The Christmas before I moved from Texas to California, my aunt gave me a snowglobe. I don’t like snowglobes, but I cherish this one. Contained within the 5-inch-diameter glass ball is a snowball designer’s representation of my hometown of Houston. A snowglobe designer might choose any number of ways to represent that sprawling Texas city; this globe celebrates one of the things I love about Houston: its skyscraper architecture.
The buildings in the snowglobe are classics: the Astrodome, the Philip Johnson triumvirate of Pennzoil Place, RepublicBank Tower and Transco Tower (with waterfall), and SOM’s dollar-sign-plan, green-clad Allied Bank Tower. However, the crazy snowglobe designer took these architectural icons, some miles (or at least blocks) away from each other, and clustered them around a tiny San Jacinto monument, which in real life is on the outskirts of the city, not downtown. In addition to these buildings, the globe contains an oil derrick (just like the one in my parents’ back yard!), a NASA rocket (oddly, shown more than half the height of the skyscrapers), a few trees and, or course, cars.
The base of my Houston snowglobe is a music box. Twisting the pin on its underside starts up a tinny, surprisingly loud version of Deep in the Heart of Texas. Any card-carrying Texan knows the lyrics and will perhaps sing and clap along with the scratchy melody:
The stars at night are big and bright (clap, clap, clap, clap),
Deep in the heart of Texas.
The prairie sky is wide and high (clap, clap, clap, clap),
Deep in the heart of Texas.
The sage in bloom is like perfume (clap, clap, clap, clap),
Deep in the heart of Texas.
Reminds me of the ones I love (clap, clap, clap, clap),
Deep in the heart of Texas.
My snowglobe traveled with me to California, and several years later moved north with us to Washington. It now sits on the bookshelf in my office, here in Seattle. Each time that I tilt it over, set it upright, and watch the glitter snow swirling around that madman’s mental map of Houston; each time that I turn the crank on the music box, and listen to that tinny Texas tune, I am indeed reminded of the ones I love, still deep in the heart of Texas.
To open the Advent calendar window for Day 3, click here:
From left to right, in unnatural proximity: RepublicBank, AlliedBank, Transco and Pennzoil. Money and energy… kinda seems like the Enron building should be in there, too.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hello, fellow Holidailies-er! I saw this and had to click through — being transplanted to Houston and a NASA nerd. The rocket might actually be sort of to scale. It looks like it’s supposed to be the Saturn V rocket, which was 111 meters/363 feet tall when assembled. It actually is over half the size of the Pennzoil Place building! (Yes, I looked it up … I’m fascinated by stuff like that!)
If only things in Houston really were that close — it would make driving through the city a lot easier!
Hi Erin! Thanks for stopping by. My husband — a space program nerd since he was a kid in the ’60′s — thinks the rocket is supposed to be a Mercury Redstone, which he says would be shorter. I’m not so much a NASA nerd, so I’ll let you two figure it out.
I agree with you about the distances; if I could rearrange Houston’s layout, it would be a much different city.