Houston, Texas. We crossed into Texas at 11:00 a.m. with another three hundred miles to go to Houston. This part of the state is brown from a long, punishing drought, which means the rough on the golf courses will not be thick. U2 was blasting from Jack’s iPhone through the radio speakers as we rolled past boarded-up businesses and rusting mobile homes and shotgun shacks and car wrecks that need to be hauled away, and Walmarts that stay open twenty-four hours a day, and sheet-metal churches that offer the only hope, with buzzards circling the big sky overhead. I kept thinking, Thank God I never had to move my family here.
The Studio Plus, our new home until the end of February, will be fine, I think. Jack said, “Cool, this will work,” as we entered the room for the first time. One room about thirty by thirty, divided into a kitchen and bath and sitting area, where the couch pulls out into my bed, just across from Jack’s double bed. The first thing Jack did was check the water pressure in the shower, recalling how bad it was in our B&B in Carnoustie, where we stood, frozen after each round, under a weary trickle. I walked outside to see if there was any grass, and I found a nice patch of Bermuda rough at the far end of the parking lot where Jack can practice his wedges.
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We put our stuff in the drawers and closet and then found our way to Walmart, where we bought two weeks of groceries for $184 and loaded everything into the back of the truck except for the beer and eggs, which I held on my lap.