Last week Vertis and I took that long drive down U.S. 59 to Houston. It sure wasn't our first trip.
We reconnected with Texas, saw some old friends, and took in the urban renovations. Since a resurgence began several years back, the former eyesore known as downtown Houston has come alive with massive multistory buildings surrounded by landscaping programs.
This was a business trip for me to attend the North American Petroleum Exposition, where over 400 companies have booths to show some 6,000 attendees oil and gas deals. Those companies are looking for investors to finance oil and gas ventures. It boils down to a day and a half of standing in your booth with oil and gas maps behind you, waiting for a potential company or investor to stop by. Then you tell them why they should put up some of the drilling money to drill a well. I'm usually hoarse from constantly talking.
Being in Texas for three days brought back some memories, and since the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo was coming up at the end of the month, several pre-events were on tap.
The last day we were there, one of the heritage events was underway. Folks in fancy western gear pranced through our hotel lobby near the George R. Brown Convention Center. If you have seen the movie "Giant," it's similar to when Jett Rink opens his grand hotel in Houston and all of the bigwigs in Texas turn out. After a while, as the dressed-up Texans came through the lobby, we began to feel as if we were part of the movie.
Texas loves its western heritage, and the whole city turns out for the week of the livestock show. "Dress Western" signs are posted everywhere. When we lived in Corpus Christi, my business partner and I went to Houston for an oil and gas meeting with Elf Aquitaine, a French company. It concerned forming a producing unit in which we would have an interest.
We were ushered into the meeting room, and in walked their landman, geologist, and engineer. We knew it was Dress Western Week, but an Arkansas geologist and his Mississippi partner weren't going to join in. We had on suits and ties.
The three Frenchmen did the whole cowboy bit, complete with big Stetson hats, which they kept on for the entire meeting. It wasn't just the clothing. The Frenchmen spoke English with heavy French accents. We didn't laugh until we were outside. Texas is serious about its state and shows it, but when you have towns named Muleshoe, Dime Box, and Cut and Shoot, it's hard to keep a straight face.
The most amazing part of the trip were the number of new buildings, complete with excellent landscaping. A number of years back, Houston managed to hook the Super Bowl; that started the tree planting and kicked off a building boom that has grown larger each year.
The initial trees planted around the Convention Center are a sycamore variety and live oaks. They have continued to fill out, and the visual difference is impressive.
The initial planting went so well that the city embarked on a concentrated effort to add more trees throughout the city. This year, block after block has been circled with 10-foot-tall trees planted 30 feet apart. Based on what I could see, thousands have been planted.
An organized group called Trees for Houston has already planted 600,000 trees and initiated a five-year drive to plant 100,000 more.
It's not only the city core that is receiving the trees. The freeways that criss-cross the city are seeing thousands planted in the medians and alongside the outside lanes of traffic.
Freeways are inherently ugly, but thousands of new trees certainly are a welcome sight.
Now back to the Natural State's highways and medians maintained by the Arkansas Department of Transportation. It's mow, mow, mow the grass--but plant a tree? I don't want to live in Houston, but if we think calling ourselves the Natural State is all that needs to be done, then give me a little Houston mentality. We can do better!
A few weeks ago I launched a drive to plant 100,000 trees in Arkansas over the next five years. I received a lot of support and several donations to plant trees around our new high school campus, but no response from the City of El Dorado or from a member of the Legislature.
In El Dorado our new high school campus remains a blank treeless embarrassment because my offer to plant trees with the donations I received didn't receive a response.
The El Dorado City Council, the mayor, and the public works director have taken a step backward. In the recent sidewalk renovation and construction of the Haywood Hotel, around 30 sidewalk trees were cut down, and many were not replaced. To make it even worse, some of the 20- and 30-foot tall trees were replaced with two-foot sprigs. They looked so bad that I volunteered to replace them. No answer.
We have the potential to plant 10 trees for every one planted in the city of Houston because we are the Natural State. But we need an attitude adjustment from some of our elected officials ... or maybe just some new ones.
Email Richard Mason at richard@gibraltarenergy.com.