Crossings, circlings, etc. (With scary pictures of yours truly)

Caitlin over at Throw Me in the Ocean has a great post explaining why she'll swim around Manhattan before she crosses the English Channel. Well written and thought out, with a wonderful family story to boot. Well done and a fun and engrossing read.

This post, dear reader(s), will not be that. I have no such great story. I have no such connection with one certain crossing, or circling, or other great, long, harrowing marathon swim. I wish I did. But I don't. I grew up in a few places, but even more so, I've spent the greatest part of my adult life constantly moving. It is always interesting when people ask me where I'm from (which they do a lot here). I finally tell them, after much explanation of my migrant ways, that I am from Texas, but I hurry to add, "But I won't be moving back there."

I explained to some Brazilian friends the other night that "I spent 10 years growing up in the heat and humidity of Houston [how's that for alliteration?]; I've done my penance." Not really fair to all that is good about Texas: cheap houses, cheap gas, good beaches, pretty women, my family!

My sister put this picture of us through a "make short and squat" machine; we're not little people

However, I just can't take that kind of heat anymore. At least, not for such an extended duration. I grew up with summer lasting 9 months. You went to sleep one night with leaves on the trees and woke up to the cold and all the leaves dead and lying under the bare branches of your ash tree. You've slept through fall. In three months the heat would return.

My pathetic attempt at college...that's me in the center. I should have been studying instead.

My first car was a 1973 Mercury Montego, a beast of a car that only a dad would love his son to have. Actually, it was a great car, with a great huge back seat (that dorky ole me didn't get to use much), a bench front seat that needed a passenger to help adjust, a state-of-the-art (in 1973) AM radio, and pleather seats. Notice I didn't list A/C. Air conditioning for me involved rolling down the front windows (yes kids, windows used to roll down with actual elbow grease) and driving at least 40 miles per hour. Summer was brutal trying to go somewhere nice without showing up dripping wet. The car got an amazing 4 MPG in the city, and a whopping 5 MPG on the highway, and needed a fill up of its 20 gallon tank weekly.* The engine was so holy that it took two quarts of oil and one quart of transmission fluid a week. What's more, the car came equipped with a mosquito fogger. People in parking lots wouldn't understand when I would ask them to move from behind my car. "You're not even close to us. You won't hit us." That's not what I mean. Then I'd start the car, and the huge smoke cloud would exit the back and engulf them. It was brutal. When I joined the Air Force, I tried to sell this hunk of junk at every place that said "Push it in, drag it in, we'll buy anything." No one would buy it. In the end, I had to call a towing place who brought a flat-bed truck, gave me $45, and took my baby away. It was sad.

My two sisters and I

This post has become about my car. But really it is about how much I loved growing up in Texas, despite never wanting to live there again. I should add permanently; if the service sends me there, there's not much I can do about it.

Still, I have no such open water swimming marathon (real marathon, as in the "you need a boat crew" kind of way) connection like Caitlin does. Maybe someday.

*The last gallon of gas I bought for my car before joining the service in 1986 cost me...wait for it...59 cents. Yes! Fifty-nine cents. Incredible.