What a Texas Sunset will do to you.
It's the Summer of '68. I'm assigned to Goodfellow AFB, Texas and have just acquired a 1955 Ford, faded blue with huge chrome bumpers and white wall tires. Real ones. Maybe the ones which came with the car in 1955, the stripes are four inches wide. I have two stripes on my sleeves and I am driving around the base in the late afternoon sun.
I'm on the empty flight line, Goodfellow has only one weather plane left that actually flies in and out of the base, the rest is reserved for spooks and cryptos, so I have a clear view of the Southwestern sky. Out there there is a mountain range that is moving my way. Huge towers of clouds are spiking upwards in the air and the sun's light is cutting in from under them lighting them as you would a tree in the corner of your living room.
As the light changes, the clouds turn orange and pink and gold and red.
I mosey on down to the end of the flight line. Park. Get out and clamber up onto the big hood of the Ford with my feet spread wide on her bumpers. The glory in the sky now widens and all around and overhead the colors are swirling in a freshening wind. I'm in heaven.
About that time the AP's pulled up in their little car.
"What are you doing down here?"
"Just watching this."
The two AP's looked West, looked South, looked up.
"****, this happens every night."
"Yeah, well, this is the first one I've seen with my new used car."
"Nice tires. '56?"
'' '55. .... Can I just stay and watch this finish?"
Long pause. The towers are now magenta and golden with hints of green. The sun itself is a eggyolk yellow medallion hanging just above the flattened landscape and the wind has picked up just a bit.
"We would be required to stay with you, wouldn't we, Airman Sheffield?"
"Yes sir, Sargent, we would."
They were and we did. I stayed up on the Ford's hood. They stood by their little car. It was a good ten minutes of the sun fighting to stay lit as the clouds rose up and pressed themselves down. The air got greener and so did the sky. Just after the sun disappeared, the first drops hit heavily on the blue Ford.
"Here she comes!"
And in seconds, a driving rain wiped the sky of all it's color. We convoyed back up the flight line past the hangers in curtains of water. Before I turned off I gave the APs a couple of thank you headlight flashes and deep beep of the Ford's horn.
And so I learned that no matter how official your duties are, sometimes beauty trumps everything.
Joe(she had a cherrystone radio)Nation
That's beautiful, Joe. Thank you very much for posting it.
There is a very fine Texas magazine, too.
http://www.texasmonthly.com/
Red-light cameras may have a green light
Efforts to thwart Houston's program appear to be over
By JANET ELLIOTT
Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau
AUSTIN - Houston dodged what may be the last legislative attempt to stop its plan to enforce red lights with cameras, as the Senate Friday night defeated an amendment that would have required a public vote on the program.
The Senate voted 18-13 against the amendment by Sen. Mike Jackson, R-La Porte, after a spirited debate. Houston Democrats Rodney Ellis, Mario Gallegos and John Whitmire joined with Houston Republicans Kyle Janek and Jon Lindsay in voting against the amendment.
Sen. Tommy Williams, R-The Woodlands, supported Jackson's amendment.
Whitmire, who spoke at length against the amendment, said he believes efforts to thwart Houston's red-light camera program are over for this session, which ends May 30.
"That booger is dead. We just gave it a proper burial," he said.
Jackson attempted to attach the requirement for voter approval to a routine transportation bill. Earlier this month, he failed to get enough votes to bring up for floor debate a bill that would have prohibited cities from issuing civil citations against the owners of cars photographed running red lights, as Houston is planning to do.
The House has passed several measures to outlaw the use of red-light cameras but none has been adopted by the Senate.
The Houston City Council voted in December to set up cameras in as many as 50 intersections and to issue civil citations to the owners of cars photographed running lights. It had planned to have the cameras installed by April, but that has been put on hold as the Legislature considers the issue.
Jackson said Texans would not like opening their mail and finding a picture of their license plate and an invoice for running a red light.
Proponents of the camera system countered with safety arguments.
"How in the world could anybody on this floor be against a program that might deter one person from running a red light and taking one of our constituent's lives?" asked Whitmire.
Jackson said the programs are more about generating revenue for cities and allowing police departments to have fewer patrol cars on the road.
Whitmire said Garland has seen a 53-percent reduction in red-light crashes and an 80-percent reduction in injury accidents since it installed cameras.
Several senators from North Texas, where Garland, Plano and Richardson are using or planning camera systems, opposed Jackson's amendment. Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, said she received 150 emails from her constituents in favor of red-light cameras.
"The people want it," she said.
Houston's final frontier: How far out will we live?
An inexhaustible housing demand and buyers' willingness to commute push city boundaries in all directions
By NANCY SARNOFF
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
GRAPHIC
New frontiers: Residential developments planned or under construction on old farms and barren prairie lands beyond Houston's city limits.
Lured by enormous parcels of land, cheap prices and an insatiable demand for new homes, residential developers keep stretching Houston's boundaries.
One of the next outposts of suburbia is west of Houston near Fulshear. Jefferson Development has just started work there on Firethorne, a 1,400-acre master-planned community about a mile south of Interstate 10 between Fulshear and Katy, about 30 miles from downtown.
The project, which promises "Hill Country atmosphere," is expected to have 3,500 houses when completed in 10 to 12 years.
Despite its location west of Katy Mills Mall, which seemed a far-off shopping destination when it opened in 1999, Wayne Meyer of Jefferson Development doesn't consider Firethorne on the fringe of the city. He notes developers are buying land for future use even farther out.
As land becomes more valuable closer in, old farms and open prairies in outlying counties are attracting more home builders and residents willing to make long commutes.
"Houston is growing by leaps and bounds. And it's growing in all directions," said Mike Manners, president of Houston-based Elan Development.
Though opposition to growth in some parts of the country has sparked heated battles over land-use controls, developers here faced little resistance in outer counties where rapid growth is often seen as a plus by local leaders.
Environmentalists are competing with developers to buy land out west of Houston, in the area known as the Katy Prairie, to preserve valuable wildlife habitat. And traffic experts note highway expansion generally spurs more development, duplicating the traffic congestion the projects were meant to solve.
But real estate experts say it's not a question of if the city can grow this far, and beyond, but when.
"We'll be building houses past Sealy and Brookshire in the next 10 years," said Mike Inselmann, president of Metrostudy, which tracks housing trends. "I think we'll be astonished in 20 years to see how far people are driving."
Commute to airport
Some families who commute to jobs in Houston are moving into Bentwater, a community on the north shore of Lake Conroe in Montgomery County, which was created as a preserve for vacation homes.
Heidi Hafner, a Continental Airlines flight attendant, just moved with her family to Bentwater from Cleveland, Ohio. Hafner's husband, Bill, also works for Continental.
Although the commute to their jobs at Bush Intercontinental Airport takes nearly an hour, Hafner works only a few days a month, and her husband commutes just a few days a week.
The Hafners considered buying a home in The Woodlands but found the community to be "too busy and chaotic."
Near highway projects
These new communities share common features.
They are generally near well-known housing developments that are nearing completion.
Developers pick sites along the routes of big highway projects. Firethorne is north of the town of Fulshear, just south of the Katy line. What was once a farming town is in an area being transformed by three road projects: the Grand Parkway, Houston's outermost traffic loop, which is still under construction; Interstate 10, which is being reconstructed and vastly expanded; and the Westpark Tollway, expected to reach the Grand Parkway later this year.
Real estate agent Mike Roller of Realty West acknowledges it sounds like a marketing pitch but said, "You'll be able to live out in Fulshear, Texas, and get to the Galleria in 30 minutes on the new Westpark toll road."
In most cases, the frontier is about 30 miles from downtown. The long drive has not been a barrier to development because many of those moving into these far-flung communities work nearby. Employers have been moving to outlying locations such as The Woodlands and Sugar Land.
Large sections of open land are another critical component, as are good school districts.
"You can't find 3,000 acres unless you go out," said Will Holder, vice president and general manager for Trendmaker Homes.
Another arm of the company, Trendmaker Development, is planning a 3,200-acre community in Fulshear.
Outpacing city growth
Although many urban planners and educators focus on the rebirth of cities and their influx of empty nesters and baby boomers, that's only a small part of the story, said Joel Kotkin, a fellow at the Los Angeles-based New America Foundation.
More than 75 percent of the houses sold in the greater-Houston area last year were outside Beltway 8, according to Crawford Realty Advisors.
The suburbs are going to grow much faster than cities, said Kotkin, who studies economic and social trends.
''It's the schools, the back yards, the parks. It's safety," he said.
That trend means the definition of "far out" keeps changing.
Master-planned communities once viewed as remote and isolated now seem close in.
"Anything inside of Highway 6 is considered practically in town," Holder said.
'Seeing more interest'
Others said that a commute longer than 45 minutes on a good day is too far. But John Daugherty, owner of John Daugherty, Realtors, in Houston, said more people are buying full-time residences in places such as Bentwater, Galveston and even Brenham, about 70 miles west of Houston.
"We're seeing more interesting bedroom communities within an hour, where people are willing to commute," said Daugherty, who owns a weekend home on Lake Conroe. "We're seeing more and more of that as Houston continues to grow. "
The Hafners said they chose Bentwater because of its relaxed lifestyle and three golf courses, said Heidi Hafner, 37.
"As soon as you drive through the gates here, you feel like you're on vacation," she said.
Agents say homeowners such as the Hafners are part of a larger trend.
"Bentwater is now a commuter market," said Mark Woodroof, a partner of Prudential Gary Greene Realtors.
Out U.S. 290
There are stories of developers who went too far out. But the city has a way of making those bets pay off eventually.
It took much longer than the developers had thought to sell homes in Fairfield, the 3,200-acre housing community in northwest Harris County that critics used to refer to as "Far Field."
Years ago, residents in the project along U.S. 290, well past Texas 6, had to drive many miles to get to a big shopping mall and other major developments.
Inselmann, of Metrostudy, chalks it up to bad timing. Fairfield started selling homes in the late 1980s, right as the economic bust was emerging.
"Not only were they a long way out, but the market dropped from 30,000 (housing) starts to 7,000 starts," Inselmann said. The community is still not built out.
Today, Fairfield doesn't look so far away.
A new project about the size of Clear Lake City is being planned in northwest Houston near U.S. 290 and Fry. Developer General Growth Properties said the new community, called Bridgelands, will have more than 20,000 houses when it's built out 20 years from now.
U.S. 59, Texas 288
There's a similar push to the southwest in Fort Bend County.
Steven Alvis, managing partner of NewQuest Properties, said most of the land in Sugar Land has been built out or purchased for development.
"The next logical leap for Fort Bend County is down the 59 corridor to Richmond/Rosenberg," he said.
South of the city, the Texas 288 corridor is dotted with places such as Silverlake and Shadow Creek Ranch, which was one of the top-selling housing communities last year.
Still, Shadow Creek is practically in the shadow of downtown if you compare it with places farther south such as Arcola, Alvin and Fresno, where developers have started to build.
And Friendswood Development Co. just bought 300 acres to expand its Savannah community in Brazoria County.
Liz Dantone, a project manager for Friendswood, said the new Fort Bend Parkway that runs from Beltway 8 to Texas 6 has been a boon to the area.
The reconstruction and expansion of U.S. 59 has driven development in the northern boundaries of Houston.
'Jump the lake'
Mark Wimberly, a commercial real estate broker who works in the Kingwood and Atascocita areas, said so much of the land on the west side of Lake Houston has been purchased that the next logical place for development is across the lake in areas near Crosby and Huffman, about 30 miles from downtown.
"When you jump the lake, there's a ton of farmland that could easily go for residential development," he said.
Wimberly expects residential developers will soon start buying parcels along FM 2100 just east of the lake.
Wimberly has a message for the area's residents who live in an almost countrylike setting: "They need to enjoy it because it's not going to last."
Anticipating growth farther north, Elan Development is plotting the course of a 1,500-acre ranch in Willis. Elan is working on forming two municipal utility districts there to provide utilities on the property, about eight miles north of Conroe.
It will be years until building begins, but Mike Manners, Elan's president,thinks a growing employment base in The Woodlands and other northern points will create demand.
"Going somewhere like Willis, you're away from the hustle and bustle of the city, but the commute is not that bad," he said.
Trendmaker's Holder said he has had success selling lots and homes in West Houston communities in part because of the strong demand from buyers who work along Interstate 10 and by those who want to be in the Katy school district.
"To the extent that there's continued employment growth in Houston, there are going to be people moving here and looking for attractive, well-planned communities convenient to tollways, roadways and good school districts," Holder said.
So far, the projects planned around Fulshear haven't changed the country feel of the place, according to Tammy Canton, who recently moved from Sugar Land to a new house on 10 acres. She and her husband, John, wanted a place where their son could go to a small school. She gets the impression people like the two-gas-station town the way it is.
"They don't want it to grow too much. I think they like it how it is now. You have to drive a little bit farther out to go the grocery store, but that's OK."
Katherine Feser contributed to this report.
