Worldrover     TRAVEL MAGAZINE    Dec 02 - Jan 03 2  

AM1117

Texas  ©  

Blazing Saddles  
AND BRILLIANT CITIES....

Texas is big, everything is on a grand scale, 
even the flight there from the UK takes nine hours, and so it was,  body clock all out of sync at three in the morning, I was wide awake.

The sound of  a siren in the streets of Dallas drew me to the hotel window.   

And what a magnificent sight it was, a panorama of towering  skyscrapers, a blaze of light, one building outlined in green neon, 

another in a diamond pattern  and on yet another there was perched what looked like a second moon, a sparkling globe of light and through all this, along the freeway flowed a river of car headlamps.

It was an impressive curtain raiser to anyone about to set off on 
a fly-drive holiday.   

  Our airport of arrival had been  ‘Dallas - Fort Worth,’  and they are part of the same  ‘Metroplex’  It covers the cities and everything in between with communities that are as  different as night and day. 
  Fort Worth is traditional ‘Western’  while  Dallas is a gleaming glass city on the cutting edge of new technology.

The former includes the Cattleman’s museum and the Fort Worth Stock Yards Historical District, a place where you find the bars where  the cowboys would slake the dust from their throats, drinking long neck beers in the company of ladies known as ‘soiled doves’   

We went for a couple of longneck beers at Billy Bobs’ Texas, which a ‘Cowtown’ local described as the world’s largest ‘honky-tonk’ -  a cowboy’s beer joint,  with ‘two stepping’ music and a big dance floor. I believed him, it’s not every bar that has a dozen pool tables, it’s own indoor rodeo ring and forty beer stations or can feature top country singing stars. 

Customers arrived by old pick up tucks and shiny stretched limousines.  Most seemed to wear starched wranglers and tall Stetson straw hats, it was almost like a uniform.  

Fort Worth was once the capital of beef and one a time all the steers came thundering in on the hoof. I looked round the old cattle pens in the stock yard and found them strangely silent. One  aspect of the cowboy’s skill still lives on, the rodeos which started a hundred and thirty years ago are now more popular than ever. 

The area has more professional rodeo cowboys than anywhere else in the States. 

The winners can make big money so I started my training by moseying on down to another part of the Lone Star State,  to the Mayan Dude Ranch at Bandera  near San Antonio. 

As we arrived at the ‘cook-out’ on the hay wagon,  we were entertained  by a singing cowboy. I drifted over with my tin plate to breakfast, where we started off with wholemeal and buttermilk biscuits, bacon and sausage plus, imaginatively named, armadillo chilli, which they described as “ A Louisiana swamp bowl,”  “ It’s pretty hot, it’ll knock your socks off! After all that, pity the poor horse.

 We sized up the mounts.  I was hoping to start off quietly, while the lady next to me seemed to be in he mood for ‘Champion the wonder horse’. She looked at  a lively beast and said " I like this one, it’s chomping at the bit" and then at the one I fancied  "I’m not having that thing, it looks as though it might drop dead  at any second." I made  a mental note to let her have a head start in any race for the nags.   

 
The horses are fortunately intelligent enough to cope with people who don’t know how to ride. Which is just as well, if I was going to be a ‘dude’ I wanted to be a cool one.   

We mounted up and off we went through the woods on the trail of the lonesome pine. It ended along side a fast flowing river. We had eventually found the ‘cool clear water’ that the cowboy had been singing about.

It was the Medina River on which you can go "tubing."   You drift down on a large tractor inner tube, most of the  ranches have a pile of them stacked up as part of the equipment.  A visit to a Dude ranch seemed like a good thing to fit in as part of a fly drive holiday.  

The cabins might look pretty rustic but mine had a bathroom en-suite and a large colour telly. It seemed like a lot of fun but somehow I couldn’t imagine Roy Rogers or John Wayne aimlessly spinning downstream with their tail in the water and clutching a can of beer.

REMEMBERING THE ALAMO  

I saw miles and miles of the “Lone Star State” but the dusty windblown cactus ridden  Texas of the cowboy films of my youth was really not much in evidence, not even at the Alamo. 

The city of  San Antonio has grown up around it and the outside was a little marred for me by having Woolworth’s built directly opposite. It  really seemed  a long way  removed what we saw in from the John Wayne films. 


The inside of this American national monument was,  however,  quietly impressive and amid the bustle of America, a  tranquil place that has been  kept in it’s original state and maintained as a shrine.

I was surprised to learn that a number of Scots were listed among the one hundred and eighty nine who took part in the battle in 1836  and defended the mission along with Davy Crocket and James Bowie.

Little pleasure boats take visitors on the narrow San Antonio River that flows through the centre of the city. It’s banks are largely concrete but they are pleasant enough. There are restaurants where you can sit and enjoy the spicy Tex-Mex food and margaritas while you are serenaded by wandering musicians. They belt out their songs to the accompaniment of trumpet and guitar. There is also a Mexican market that dates back to the early 1800’s.

After exploring the compact city we headed for the airport and our Boeing 737 to Houston.

The flight attendant raised a smile when he informed us that his ex-wife would be looking after the passengers in the forward cabin while  he and his fiancée would be taking care of us in the rear, then added "If there is anything that we can do to make this flight more enjoyable for you, please do not hesitate to ask.!"

Spaced out in Houston

At Houston we joined the crowd at the Astrodome.   Rockets and fireworks burst and sparkled two hundred feet overhead and almost fifty thousand people stood up to sing the Star Spangled Banner. For first time visitors from Europe the anthem really conveys something of the uniting nationalistic fervour of the vast country.  It can be quite moving.   

The events staged at the Astrodome include basketball and American football.  That night it was combination of baseball, a western show, livestock event and Rodeo. Everything in Texas is big, and the Astrodome is no exception, it can seat over 65 thousand and is air conditioned.

In Aisle 431, row 14, seat seven I certainly had good view and the main event had the crowd in frenzy.

Cowboys rode on the backs of bulls, held on by skill, will power and in some cases what looked like super-glue. They used only one hand to hold on and the man in the next seat said "These guys have to loco to do that" The worst kind of injury is if the guy falls off and the bull stomps on him,  they are 1200 lb weight.”

They had vicious looking horns too and I decided that you wouldn’t catch me doing it, not for a million dollars. It took me enough courage to get on the gentle nag at the Bandera Ranch near San Antonio.

Report by Allan Rogers

FACT FILE:

For a free   Texas travel guide  Tel: 0207 978 5233.
or visit www.TravelTex.com 

Flights with Continental Airlines  Gatwick - Houston,  www.continental.com 
In UK Telephone  0800 776464

Dude Ranch  www.mayanranch.com