Storymania - All My Ex's Ain't In Texas by Patti Dinneen

All My Ex's Ain't In Texas
Patti Dinneen

In all honesty, my expectations were a little too unrealistic. When I found out I had to go to Texas on business, it immediately evoked images of tumble weeds, cattle drives and craggy old men playing checkers while sitting on the weather-beaten porch of an old general store. My Connecticut -born and -bred mind envisioned endless prairies with cowboys that looked like Marlboro men. However, I'm here to tell you, that ain't exactly how it is in College Station, Texas - home of Texas A&M.

We arrived on "Flight 666" from Dallas to College Station. Now, I'm not a big fan of flying, primarily because I've never been a big fan of death. Yeah, yeah, I've heard all about flying being safer than riding a basset hound, but I'm not buying it. Ironically, all the passengers who walk down the "plank" to board the plane act as though they have absolute no idea that they are WALKING TOWARD THEIR DEATH! They laugh, they joke - they basically pay no mind to the fact that this will be the last time that their loved ones will see them alive! Oh yeah, yuk it up buddy! They'll refer to you as "jovial" at the service. I, on the other hand, am fully cognizant of the fact that we will probably explode on takeoff and do what any "normal" person should do. That is, I use all my powers of concentration to keep the plane aloft; therefore, nobody can speak to me.

Amazingly, my flight from Hartford to Dallas managed to land sans the fireball. However, I was given no credit for having selflessly kept the plane in the air by sheer will. What a bunch of ingrates! We had to hurry through the enormous Dallas Airport to get to our connecting flight. I knew things weren't good when I was told we were going to have to take a van out to our connecting flight. Bob, my coworker, informed me that we were going on "a prop plane." Translation being, "Little plane with a propeller that drops off when it crashes into rush-hour traffic." To make matters worse, the stewardess was moving people around to distribute the weight on the plane evenly. She made mention to the captain about the need to "drop some fuel." I spent the flight wondering if we were going to run out of gas in midair.

The plane rocked and rolled its way to College Station and much to my dismay, I found myself grasping at the airsickness bag. I came to realize this was actually good because trying to keep myself from getting sick took my mind off the fact that were going to crash. Fortunately I was able to keep things under control, since we were forbidden to leave our seats or use the facilities. Bob began telling a compelling story about a private jet he once traveled on, where the toilet on the plane was only separated from the other passengers by a curtain. He recalled the torment he suffered trying to decide whether to use the curtained commode or to wait until landing. He decided to wait and cursed the Mexican meal he had eaten the night before. His colon hasn't been the same since.

We finally arrived in College Station and I realized immediately that this could be any town, anywhere.

"Where are the tumbleweeds?" I asked Bob.

"They just vacuumed" He replied.

"There aren't any, are there?" I asked gloomily.

"No, there are. Just not in Texas."

I was crushed. I decided not to mention the craggy old men or the Marlboro guy. I sat staring out the window as we drove into town. Imagine my disappointment as I witnessed nary a horse hitched to a fence post at a general store.

We went to lunch at a Mexican place in town, where I drank a bunch of margaritas to drown my sorrows. On the way out, I got into an interesting conversation while Bob went to the men's room (which thankfully had solid walls). I was standing at a counter looking at three different kinds of candy when the owner - a Mexican man with a thick southern drawl - began describing the candy to me. The first type of candy he proclaimed was "No dern good, cuz it come from El Paso." I shook my head disappointedly, assuring him that I was no fan of that lousy El Paso candy, and who the heck did they think they were, trying to pass off that crap on us? The next candy he pointed out was a mound of peanut clusters that he said were made locally. "Them are my favorites," he said to me, without expression. He said nothing for a moment and I was unsure whether to claim they were my favorites as well. Finally, he pointed to the last type of candy and as though it were an afterthought, he slowly cautioned me that I didn't want them, because they would "give me a fit." Since I wasn't sure what type of "fits" people were prone to in Texas, I bought three of the local favorites and left, mercifully fit-free.

We drove out to the home of Bob's good friend Kirby. I liked him immediately and wasn't even bothered by the fact that he mentioned "Hog huntin" within ten minutes of our introduction. Kirby had a "nice spread" complete with horses, cows and a 1986 Chevy Suburban. Kirby also had four dogs, none of which had legs longer than six inches. There were two corgis - which are short, tailless dogs that look like a cross between a collie and a daschsund. There was a small black pug that occasionally snorted and a small brown dog that looked like a cross between the Taco Bell dog and a pair of wingtips. At one point Kirby corralled up the group of misfits and exclaimed "Y'all a fine pack of dawgs!" Now fine packs of dogs generally consist of shephards or huskies in my book. However, while not as fine a pack as they could be, they were extremely sweet and lovable. I quickly became attached to this motley crew and after the initial meeting when they refused to stop barking at me, they followed me everywhere. This became a game for me, as I would get all the dogs into the car whenever we were going anywhere and Bob would have to throw them all out. I never tired of that game, although I suspect Bob did.

We spent the rest of the afternoon chatting and exploring the property. After I had successfully wormed a horse as a welcoming ritual, we decided to go out for "barbeque." Now Texans are fierce about their barbeque being the best on the planet. Apparently what we do in the East is not barbequing - it's "grillin." Kirby looked at me with shame in his eyes as I mentioned that I made some pretty good ribs.

"You use any wood?" Kirby asked suspiciously.

"No, but I cook the ribs off the heat."

"No wood, huh?" He looked at me as though I'd just stolen some money from him.

"Uhh...well...I"

"If you ain't using wood, you ain't barbequing...you're grillin." He said with a look of disgust in his eyes.

He then pointed to a huge metal contraption, which may have once been the rear end of a 1968 Volkswagen Beetle, and said, "That's what you barbeque in." He threw me a look that said, "Just arrive here on earth?"

Duly reprimanded for even thinking I could prepare meat in any way, shape or form better than a Texan, we went to the local barbeque joint for the real stuff. We sat around a rustic table as the waiter brought out hanks of meat. We had beef, chicken, sausage, ribs, pork, armadillo and yak. The table had been all dolled up in a special tablecloth, made from the finest butcher paper. Along with our meat we were served slices of white bread, cheese and a whole raw onion. I didn't ask what the onion was for, but I used it to disguise the taste of the yak, which, by the way, did not taste like chicken!

On the next day my heart had been set on going to the rodeo, and maybe meeting Tim McGraw. I knew the moment Tim laid eyes on me he would of course claim me to be the love of his life and dump that pesky Faith Hill. Much to my dismay, the rodeo wasn't going to be in town until the following weekend. Bitterly disappointed, the only logical thing to do was round up as many guns as were in the house and go shooting!

On the ride out to the shooting range I saw something I would never see in Connecticut; humongous catfish heads mounted on a fence! You can hardly spit in Texas without hitting something's head that's been nailed to a board. Kirby's son Scott had a special way to welcome me to the state, which was by taking me to view the deer heads he had hanging from a tree. Apparently it is a fun child's game to hang the heads from a successful deer hunt on a tree branch and let them decompose in the sun. Those goofy kids are just crazy about their animal skulls! And trust me, you don't want to be the only one on your block whose skulls where not hung in time for the insects to get at the flesh and assure a nice "clean" ruminant mammal cranium. Imagine the shame you'd feel if you hung your deer head late in the season and what remained after a few months was a very discernable deer face. Nobody wants to live that down, I tell you.

We finally made it to the shooting range, where I got to shoot a bunch of different types of guns, including a .357 Magnum, a .22, an M1 rifle and a turnip gun - which actually shoots real turnips! Like I'm always saying, there's nothing like putting a little firepower behind your root vegetables! I was a little distrusting in the beginning and instantly got shell-shocked by all the artillery. Four people were firing at once and I stood there wondering when I was going to be shot. Finally, insisting that I try firing a gun, Bob handed me the Magnum and instructed me to cock the hammer and fire. However, as I was doing that Scott calmly uttered, "Don't cock it. It has a hair trigger." From what he was saying, I was pretty sure he was sending an important message, but he was, as I discovered with many people in Texas, completely devoid of emotion in his voice. If he had, for instance, been issuing a warning that you were about to step in a swarm of deadly flesh-eating fire ants, it would go something like this, "Watch them ants." As for the gun, well at that point all I wanted to do was drop the thing. Hair trigger? Was that something I needed to worry about? I stood pointing the gun at the target, unsure of what to do next. I was even afraid to point it at the ground, so I just sort of stood there, looking like a deer about to find its head swinging from a tree branch. Bob took the gun with the "hair trigger" away from me, and shot toward the target. The bullet exploded from the gun. He got up off the ground, removed the parts of a "cow paddy" he had landed in from his posterior and handed me the gun. "Don't cock it, just pull the trigger, it'll be fine," he said. He handed me the gun. "It'll be fine," Bob said again, noticing the look of terror on my face. "Fine..." I said to myself as I took aim at the target.

"Now just point and shoot." Bob said.

"You sure?" I questioned.

"Yep, point and shoot, piece of cake."

"I don't have to do anything else?"

"Yes, shut your mouth. Now shoot."

I pointed the gun at the target, half closed my eyes and shot. The bullet screamed from the gun and suddenly my hand was on fire. My hand throbbed, and I was sure the bones within were crumbling. I handed the gun to Bob who said, "Oh yeah, make sure you relax your grip or your hand could break off...I think I forgot to tell you that." He looked at me sheepishly and said, "You okay?"

"Never better." I responded as I looked at him and pictured a moving target.

While at the shooting range I heard a warning I can say for certain that I would never hear in Connecticut. That would be, "Y'all need to stop shooting now, you're gonna kill one of them cows!" Kirby yelled this to his son who had not noticed that a bunch of cows had wondered into the target area. That about ended the day's festivities.

The remainder of my time unfortunately was spent actually doing the work I was there to do. Before I knew it, it was time to head back East. As I sat waiting for the small prop plane to take me to Dallas, I reflected on my trip. I had shot a bunch of guns, played with mutant dogs, wormed a horse, petted multiple cows and eaten alligator cooked with wood. These are things I just don't do in Connecticut. Truthfully, I'm still trying to figure out if I had a good time. I think I did. Fortunately, I bought an item for myself that will always remind me of my trip. Yes, every time I look at my candy dish made from a bull's scrotum, I think of Texas and smile.