Brushy Creek Journal
Thursday March 3, 2016
Partly Cloudy 84°F/29°C in Cedar Park, Texas 78613
Rainy 54°F/12°C in
Roma, Lazio, Italia 00128
Texification:
A process similar to naturalization, whereby an individual is transformed
through the process of assuming or being granted citizenship of the sovereign
state of Texas, usually a country other than that of the person’s origin. A
process also known as Tex-Assification. Becoming a Texan!
Buongiorno!
I think my muse
must have fallen off the moving van somewhere back around El Paso, because,
except for one new blog and a couple of posts on Facebook, I haven’t been
writing very much since I pulled up stakes and left Rancho Santa Margarita. I
had returned to Southern California following my latest excursion to the Land of the Caesars! I mean…after
tripping the lights fantastic in Rome, Venice and Amsterdam, there is a bit of
a sudden de-compression that hits you when you return to the “55-plus Senior Living” apartment complex
where you dwell.
There’s just no comparing your
neighbors’ wheezing and cackling and the clunks, clatters and whines of their
walkers and scooter chairs to the hustle and bustle of a big city like Rome.
And to make matters worse, my four young grandchildren had been spirited away to far
off TEXAS by their parents. I was
once again a stranger in a strange land, a sailor adrift in a sea of senior
citizen discounts and inundated by deluge of mailers and emails from the AARP!
You don’t know what
PTSD is until you wake up trembling
in a cold sweat following a nightmare in which an angry mob of evangelical,
conservative Tea Baggers with torches
and pitchforks and full-on assault rifles trample through your flower beds and
stampede across your yard hell-bent on taking away your Social Security pension
benefits and your Medicare card and leaving you swinging from the old oak tree
in their rampage to Take Their Country
Back!
TEXAS! A state of
mind that needs no introduction! Texas can be seen and heard from anywhere in
the world! To anyone from outside of the USA, America is made up of TEXAS and a
few minor provinces. Just ask any member of the human race from Novossibirsk to
Hackensack. As sure as there is a Capital T in the UniTed STaTes, it
stands for TEXAS!
WARNING: Exposure to anything
Texan, may be a life-changing experience!
Apart from my son
and daughter and a very few close friends, my decision to move from California,
where I had lived since 1966 and raised my family, came up suddenly, and was a
complete surprise. But, that was really not the case. I had moved back to
southern California from the Sacramento area to be close to my daughter and
four of my grandchildren, and be in a position to make occasional journeys to
Rome to spend time with my son and his family. Then, last year Dana and Jason,
faced with the challenge of raising a growing brood in the increasingly expensive California
economy made a decision to leave and look for new opportunities to the east.
They moved - lock, stock and barrel from Orange County to the Austin, Texas
area.
In mid-September,
when I got back from Rome, they were gone. But it wasn’t long before Dana and I
were talking about a Christmas visit from
Grandpa! So, I drew down some of my frequent flyer miles and booked a
round-tripper from Long Beach to Austin, with the thought in the back of my
head that while I was there, I’d check things out for a possible move of my own.
But by the time my flight left, I had decided to make it a one-way flight to Austin.
Dana scouted out apartments for me close by and I followed up on line. When I
found the right two bedroom apartment I
signed the lease on line, and wired the deposits and rent to the company. I stayed with Dana’s family until the moving
van arrived with the rest of my stuff. We all celebrated my 75th
birthday together, as a family once
again. Then, my Texi-Fication really began. Right around the moment I started sharing
the news of my adventure on social media, I was greeted by a
lot of skepticism. The overall opinion was that me, “the California Flash,” was
in for a huge amount of culture shock. I was advised to buy a gun rack for my
pickup truck, and shop for western boots, jeans and a Texas ten-gallon hat on
my way to the airport. Oh, I would, of course be derided for having a Toy
Poodle as a pet instead of an “ole huntin’ dawg.” As a registered Democrat some
of my friends warned that I would not survive my first week in the biggest Red
State of all unless I stocked up on a generous collection of shootin’ arns! Actually the whole
brouhaha reminded me of the time years ago when I left the Big Apple – New York
for Arizona. There are places on both the east and west coasts that consider
the central part of our country as “Never-Never Land” with the biggest part of
this cultural vacuum being the Lone Star State!
 |
| Jessica, MikeBo, Jaydan, Jordan |
 |
| Check yer guns at the door! |
The biggest element
of my own culture shock was the realization that Austin, Texas looks a lot like
southern California. The area is criss-crossed by freeways and toll roads.
Shopping centers carry the same signage as any mall in the Silicon Valley. I
didn’t see as many western boots being worn as I did Nike and Adidas running
shoes. Instead of jeans and western shirts and hats, there are warmup suits and
baseball caps worn with the visor pointing straight ahead. All of the
Texans I met during the first few weeks acted and talked like they were from
somewhere else. After a while, it dawned on me….they were. From the very first
day in Cedar Park, my new neighbors all seemed to be from Irvine, San Diego or the San
Fernando Valley or the Bay Area with a few additional transplants from Brooklyn
and Queens. Most of the Texans I was
running into are not native Texans. They are, by Texas standards, alien species. Oh, and the news accounts
of gun-totin’ survivalists shopping at WalMart in large numbers or parading in
public didn’t seem to bear out either. Private universities in the area have
banned the open carrying of weapons on campus and a lot of businesses are
posting signs like the one at the front gate of my apartment complex advising
that openly carried weapons are not welcome.
My own Texi-fication process has followed the normal rules for
interstate moves: I had to get my truck safety-inspected and insured in Texas
before I could apply for a title change and vehicle registration. Then, once I
got my Texas license plates, I could finally get my California drivers license
transferred to the Lone Star State. And finally, with my status as an American citizen and fully fledged
resident of Texas officially validated, I was clear to register to vote. Yee
Haw!
Ciao,
MikeBo
PS: MikeBo’s
Blog, MikeBotula.blogspot.com and his
postings on Facebook or @MikeBotula on Twitter are wholly owned subsidiaries of www.mikebotula.com
© By Mike Botula 2016
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