Whenever I move somewhere new, I inevitably run into the unique things about the new place that are somewhat mysterious to an outsider. As I live there longer, these oddities become the norm, and I forget that they were strange to begin with. Having lived in the Twin Cities for almost six years, I\u2019d gotten used to the term \u2018ramp\u2019 referring to a parking garage (but not the substituting of \u2018gray duck\u2019 for \u2018goose\u2019 in the kids\u2019 circle game). Now here I am in Austin, Texas. And the questions began the very first day. Most of them I\u2019ve gotten answered. Here are my accumulated (thus far) Austin oddities and observations: (some of which may pertain to all of Texas)<\/p>\n
1) We live just off \u201cLoop 1.\u201d Sounds like one might get kinda confused on such a road \u2013 sorta like the ring roads around London. Right? Nope. Highway 1 is a north-south highway that parallels Interstate 35. \u201cLoop\u201d here just means \u201chighway.\u201d<\/p>\n
2) \u201cLoop 1\u201d is also known as \u201cMopac\u201d. Weird name. Probably not a surname. Maybe an acronym? Or an abbreviation? But I never saw it spelled out anywhere. Always just \u201cMopac.\u201d Finally I found out that it stands for Missouri (MO) Pacific (PAC), which was the company that owned the railroad right-of-way along which the highway was built. Ah.<\/p>\n
3) Several of the roads here are labeled \u201cR.M.\u201d and \u201cF.M.\u201d In fact, we live pretty close to \u201cR.M. 2222,\u201d which seems like a pretty striking name for a road \u2013 especially when contrasted with \u201cLoop 1.\u201d Turns out that the abbreviations stand for \u201cRanch-to-Market\u201d and \u201cFarm-to-Market.\u201d So our \u201cR.M. 2222\u201d is sometimes called \u201cRanch Road\u201d locally. Wackyness.<\/p>\n
4) The department of motor vehicles here doesn\u2019t seem to want to deal much with motor vehicles. I have to go to the county tax office to register and title my car; and I have to go to the department of public safety to get my driver\u2019s license.<\/p>\n
5)\tI have to write my check for my registration and title directly to \u201cNelda Wells Spears,\u201d which sounds completely sketchy and corrupt. The tax agent assures me that it\u2019s on the books, and that it\u2019s how the county tax assessor is honored \u2013 by having the name Nelda Wells Spears everywhere in the office. I pointed out that it\u2019s gotta be a pain to switch everything when Nelda is voted out of office. Yep, he agrees and tells me it costs about $50,000 to switch out all the stamps, letterhead, and signage. Tax dollars well spent.<\/p>\n
6)\tSpeaking of taxes, there\u2019s no income tax here, so boy, do they pile on the fees. It cost me $177.30 to register and title my car, not counting the $30 safety and emissions inspection. The amount includes a \u201creflectorization\u201d fee, a \u201ccounty road and bridge\u201d fee, an \u201cautomation\u201d fee, and a \u201cchild safety fund\u201d fee. And $90 is a \u201cnew resident\u201d fee. Welcome to Texas!<\/p>\n
7)\tMore on Texas government. Somewhere in some voter information literature, I was reading about how much the various elected officials make. Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, yadda, yadda. All making six-figures. No real surprise. Wait. Here\u2019s one: Railroad Commissioner. In fact, there are three of them. Also six-figure types. What in the world do they do? It\u2019s not like there\u2019s an overabundance of railroads here. A little Internet check\u2026<\/p>\n
“The Railroad Commission has primary regulatory jurisdiction over oil and natural gas industry, pipeline transporters, natural gas & hazardous liquid pipeline industry, natural gas utilities, the LP-gas industry, and coal & uranium surface mining operations.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
R\u2026i\u2026g\u2026h\u2026t\u2026 ah, transparency in government.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Whenever I move somewhere new, I inevitably run into the unique things about the new place that are somewhat mysterious to an outsider. As I live there longer, these oddities become the norm, and I forget that they were strange to begin with. Having lived in the Twin Cities for almost six years, I\u2019d gotten […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/teamguava.org\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/teamguava.org\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/teamguava.org\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamguava.org\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamguava.org\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=573"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/teamguava.org\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":574,"href":"http:\/\/teamguava.org\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/573\/revisions\/574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/teamguava.org\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamguava.org\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/teamguava.org\/family\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}