Dallas

The gap since my last post is explained by the fact that I've been away for a few days. Kathy and I went to McKinney, a town north of Dallas, although I think of it as part of Greater Dallas, since it's one of a string of towns grown together between the center of Dallas and the Oklahoma border.

The size of Greater Dallas is hard to comprehend and it grows all the time. Having joined with its neighboring city, Fort Worth, to form one enormous conurbation, it continues to swallow towns around it, turning them into suburbs as it does so. Only the roadside signs indicate the transition from one town to another; there is no empty space between them. Drive northwards on the 75 through Plano, Allen (surely a superior town with a name like that), Frisco, McKinney to Sherman and you will know that it is all Dallas. When you read that Dallas is not even the biggest city in Texas (that honor belongs to Houston), the mind begins to reel.

Where did all these people come from? Texas has been a state for less than 200 years yet somehow has developed these huge cities in so short a time. The little town of Allen already has a million inhabitants and this is just one suburb of Dallas. And then we have to consider that, apart from Dallas and Houston, there are so many other large cities in this state: Austin, San Antonio, Corpus Christi, Amarillo, Lubbock. Surely Europe must have been emptied to provide this burgeoning population.

But it's not just the size and population of Dallas that never ceases to amaze me; it's the wealth. New housing estates are being built all the time and every one of them consists of houses we would consider mansions in Britain. Acre upon acre of these estates spread northwards and westwards, every house different yet obviously expensive, mile upon mile of high class suburb. To drive from McKinney to Fort Worth and watch this endless procession passing by the windows is to be astounded, not just at the number of people; it's how much wealth is being shared amongst them.

I know that the people who buy these houses are not rich by American standards; in Texas, the rich buy ranches and pretend to be cowboys. Even leaving the truly rich aside, however, the wealth evidenced by the houses in Dallas is incredible; so many houses, each with a family earning far beyond what the vast majority in Europe can aspire to. Add it all together and one begins to get some idea of how rich America is.

The locals explained it away by pointing out that Texas has no state taxes. Housing is cheap in Texas too - these houses would cost twice as much were they in California or New York. Yet this cannot begin to account for such prosperity. The fact is that Texas and many other parts of America continue to be the land where the streets are paved with gold.

I can remember being amazed at the wealth in Britain when I first arrived from Africa. In Zimbabwe everything was recycled and nothing wasted. To see how British and other European governments wasted huge amounts of money was galling but also made one realize the vast reserves of wealth that could support such wastage. It's in what a country fritters away that its real prosperity becomes apparent; only fabulously rich nations can spend billions on fruitless projects and yet remain vaguely solvent.

Dallas always speaks to me of how the wealth of other nations is dwarfed by America. If we multiply the riches apparent in this one city to include all the great cities of the States, the figures become astronomical, far beyond what we can understand through personal experience. It is truly humbling.

As we returned to Lawton through the dry, flat and empty plains of western Oklahoma, with the clouded blue Wichita Mountains spiking the straight line of the horizon, I was reminded once again of how like Africa is the prairie. No signs of great wealth here; this is one of the poorer parts of America.

And I'm glad it is so. Perhaps I'm just a country hick at heart and all those riches and the complications they bring are too much for my backward soul to comprehend. It's good to be home.

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