Snowmaggedon 2025

 

Well, an apocalyptic event happened down here in Texas yesterday: Snow.

We’ve been down here for 3½ years, and normally we receive but a dusting of snow once or twice a winter. The temps plummet below freezing for a week or two every January and we’re forced to let the faucets drip to avoid burst pipes. Our first winter saw a mini-freeze where icy rain coated the streets for two or three days and schools were closed and everyone worked from home. Other than that, we really don’t have harsh winters down here, for obvious reasons. The severe weather comes in the form of 90 days of summer heat over 100 degrees (the record for my experience has been 108 degrees) and harsh hail storms every couple of months.

Rumors of snow circulated Monday night. In the grocery store with Patch I overheard a couple catastrophizing about 9 inches of the white stuff. I inwardly laughed. Back in NJ we’d get one or two of those sized storms a winter and drive to work the next day. But at my job Tuesday word spread we’d be remote on Thursday and Friday. By Wednesday it was official. And yesterday morning, Snowmaggedon 2025 began.

 The view outside my front door at 8:15 am.

 

1 pm.

 

2:48 pm.

 

Around 3 o’clock the snow stopped falling at around 3 inches accumulation. After a brief reprieve it started up again, this time as sleet. Icy rain. Much more dangerous to these southerners. The sleet continued throughout the evening and overnight and as I write this at 11 am on Friday, it is still going.

Since we hardly ever get snow down here, the towns do not stock up on salt or invest in snowplows. They do have some, a fraction of what we had up in Jersey, but that’s reserved for the tollways. The side streets are on their own. I expect to be “snowed in” until late Saturday afternoon. Today’s high will be 37, but Saturday will go up to 46. It’s supposed to be sunny, too. Most’ll melt by dinner time. I expect to be driving to pick up some takeout Saturday night, and attend mass with the family Sunday morning.

And Texans will speak of Snowmaggedon 2025 in hushed tones for years to come …

 

The current view from my north Dallas home office window.

Barbed Wire on the Border

 

Couple of observations from Hopper down here in the Lone Star state …

 

(1) Though I’ve been living down here in Texas for two-and-a-half years, my house is about a half hour north of Dallas. That means I’m roughly 420 or so miles away from the closest point of the southern border. That’s almost three times more distant than my parents, who live in the mountains of Pennsylvania, are from the Jersey shore. Or as far as New York City is to Niagara Falls. Or about 45 minutes longer than it takes one to drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco, if you’re on the left coast. So the border crisis does not really affect me in a way that keeps me up at night.

 

(2) Texas is basically 98 percent red (conservative), with the major exception being the People’s Republic of Austin. While our neighborhood HOA disallows political signage of any type, you occasionally run into the loony Beto fan with election posters plastered all about or a house with one of those cringy hate-has-no-home-here placards creeping unobtrusively in a shrub off to one side of the front door. Again, by the same ratio, about two houses in every hundred.

 

(3) Conservatives down here are very proud of Governor Abbott. Maybe a presidential candidate in ’28 or ’32? I dunno; he’s getting up there in age. He is in a wheelchair (but doesn’t flaunt it; I was here a year before I discovered this). He’s doing (mostly) all the right things down here. At least in sparring with the Biden Administration and handling the border. I hear some people bicker about him being soft on crime or guns and not as strong as he could be about state economics, and I can complain too, but by and large I’m a fan.

 

(4) We absolutely love it that he has been sending illegal immigrants up north. I say keep sending them if they keep coming. We’re enjoying Mayor Adams of NYC squirming in trying to deal with the immigrant problem – and the crime and economic shocks it brings with it – as well as the Chicago Mayor. We also loved packing them off to Martha’s Vineyard. I – and many others down here – say start resending them there. And also target other liberal enclaves, such as Hollywood, Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, and Aspen. Oh – and don’t forget Washington DC!

 

(5) These are not just publicity stunts. If a national government comprised of states dictates a policy that would affect only a handful of such states detrimentally, and those handful of states are essentially outnumbered in dictating policy, I believe it is reasonable that such states may address the issue so all states – or at least those states dictating the policy – can experience the detriment too. Like many hotbed political issues nowadays, it’s best said simply in a meme:

 

 

 

(6) In an effort to deter illegal immigration, Texas has strung up barbed wire along certain parts of the border. This was struck down as illegal by the Supreme Court. Interestingly, all four female justices voted against the Texas position. Now, I am not really a legal guy; Law doesn’t hold my interest. But for the life of me I can’t fathom why the government would take the side of disallowing a state to respond to what basically amounts to an invasion. Just doesn’t make sense without that proverbial tinfoil hat.

 

(7) It is an invasion. My mouth dropped to the floor recently when a relative likened the illegal influx of Mexicans and Central Americans to Jews fleeing Nazi Germany in the 1930s. And I still hear the old “as a Christian, how can you be for a wall? (or barbed wire at the border)?” Well, one can be a Christian and be against an invasion of 5,000 migrants a day, many of whom are military-age young men, and most of which is done without documentation or screening. This is not the same as callously stepping over a local homeless person walking up the stairs to the church. Apples and oranges.

 

(8) There will not be a second civil war over all this. Abbott and Texas stood up to whoever is running the Biden Administration with a concise letter which essentially emphasizes a state’s right to defend itself, a right that overrules federal mandate. Over a dozen southern and western states joined in solidarity with Texas. The federal government will back down, is backing down, for several reasons. The media is not reporting it front-page. It’s a lose-lose proposition for the Democrats going into an election year, and the Border Patrol is starting to let slip that it would not interfere with state agencies further.

 

Anyway, just some thoughts from an amateur in the area but not at the area. I welcome any correction or explanation or respectful disagreement. Otherwise, back to regularly scheduled programming in a day or so. Just wanted to vent, I guess.

   

Rain

  

We’ve been living a little over the past year about thirty minutes north of Dallas. Initially, the biggest sticker shock was the heat. Right off the bat last year we experienced 21 days in a row of minimum 100 degree weather. About three weeks back we had a string of days around 107, 108, 109. But I have to admit this second summer is much easier on me and the family. Our bodies have somehow acclimatized.

Unfortunately, we’ve had a very, very dry summer. I can’t remember the last time we had a thunderstorm. Had to be early May or April, I think. Since Memorial Day, we’ve only had a half hour of rain. And I know this because since Memorial Day I’ve been reciting that statistic, day in and day out, week in and week out, month in and month out.

My lawn is taking a beating. It’s on life support: dry, yellow, brittle. Thousands and thousands of tiny blades of grass are undergoing near death experiences as I type. Perhaps forty percent of my lawn is in this bad shape. Part of me is concerned because I’m waiting, just waiting, for one of those snide letters from the HOA. However, it’s not just me; the entire neighborhood lawns are suffering.

And not only is the grass suffering, but cracks are sprouting up in the dirt patches at the edges of my yard. Deep cracks that look like miniature Grand Canyons to me. If I suddenly flashed back to the age of ten, I’d have a field day with those cracks and my green plastic Army soldiers.

Yeah, the house came with one of those in-ground lawn sprinkler systems, set on a twice a week timer, but I think it needs adjustments and overhauls, and I’ve been lazy in getting someone out to look at it and fork over the coin to get it adjusted and overhauled. So the past week I’ve been spending about a half hour a day watering my poor Bermuda grass manually, hose in hand, ten minutes on the front, ten minutes on the side, and ten minutes in the backyard.

It seems to be improving, very, very slightly.

What we need, what Texas needs, is rain.

Not a Texas-sized thunderstorm. Not torrential downpours that whip though the plains. No, we need a nice, long, thorough but mellow raining.

Water is very, very expensive down here. My water bill is thrice what it was up in New Jersey. It might be the one thing that costs more down here than the Great Tax of New Jersey – I mean, State. So I don’t want to quadruple that bill because I’m doing the necessary leg work that Mother Nature isn’t.

I’m writing this as I sit at my work desk at the home office. The second floor window looks out over a park directly across the street. Above that park are very heavy, very dark, and very ominous storm clouds, stopping by the neighborhood somewhat indecisively. Thunder booms in the distance every ten minutes or so, rattling the windows a bit, and I caught a flash of lightning out the corner of my eye a few minutes ago.

What we need right now is rain.

Lingering rain.

 

One Year in Texas

 

Today marks the one year anniversary of the Hopper clan’s move to Texas.

What have I learned and accomplished this past trip around the Sun?

What’s the best thing about Texas, for me?


Well, to be honest, that’s a tough one. I could go on about higher earnings, lower taxes, bigger house, newer house, new cars, and all that material stuff, but in reality we were doing well in New Jersey and now we’re doing a little better 1,550 miles away. I feel that it’s a better place for my girls, though they’ll be loath to admit it. I could mention how I got a better paying job working with nice people in seven weeks, eliminating one of my existential fears about the move. I could mention more, but I don’t think I’d be writing anything of lasting importance.

So, what’s the best thing about Texas, for me?

It might sound kinda goofy, but for the past twelve months I’ve felt – no, been inundated – with a sense of promise down here. That something good is just around the corner. It’s a cloud I’ve been walking through for my entire time down here. But it’s not something passive; it’s something that will demand an active response from me. I think I know what that is, I’m just gearing and screwing myself up to do it. Aw heck it’s analysis paralysis, but of a much lesser and weaker kind than the form that overwhelmed me in Jersey. And that “cloud of promise” was never present to me up in the northeast.

That’s all I have to say. I have lived elsewhere in the past; eight or nine towns in New Jersey, three semesters at Rutgers, an eighteen month stint down in Maryland. Although we made some good friends down in Maryland, I never truly liked it down there and was always looking forward to a return. Now, though, in Texas, despite having good friends and great relatives up north, I’m not homesick for the Garden State.

Texas is home for me, at least for now.

(And plane travel several times a year is now the new normal!)

In the Belly of the Beast

The silver lining is that it probably would’ve hit me way harder had we moved down to Dallas five or more years ago.

Man, is our new area football obsessed.

At first I thought that it was a cliché: if you’re a Texan, you’re into football. You know, the “Friday Night Lights” thing and all. Yeah, I have a brother-in-law who’s a Lone Star native and who’s been pushing the Texas Longhorns on us for years. But it started to hit home when we learned my daughter’s high school football team, which normally practices on a five-acre lot of prairie, will be playing its games at The Star, the Dallas Cowboys’ practice facility.

So, yes, it seems football is a big deal down here.

Now, football used to be a big deal for me, too.

My father played some low-level college football and wound up a high school defensive coordinator. My godfather, his best friend, tried out for the New York Jets in the sixties. I watched football with him, as well as with my two uncles when I got older. Both uncles were diehard Giants fans, and it wore off. My friends during my teens and early twenties were Giants fans, too. This was the Parcells era when the Giants were a dominant team and went to the Super Bowl twice.

Later I worked for a company whose owner was a diehard Giant fan. I saw Eli Manning, and could’ve chatted him up and shook his hand if I were a little more courageous. The wife was a Giants fan and we watched three Super Bowls together. I was finishing my daughter’s nursery when Eli started his first game.

Then around 2016 the whole kneeling thing happened. I am opposed to kneeling. To me, it’s disrespecting the flag and all the great things this country is about. Yeah, we’re not perfect, but we’re the best place on the planet to live. You don’t see migrant caravans storming the beaches of Cuba to get in.

Anyway, I digress. I’ve watched a grand total of three football games in the past five years. I’ve spent zero dollars on the NFL. As a result, I no longer consider myself a football fan, despite many happy years of chugging beers, barbecuing, watching the games with my pals. No more.

So it was a bit of a culture shock when, last week, my wife took us to The Star.

Now, not only is it the Cowboys’ practice facility, it is also a massive mini mall. Eateries, shops, museums, and plenty of office space. The Mrs. wants me to nab a job at a company that leases space at The Star, that’s how close it is to our new house.

She had to pick up some housewarming items from a local boutique at The Star, one she follows on Instagram. We drove in and had brunch and an interesting place somewhere across from the turf below the Jumbotron along Cowboys Way. I’m sure Jerry Jones got a nice percentage of our brunch bill, probably $10, to add to his net worth of $800 billion. Anyway, the food was good, and the boutique was phenomenal, at least according to my wife.

But walking around this Mecca for Dallas Cowboy fans sure gave me a weird vibe. Set in the concrete walkways were slabs devoted to Cowboy stars of the past, their names, position, active years and jersey numbers etched into concrete. Flags displaying current local team members adorned every light post. Stores sold buttons, pendants, posters, bumper stickers, kitchen magnets. I didn’t see a pro shop, but I’m sure several of them were strategically positioned around The Star for Mr. Jones to get his fair share of memorabilia revenue of the team he invested so much in.

(A team that’s been 26 years without a Super Bowl win, the dormant Giants fan in me has to point out.)