Fort Worth or Bust!

Downtown Fort Worth. Note the tan building on the right and the brick building on the left.

Those are two very popular building materials in those parts.

I had a horrible flight. After flying international, American domestic flights are real letdowns. There is no legroom. No legroom. Right before the woman in front of me went to sleep, she put her chair back as far as it could. That meant that her chair was about eight inches from my faces. When I checked in, I was offered the opportunity to buy an first class for $135. I thought about it but skipped it. I would have paid five times that amount in order to move. There was also no food, no movies, no television shows, no nothing. The four-hour flight from Newark to Dallas-Fort Worth was about three hours shorter than my flight from Germany and I got all of those things.

Texas is blessed to have Dell company call it home. There were computers with free Internet access sprinkled throughout DFW. I sent Kara an email that I was early and my cellphone was not working. I went outside and waited.

After living in brusque northern Germany, it was nice to be inundated with "Please," "Thank you so much," "Have a good day," "Yes, Ma'am," and "Oh, I'm so sorry."

I was met with a world of tan. The outside of the airport was tan. The parking garage was tan. The nearby hotel was tan. I waited and was excited. It observed all the cars. There were a lot of white cars. In northern Germany, there are a lot of black and gray cars. Go Figure.

Kara pulled up in a white car with her young daughter in the backseat. I feel old. I used to hate it when my parents friends used to note how big I had gotten. It was obvious to me that I had not gotten any bigger. I was the same size as always. I was tempted to say this but I kept the words in. It was so relaxed and cool.

I had some goals for my time in Texas and fulfilled all of them.

Eat egg foo young. [This faux Chinese food makes me very, very happy. This delicacy has not made it to these shores.]

Eat big pieces of meat, especially with bones/

Eat good Tex-Mex.

[Michelin recently started awarding Germany a lot of stars. However, these accolades are mostly for gourmet restaurants that serve great French fare. Germany is not an ethnically-diverse nation, so the food reflects it. The most popular cuts of steaks have no bones and no fat. Mexican food has no kick but does have cream in odd places. Chinese food is as bad as it is anywhere but there is no egg foo young. Germany has many "Asian restaurants," serve food allegedly from China, Japan and Thai under one roof. Therefore, there is a variety of bad food to be had in one place.]

Visit one of the amazing art museums in Fort Worth.

See the place where JFK was shot.


Check. Check. Check. Check. Check. Check.


It was cool to hang with Kara and her parents. Parents make me nervous. I am constantly making sure that my elbows are not on the table. However, Kara's parents are welcoming and interesting. Her mother, Kathy, was sincerely interested in my life in Germany. I felt honored to go to a blues club with her father, Robert. It was like hanging out with Frank Sinatra in 1965.

Kara had so much going on. Graphic design class and coordinating Angel's various lessons was a sight to behold. Plus, she and her husband, Josh, are renovating some cool houses in Fort Worth. Despite all this activity, we talked, ate, shopped. I love gift shops. I was happy that Kara and Angel moved as slowly through the superb Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth as I did.

As polite and delicious as Texas is, I didn't fall in love with Fort Worth or Dallas. From my short, three-day visit, it seems that the area is beige buildings and shopping centers connected by highways.

 

A view of downtown Fort Worth on the way from DFW airport.

I needed to go to the store for some juice. To get to the Albert's supermarket from my hotel, I had to cross over a wide highway without a fence. It was the most stressful that I have done in a long time. I had to do this twice. Residential and commercial areas do not mix.

If you need bread, you need to hop in your car to drive along I-30 to get to a store. Also, museums are segregated. The Amon Carter Museum, the Kimbell Art Museum, the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame, and the Modern sit away from the houses and stores in city's Cultural District.

While one shopping center looked like the other, houses were not carbon copies of one another. Plus, there were no rowhouses or massive housing projects.

I enjoyed my time in the company of Kara and her family. I cannot wait to see them again. It will happen before 2016.