- If in the Midwest people are kind, here in Texas they are even more so. It’s overwhelming how nice everybody is.
- At the conference lunch yesterday we were served a salad with fresh berries and roasted pecans that finally made me understand why people eat pecans. The Midwestern pecans are garbage. Or maybe it’s all in the way they cook them.
- Save for the palms and the Hispanics, I’m not seeing any difference from anywhere else. I’m not feeling any special Texanness. Not a single person in cowboy attire.
- People are a lot more cosmopolitan than in St Louis. Houston is a cultured city, a lot more so than Baltimore, Philadelphia and Chicago.
- The stereotype of dumb, redneck Texans is stupid.
- Save for the climate and the bizarrely horrible roads, I could be very happy in Houston. That’s something I did not expect.
6 responses to “Texas Observations”
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good and interesting perspective!
Only thing i would add is you are in the biggest city in texas (i think its a little bigger than dallas-fortworth)
If you go to more rural texas some of the stereotypes are a little more relevant, but the same can be slightly said of rural midwestern areas. Consulted for 3-4 months in eastern texas and while nice people, certainly not as cosmopolitan as you are describing in houston!
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Yes, mine is a very limited perspective of a single city. But I’m shocked by how people keep saying that the East Coast is super cultured compared to everywhere else, and I’m not seeing that at all. It’s a stereotype with very little basis in reality.
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” people keep saying that the East Coast is super cultured compared to everywhere else”
I would assumt that the people who say that are mostly East Coasters without much experience of the rest of the country….
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I guess so. But it’s one of those myths that aren’t even remotely rooted in reality.
I honestly thought that Texas was a stale backwater but I’ve met several local people- not academics – and now I see that it’s a ridiculous belief.
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Oh yes, Houston is pretty nice – a little flat for my taste, and hard to find vegetarian food at times. I think the only negative experience I had was when I went to the pharmacy to refill my birth control, I got some serious stink eye from the pharmacist. But I mostly found that hilarious.
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The Midwestern pecans are garbage. Or maybe it’s all in the way they cook them.
Cook them??? Unless one is making pecan pie, a wonderful occasional dessert, pecans should be eaten raw. Cooking them invariably ruins them.
However, pecans from Georgia and from Texas are the best ones.
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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