how to drive.
I did appreciate the Native American Expressway with a posted speed limit of 80. I subscribe to the “nine-your-fine, ten-your-mine” rule to highway driving. If you know, you know. So I was able to get to my destination in just about 12 hours.
The joy aside from seeing my wife for the first time in about two years, was spending time with nieces and nephews I hadn’t seen in about four years. I watched a couple soccer matches and played a big family game of Skipbo around some tuna-noodle casserole that I hadn’t had in about five years.
Tuna noodle casserole is something Lee used to make that has no egg-yolk noodles, tuna fish, cheese-wiz, mushroom soup, and a bag of peas and carrots. You heat up the noodles and then when they are ready you drain them and then mix everything all together, throw it in a casserole dish, and bake it all. Then with about 10 minutes left in the baking, you add crushed Sterzings, and only Sterzings, to the top. It’s a salty and savory comfort food that took everyone by storm, except one of the nephew’s girlfriends who politely has a small plate of food with no casserole. How dare she.
For lunch between the soccer games I had a stromboli. I thought it was two big pasta shells stuffed with ricotta and sausage, covered in cheese and marinara and baked. I think I got it mixed up with manicotti?  But it turns out that stromboli is like a calzone. Now I like a calzone as much as anybody, but it's typically too much food. When the stromboli came out I I was like…whaaaat?. Then I proceeded to eat almost the whole thing in a cut-and-nibble process.
I stayed for about four days and headed home this morning. As you’re reading this, I’m on some two-lane thing headed to southeast of St. Louis where I FINALLY get to pick up my truck. It’s been at a dealership for about 10 weeks recuperating from drinking about 10 gallons of diesel fuel unbeknownst to all of us. Insurance companies fought and the dealerships fought, but it would appear that finally they’ve come to terms.
So my hope for this morning is that the Texas and Arkansas roads are polite to me, my extended family misses me, and my wife appreciated a quick friendly visit before the holidays.
I will miss the family and the reconnection with them all – but I won’t miss the damned heat. But that’s Beside the Point.
Chuck Vandenberg is editor and co-owner of Pen City Current and can be reached at Charles.V@PenCityCurrent.com.