The red, white and blue of the stars and stripes were providing the best color on the prairie this afternoon at the Tandy Hills Natural Area. That's the flag waving in the slight breeze on its pole high atop Mount Tandy.I slept in to the unprecedented hour of 7 this morning. This had me in the pool way later than usual. Which pushed breakfast off til 10, which pushed going hiking off til 1, giving the air plenty of time to get HOT, which it did.
It was 98 when I left here to go hiking. By the time I got back here I jumped in the pool. I didn't care that I was in my hiking cargo shorts. I wanted to get wet from something other than being drenched in sweat. This morning when I went swimming the pool was warmer than the air. By this afternoon that condition had reversed, which was a good thing.
It is the 4th of July. I have not heard a single firecracker. Texas is such a repressive state. Due to running their Indians out of the state, or killing them off, Texas has only 2, very small, Indian Reservations. In my old state of Washington we liked our Indians and made them our friends. The Indians help
Washingtonians participate in the 4th of July by providing fireworks supply areas, with names like Boom Town. Boom Town is huge. It is run by the Tulalip Tribe. The Tulalip also have what may be the best casino in Washington. I liked the big Orca out front with the giant Indian getting ready to spear a salmon. Just a sec, I'll see if I can find a picture I took of the Orca.That picture took way too long to find. The Tulalip Casino is, for want of a better word, cool. You've got that splashing Orca, the Tulalip Indian spearing giant salmon, a lot of water, sound effects, and when you walk into the casino there are waterfalls on either side of you. Inside the casino the effect is that you are underwater, in an aquarium. I've been told the buffet is really good. The slightly nearby Swinomish Casino, just a few miles from my Washington abode, had the best seafood buffet. Oysters just like mom makes them.
In my old neighborhood, known as Thunderbird, in the town known as Mount Vernon, all the streets are named after tribes. I lived on Pawnee Lane. Pawnee connected to Apache. (Go here for a virtual visit to where I used to live, where you'll see my cat Hortense reading the morning paper with me and the deepest snow in all my years of living up north) In the valley in which I lived, Skagit, there are several tribes, the Skagit, the Samish and the Swinomish. The Skagit Valley tribes have nice reservations. Two of the tribes have built casinos in the valley. The little valley I lived in has 2 huge casino complexes. There are none of those anywhere in Texas.
The Washington casinos are not like those goofy ones up in Oklahoma where it's like a pretend casino, the Washington casinos are just like what you find in Nevada, minus topless girls and strip shows. And free drinks.
Anyway, the tribes in Washington make a lot of money selling fireworks. Tonight my old neighborhood will become like a war zone. It was fun to watch and would go on for hours. One group would launch a display, then another would try and out do them. The area where my house sat was heavily wooded with huge fir trees. I was ready with a hose should a firework go awry. I had several land on my roof, which was flat. No fires ever started though.
So, what was I saying, oh yeah, in Washington, by now, I would have been hearing firecrackers going off for days. With today almost non-stop, with all hell breaking loose once it got dark.
When I moved to Texas, the first location was in far north Fort Worth, with the mailbox in Fort Worth and the house in Haslet. We all anticipated a very wild 4th. We were in Texas, for gawdsakes, everyone packs heat here, they're big on their cowboy, wild west past. So, as the sun began to set, we sat outside waiting for something to happen. There were a few random noises, but we were all in WTH? mode. Now I live deeper into the urban zone. I suspect I will not hear a single firecracker tonight.
What happened here that has these people so stifled? Was there some sort of silent coup that took away some basic freedoms that the rest of America enjoys? It perplexes me. It would likely really perplex a lifelong Texan if he/she were to find him/herself in my old neighborhood tonight.
It used to be more like that. When I was younger you could drive down the highway and there would be plenty of firework stands. Eventually laws were passed and the freedoms we enjoyed were corralled into little two acre plots where we were allowed to shoot off fireworks. I doubt there are even those anymore. I suppose it's because of the Texas summer baking the grass into something akin to firewood kindling. My rational mind can understand this reasoning. My youthful mind thinks... bummer.
ReplyDeleteI get the grass fire potential. And those do occur in Texas. But in Washington you have huge forests, that do catch fire. And one would think it logical that things like fireworks would be tightly controlled in such a zone. Instead, Freedom prevails. Ironically, slightly, I prefer the Texas police state control method. All those explosions up in Washington, on the 4th, really wore on my nerves. Worse than Wind Chimes.
ReplyDeleteThere's a nice 4th of July firework display in Twister's old stomping ground of Kermit, TX...and it is because of fire bans that keeps us from shooting on the 4th, at least here in Wink. We never gave it a second thought when I was growing up in MS...shooting bottle rockets at each other, making firecracker grenades and hurling them over each other's heads, lighting off battery missile rounds...it was a lot of fun :)
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed the virtual tour of your home back in Washington. I must say the flowers and view, very lovely. LOTS of snow! AND Hortense was such a well cared for kitty...very pretty.
Hortense was the only smart cat I've ever known. That snow was very unusual. We could go several winters in a row with no snow in the lowlands. Meanwhile just 30 miles north, where my mom and dad grew up and my grandmas lived, the Dutch town of Lynden, they could get blizzards with huge snow drifts. They got weather coming south out of Canada, down the Fraser River Valley. A mountain range blocked that from where I lived. A few miles to the west of where I lived a rain shadow caused by the Olympic Mountains had the annual rainfall being in the desert range. People who only know the rainy Washington of myth don't know how diverse the geography and weather is.
ReplyDeleteOur Maine Coon cat, Lizzy (named after Thin Lizzy) wasn't very smart, but she displayed some oddities, that made her quite fun to have around...I don't know how old she was, I know at least 10 years. She had kittens in an old computer box on my upstairs balcony...after that, we found homes for the kittens and then I had her fixed and kept her :)
ReplyDeleteYou're right...I knew nada about Washington's weather except it being rainy and I always thought the entire state to be Mountainous and lush green...
The Cascades split Washington sort of in half. Eastern Washington is not as green as Western Washington, but due to plenty of water, due to dams, there are a lot of orchards and vineyards, so it isn't brown in the way parts of Texas is. The hills of Eastern Washington always looked like velvet to me when I was a kid. The Olympic Peninsula is one of the rainiest spots on the planet. With the rain forests being the wettest and the greenest. It usually is not very rainy in summer. For years there was a propaganda campaign called "Lesser Seattle" where you were never supposed to tell an outsider that we had a sunny day. You were always supposed to say it's raining. It gets so many out of state and out of country tourists up there now that too many people now know the weather is pretty moderate most of the time. Where I lived I could go east 5 miles and be in the foothills of the Cascades, go west 10 miles and be at saltwater, go west 20 miles and I could hop a ferry that'd take me to the San Juan Islands, which are in the Olympic Rain Shadow, which gives them a Mediterranean climate with not much rain.
ReplyDeleteThe San Juan Islands, is that where all the poor people live?
ReplyDeleteYeah, the San Juan Islands is where a lot of poor millionaires live. And a movie star or two.
ReplyDelete