Houston's; Houston, 2024

For a country boy terrified of big city traffic, driving along the Katy Freeway going 70 MPH, white knuckled and sweating, getting passed by people doing a hunyed and missing your starboard bow by inches when they cut you off... is akin to having to go the denstist for a double root canal. At your point of destination you want to get out and kiss the parking lot like Chris Columbus, then proceed to immediately ask the valet guys where the bar is. I see no reason to live in a city and its only loved ones that make it good to visit.

Houston I think is probably as good as cities get. At least, after 70 years of visiting, its familiar. I was there off and on when I worked for B&C, mostly off, but the restaurants are outstanding; from the Ragin' Cajun on Richmond and 5 gallon buckets of crawfish dumped on the table to Brennans and $400 checks. Houstons Restaurant, now called Hillstone, I guess, is as least 40 years old and always fun. Its across 59 from River Oaks, near Rice University, within reach of where they have the Houston Rodeo and OTC week and everywhere you go in Houston there is always something, somewhere that reminds you that Houston is the oil capital of the world...like this really cool sculpture just inside the front door. I mean really, where else in the world are going to see stuff like this other than Houston, Texas?

As the buzzard flies, Houston's Restaurant is about 3 to 4 miles from one the greatest oil fields in S.E. Texas, and the 2nd or 3rd largest within the Houston city limits, Pierce Junction. This photo above is dated 1923, when the field was first being developed; a salt dome it was with producing sands draped across the top and pinched out againt the salt wall.

There were jackrabbits in that part of Houston back in the day. No more, I fear. They fled the city for more peaceful, country way of life many decades ago...where they wouldn't get smashed by Fed Ex delivery trucks.