‘The eyes of Texas are upon you,’ says a sign one encounters upon crossing the state’s border. Sounds quite intimidating, particularly given the fact that whatever the place, you get overwhelmed by an infinite number of signs informing about all bans man has ever come up with. No loitering, no public display of alcoholic beverages, no walking off the sidewalk, no playing in the dumpster. Texas has also put up a strong front against DUI. However, it needs to be noted that, in similar fashion to many other states, Texan law allows drivers to have 0.08 blood alcohol content. Compared with the equivalent Polish regulation, that looks very benevolent, of which I frequently take advantage. Rules might exist but their enforcement is a thoroughly different story, especially if you are a European tourist travelling across this country. Within two days, we had 4 encounters with the police. The ‘offences’ included stopping on shoulder to take pics, speeding and neglecting to use winkers. The story of Europeans taking a journey into the unknown must be so appealing and touching that every time, instead of being given a ticket, we only strike up some small talk about our adventures.
One police encounter was caused by a different reason, though. We stopped next to a high school, having mistaken it for a supermarket (it really looked like one). Obviously, there was little chance of doing any shopping but since we had been travelling for quite a long time, it was a good moment to take a brief pause. No sooner had a couple minutes passed than two police cars drew up. They had been alarmed by the guards looking at the security cameras outside the school building and seeing that there were some guys, potentially drug dealers, hanging out close to the entrance. The police officers ended up laughing heavily as soon as they found out the actual reason behind our presence. That situation left me ruminating over two issues:
1) The point of using CCTV. On the one hand, it is supposed to prevent crimes and help capture offenders. On the other, it is very difficult, verging on impossible, to draw a line between protection and excessive interference into citizens’ lives. The police should find it easier to identify certain criminals but will also be forced to waste a lot of time attending to unjustified calls.
2) To what lengths should schools go to eradicate the drug abuse problem? They have to do something because otherwise parents would lay all the blame on them. Most high-schoolers, however, use this time of their life to experiment with what is considered illegal. It is rooted in human nature and schools will never be capable of fully resolving this matter. They might even install airport-style gates at the entrance but teenagers will be getting the drugs their want after school hours. If they want to try, nothing will stop them.
Texan police officers are great but there was another highlight of our journey through this state. For the first time, we saw what I deem to be an essentially American landscape. If the American South struck us with its extent of uninhabited land, Texas did the same much more powerfully. There is no longer an exit leading to a town with a full array of services every few minutes. GPS shows that the closest gas station or restaurant is located within 40-50 miles. The distance between towns is large enough to feel that one travels across a no man’s land, a red and yellow prairie, with occasional green bushes. Upon turning into a smaller county road, we came face-to-face with a group of brave cows which were very reluctant to move off the street and let us pass. It took a lot of hooting before they eventually surrendered.
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