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Is It Still Home? My Trip to America – Texas 7

07 Wednesday Aug 2019

Posted by noreennanz in Uncategorized

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College Life, Georgetown, Home, Pilgrimage, Renewable Energy, Retirement, Texas, travel

My last full day with Rhett and Natalie. Another “down” day for Rhett. They’re talking about driving together tomorrow on his “up” day to take me all the way to Louisiana to meet my friend Robert. A drive of at least four hours! I can’t believe their generosity. Nor am I convinced that Rhett can really handle this.

“No big deal,” he says. “I do this all the time to drive to visit relatives in New Mexico.”

For today, Natalie has plans again. We meet one of her friends for lunch at the Student Union of Southwestern University, alma mater to Rhett and Natalie as well as Donna.

Southwestern University is a Methodist university in Georgetown, approximately the size of Macalester College in Minnesota, my alma mater. Macalester is also a church college run by the Presbyterians. Both colleges have a definite secular feel about them, even if they are owned and operated by Christian denominations.

I haven’t been on a college campus in decades! But it turns out that Natalie and Donna often spend evenings at the college attending concerts and plays. After all, Georgetown is a college town, and Natalie tells me Southwestern is the oldest university in all of Texas. I detect some pride here. Maybe I would go to cultural events at my college too if I still lived in Minnesota. But then the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul have at least twenty-five colleges and universities, with over 50,000 students at the University of Minnesota. Multiply each college’s cultural offerings and there is a lot to choose from in the Twin Cities! Not to mention professional groups like the Minnesota Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Guthrie Theater.

We eat the same lunch many of the students are eating, hamburgers. Natalie orders a portabella hamburger, expecting a hamburger with a slab of meat and a mushroom. Instead, all that comes is a mushroom on a bun! Welcome to college life in the 21st century, the age of vegans and vegetarians.

After lunch, we walk around the Student Union, then saunter around the campus grounds outdoors. The buildings, all clad with rough-cut limestone, have a feeling of uniformity, no matter when they were constructed. I find the campus very attractive.

We walk alongside a lush lawn with beautiful huge shade-producing trees. Dotted here and there are pretty wooden lawn chairs. “These chairs have each been donated by alumni,” Natalie says. In one section of the commons there are dozens of plaques on the ground, honoring former students who have contributed in some major way to society or to the college. One of the plaques is dedicated to Donna.

Inside the Student Union of Southwestern University
Student Union of Southwestern University

We walk on for an hour or so. Natalie points out the sorority she belonged to. We walk into the chapel, where she and Rhett used to make out during hours when the chapel was not occupied. She was in awe of this lively, handsome young man who was popular with all the girls, but for some reason wanted to be with her!

More of the Student Union building

We wander into the theater building, where students are rehearsing a play Natalie and Donna will be attending in a few days.

I am puzzled by this attachment they feel to the college they graduated from. I feel no connection at all to Macalester. Is that because I graduated in the time of the hippie movement? Most of us in my graduating class chose to not even wear the traditional caps and gowns. Or did I inherit this disconnection from my parents? My father was matter-of-fact on the rare occasions when he talked about college at all. He graduated from Columbia University in New York City. Was he proud of that? It’s an Ivy League school, after all. I did know that neither he nor my mother liked New York City, the city I feel best in! Neither of my parents received alumni magazines from their respective schools. My mother went to nursing school at a hospital that doesn’t even exist anymore. She worked in New York City at a hospital belonging to Columbia, and that doesn’t exist anymore. My parents didn’t talk about college. Except about the college I didn’t want anyone to know I had attended, and that was the frequent subject of conversation between my parents. My parents donated so much money to Bethel College, they put my father on the board of directors and even gave him a teaching position. The president of the college and his wife had been guests at our home. I attended this college too for three years because it seemed like the obvious choice. But I was not happy there, and I was highly embarrassed to run into my father occasionally on campus. Even after I had married and was living in Germany, my parents would mention who they had seen at the Festival of Christmas, a music extravaganza the college puts on every year. I sang in these concerts too while attending the college, but never set foot in that place again after transferring to Macalester. I definitely did not want to be associated with that college.

But I was no more connected to Macalester than to Bethel. I knew that Macalester had a good reputation, but I also never let the alumni association know of my new addresses so they could send me alumni magazines. I was just relieved to finally be finished with college! The same thing when I got my MSW at the University of Minnesota. I graduated in absentia and never went back. Seeing Natalie and Donna’s enthusiam, I wonder if there is something misplaced within me. Why can’t I connect? I am the one who is disconnected from parts of my past others brag about. I wonder if this has to do with wondering where I belong. College wasn’t home. Where is home?

Interestingly, one of the singers in the choir I sing with now in Germany is from Minnesota. The choir director I sang under at Macalester, Dale Warland, is well known internationally. When I mentioned to her that I had sung under him, she said, “Lucky you. I never could get into his choir.” Of course, she meant his professional choir. I sang in the large concert choir. Still, when she told me that, I felt a moment of pride. I belonged to a good college and sang once under their renowned choir director! It felt good to have a brief sense of having belonged someplace.

We eat ice cream at Donna’s chic town house, in a housing development constructed specifically for senior citizens.

And then we leave Donna. Natalie says, “You haven’t seen Sun City yet! This is housing on an entirely different scale than where Donna lives.”

We drive past the center of Georgetown to a suburban development. There are homes here larger than the one my parents had built to accommdate seven children! This is the place retired corporate executives move to, intending to downsize. We drive past house after house, condominium after condominium, all built for wealthy or at least upscale people fifty-five years old and up. We pass people driving in golf carts along the road. Sun City has its own golf courses – three of them! Its own senior university. Its own cultural center, ballroom, activitiy center, artificial fishing lake, its own swimming pools. I read that this is the first home people live in after retiring, but not their last. This is a place for vibrant, restless people on the go!

I see one active creature here that is of much more interest to me than all the golf courses of Sun City – a roadrunner!

A roadrunner! A natural creature thriving in a very unnatural environment

I am thrilled to see the roadrunner, the first I’ve seen in Texas this trip. I feel out of place in Sun City, though. It feels artificial and unnatural to live in a place constructed for and devoted exclusively to seniors. Rhett had suggested once that I might want to move down there. “It’s growing all the time,” he said. There are over 14,000 residents living there now, pushing up the population of Georgetown to about 50,000 residents at present. It’s growing larger, day by day. Georgetown is no longer a town. It has become a thriving city.

Our next stop is Lake Georgetown, a dammed-up part of the San Gabriel River, now a reservoir providing drinking water and recreation for the inhabitants of Georgetown. It is a pretty, very large lake, but lacks the pristine beauty of the lakes I knew as a child, spending summers in the pine and birch forests, camping along one of the thousands of lakes in northern Minnesota.

Lake Georgetown, Texas

I learn that Georgetown is one of a few cities in the United States using 100% renewable energy. Talk about a green city! Texas is not at all what I expected. This is one of the most forward-thinking places I can imagine, way ahead of anything I know of in Germany. I can understand why people are proud to live in Texas, in a town turned city called Georgetown.

Our last stop is at HEB, the supermarket Natalie normally shops at. “We’re going to the ‘Mexican’ one,” she says. “I feel more comfortable there among these ordinary people than all trendy, hip shoppers in Sun City.” We roam along the aisles in a crowded, rather shabby but comfortable supermarket, surrounded by Mexicans.

Yes, Natalie and I are one of a kind. Neither of us would choose Sun City as our local neighborhood. But Georgetown as a whole, that’s another thing. After having spent a week in Georgetown, I can imagine why people feel at home here. But I have to move on. Tomorrow I will be in Louisiana – for the first time.

Is It Still Home? My Trip to America – Texas 4

13 Saturday Jul 2019

Posted by noreennanz in Uncategorized

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America, Christianity, Food, Georgetwon, Grieving, Home, Pilgrimage, Retirement, Senior Univeristy, Texas, travel

Today is a “down day” for Rhett, but Natalie has it all planned for me, and it sounds good! I am opening up more and more to life in Texas. Natalie has written articles in a local magazine about various aspects of life in Georgetown, and from what I have read in snippets here and there, Texan life as it is lived in Georgetown sounds wholesome, a quality that appeals to me very much. I like the fact that the Christian faith is presented in this part of the country frankly, unapologetically and naturally. Of course it isn’t the only religion in America, but this faith and life philosophy is represented by a huge number of Americans. Why not be matter-of-fact about it, not overly defending it, but not castigating it either? Of course, in New York City, where I’ve just come from and where I lived for so many years, most people I knew don’t go to church, and there are probably many more non-Christians as well as people who practice different religions in New York than in Texas. Maybe for that reason, faith as expressed in organized religion seems to get pushed into the background of conversation and in the pages of newspapers and magazines.

We meet Natalie’s cousin Sandy for lunch. “Here we are – at Dos Salsas – the best place in all of Goergetown for chicken tortilla soup,” she suggests. The soup is delicious. My Peter would have loved it. I wish for a moment he could be sitting with me here eating chicken tortilla soup. We chat while eating, and I learn a lot about life for the retired in Texas from Sandy, who is taking courses at a “senior university”. She is taking one course in memoir writing and another on espionage during the Cold War. All students and professors at this senior university are senior citizens. I have never heard of such a thing – a university for senior citizens? “Oh,” Natalie and Sandy chime in together, “Georgetown is a mecca for senior citizens. You should see Sun City. This is a part of Georgetown where only senior citizens are allowed to live, and they have their own university.” I feel a pang of longing tugging at my heart. How I would love to take a creative writing course in English. Courses are offered in German here. But I don’t write in German. I could take an online course – I have a friend who has done this. But how nice it would be to have classmates you could share your writing with, people you could interact with face-to-face. Sandy says there are courses on all sorts of subjects. I’m not sure, on the other hand, what the big deal is about all these courses for senior citizens. I have no problem being in a learning environment with younger people.

Natalie and I leave Sandy and drive into the Georgetown town center. There is a main street in this town, and charming little shops and boutiques. I am reminded of Bill Bryson’s book The Lost Continent, where he travels from one small town to another, all over the United States, finding an appalling dearth of charm. The town centers, he says, have all disappeared, giving way to strip malls, chain food restaurants and shopping malls. He would be happy to discover Georgetown. Unfortunately for me, the day is rainy, so we have to walk through the streets with umbrellas.

Natalie is an expert on Georgetown, having researched and written so many articles about her town. She tells me that in 1976 an ordinance was passed in order to protect all the historic buildings in the town center. The roads and many buildings were also restored during this time. In 1977 the historic district was placed on a National Register of Historic Places.

Historic Town Center of Georgetown, Texas

Natalie takes me to the courthouse. What’s so special about a courthouse? I wonder. But I dutifully follow her into a splendid wood-paneled courtroom. “This is the room where the first trial against the Ku Klux Klan was won,” she says. “This trial took place inthe 1920s, and the room has not changed since that time.” She recounts the tale of what were actually several trials. The Ku Klux Klan practiced hate crimes against more than black people, she says. In this particular case, there was a white traveling salesman, Robert Burleson, who happened to be in Georgetown when the Klan targeted him, flogging and tarring him. Perhaps he held more liberal views than those of the Klan members. They were prosecuted by the young District Attorney, Dan Moody, who won a series of trials against the Klan. The jury gave the Klan members the maximum possible punishment in all cases, and from that time the power of the Klan in Texas was weakened. Moody went on later to become the Governor of Texas.

Courtroom in Georgetown, Texas. The first KKK trials to defeat the Klan took place here in 1923 and 1924.

We stroll along Main Street. Natalie takes me into a consignment craft shop. It is beautiful, with tasteful objects like quilts, pottery and gifts sewn by artisans from around Georgetwon. “This shop is run by senior citizens,” she says. “You have to be over fifty years old in order to display or sell your work here.” Even the women working behind the counter, volunteers, are over fifty.

Craft shop with articles created solely by senior citizens

I find a bib someone inscribed with “Spit happens.” This is just too cute. I buy it for my future grandson, who will be born in a few months, along with another small item, a cotton flannel padded burping cloth with a pattern of old-fashioned locomotives. I chat with one of the volunteers at the cash register, a German woman who now lives in Texas. It’s fun speaking German in this strange setting!

We continue along Main Street, browsing for a few minutes in a chic boutique. There seem to be no chain stores in this town. Everything is local and tasteful. We stop in a toy store/ice cream parlor. “You know how you were just speaking German? This place is run by Germans,” Natalie says. The toys are the kind I would see in a German toy stores, wooden Brico trains, wooden puzzles, and plenty of Playmobil and Lego. “The ice cream is a big drawing factor,” she says. People love to shop here and the kids get to combine it with ice cream.” There are unusual flavors here, like amaretto cheesecake, and more traditional ones like chocolate or strawberry. We each order a dish of ice cream and sit down and enjoy being kids again for a few minutes.

I am impressed with Georgetown. Yes, I could imagine living here!

Is It Still Home? My Trip to America – Texas 3

26 Wednesday Jun 2019

Posted by noreennanz in Uncategorized

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Tags

Aging, Christianity, Georgetown, Illness, Pilgrimage, Retirement, Sun City, Texas

The laundry worked out – sort of. I had to buy detergent from a vending machine. I poured the powder into the washing machine, as the instructions said, but when I went to collect the wash, I discovered that all the detergent got clogged up in the detergent receptacle. I should have just thrown it in with the wash! Now I have rinsed clothes, probably not clean. Oh, well.

We go to church today. Today is another of Rhett’s “up” days, but he’s feeling too down to go to church. Natalie says this has been happening a lot these days. I find out it is black history month. This is something that was never observed when I lived in the States. How is that going to play out in this almost entirely white Methodist church?

I don’t recognize a single hymn we sing. Later I learn that each of the hymns sung was written by an African American. So that’s why I don’t know these songs! Discrimination is not a stranger to the Church, sadly and unsurprisingly. A soloist sings a couple of spirituals I do know.

Natalie and I go out to lunch in another chain restaurant in the town the church is in – Georgetown. It turns out, Georgetown isn’t a small town at all. The population here and elsewhere in Texas has exploded in the past decade, and here it is now somewhere around 70,000 and growing every day. In 2010 the population was 47,000. People are talking about “Sun City”, a new housing development in Georgetown where only senior citizens live. Before I even arrived here, Rhett mentioned that I might want to consider living there.

We return home, and Rhett is feeling much more chipper. We sit around over dinner and exchange stories. Rhett is even funny, just like before! It’s good to be able to laugh. He even jokes about rednecks. Obviously, he doesn’t consider himself or Natalie to be a redneck. I have had the feeling talking to Northerners in America that they think every Texan is a redneck! Maybe he’s not as conservative as I thought. I find myself agreeing with most everything we talk about. He and Natalie went on a cruise to Alaska, with his oxygen mask a prominent feature of their trip. He still had his up and down days, but also got to see a lot. Now Rhett says, maybe we could go to England together – Natalie, him and me. He thinks he could do it if he flies first class, and Norwegian Airlines is offering cheap first-class tickets to England. Could we do this? Could I travel to England, to Cornwall, the land of our mutual heritage, with them?

Right now, Rhett has to do some heavy lifting. Furniture in the basement had to be shoved and carried into its rightful place, so that he and Natalie can have a bedroom again. Can he manage this? Natalie thinks it’s too much. She speaks to him about it, politely but clearly. No, he believes he can do this. They don’t want me to help. “It’s enough that you have to put up with this mess,” Natalie says. “I’m sorry you couldn’t even do your laundry here.” But I do some pushing and hauling, too, and they don’t stop me.

While we are pushing and shoving, Rhett’s cell phone goes off. “Check on that, will you,?” Rhett asks me. I run upstairs to the phone. It is an alarm. I turn it off. It says, “Take time out to pray for five minutes.” I run down to Rhett with the message. Apparently, he stops whatever he is doing, several times a day, to pray for people. I know he prayed every day for my husband after he fell ill. I am humbled. I don’t pray for anyone every day.

When we have finished all the work we can do for the day, we sit down in the living room. Rhett looks over some news site on his cell phone. “This is interesting,” he says. He reads about a new law in New York State that allows a woman to have an abortion right up to her delivery date. We are all shocked. I can’t believe it. Is this really true? Why haven’t I read about this in the New York Times?

Later, I check my New York Times website. There is an article about this law, but it makes it sound as though it were something only used rarely, and only when the mother’s health is at risk. I tell Rhett and Natalie, and they nod. I am somewhat reassured.

I go to sleep in the guest room of their home, feeling much more at home. I hear the drone of the oxygen machine. For me, it is somehow comforting, reminding me of the inhale-exhale sound my Peter made while in the hospital for months after his stroke. It is comforting to hear this sound of life, even if it is coming from a machine.

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