Yes, two entries in one day.
The greenness of Texas amazes me sometimes. I was raised (until 12) in north Georgia. Pine trees and red clay abound! Gorgeous really. When I moved to Texas I fully expected to find a scene out of some cheesy western and a horse tied up in my front yard. To the hitchin' post, if you will. That reason (and very retarded assumption) was the main thing that kept me appeased enough to make the journey west.
When we got here. Oh MAN was I ever disappointed. Dallas is a BIG city, buildings and shit everywhere. Not one tumbleweed to be found. We settled in a northern suburb of Dallas called Plano, and that was my home until 1990.
Our house, to me at the time, looked just like everyone else's. I even got "lost" coming home from school one day. I came home the first day of school and couldn't tell our house from the others on the block. We lived close enough to walk to school for the first three years.
It was a great place to grow up. Competent teachers very involved parents and neighbors and a pool in the back yard. I was missing the trees and the hills of Georgia in a bad, bad way. Not to mention my grandparents. Moms and Pops from my father's side and Butter (I'll explain later) from my mother's side. My aunt and all of the people I grew up with. I sorta just sucked it up and dealt with it by joining every extra curricular activity I could find. Including choir, everything at church and at least 6 hours of dance every week.
Every weekday morning when I walked out the front door to walk to school, I always looked for the horse that I assumed would be waiting for me. That damn hitchin post was missing too.
One Saturday when my father was in town he asked me to get up early with him and put on my boots and jeans. I did so and we headed off for a surprise. About 20 minutes later we pulled up to this rickety fence with a bunch of wormy dogs milling around. This man that looked like he had the worse case of jock itch and a cactus up his ass came out to meet my father and I at the van. I stopped staring at this unwashed fellow and looked past him. Horses! Horses of every shape (in shape and out HA!), color and breed were being saddled over by a true-to-life hitchin post.
I got out of the van and looked at my dad. He was beaming. He had called this stable to see if we could rent horses for the afternoon. I was so excited I almost cried. But being what (in my opinion) was the closest thing to a son my father was going to get (another story entirely) I sucked up the happy cry and sauntered over. Yes, I sauntered. It called for a good sauntering. Shut up.
We saddled up a few mangy, (very close to) flyblown equines and rode off into the "vast wilderness". It was a wonderful day.
We even stopped for Dr. Peppers and peanuts and had a belching contest on the way home.
I make a wonderful first impression... don't I?
Several times a year, for most of my teenage life my father and I would sneak away on a Saturday and go saddle up some broncs for a little rough riding. Okay, so they were just very poorly maintained animals on a capitalistic farm in a small pocket of trees in the Big D. But to me, it was like riding the wind.
I miss those days, not because of my ill spent youth, or lack of time with my father. We are closer now than we have ever been. I miss them because that pocket of trees that used to be my personal wild west is now the home of the largest Nortel campus in the Northern hemisphere. (I may be exaggerating, but it is huge.) And instead of riding wild (or mostly wild) beasts on Saturday morning and afternoon, Mister and I shop at the local grocery store. Making sure, of course, to fix meals with the right amount of protein and fiber.