F=ma!
That's what I yell when I ride past the cows and steers, grazing behind 5 strands of barbed wire. F=ma. A little Newtonian mechanics for y'all. To chew on with your cud. F=ma. Assume linear. Neglect friction. F=ma.
Most of them don't get it. Their faces look blank. "Will this be on the test? Do we have to know this?"
I thought they might be naturals. If there's anything a cow should understand, it's mass. They can accelerate too. I've seen it happen, especially when they're spooked by relativistic concepts. Zoom -- they're far away from those five strands of barbed wire, moving at near light speeds to the safety of the woods.
Except this one cow. I think she gets it. She looks straight at me, as if she's got a better purpose in life than cheeseburger. She radiates awareness. F=ma. Yesterday though, it had been raining, and the grass was so soft and green that she didn't even look up.
The Silk Stocking is the strip joint on the edge of town, just beyond where Rock Prairie meets the Highway 6 Bypass. As you can see, the building's faded-blue metal, pre-fab, as so many buildings are around here. Much of the time, the parking lot's deserted, and the place has a forlorn, hangdog look to it.
Sins uncommitted.
Lust unprovoked.
But Friday and Saturday night, the place perks right up. The lot fills up with vehicles of every description: men out for a night on the town, ready for some exotic dancing.
I've never been in there, but I did hear Arie teasing Matt about the dancer who came by the coffee shop (EUGENE'S) late at night -- well after closing -- and tried to sit in his lap.
"She likes you, man" is what he said.
She was squawking like a chicken, and doing a chicken dance. They were all drinking wine. I guess she was used to it: bored, blase faces watching her dance. Was she saying "YOU ARE ALL CHICKEN. YES. CHICKEN!"? Was she drunk and indelicate? Was she a Poultry Science major gone bad?
We need more performance art in this town.
The Bryan/College Station Eagle is our local paper. Subscribe long enough and you'll see everyone you know flash by -- in color -- on the front page. It's nice to be able to spill coffee on a familiar face in the morning.
Much of the paper is just what you'd expect from a small town newspaper -- adequate coverage of the Simpson trial, a focus on true crime ("Mom Drowns Toddler" or "Child Molester Begs Court for Castration") and ailing celebrities, a misregistered weather map, and big events in town (like the recent go-ahead for Sanderson Farms to open a chicken packing plant). But what I like the best is "Today's Smile". I've torn one out for you to see.
Today's Smile is smack dab in the lower left corner of the front page, right below the maroon "Good Morning!" It's where the fair citizenry of the Bryan/College Station area are allowed to experience the irresistible lure of publicity.
And why are you smiling today?
You find them in every rural gas station: dime packets of Twang, right there by the register. They are irresistible. The graphics. The whole idea. A 1 gram package of flavored salt.
What do people do with 1 gram of pickle-flavored salt? The guy behind the counter told us they put it in their beer. That kids eat it straight from the package. That would explain the new offering from TWANG Inc.:
I was so puzzled by Twang that I wrote a letter to TWANG Inc., and the head of the company called me one evening from San Antonio. It wasn't at all what I expected (What do we expect when we write letters to strangers?). Twang is modeled after a product available throughout the deserts of northern Mexico. The man I spoke to said Twang was just a start, that he had big plans to introduce and manufacture Mexican products to the North American market. I felt flip, and a little foolish with all my letters and my questions.
Texans are always in motion. Big working-man hands grasp the steering wheels of white pick-ups. Black labs sit up as straight as gods in the passenger seats, noble in profile through dark tinted windows. The trucks go by so fast, rumbling over the potholes, suspension unstrained.
I'm not imagining this: on Channel 3 (KBTX, Bryan, Texas), car dealers hawk row after row of vehicles with paint as slick and hard as armor. To be in motion is to be fulfilled.
I have been in motion too since we moved here from Los Altos (Spanish for "the Mayonnaise Eaters"). I pedal down the East Bypass every morning, fighting the wind, scoping out what's fallen off those white pick-up trucks. There's the scrap of imitation Berber carpet -- new homes are always under construction, circled in close like covered wagons. And there's a scattering of black plastic pots, detritus from a landscaping project; I bet they planted red bud and pampas grass. Here's a Sonic bag -- no lunch left. Everyone is ravenous at lunch time. It takes energy to be on the move like this. And here's the Ponderosa Motel -- Truck Parking available. It looks much better with that new red metal roof.
Finally it is flat enough to see into the future. I read the roadside trash as carefully as I would chicken entrails.
Austin is not far, perhaps 90 miles away. I went there on Wednesday and shot some snaps up the capitol dome. The dome was beautiful from below, a glowing eye. A school of sixth graders milled and darted in the dome's aquarium light. They all wore black t-shirts with the same cute saying on the back, something about hungry pets eating their homework. A man -- a legislator? a legislative aide? a well-dressed homeless person? -- asked me whether I liked the digital camera.
On the way to I-35, Mark gave the finger to a man who wouldn't let me merge into a right turn lane. The man pulled up alongside me later and called me a bitch. "He's the one who flipped you off," I told the angry stranger, but not loud enough for him to hear. It was somehow heartening to be back in a city, being angry in traffic, worried that it could turn ugly, but not too worried to be excited.
It's got the best barbeque in town, Junek's Chevron Station; it's way out by us, in Wellborn, actually. Barbeque beef sandwiches on a white bun with dill pickles and onions -- the beef's so tender, the bread's so soft, that you barely need to chew. There's Twang by the checkout stand too, if the dill pickle slices aren't enough to satisfy you. The smoky pungence mixes just right with the unleaded fumes.
So it's true: people buy what they most need, what they most care about, in the convenience store at their local filling station. In Germany, the convenience stores carry wine; in California, a big rack of sunglasses; here, there's meat, big meat: dripping sausages (in Hempstead) and gas station barbeque.
Not far down the road from Junek's is THE ICE OF TEXAS sno-cone hut. It was closed all winter long, looking for all the world like a forlorn miniature chalet, abandoned by all its dwarves. But now it's back. Pickle flavored sno-cones, jalepeno too, but I'm partial to watermelon. As you can see, I'm a frequent flyer at THE ICE OF TEXAS.
First it was the june bugs, hailing against the windows at night. They whirred and clicked, slammed their cockroach-brown bodies against the glass, suicidal. Every morning, the deck was littered with june bug corpses.
Now it's the grasshoppers, locusts, and scorpions. A dozen or so scorpions have made their way into our house, skittering over tile and carpet, wraith-like and sinister. Local lore has it that they come in pairs -- that if you see one, you'll see another soon. I'm always relieved when we're at an even count, but I think what the saying implies is exponential growth. When you see one, there are always two. I shake out my Nikes in the morning before I put them on, and look suspiciously behind the cushions on the sofa.
I can overlook a Gregor Samsa-sized cockroach or two, or the clouds of grasshoppers that hiccup up from our mangy patch of lawn. But scorpions... It's like the spirit of lobsters (the Ghost of Surf and Turf Past) seeking a violent revenge.
This last Tuesday we were in the Exxon station in Hempstead, stocking
up on the local sausage and preserved meat products, and we saw a
small xeroxed poster imploring us to
Vote for
Amy Kwiatkowski
for
Watermelon Duchess.
Watermelon Duchess? I felt compelled to investigate; I've cast my vote for various officials in the past, sometimes with regret, but never have I voted for Watermelon Duchess. Am I properly enfranchised to select royalty?
The Hotline Press clarified the matter: this weekend's the Hempstead Watermelon Festival, where the Watermelon Queen, Princess, Duchess, and Little Miss Watermelon will be crowned. We do know our royalty here in Texas. And voting's never been easier: "During the day contestants for Little Miss Watermelon, Princess, Duchess, and The Watermelon Festival Queen, will be mingling among the crowd encouraging everyone to cast their ballots before the voting booth closes."
And who wouldn't want to add a line to her vita: "Crowned Little Miss Watermelon at the Hempstead Watermelon Festival, July 15, 1995." It's quite an honor, really, the kind of honor that shapes one's future and guides one's more major life decisions ("Do I buy Kenmore or Whirlpool?").
I'm going. I just love a coronation.
In the College Station area, you see the maroon-on-white slogan "Gig 'em Aggies!" everywhere: on the front of convenience stores; written in Christmas tree lights hanging from apartment building balconies; on license plate frames; carved in brick facades in the nicer neighborhoods.
What could this mean?
My brother, a scholarly sort of fellow, finds the roots to this expression in frog gigging, which I gather involves impaling an amphibian on a spear. My less-than-authoritative Oxford American Dictionary tells me that, as entry 4, "gig" is a noun, slang for a military demerit or reprimand. Naturally this leads me to wonder then if gigging 'em is a primitive hunting maneuver, or a rather more sedate recording of a black mark in one's (in this case 'em's) permanent record.
One day, I'll muster the courage to ask one of those nice young men in the camouflage outfits (the fellows who raise their caps and say, "Howdy, ma'am" to me); for now, my interpretations of Aggie Traditions can only be speculative.
