100 Days Across the USA: Could have, Should have, Would have

Quote on Building; Ye Shall Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make you Free

Campus of The University of Texas, Austin, Texas---A boy sits under one of the huge Live Oak trees on campus. The year is 1980-something and he is writing a letter to someone two states over. He had met her on the beach of South Padre Island during Spring Break that year. When they first met she joked that since she was from Kansas her name had to be Dorothy. And so the letter read appropriately; Dear Dorothy… They had flirted, laughed, danced at Louie’s Backyard and kissed. He had given her his “Texas” jacket at the end of Spring Break and they had promised to write. It was young love or rather young infatuation.

But the letters that arrived became fewer and farther apart---and then stopped. Then a year later and another Spring Break, by fate, they ran into each other, again on the beach of South Padre Island. Again they went out and danced on the same dance floor that tops the water at Louie’s Backyard. This time he explained why the letters stopped; a new girlfriend…a serious one.

I walked around the UT campus today where about 51,000 students attended in 2012. A part of the Big 12 Conference the “hook ‘em horns” battle cry and the Longhorn logo, like in any college town, their proud team name is ever present. The iconic campus Tower has a clean line-of-site to the Capital Building downtown Austin. It’s a beautiful campus.

As I watched hurried students rush past on the maze of sidewalks and limestone layered clearings, or huddled around tables in the Union and in their campus Starbucks, I realized just how young I was when I got those letters from this boy going to school in a place I’d never been: Austin. I remember he described the trees and the bench he sat on. He wrote about what he wanted out of life and how far away I was. Last I knew he had married that girl and become an Austin Firefighter. He was living happily ever after in my head.

Even before that, my dream in high school had been to go to college in Texas. At 17 years old, two girlfriends and I actually talked all of our parents into letting us use a family station wagon and drive from Kansas to check out three schools in Texas. It was the first time I had ever seen major highways. The first time we had gotten a hotel room without an “adult”. However when we heard a noise outside our motel room and moved all the furniture in the room in front of the door for the night while the girl closest to the door slept with her curling iron (weapon of choice) next to her, I’m reminded how scared we really were.

But after driving to Dallas, Denton and Abilene and back again, I had realized I could not afford out-of-state tuition and would commit my education to Kansas and then move to the coast of Texas just as soon as I had a degree in my hand. But things do not always end up how you plan, especially the plans of a teenager. My path was redirected to Florida while at Kansas State and things are as they are.

As I visit here, I have to wonder all the “what ifs”. From Houston, to Austin, to San Antonio and on to Dallas soon. What if?

Being here, I remember why I loved Texas.

I still have his UT jacket from that Spring Break so long ago. For some reason I have not thrown it out. Maybe it is just a reminder of sweet innocent times. Times that remind me that there has always been a tiny part of my heart that is in Texas.