July 23rd, 2010 by Hoopleton

Settling in is the hard part. But we made it, no worse for wear.

My bearings are still set to Chicago. The Midwest still my home country. I rarely realize how far south I am. The temperatures are high but I’m acclimated for summer. The insect swarms are new, so is the prevalence of greenery.

Mainly I spend my days scouring the job boards and staring at her who brought me here. I have, I think, come to understand how blessed I am. I feel her belly and the life growing inside and I think it inconceivable that I had something to do with it, no matter how small.

I’m changing. Growing perhaps. I can’t imagine my life before all this or how every event of my life didn’t lead to this. I look for time to write, but I’m happy to let the days slip by into memory. For the first time I feel as though I’ve made the world better than I left it and in that there is nothing but eternal gratitude.

The other day we drove to the capital building and generally drifted through the streets of Austin. The city is booming. The grid can’t contain it. Skyscrapers rise in days. Highways in mere hours. I imagine myself returning to Austin ten years from now and feeling like I’d never been here before.

It may be cliché but everything really is bigger here. The food is fresher. The air cleaner. The optimism of the West energizes every square foot. The promise of the New South drives every conversation. Johnson era liberalism mixes equal parts with fiscal conservatism. The economy is probably better here than any place in the whole of the United States of America.

But it’s still not Chicago. I doubt any city could replicate the factory thunder of the great Midwestern Metropolis. I doubt any city would ever want to. Life is slower here. Easier. Kinder.

I’m still getting acclimated. Still settling in. For now I imagine it’s too soon to tell.

July 5th, 2010 by Hoopleton

Yesterday we were in Dallas. Dealey Plaza. Five feet from the spot where JFK was murdered in 1963. It wasn’t what I expected. Smaller. Hillier. So condensed that it be hard to imagine that a second assassin would go unnoticed. Even so, all the talk was of conspiracy. Old men surrounded by children passing down paranoia like so many pearls of wisdom.

Texas has come a long way since 1963. Even in this economy. Construction is moving forward everywhere. Cities and towns are booming. In Dallas too, beyond the decaying shrine of Dealey Plaza there is prosperity. The industrial north has turned to rust and it is the defeated south that is on the rise again.

But they don’t lie. Stacy told me as much. The heat here is like nothing you’ve ever known before. Of course I’ve been in the south in summer even further, but now the temperatures seem so much more oppressive. Weightier. Perhaps it’s permanence that peaks my senses. Maybe my winter was just too long.

I tell Stacy that she brought me this warmth. She asks why I don’t write about her anymore. I’ve been so overwhelmed by having her I haven’t written anything in six months, I reply. But now we’re in Texas. I can write about Kennedy, our trip to Dealey Plaza, and the heat. It’s a start, isn’t it?

July 3rd, 2010 by Hoopleton

These pages have been quiet of late and for this I apologize. Changes come when you least expect them. Where once there was the incessant teletype of keys, today there is the rumble of a moving truck engine.

I’ve said goodbye to the prairies of Illinois, trading in the Midwest for the dusty roads of Texas. My life is in boxes. Packed and stowed into a fourteen foot Uhaul quietly roasting in the parking lot of a Super 8 in Hope, Arkansas.

We’ve been on the road three days. Out of Michigan, through Chicago, then down the Mississippi toward Texas via Memphis and Little Rock. Mainly there’s just the blacktop. Endless. Rolling by in clumps and patches. But we do stop now and then. I was at the Lorraine Motel yesterday and will probably stroll through Dealey Plaza tomorrow. Moving has somehow become an assassination tour. So it goes.

The South is still a stereotype for me. The history of the Civil War and Civil Rights. A dozen Johnny Cash ballads. Humidity, poverty and race. I suspect this will change in time, as we move further down the road. Further south. Further west. Further into an uncertain, but exciting future.

More tomorrow. For now back on the road.