My wife, who spent some of her earlier years in a little town called Talco in East Texas, warned me that things are different down here and I would need some time to adjust.
I laughed, but she was right.
For example:
- We have assumed partial ownership of Ruby, a small, squat dog of undetermined breed. Ruby, for immunization purposes, belongs to a lady at the other end of our street, but she roams the neighborhood from early morning to late at night, usually at a modest trot, visiting from house to house. She usually checks in with us at least twice a day, more often if we are on the dock fishing (I suppose she's looking for snack), and will often accompany us on our evening strolls. She has no fear of traffic, and will calmly wait for cars to pass before trotting across the street. We've been here, now, over a month and I've yet to hear her bark. She seems to be friends, or at least has a non-aggression pact, with the neighborhood squirrels and birds.
- In East Texas there are an enormous amount and wide variety of spiders. I am against spider, though for some reason the bigger the spider is the less it bothers me. We have these little spiders, though, which can be found on all surfaces at all times of the day. They all seem to be rather menacing, with huge bodies behind their little heads. They also all appear to be venomous, at least to my uneducated and nervous mind.
- Grocery or hardware store lists are important. It's 20 miles to a big grocery or hardware store, so we are constantly making lists. It's also very important to remember to take the list when we make the big drive to Livingston, which is our county seat. Forgetting the list invariably means that either we forget something which necessitated making the trip in the first place, or we overbuy, which is a detriment to our cash flow.
- While our electricity has been just fine, the water has gone off twice since we've been here. As I mentioned above I lived in Arlington for 47 of my 48 years, and I cannot remember, even one instance of the water going off. The water quality is fine, so far as I know, but the pressure and the availability seems to be suspect.
- Lake Livingston is fed by the Trinity River. When it rains a great deal in the Ft Worth-Dallas area, a week later we can sit on the dock and watch all manner of stuff float into the lake. (Our house is at the north end of the lake, not too far from where the Trinity flows into the lake). Just this week I saw numerous big logs (some over 20 feet) floating by, an unidentified five or six foot long critter floating belly up, a dead snake, which looked to be about four feet long, draped over a log floating by.
- There doesn't seem to be any procedure for dealing with these big logs that wash up to my deck or bulk head. They are too heavy to just lift out of the water onto land, and even if I could I'm not sure what I'd do with them. My solution so far has been to just push them out back into the current and let nature take it's course. That doesn't seem very neighborly, though, so I'm continuing my research.
- There's a dearth of restaurants in Onalaska. There's one very good home style joint called Jerry's, a Sonic, a Subway, and a couple of other Mom and Pops that we've yet to try.
- There's no library, and no used book store, both of which I'm having difficulty accepting.
