Houston

Usually when we go to Houston, we don't bring a camera.

Why bother? What are you going to take pictures of? NASA? What are you going to take a picture of at NASA? A moon rock? Have you ever seen a moon rock? Ugliest damn rocks you ever saw in your life. If you had one in your backyard, you'd use it as ballast for your garden gnome.

I brought the camera this time, though, on the off chancewe might run across something picturesque. Well, we didn't.

OK, that's not quite true. The last afternoon we were in town, I'm hanging out in my Mom's apartment eating Bluebell ice cream. Tony had already collapsed back at the hotel after 3 straight days of sauna-like atmospheric conditions and my Mom says to me "Do you want to see the world's largest dollar store?"

I said "Would I?!"

We got in her car (I'd already taken my roomy late-model Chevy back to the rent-a-car place.), and she drove me way the hell out to someplace that used to be cow pastures when I was a kid. (For those of you following along on your Google map, this would be somewhere around Dairy Ashford and Bellaire.)

We're driving along and I keep seeing one dollar store after another. It was like some kind of dollar store district! It's like this area in Houston is experiencing some kind of dollar-store based economy. It kind of reminded me of South of Market ten years ago, except with dollar stores instead of Web design firms.

I kept saying to my mom "Is this it?" "Is it that one? That's a pretty big dollar store."

And my Mom kept saying "No! The dollar store I'm taking you to is huge! It's The World's Biggest Dollar Store!"

So then just past Dairy Ashford all of a sudden I see a banner that says "THE WORLD'S BIGGEST DOLLAR STORE!" hanging in front of a building that looks like you could park a couple of 747's in it.

I mean this place was humongous!!!

So me and Mom went in there and bought two cans of grapefruit juice and some paper towels.

Now you might be wondering why there are no kurttrue.com photos of this awe-inspiring temple of budget shopping. Well, see I was afraid to take the camera.

That's because my mom does not believe in air conditioning for cars. She thinks you should just drive around with the windows rolled down. I can run the air conditioning in my rent-a-car because I'm allowed to do any fool thing I want in my rent-a-car, but in her car, you just roll down the windows and try to maintain a speed of at least 35-miles an hour at all times.

And I just wasn't sure if my camera could take that kind of punishment! One long red light and that sucker could just fry like a corn dog in a kettle o' bacon fat.

Did get some nice shots of the cats, though.

Kurt "big daddy" True
14 august 2005