Signs across Texas

   Some things change. Some things, never.

   Evidence thereof was great during a motorized spring swing through a great and greening state.

    The Panhandle city of Hartley — Population: 1 grain silo — has not changed one granule since I was a child sleeping in the back of the station wagon. My parents had removed the inside door handles so that in our wrestling, we three sons would not eject ourselves out into the cactus.

    The state-line city of Texline has changed, of a sort. A well-used and much-coveted convenience store right across from the red sandstone state marker is gone, and with it the curio shop of my childhood dreams.

    A house trailer roughly at the same spot — the first residence south of the state line — burned to the ground some time ago. There it remains. First impressions being what they are, the Texline Chamber of Commerce ought to demand a cleanup. If not, let us request that the Texas Legislature do something. Oops. An oxymoron.

   "Do-nothing Texas Legislature" has been a redundancy for a decade.

    Driving across the state, one wonders if Texas is moving at a brisk pace or is like a Geiser steam tractor trudging on the road's shoulder. It will get there when it gets there.

   Hey, things do happen. North of Lubbock is a brand new — OK, two years old — two-screen drive-in movie theater. The Stars and Stripes Drive-In has first-run movies, swing sets and all.

   And that's not all that's new.

   We noticed that counties had new signs identifying themselves. That's progress. I now know that Dumas is in Moore County and Hereford is in Deaf Smith.

    "You know you've made one trip too many when you remark on new signs on the highway," said my wife.

     Some signs were old standbys, like "Watch for ICE on bridge" we saw deployed everywhere. I always wondered about that. Knowing Texas drivers, the last thing you want is to raise their fear quotient to Level Orange about icy roads. Indeed, at the mere mention of snow, Texans will sweep every digestible item off every store shelf and wage hand-to-hand battles over spare kerosene (even if they have no means of using it). Then, it won't snow.

    You don't see "Watch for ICE on bridge" signs in states that actually have ICE. But at least in Texas people are watching.

     There's also the highway sign that warns of water on the road when it rains. Go figure.

      On our March trip, what we needed most of the time was advisories about wind — like every step of the way.

       Pursuant, and in probably the most striking indicator of change, giant wind generators by the thousands were turning, churning, and presumably making clean electricity.

        My wife is not so sure. She thinks this may be a big scam.

        After seeing waves and waves of the colossal one-legged, four-armed creatures in Scurry County, followed a few miles to the north by a pale army in Garza County waving in the neighbors' southward direction, she deduced that this wasn't about harvesting wind.

      "Those are giant fans. They blow the wind that turns the ones in the next county."

       Powering the fans? Oil, most certainly.

       That Boone Pickens is one smart man.

        Did I say greening? Well, whether or not its leaders are truly enviro-green, Texas is one blushing babe this time of the year, with more chlorophyl than a sea of breath mints.

        We're glad to report that though some visionary types in the Capitol will surely try as they have over the decades, no one has figured out a way to destroy the state's natural charms in commerce's name.

       What was true once from the back of the station wagon remains true now from behind the wheel: "No place like Texas."

         John Young writes for Cox Newspapers. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

The canards of March

    Canard — n. (etymology: French for duck) a fake or unfounded report or story, especially: a fabricated report; a groundless rumor or belief.

    "They crammed health care reform down our throats."

     Yes. Barack Obama, Joe Biden and a decisive majority of Democrats ran for office on health care reform. They secured the White House and an overwhelming majority in Congress on the pledge to reform health care. They debated it for months. They made compromises and deals. Despite the minority's furious effort to obstruct, they got something done that they campaigned to do.

     One person's idea of cramming down throats is another's idea of representative democracy.

      "Health care isn't a right. It's a privilege."

      The protester, a misspelled placard in hand that features Obama in a Hitler 'stache, is headed to be with his Tea Party kin. Distracted by the horrific state of affairs across the land that once was his, he is run over by a street sweeper.

       Either: (a) He will pull his mangled body with every ounce of sinew left in his own bloody elbows to the nearest hospital for care; (b) A privately operated ambulance will mosey up and offer transportation to the hospital if he can present an insurance card that it honors; (c) An ambulance will show up in seconds, ask only about his vital signs, and not assume that any brain injuries are a pre-existing condition. (Answer: c)

      At the emergency room and in intensive care: the same. Insurance or no, society — you and I — through higher hospital costs and fees and other assumed costs, including taxes, will do whatever it can to save the protester's life. If he has insurance, the frantic emergency care to put the saving of his life above all other considerations will drive up the cost of your health care and mine.

      "It'll drive up the deficit."

      We know that our government tends to spend wildly without a means of paying for what it does, like invading and occupying two countries while cutting taxes, like snaking through a Medicare prescription drug benefit that was roughly half a trillion dollars more expensive than its authors knew but didn't admit at the time. One difference here: In this case the government is actually trying to pay for some of what it spends. For one thing, in 2011, the Medicare payroll tax will increase from 1.45 percent to 2.35 percent for individuals earning more than $200,000 and married filing jointly above $250,000. 

     "It will cause our economy to collapse."

      Yes, it will, just as opponents of a tax hike on the wealthy warned it would during the Clinton administration. A "one-way ticket to a recession," said Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas. As soon as his party claimed the White House after two terms of unrivaled prosperity under Clinton, and had two terms of its own, it it made Gramm a prophet.

     "Americans oppose this. Fox News says so."

     Tuesday's Gallup Poll found that 49 percent of respondents were glad Congress acted, while 40 percent said they didn't.

      "The Democrats will pay a political price for this."

      Well, it's true that people often play a political price for doing something in Washington. Rarely do they pay a price for doing nothing, save for cozying up to industry and the people who have all of their needs met. Little political gain is to be had for representing society's marginalized or shifting the status quo so much as an inch.

     Shifts of that sort happened after Congress passed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Decades of recrimination followed. Then again, marginalized people weren't so marginal anymore. Indeed, they had, they have, actual power. It's just what the recriminators feared.

    In the case of health care, someday the offspring of working Americans left to hang in the winds by do-nothing, backsliding politicians will stand up for the kinds of policies that delivered their parents from one of life's biggest dilemmas: to eat or to get a checkup.

      No wonder some people fear it so.

     John Young writes for Cox Newspapers. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.

I've just seen my legs

  This all has to do with blue jeans, and white legs.

   I didn't wear blue jeans much in 25 years in Texas. Most of the time during recreational hours, I wore shorts.

   If it was long-pants weather — and, let's face it; with global changes, many Texans had forgotten what a winter feels like until this one came along — I would strap on sweat pants. My jeans hung forlornly in the closet, trappings of another life in a colder place.

   Then, this fall we moved back to my home state of Colorado. Suddenly, it was blue jeans weather, every day. The brown cargo shorts worn so faithfully at another latitude leeched from the top of my fun-wear drawer into its depths, to mingle among the free T-shirts from the blood bank.

   I also took to wearing pajama bottoms around the house when the blue jeans were getting a rest. No more open-air gym shorts from high school: too open-air for Rocky Mountain air.

   And so I was completely unprepared for the shock this week when, going out on a beautiful almost-spring day to bat around tennis balls with my son, I saw my legs.

   Yes, they were white. White as toothpaste out of the tube. White as a Republican caucus.

   My legs had come to Colorado caramelized like those of any good Texan. They are now vanilla almond bark.  

   I was reminded of days of yore when summer would arrive and we Colorado kids would strive to avoid sock tan lines on our too-pale legs when we bared them for summer sun. So, we choose not to wear socks.

   With the almost year-round solar exposure of their legs, Texans have no such concern. I certainly didn't while living there.

  All of this might sound like a complaint about the weather conditions I now experience. It is not. First off, I enjoy wearing jeans again. I also enjoy snow, something I don't recall doing back in that other life in Colorado. Key to enjoying snow and cold is good shoes. I lived in Colorado for almost 30 years without good shoes. Now I have great shoes: great waffle-stomping boots. They insulate my toes in all conditions.

    Snow has much to offer in ways I did not appreciate as a younger man. It causes vehicles to move more slowly. It enforces solemnity across the land. It is soft and white. It delivers needed moisture. It insulates and waters lawns.

     A dimension to this newfound appreciation for frozen precipitation is that back when I hated it, I was a single man who put a premium on mobility, of which snow is an enemy unless you're on slats. Now I'm a married man with a great family, and I choose domestic tranquility over my mobility.

    March in Texas, I assert from experience, is the best month of the year. It is mild and warm. It is green. The wildflowers start to spring to life.

    The March I remember in Colorado was the worst month of the year. It was cold and windy. Statistically, it is the snowiest month here.

    The day after our tennis outing and the baring of my legs, the TV announced a winter storm warning. Sure enough, an icy front slid our way down through Wyoming. Right now, it's white out there, as white as my legs.

    I can handle both gladly. But the next time I'm in Texas, I'm wearing sweat pants.

    John Young writes for Cox Newspapers. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.