A Bangup in Dallas 2 responses
What most people know about Dallas; this is where President Kennedy was killed by a sniper firing from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository – this building.
GUNS
The stereotype: Dallas is the hub of climate-change denying gun culture. Cars with engines the size of a house. Plastics everywhere. Conspicuously outrageous consumption.And ultimate self-indulgence.
Lee Harvey Oswald’s view of a Dallas Street. Look carefully at the road and pick out the white cross where the lethal bullet entered Kennedy’s brain
It’s certainly partially true. But the city also has some of the sweetest people in the world. Kindness radiates. Love is in the air. And ineffable sweetness.
Physically this is a web of interconnected and unconnected shopping malls bound about with wide sweeping highways, twisting in every direction, often up. Surrounded by a sprawl of suburbs, leafy or not.
As to the gun culture: yes, evidence everywhere. But no guns. Or at least, I saw none in public. I did see many signs implying that anyone trying to take a Texan’s gun would have to prise it from his or her cold dead hands. There are signs at many restaurants and other venues: no guns to be visibly carried, with threats of terrible fines and imprisonment for anyone carrying an unconcealed firearm. Does this mean those bulges in Texan’s pockets don’t simply mean they are pleased to see me?
One of my friends who invited me here took me to his beautiful house in the suburbs. From the outside, a neat bungalow-style home with no pretensions. The inside, like the Tardis, is much bigger than you’d think. High-ceilinged, wooden-beamed living room open-planned to a well appointed kitchen. All very tasteful with a warm family feel.
H took me to his study and showed me his gun cupboard. Hey, a good family man with a great job in a big retail chain. Good citizen. He came here from the UK around ten years ago. I taught him Martial Arts in school – the empty-hand version. Cupboard: a vicious semi-automatic rifle; a single-barelled pump-action shotgun small and vicious; a Kalashnikov. A box of plenty bullets for all of them. H could withstand a siege.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I like them.”
Meeting with a mass murderer
ASSES
H has looked after me like a celebrity. This is my second five- star hotel, and waiting for him in the lobby of the Westin Hotel boy have I seen some asses! Great blobby masses of men and/or women, some tattoo-bedecked, black white and oriental. This is blobby city for sure. Here overindulgence is a lifestyle bordering on the religious. The words “it’s my right” hang in the air everywhere. Luckily there’s so much space in Texas! So they have the right, apparently, to eat the world.
From the hotel window
LOVE AND MARRIAGE
Go together like a Sikh and a Christian. Sometimes.
The wedding (the reason I came) certainly had a heart. The marriage of a superbly aristocratic Dallas Princess to a boy of Sikh extraction in a very traditional Christian ceremony. Not in church mind you…was simple, pleasant and fun.
A beautiful couple
Like all weddings, the bride’s family sat on one side of the aisle and the groom’s on the other. The potential for awkwardness was certainly there. Especially as one side was American white Texan, the other Indian.
Yet her family seemed to accept the brown boy into their world without any visible discomfort. In fact her brother, a huge man in a stetson and jeans said, with some evident surprise on meeting the groom’s family, “Hey! These are some really nice folks y’all” So one stereotype at least. Not just the stetson but the y’all at the end of each sentence.
A seriously beautiful couple. A salutary lesson for me, not to assume all Texans are racist shitkicking assoles. In fact these were some really nice folks! Y’all. I have no doubt that if I were to dig I’d find some views which would make me puke. So I didn’t dig.
MORE ASSES
Last night dinner with an Evangelist reverend and his family and he confirmed what I learned in a Channel 4 news broadcast months ago: He has a large congregation and many connections throughout the Christian evangelical community: Trump’s agenda, driven by his evangelical advisors, is to bring about the End of Days as per the Book of Revelations in the Bible. To this end, Jerusalem needs to be the capital of Israel, the Temple needs to be rebuilt – before this happens there will have to be a terribly bloody race war. Then all the dead will be resurrected to be judged and sent to heaven or hell. Then Jesus will come. By the way, no non-Christians will enter paradise. Trump believes this shit. Do you?
Shit shit shit
That’ll teach me to dig! I had to say with all my heart to the very Rev, “I cannot agree with you and I never will” to which he replied condescendingly that the mind of God is so vast there’s just no point in little me having any opinion whatsoever on this matter.
LEAVING or, Conclusions and Recommendations!
Mess
Dallas airport is a mess. Lines and lines of frustrated people hoping to get through security in time for their flights. Shifted from line to line by officious little kings of little kingdoms, petty uniformed pedants whose rule books so exceed their intellectual capacity, no one is going to get any kind of easy time.
Finally through, assisted by a monster slab of prime Texan beef probably called Brad or Caleb, who had taken my lack of a passport (as my flight is internal I thought a driving license would do as ID and my passport was in my checked bag) who made sure I had every security check in his copious manual, including a pat down which, I assure you, was pure homo-eroticism. For him anyway.
I am at last on my seat in AA flight xxx to San Diego in exactly the seat I did not book. I ALWAYS book a window seat as I can’t accept crossing a country without knowing the way back.
Not my window
The grey man next to me is earnestly reading his bible just in case.
So it turns out Dallas is not the bumhole of a farting elephant after all. At worst its a sugar-coated very rich cake with icing a foot deep. Deep inside there is probably a heart, stuffed as it is with dollar bills. As I said, the city is an interlaced concatenation of highway and shopping malls, surrounded by a sprawl of suburbs. The people are adorable, my host and hostess especially. They made every effort to give me a good time and they certainly succeeded. The wedding was delightful, and the opportunity to meet and talk Martial Arts with my two Founder Members again was brilliant.
And Dallas has an astounding Samurai Museum!
Who you looking at!? Meeting a friend
…San Diego, here I come…
Interesting! But this is not the real Dallas trust me. You don’t mention the Mexicans and the immigrants. The City is not always so friendly to outsiders. Depends who you meet. Come for longer next time.
True, I did see quite a few Mexicans, as well as Muslims. I seriously saw no evidence any tension between the white Texans and these people. Perhaps, as you say if I stayed longer?