Ken and I survived our first weekend in Houston. Fortunately, Saturdays in Texas were like weekdays in New England in that everything was open. In the Northeast, the weekend was for rest and relaxation, not for business or shopping.
We once more journeyed to Spring from the Med Center. I was able to make the final arrangements with the Jethro Bank for a car loan and was given the name of an independent insurance agent, John Nanninga. As it turned out, John remained as our agent for the next twenty years. Although he was from Chicago, he acted more like a “good-ol’-boy-Texan,” a trait I found to be true for other friends who came from the Windy City to Houston. Later, when Ken and Chris had to get their own driver’s insurance, John gave them his standard lecture on safe driving, before adding them to my policy. However, back in July 1977, he presented me with information I had never heard about before: flood insurance and something called the “hundred-year flood plain.”
I learned that Grand Valley Drive, where we were to live, was the last street on the flood plain, and, thus, flood insurance was mandatory. However, John said we could get it transferred from the current owners and would save some funds by doing it this way. Twelve years later when we had a foot of water in our house, after tropical storm Allison had sat over us for a day or two, we learned the full meaning of the value of flood insurance. But back in 1977, the expense was “just-one-of-those-necessary-things” that were part of moving into a different region of the country. At least the insurance for the old Mercury and the new Pinto would cost less in Texas than in “Taxachusetts.”
The discussion with John took an inordinate amount of time (for me, but evidently not for John.) Ken and I finally had breakfast about two o’clock in the afternoon.
My journal notes, which I have used to recall this particular adventure, indicate we also went to a place called Target, which I compared to a local Zayers or Bradlees, similar sites in the Northeast. There we purchased hangers, since our motel had an insufficient count. We also bought socks for Ken, who had not brought enough with him, and another pair of short pants. With his own money, he bought a football.
That evening, as Ken watched more television, I found a Laundromat in Rice Village, being thankful for the presence of a college-town atmosphere with such amenities. On the way back to the motel, I stopped at a place called Jack-in-the-Box, which I described as being like Hardees, to bring back a late dinner for us. Having done this, Ken would not need to leave the room and miss his programs as he had to do the night before, an apparent hardship resulting from the time differential from the East Coast. Once again, he did not like the JitB version and I gave him a buck, according to the journal, so that he could get something from the Burger King next door to the motel.
Ken had two ongoing problems. He did not like the new choices for fast-foods, and he dramatically objected to my smoking in the motel room we shared. To keep our disputes to a minimum, I did not smoke in our room after his complaints but enjoyed sitting by the outdoor swimming pool in the evening and staring up at the flood-lite palm trees, the likes of which were radically new to my historical view of where to relax on a quiet evening in midsummer.
On Sunday morning, I tried to find the Cathedral (actually the co-cathedral since the bishop is really in Galveston rather than Houston) but got confused and ended up at Holy Rosary, a Dominican church of a traditional bent. Ken had no interest in attending mass in the Cathedral and stayed in the motel; I did not make an issue of his preference; I was, finally, learning how to keep arguments to a minimum.
That afternoon we did drive through downtown Houston to gaze up at the tall buildings, a past-time for country folk which we still were. We stopped at the Hyatt Regency Hotel and rode up the 30 floors in the glass elevator, an impressive activity as far as Ken was concerned.
Late afternoon, we returned to the motel for some sun and swimming. The temperature on the building down the street said 100 degrees on its outside thermometer, but it didn’t seem as bad today as it had the day before. The humidity must have been lower today; I was very thankful for air conditioning both in the room and in the car. Yes, we were, indeed, no longer living in the Northeast.