Pine Forests and Bayous
11/01/2005
(This article forms part of the Journal that I am writing to describe my impressions of America since arrival in September, 2004. To begin reading this Journal from the beginning, click here.)

As I have mentioned, my Christmas present was a few days in Galveston on the Gulf coast of Texas. The journey there was as interesting as the destination, however. We traveled first down to Wichita Falls and then through North Texas, just south of the Red River.

Once again, I was struck by the immediate change from Oklahoma to the prosperity of Texas. This is horse country and we passed several ranches declaring their excellence in the production of quarter horses. I have seen this area before, however, and I turned to the radio for entertainment. That was when I discovered Mexican rap.

I had not suspected that there was such a genre but the evidence was pounding at my eardrums. The recognizable rhythms of Latin music were being wedded to a frantic tirade of incomprehensible Spanish. The effect was, surprisingly, quite hypnotic and I listened to the whole song, quite fascinated. Kathy was disgusted, no doubt, but she knows that I will listen to anything unusual and she said nothing as the next tune began.

And this was even stranger than the first. It was the reverse idea; the insistent drums and bass guitar of rap were now linked to a lady singing in an operatic style. I was enthralled. Which is not to say that I could listen to this music all the time; but I felt as if I had found something new and interesting. I should not have been surprised, having experienced that wonderful mix of African folk music and modern rock that is Zimbabwean pop music; this "Mexican rap" was just a combination of styles that I had never imagined possible. At various times throughout the rest of the trip, I tuned to Latino stations, hoping to hear more of this unexpected musical concoction.

Which led me to another discovery. Latino advertisements are awful if you don't understand Spanish. They jabber away at you in machine gun style, hardly pausing for breath. And they go on for what seems like hours, absolutely determined that, whether you understand or not, you will buy their product. Just occasionally an English word or recognizable product name will intervene and it was only this that persuaded me that I was listening to commercials.

What these advertisements did succeed in doing eventually was to drive me to change channel. And I was back in the normal South West of country music again. Since writing of this genre, I have learned much and I recognize now that the situation is far more complex than I had supposed. There are subdivisions within the all-encompassing label of country music. I will not go into detail here but would like to thank a friend of mine who pointed out that much of country music should really be known as "redneck pop".

We stopped for the night just north of Dallas on the outskirts of a city named McKinney. In the early morning the open road called again and we breakfasted at a Denney's. Across the roof of Texas we traveled, then turned south to make our way through East Texas.

Approaching Tyler the countryside became more rolling and pine trees began to put in an appearance. The land here could be somewhere in England with its green farmland and small woodlands. Only the houses give the game away, for these are typically American and are mainly built of wood. Near Lufkin we stopped at a Dairy Queen for hamburgers, "the best in America", according to Kathy. It was good, although I still think that Burger King's variety is hard to beat, as messy as they can make you.

After that we were in the Big Thicket, that dense forest of pine trees that once covered all of East Texas and is still big enough to get lost in forever. It seems strange that pines would choose to grow in such a warm climate but I was reminded that some varieties of pine grow quite happily even in Africa. On one of my father's properties there was a small grove of pines and it was a perfect place to escape the sun on a hot day. There under the trees there seemed always to be a cool breeze and a silence that was only enhanced by the sighing voice of the pines. The ground was clear too, for it was covered with a thick mat of pine needles that made the soil too acid for any undergrowth to survive.

The yellow pine of the Big Thicket seems to be a much less xenophobic tree than the pines I knew in Africa, however. They share the forest with many deciduous trees and do not kill the undergrowth. And it is this that makes it possible to disappear in the Thicket. The spaces between the trees are filled with bushes and other plants, making it difficult to see more than a few feet into the forest. As we drove on through mile after mile of dense forest, I began to marvel at the perseverance and fortitude of those early settlers who had entered Texas through this area, settling where they would and clearing the land by the hard labor of their hands. England too was once covered by forest and my ancestors cleared it to the point where there are only a few forests left. But this took them a thousand years; the Texans have achieved as much in little more than a hundred.

Much of the Big Thicket is protected now and lies within a national park. We passed a few areas where logging was taking place but just as many where the trees had been replanted and were growing up again. As we neared the coast, the land became flatter and increasingly we passed small areas of open water. Soon the forest thinned out and we were in bayou country.

This is not the swampland of my imagination, where even the land is waterlogged and alligators lie in wait beneath trees festooned with spanish moss. The bayous are pools and ponds that look like any stretch of water anywhere. There are trees along the banks but no sign of any moss, spanish or otherwise. And no alligators. Instead, I see other plants that I had not expected. There is the palmetto, a plant like a palm tree without a trunk, and, in drier areas, enormous stands of pampas grass.

Soon we are getting into populated areas again. We have come by this route partly to avoid the huge conurbation that is Houston but now we pass through those towns that line the last few miles to Galveston. I keep hoping to see the ocean or at least the Bay, but there is no sign of them as we pass through Baytown and Texas City. We reach our destination, Kathy's home town of La Marque, without having a sight of the sea.

Later, when we visited the cemetery in La Marque where Kathy's parents are buried, I saw great old oaks festooned in the proverbial spanish moss. But my first sight of the ocean had to await the morrow and our trip into Galveston.

(to go directly to the next entry in the Journal, click here)

Clive

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