Diary for Texas November 16 to December 9, 1999
As part of his new Tivoli job responsibilities, Curt took an opportunity to spend a month working in Austin, Texas. Not wanting to be separate for a month, we arranged for Missy and Eric to spend twelve days including two weekends and the Thanksgiving holiday with Curt in Texas. We stayed in Bradford Suites, an extended stay hotel that was located near the Tivoli building at which Curt worked and even closer to a Whole Foods store in a large shopping plaza. This combination enabled us to easily make our own and varied vegan meals and allowed Missy and Eric access to Curt's rental car while he was at work. General Texas Observations Texas is a huge state whose land area is greater than that of all of New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois combined. Yet, when you think of Texas cities, nearly all the ones that come to mind (for most non-Texans), are within a few hours drive of each other (the exception being El Paso). Starting from our base in Austin, within a 3-4 hours driving distance we visited San Antonio, Houston, Galveston, Waco, Fort Worth, and Dallas and drove past Arlington. We could have reached Corpus Christie as well but didn't stay in Texas long enough to travel there. El Paso is probably an eight hour drive from Austin. Austin sits at the edge of the Texas hill country. Driving east from Austin, the land is flat and largely treeless. It was also very brown, perhaps because of the continuing drought in the region. Driving east towards Houston, the land abutting the highway was one cattle ranch after another. Though the land we drove through wasn't physically attractive, many of the manmade sites we visited were very beautiful, entertaining, historic, and/or informative. The famous Texan independent-minded tough guy attitude comes across in a myriad of ways. There are many "Don't Mess with Texas" (anti-litter) signs along the highways, there were at least two state-sponsored executions in the month we were there (executions are so common they aren't big news so there may have been even more that we didn't hear about), and several of the sites that attracted us as tourists were associated with killings (when in Texas, do as the Texans). See the sections on Austin, Waco, San Antonio, and Dallas for the killing fields we visited. We didn't go to Killene (site of the Luby restaurant mass murder), Channelview (where the cheerleader mom put out a murder contract on her daughter's rival and her mom--sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1991, she got out of jail in six months and got joint custody of her daughter), or the road in Jasper on which, in 1998, three racists dragged James Byrd Jr. to death because he was African American. The folks in Texas with whom Curt worked did not have the Texas cowboy mentality, though that could be because none of them were native Texans. Curt's Tivoli co-workers are young, intelligent, and energetic. The "job space" is more a playspace than a workspace. During his month in Texas there were several Tivoli sponsored parties and on a couple of windy days, we'd take time out to fly teammate Tony Godwin's stunt kite. Curt thoroughly enjoyed his office time while in Texas (including the long hours on those days Missy and Eric weren't in town). He loves designing and developing computer programs and this was a rare chance to dedicate himself to it and the first time he got to write Java code. While in Texas, Curt developed a new conspiracy theory and collected evidence to support it. Curt has obtained never-before-seen film of a man, a foreigner from a country friendly with the Soviet Union in 1963, running down the grassy knoll after Kennedy was shot. He has film of the same man standing at the spot on the Branch Davidians grounds where the incendiary devices went off that caused the deaths of 80 people. Finally and incredibly, he has film of this same man, aiming and shooting from atop the Tower on the University of Texas' Austin campus. Until today, it has always been claimed that Charles Whitman was the lone gunman atop that tower in 1966, and that somehow he alone was responsible for shooting 45 people. This diary is broken down largely by the areas we visited during a
particular day or weekend. As Missy and Eric had returned to North Carolina prior
to Curt's last weekend in Texas, Curt did the touring
of Waco, Fort Worth, and Dallas with friend and co-worker
Ramesh Somisetty.
While in Austin, Curt painted these portraits based on our homepage family photo.
© 2000 frantzml@juno.com
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