Driving from Houston to Catahoula a few years ago, I stopped for gas during one of those loud and scary thunderstorms you rarely see anymore. The sky was dark and darkened with rain. An aura of night had invaded the day. Out of this raucous gloom spread a radiant web of light, lavender electricity across the black fabric of the heavens, crinkling as it unfurled downward from the stormclouds it tinged rose. “Everything really is bigger in Texas,” I thought to myself, squeezing the trigger of the gas pump, “even lightning.”
Was Texas lightning actually bigger than, say, the lightning in Louisiana? Or did it just appear to me that way? Sayings, after all, have a way of sounding true even when they’re utterly false. Had the saying swayed my judgment? There’s no good reason to think that Louisiana lightning isn’t every bit as big as Texas lightning, except for that stupid saying. Lightning, I’m pretty sure, doesn’t read maps or pay much mind to sayings.
Now, I like to think of myself as a skeptic. You won’t catch me swallowing a sweet falsehood blindly, mesmerized by the loveliness of a folksy turn of phrase. Not me, I’m not so easily fooled. Shaking the last few drops of gas from the nozzle, I considered the question objectively, scouring the databanks of my memory for evidence one way or the other. Texas in one corner, in the other corner Louisiana.
I remembered a vivid display of heat lightning in El Paso – is heat lightning actually lightning? – and lightning on the beach in Galveston. I couldn’t recall how big the lightning was, but I figured if it stayed stuck in my memory all these years, it must have been pretty dramatic. And the lightning I saw a few seconds ago was maybe the biggest I’d ever seen.
But when I searched for memories of lightning in Louisiana, my mind drew a blank, and that settled it for me. Lightning is actually bigger in Texas. Then a second round of lightning even bigger than the first lit up the sky again. I thought to myself, “Maybe there’s something to that old saying after all. The lightning in Texas is huge!”
When I pulled onto the interstate and read the road signs, I realized I'd already crossed the Sabine. I was actually in Louisiana.