How I Got To Be A Texan

I grew up just north of San Francisco, in the midst of rolling hills, redwood trees, and very little weather.

I live in the Texas Panhandle, in the midst of some of the flattest land you've ever seen, with very few trees (and those we have are stunted), in what is commonly known as Tornado Alley.

Why? you ask.

It is all my mother-in-law's fault. Mind you, my mother-in-law died more than 10 years ago. She and my husband had been estranged longer than that.

My husband went to over 30 schools before he finally quit school in his sophomore year of high school. His dad, a former Navy cook, was a dairy milker. He milked for various dairies in California, mainly in Southern California and the San Joaquin Valley. He also milked for a time in the Lone Pine/Bishop area.

He would go to work for a dairy. Back in the day, the milkers lived onsite in a provided house. They were paid and also given 1 gallon of milk a day and part of a steer at butchering time.

They would stay wherever until the next dairy farmer offered 1 1/2 gallons of milk a day, or an extra quarter of beef a year or a dime more an hour. The family, by now consisting of Mom, Dad, my husband and his two sisters (another son died in infancy) would move again.

At one point, my father-in-law had a chance to manage some property in Oregon state for a dairy farmer, with an option to buy. It was a great deal. This was on the eastern side of the coastal mountains, in the agricultural area of Oregon. My mother-in-law did not like it. She really did not like it. She made no real attempt to like it.

They moved back to California and back to what was, for them, normal.

And forever after, whenever things got tough, and they did, it was always...

"Gee, if only we could have stayed in Oregon" or "Gee, if Dad had just stuck to his guns in Oregon, it sure would be different" or "We almost had it all, once".

So, when my husband moved us from California to Nevada, I was good. After all, how bad can Tahoe be?

When my husband moved us from Tahoe to New Mexico (and that's a whole 'nother story!), I was good. Mind you, I cried the first two weeks I was there, but I was good.

When my husband moved us from New Mexico (hallelujah!) to Texas, I was good because I would be danged if, anywhere down the road, I was gonna be the subject of one of those, "Gee......" sentences.

So, long story short, I am in Texas because my mother-in-law, probably before I was born, would not move to Oregon.