Driving in the No-NPR Zone
By Daniel Rigney
Driving between two NPR cities, I’m losing the signal from Austin’s national public radio station. I cross into a liminal space between two known urban worlds as twilight approaches. I have just entered the No-NPR Zone.
The radio is silent. In this silence I resolve to make the most of my next three or four hours alone on the road to Houston. Aspiring to become what Saul Bellow called a “first class noticer,” I resolve to pay close attention to small details in the passing panorama, scribbling notes into my pocket-sized blogging pad as I drive with one eye on the road. I’m texting hazardously the old-fashioned way, with a ball-point pen.
I’ve taken this route many times. How come I never saw these things before?
Although I’ve lived in this state (Texas, not oblivion) most of my life, the only time I see the hinterlands of Old Texas is during infrequent trips from one metropolitan area to another by car. The windshield is my television screen, and today the passing scenery resembles a live PBS documentary on the subtle and sometimes unexpected signs of transformation that are sprouting in 21st century rural and small town America.
Eye Catchers
Some things, I notice, remain constant even in the flux. With apologies to Ben Franklin, nothing is certain but flags in Texas. (This is, after all, home to the original Six Flags Over Texas amusement parks.) I see mostly U.S. flags, but also lots of Texas Lone Star flags (the Texas tri-color, I call it), and a few corporate flags, even in the middle of nowhere. I realize that today there are only three flags over Texas: U.S., TX, and INC. I quickly lose count of the scores of banners on the road as I continue observantly through the No-NPR Zone, heeding Yogi Berra’s advice that you can observe an awful lot just by watching.
Well out of Austin now, I see a fast food drive-through boldly displaying the national, state and corporate colors. (The corporate flag of Sonic Drive-in features the traditional red and gold against a retro-futurist-shaped white field evoking the Jetsons era.) A Mazda dealership pledges its allegiance with perhaps a dozen small U.S. flags surrounding one much taller mother flag. I'm amused by this ironic spectacle as I drive past in my Honda Civic, assembled in Canada.
Now I’m in observational high gear. I pass a tiny old frame house that might have once been a cowboy barber shop. It has a new coat of crimson barn paint and a big sign in front reading WEB SITE DESIGN. Even in rural America, the times they are updating. Nowadays, a good ranch needs a good web brand to compete effectively against foreign cows.
Flags stand silent watch over browning, sun-beaten pastures and Texas cattle. Ranch gates are typically flanked by one American and one Lone Star standard. Since September 11, 2001, it seems, even our cattle are more conspicuously patriotic and state-riotic than they used to be.
Flags stand guard at small-town gas stations. A ramshackle tin barn in an advanced state of dilapidation has a big sign out front: NATIONAL CONSTRUCTION SERVICES. I’m guessing this is not the home office.
There’s abundant road kill today – raccoon, possum, skunk, deer, and several specimens unidentified at a passing speed of 70 m.p.h. This topic is not for the faint of stomach. I had a good joke here about a Texas art museum fundraiser, but I’m going to let it go for your sake. Let’s move on, shall we?
To take my mind off of death on the road, I tune into local radio. There are no jazz stations in these parts, so I turn for solace to country radio station 92 FM (“Renegade Radio”) in LaGrange (population 4,641), a town made famous not only by the Broadway show and movie “Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” but also by the classic rock tune “LaGrange,” performed by a little old band from Texas that we like to call ZZ Top. I listen to some old-school Texas swing music on 92, and a little Willie – the latter a musical and cultural bridge from Old Texas to the emerging New Texas (“It’s newer. It’s bluer. Get used to it.”) with which I identify, and whose very existence as a cultural entity I am now announcing publicly.
An ad comes on the radio urging listeners to listen to Radio – not just Renegade 92 in particular, but Radio in general, now also available on HD and the web. As radio stations continue to compete with each other for listeners, the radio industry as a whole now broadcasts advertisements on behalf of the entire medium. The radio business finds itself in a desperate commercial struggle for survival with other media technologies and industries to capture and hold onto scarce eyeballs and eardrums in the global attention economy.
I shouldn’t be surprised that Renegade Radio 92 proclaims itself “proud to be American and even prouder to be Texan.” This is all in keeping with Texas mythology, and in particular with the Myth of Texas Exceptionalism. The voice of 92 is a familiar one in Old Texas.
The Greening of Texas
What does surprise me is the public service announcement, sandwiched between country songs, offering tips on how to conserve energy during the winter months by greening your house. The pitch is not just that you’ll be saving your own money by patching air leaks, but that you’ll be doing something environmentally responsible for others as well, including future others. What a quaint old country notion: that there might be other compelling focal points in life than me and my money. I doubt it will sell.
Most useful tip: Check to make sure that cold air is not leaking in through your floor. It could be coming from inside the house.
I pass a classic car dealership, featuring a mid-fifties Thunderbird displayed on a platform high above a badly aging showroom. Then I pass more cows. Rosemary’s winery. More cows. More flags. More roadkill. And more evidence of the globalization and digitization of farm and market. Rural billboards now routinely promote the sponsor's website, and some roadside watering holes are hotspots. Texas has always had hotspots (It’s about 100 degrees here as I scribble), but now we have Wifi hotspots year-round in both town and country.
We're living now in the the future I heard about in my Texas public high school decades ago. It's not the future we expected. This future is a lot more interesting than the Jetsons, even if not as happy. But unlike the Jetsons, this future does have the virtue of being real.
As I near the end of my journey through the Zone, I attend to evidence of changing spirituality in the countryside. I find no roadsigns at all of the old “Repent Now or Roast Forever“ variety. The signs I see today bring a message of divine love. Coming into Columbus (population 4,305) I see a remarkable sign picturing a man crouching against a wall with his face buried in his despairing hands. The sign reads “Nothing is Too Hard for God.” But signs of hope are not easy to find in the present economy, and especially not in our dying small towns and rural areas.
Yes, I'm seeing signs of hard times here in the No-NPR Zone. Times are tough all over. It's interesting to me, though, that so few of the signs I've seen here today are explicitly political – unless you count flags. Flags have long since been thoroughly politicized, and now, more often than not, they are raised as strategic symbols promoting one or another denomination of conservatarianism. In Houston I often see them flying in front of large corporate buildings, like so many fluttering cloth billboards. American flag. Texas flag. Corporate flag. Some old-timers from World War II tell me that at one time the American flag was actually a uniting symbol. Hard to believe.
Old Texas and New Texas
Today I’ve seen old and dry cultural fields withering in the Texas drought. But I’ve also seen some new sprouts. I’ve seen remnants of 19th and 20th century Old Texas, but I’ve also seen signs of an emerging 21st century New Texas.
In Columbus I look for the Texas Stop Sign (Dairy Queen), and I’m sorry to see that my familiar DQ, where I had stopped several times in the past, has been torn down and replaced with a new Jack in the Box. Quickly deciding to remain loyal to traditional Texas fast food, I pull into Whattaburger across the street for a large cup of coffee. You may know this size as a “Venti."
I notice the relaxed and comfortable ethnic diversity of the place – Anglos, Hispanics and Blacks integrated, sometimes “within booth.” I grew up on the edge of the deep South (would that make East Texas the shallow South?), in a time when restaurants were racially gated and segre-gated, and the sign in the window read “We refuse the right to refuse service to anyone.” That sign meant more than it said. I could tell you stories.
But times have changed somewhat in Texas, and they’re still changing. Somewhat.
As I pull onto Interstate 10 for the last leg of my journey, I flip on the radio again. This time NPR is within range. KUHF is coming in loud and clear from the University of Houston. I have just left the No-NPR Zone. Goodbye, Old Texas. I’ll be in New Houston soon.
http://open.salon.com/blog/danagram
By Daniel Rigney
Driving between two NPR cities, I’m losing the signal from Austin’s national public radio station. I cross into a liminal space between two known urban worlds as twilight approaches. I have just entered the No-NPR Zone.
The radio is silent. In this silence I resolve to make the most of my next three or four hours alone on the road to Houston. Aspiring to become what Saul Bellow called a “first class noticer,” I resolve to pay close attention to small details in the passing panorama, scribbling notes into my pocket-sized blogging pad as I drive with one eye on the road. I’m texting hazardously the old-fashioned way, with a ball-point pen.
I’ve taken this route many times. How come I never saw these things before?
Although I’ve lived in this state (Texas, not oblivion) most of my life, the only time I see the hinterlands of Old Texas is during infrequent trips from one metropolitan area to another by car. The windshield is my television screen, and today the passing scenery resembles a live PBS documentary on the subtle and sometimes unexpected signs of transformation that are sprouting in 21st century rural and small town America.
Eye Catchers
Some things, I notice, remain constant even in the flux. With apologies to Ben Franklin, nothing is certain but flags in Texas. (This is, after all, home to the original Six Flags Over Texas amusement parks.) I see mostly U.S. flags, but also lots of Texas Lone Star flags (the Texas tri-color, I call it), and a few corporate flags, even in the middle of nowhere. I realize that today there are only three flags over Texas: U.S., TX, and INC. I quickly lose count of the scores of banners on the road as I continue observantly through the No-NPR Zone, heeding Yogi Berra’s advice that you can observe an awful lot just by watching.
Well out of Austin now, I see a fast food drive-through boldly displaying the national, state and corporate colors. (The corporate flag of Sonic Drive-in features the traditional red and gold against a retro-futurist-shaped white field evoking the Jetsons era.) A Mazda dealership pledges its allegiance with perhaps a dozen small U.S. flags surrounding one much taller mother flag. I'm amused by this ironic spectacle as I drive past in my Honda Civic, assembled in Canada.
Now I’m in observational high gear. I pass a tiny old frame house that might have once been a cowboy barber shop. It has a new coat of crimson barn paint and a big sign in front reading WEB SITE DESIGN. Even in rural America, the times they are updating. Nowadays, a good ranch needs a good web brand to compete effectively against foreign cows.
Flags stand silent watch over browning, sun-beaten pastures and Texas cattle. Ranch gates are typically flanked by one American and one Lone Star standard. Since September 11, 2001, it seems, even our cattle are more conspicuously patriotic and state-riotic than they used to be.
Flags stand guard at small-town gas stations. A ramshackle tin barn in an advanced state of dilapidation has a big sign out front: NATIONAL CONSTRUCTION SERVICES. I’m guessing this is not the home office.
There’s abundant road kill today – raccoon, possum, skunk, deer, and several specimens unidentified at a passing speed of 70 m.p.h. This topic is not for the faint of stomach. I had a good joke here about a Texas art museum fundraiser, but I’m going to let it go for your sake. Let’s move on, shall we?
To take my mind off of death on the road, I tune into local radio. There are no jazz stations in these parts, so I turn for solace to country radio station 92 FM (“Renegade Radio”) in LaGrange (population 4,641), a town made famous not only by the Broadway show and movie “Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” but also by the classic rock tune “LaGrange,” performed by a little old band from Texas that we like to call ZZ Top. I listen to some old-school Texas swing music on 92, and a little Willie – the latter a musical and cultural bridge from Old Texas to the emerging New Texas (“It’s newer. It’s bluer. Get used to it.”) with which I identify, and whose very existence as a cultural entity I am now announcing publicly.
An ad comes on the radio urging listeners to listen to Radio – not just Renegade 92 in particular, but Radio in general, now also available on HD and the web. As radio stations continue to compete with each other for listeners, the radio industry as a whole now broadcasts advertisements on behalf of the entire medium. The radio business finds itself in a desperate commercial struggle for survival with other media technologies and industries to capture and hold onto scarce eyeballs and eardrums in the global attention economy.
I shouldn’t be surprised that Renegade Radio 92 proclaims itself “proud to be American and even prouder to be Texan.” This is all in keeping with Texas mythology, and in particular with the Myth of Texas Exceptionalism. The voice of 92 is a familiar one in Old Texas.
The Greening of Texas
What does surprise me is the public service announcement, sandwiched between country songs, offering tips on how to conserve energy during the winter months by greening your house. The pitch is not just that you’ll be saving your own money by patching air leaks, but that you’ll be doing something environmentally responsible for others as well, including future others. What a quaint old country notion: that there might be other compelling focal points in life than me and my money. I doubt it will sell.
Most useful tip: Check to make sure that cold air is not leaking in through your floor. It could be coming from inside the house.
I pass a classic car dealership, featuring a mid-fifties Thunderbird displayed on a platform high above a badly aging showroom. Then I pass more cows. Rosemary’s winery. More cows. More flags. More roadkill. And more evidence of the globalization and digitization of farm and market. Rural billboards now routinely promote the sponsor's website, and some roadside watering holes are hotspots. Texas has always had hotspots (It’s about 100 degrees here as I scribble), but now we have Wifi hotspots year-round in both town and country.
We're living now in the the future I heard about in my Texas public high school decades ago. It's not the future we expected. This future is a lot more interesting than the Jetsons, even if not as happy. But unlike the Jetsons, this future does have the virtue of being real.
As I near the end of my journey through the Zone, I attend to evidence of changing spirituality in the countryside. I find no roadsigns at all of the old “Repent Now or Roast Forever“ variety. The signs I see today bring a message of divine love. Coming into Columbus (population 4,305) I see a remarkable sign picturing a man crouching against a wall with his face buried in his despairing hands. The sign reads “Nothing is Too Hard for God.” But signs of hope are not easy to find in the present economy, and especially not in our dying small towns and rural areas.
Yes, I'm seeing signs of hard times here in the No-NPR Zone. Times are tough all over. It's interesting to me, though, that so few of the signs I've seen here today are explicitly political – unless you count flags. Flags have long since been thoroughly politicized, and now, more often than not, they are raised as strategic symbols promoting one or another denomination of conservatarianism. In Houston I often see them flying in front of large corporate buildings, like so many fluttering cloth billboards. American flag. Texas flag. Corporate flag. Some old-timers from World War II tell me that at one time the American flag was actually a uniting symbol. Hard to believe.
Old Texas and New Texas
Today I’ve seen old and dry cultural fields withering in the Texas drought. But I’ve also seen some new sprouts. I’ve seen remnants of 19th and 20th century Old Texas, but I’ve also seen signs of an emerging 21st century New Texas.
In Columbus I look for the Texas Stop Sign (Dairy Queen), and I’m sorry to see that my familiar DQ, where I had stopped several times in the past, has been torn down and replaced with a new Jack in the Box. Quickly deciding to remain loyal to traditional Texas fast food, I pull into Whattaburger across the street for a large cup of coffee. You may know this size as a “Venti."
I notice the relaxed and comfortable ethnic diversity of the place – Anglos, Hispanics and Blacks integrated, sometimes “within booth.” I grew up on the edge of the deep South (would that make East Texas the shallow South?), in a time when restaurants were racially gated and segre-gated, and the sign in the window read “We refuse the right to refuse service to anyone.” That sign meant more than it said. I could tell you stories.
But times have changed somewhat in Texas, and they’re still changing. Somewhat.
As I pull onto Interstate 10 for the last leg of my journey, I flip on the radio again. This time NPR is within range. KUHF is coming in loud and clear from the University of Houston. I have just left the No-NPR Zone. Goodbye, Old Texas. I’ll be in New Houston soon.
http://open.salon.com/blog/danagram
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