NEXT MORNING, A TALL, good-looking young man is behind the reception desk at the University Inn. As I pay my bill, I ask if he knows of anywhere that might show the World Cup football final on television.
He suggests a place on North Expressway, a road that sits in the lee of a raised section of 83, where there are shopping malls, motels, and restaurants.
“Is there nowhere in downtown?”
“There isn’t really anywhere.” He pauses. “Well, there are places you can have a drink. They call them saloons. They’re full of smoke and there wouldn’t be a television anyway.”
We talk about football and the final between Spain and Holland; he doesn’t care who wins, and nor do I. I tell him that I’m at the end of a long trip, from Canada down through the Great Plains.
He seems rather amazed. He had no idea that 83 goes so far north. “There should be a photograph of you, at the end of your journey,” he says. “Have you got a camera?”
I stand in the sun beside Prius—and try to look nonchalant in front of a bright blue sky, the border fence, and, a long way off, the Mexican flag flying above Mexico.
He clicks the shutter.
I thank him and ask his name.
“Manuel Casanova.” He pauses, as if wondering whether to go on. “The third.”
“Wow! What a great name!” I say.
“Well.” He shrugs. “We are Mexican, but we have lived in San Antonio for generations.” He speaks with a Texan, southern, accent. “I’m a student here. In fact, I’m here to learn Spanish.”
We talk some more before I shake his hand and leave. As I drive, I reflect that Manuel, with his need to learn Spanish, is a Tejano in the old, and strict, sense: someone from a Mexican family who was born in Texas. And so are his mother and father and grandparents. Only recently has the word’s meaning been loosened to include new arrivals, and there are comparatively few of them: more than 80 percent of Mexicans in Texas were born in the United States.
LATER I SIT in cool comfort at the bar in Vermilion, the place Manuel recommended. The room is dark and windowless, with six screens so that you can see the action wherever you are. I chat to a small Latino barman and drink nonalcoholic beer called O’Doull’s. There are some posh-looking people here, thirty or forty of them, old and young, male and female—some of them waspish, preppy, in the American sense. All of them are supporting Spain. The referee, Howard Webb, is English and so are the linesmen and the fourth official. Webb’s shaven head gleams. He looks fit and authoritative, and a little natty in a turquoise shirt and a white belt.
AS THE GAME wears on, I do a sum in my notebook using figures from Prius’s odometer. I’ve driven 5,152 miles since leaving Swan River—more than twice as far as I would have if I’d driven straight here, 2,271 miles, with no detours or doubling back.
I remember that I tried to set out free of expectations, ready to look, see, listen, and hear—to enjoy a trip into the unknown, an adventure such, perhaps, as children enjoy, and fear, when they swim in a new sea, enter an unknown forest, meet someone new. I have learned a lot, much of it by chance—more perhaps than I might have, had I set out with an agenda.
I have learned, for example, that many of the Indian tribes lived collectively as farming communities; that relatively few tribes subsisted as hunter-gatherers. I have learned that there were no horses until Hernán Cortés brought a few from Spain. And that cowboys rarely fought against Indians. The U.S. military did that. Cowboys occasionally defended themselves.
I have learned that Kit Carson and Buffalo Bill were not heroes. Both attacked Indians as well as, at other times, defending them. Later Buffalo Bill exploited Indians and created the stereotype or myth. After the civil war one-quarter of cowboys in Texas were black. Hispanics taught Americans how to ride horses and herd cattle—which reminds me that Indians taught early American settlers how to farm. There are cowboys now—several men told me that they are cowboys: Robert at Carrizo Springs, Mick Barth at Oberlin, Phil Greeley at North Platte—and Carol Taylor told me that her husband, Jamie, was a cowboy and that was why she fell for him. Many cowboys have inherited a way of life; some work with cows.
Davy Crockett was a brave man and, as a senator, he took on Andrew Jackson over the Indian Removal Act. But at the Alamo he behaved like an idiot rather than a hero.
Indians were not all noble, peace-loving people provoked into belligerence by white men. Many tribes fought each other, often cruelly, for territory, women, buffalo, or horses. I remember particularly the Comanche, the Hidatsa who kidnapped Sacagawea, and the Sioux who attacked the Pawnee at Massacre Canyon.
Numerous people on the plains are the descendants of homesteaders, and many of them farm their ancestors’ land. Some have added to it; some have sold much but not all of it; some, as the result of a marriage—I think of Fran Greenwood, who sat and spoke quietly with a baby on her lap—have two farms from two sets of grandparents.
People used to be embarrassed to have Indian ancestors. That has changed, perhaps thanks to Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement.
The myth of the American road follows on from the myth of the pioneer trail. Traveling in wagons became a thing of the past, but traveling in search of the new hasn’t—look at me!
The plains are indeed flat, but there is respite in the form of occasional rivers, valleys, and hills.
Many parts of Texas are beautiful. Most Texans vote Republican (if you vote Democrat, you may have to keep it a secret), but not all Texan Republicans are conservative.
The people of Kansas, and by inference of the rest of the plains, are not all bigots bent on voting against their own interests.
Beef is crucial to the economy of the plains south of Pierre, South Dakota, but the way it is produced bothers me—though not enough to prevent me eating it.
The obesity phenomenon was triggered by the building of interstates and is perpetuated by the greed of a handful of fast-food and sweet-drink corporations. A tiny bit of socialism, in the form of taxes on sugary drinks and burgers, to temper those corporations’ capitalism might help America and the world to lose weight.
Generalizing is difficult and, as I have said, I have tried as far as possible to explore as a child might, free of preconceptions. However, I’ve picked up a sense that in this region of Middle America, which has a reputation for conservatism and Republicanism, there is—with notable exceptions—much liberal thinking and tolerance, more than I and many in Europe might have expected.
I remember Carol Taylor saying, “I don’t believe in being cautious. Sensible but not cautious.” America seems, and is, new rather than old; instead of established ways cautiously guarded, I have seen—again, with some exceptions—hope and potential.
EVENTUALLY, AFTER EXTRA time, Spain wins the World Cup by one goal to nil, and I walk outside into hot sun and a hair-dryer breeze.
Earlier I asked Manuel if he knew where I could buy a postcard.
“You will need to go to Port Isabel or, maybe, South Padre Island,” he said.
“How far is Port Isabel?”
“Twenty miles. There is nothing like that here.” He sighed, as if embarrassed by Brownsville’s shortcomings. “Unless... possibly,” he said, “Sunrise Mall. Up there past Vermilion.”
I find Sunrise Mall, park in a giant car park, walk around indoors for fifteen minutes, look into shops, and ask people. There are no postcards in the biggest shopping mall in Brownsville.
So I drive to the post office on Old Alice, go in, and buy a stamp. Then I search among my notebooks, find a postcard that I bought three days ago, and write:
Dear Stuart,
Made it to Brownsville yesterday, and they have no cards. Here is a picture of the Alamo instead. Back to England tomorrow from Houston. Thanks and warmest wishes,
David.