Houston Dream

 

Traveling to Houston and back each week to work on a project gets to be a real pain after a while. Since I knew the job I was going to be on would last another six months, I was able to talk my boss into a temporary assignment in Houston. It was like living in another world or maybe stepping out of our world into another world. It was sort of like a working vacation for me. Pam said it was like she was on a cloud with the world floating by. Our life’s were totally different than living at home. Here’s the story.

 

Houston Dream

 

In 1997, I was working on an LNG ( Liquified Natural Gas ) Project in Bechtel’s Office in Houston which required me to be in their office full time. I had been flying down on Sunday night and flying back home on Friday night for a while and it was getting old. Both my girls were in college and we had no pets, so Pam ( my wife ) was getting bored and lonely so I asked my boss if we could temporarily move into an apartment in Houston. They approved it, so we found a very nice apartment just across the street from the Bechtel’s offices and got a six month lease on it. They still allowed me to fly home every 3 weeks to check on the house.

 

We loaded up our van and headed for Houston. The apartments were two blocks from the Galleria Shopping Mall on Westheimer Street. The restaurants along Westheimer were fantastic, so we ate very good while we were there. There was this one restaurant called Churascos that really good. They had a dessert called “Tres Leches” that literally made you float out of your seat when you took a bite.

 

Pam standing by a giant Palm tree in front of our Houston Apartments.

 

Old Bill leaning on the gate to our Houston Apartments. Listening to a little George Jones.

 

Pam at the Galleria fixing to grab the lion by the balls. Hope she has her running shoes on.

 

 

Every morning, I would walk across the street and slip through a hole in the fence around Bechtel’s facilities and I was at the back door to the building I worked in. I loved the arrangement. The Apartment had a nice pool and a work out room. Pam would head for the work out room after I left and walk several miles on a treadmill while she watched reruns of Dallas on the big screen TV in the workout room. After that she would walk two blocks to the Galleria and check out all the new fashions. The only problem with that is that sometimes she would buy some of the new fashions. If I didn’t have a meeting or business appointment, I would meet her for lunch. This was like being on an extended work vacation with my living expenses being paid by Phillips.

 

The building in the center was Bechtel’s office that I worked in. My office was next to an east facing window on the 9th floor.

 

 

Just across the street about a half block from our apartment was a giant Honky Tonk called “City Limits”. Inside there were two honky tonks. One was a giant country and western bar with a huge dance floor. The other was a small Rock and Roll bar with a small dance floor. On Friday nights, they had free prime rib and all kinds of sides in the Country Bar part. So we put on our boots and hats every Friday and walked across the street to City Limits and had a free prime rib meal and then had as many drinks as we wanted while we two stepped until our legs were sore. We didn’t have to have a designated driver, because we walked home, so we enjoyed ourselves and let it all hang out. It so happened that was the year that the Houston Rockets were in the playoffs, so we often went to the City Limits during the week to watch the Houston Rocket playoffs on the giant screen TV they had in there. It was fun to hear all the whooping and hollering when they did something good.

 

 

A few doors down from the City Limits there was a store called T. J. Max that became Pam’s favorite shopping place for clothes. There was also a very good Chinese food Restaurant and a Middle Eastern Restaurant that we often had lunch at on the same block. It was really nice having every thing you needed within walking distance.

 

The apartments had a tennis court on the roof that we occasionally used to practice clogging to keep in shape. The only problem we had there was the neighbor above us occasionally had a party with extremely loud music. We called the police on him one night. But with the good always comes some bad. That’s life.

 

On the weekends we would head out to one of the surrounding towns or lakes and spend some time away from the fast life. Pam collected golden books, and I collected records. So we would hit some of the antique stores in the area. The blue bonnet fields just north of Houston near Brenham, Texas were very beautiful in the spring.

 

When the job was over, we loaded up and drove home to Bartlesville and our adventure was over and we were back in the real world.

 

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Thanks for reading Houston Time,
Hawg Jaw Bill