Destination French

Dallas, Texas is the ninth largest city in the United States with a population of 1.4 million people. Dallas is a prosperous business city, with telecommunications, computer technology, banking, and transportation leading the economic adventures of the area. It is also appreciated for the oil and cotton it contributes to the world. The headquarters for many prosperous businesses are located in Dallas, Texas including Mark Kay Cosmetics, ENSCO Offshore Drilling, Southwest Airlines, the popular jewelry store Zales, and 7-Eleven.

If you love to shop, Dallas is the place to be. It offers more shopping centers than any other city in the United States. Unfortunately Dallas also has the highest crime rate in the United States for a city of more than 1 million people since 1987. This is for both petty crimes and violent crimes. More than 3,000 police officers work to make the city of Dallas safer.

The people of Dallas are mostly white, but you will find immigrants from Mexico and a small percentage of other ethnic backgrounds in the area. The Southwest is Hispanic, the Southeast is Black, and the rest is White. Food is a popular item in Texas. The Dallas area is well known for the Frozen Margarita, Mexican food and Tex-Mex. It is also known for great BBQ. People come to Dallas for the annual events, including the Texas State Fair, Cinco de Mayo Events, parades, and food festivals.

Dallas is an area rich in culture and entertainment. The area has wonderful art galleries and performing art centers. They also have a nightlife that is known for the wild clubs and great concerts. Jazz is very popular in the Dallas culture. A part of the Dallas culture that is often not welcomed is graffiti. Some of it is very good though! The tunnels and areas of Dallas have murals on them done by graffiti artists.

Dallas is home to artists who don’t indulge in graffiti as well. They have multiple art schools and art studios. Areas of Dallas contain apartments full of artists and art students just starting out. They actually have their own little community.

Traveling to Dallas? Why not stay in a lovely Dallas TX Bed and Breakfast. This Dallas Bed & Breakfast may be just the thing for you!

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Houston is the fourth largest city in the United States and the largest city in Texas and is also credited as a global city. It is a vibrant metropolis with a broad based economy and an enormous range of cultural activities and recreational opportunities.

Two brothers who had made their fortune in real estate in New York founded Houston in 1836 on the banks of the Buffalo Bayou; Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen purchased approximately 6,500 acres with the intention of creating their own city and named the new settlement after General Sam Houston who had fought and won the decisive battle of San Jacinto close the site.

In 1837, Houston was incorporated and the infrastructure of a city started to form with the creation of a Chamber of Commerce and election of a mayor. Shipping was the first business to be promoted however, by 1860 Houston had also become a railroad hub which transformed the city into a commercial center for the export of cotton to Europe. After the Civil War, efforts were undertaken to expand the seaborne activities and especially by works to create a deep water port in sync with the nearby port of Galveston.

Galveston was hit by a terrible hurricane in 1900 which sped the works to create a deep water port out of Houston and growth was further stimulated by the discovery of oil in 1901 at the Spindletop oil field. 1902 saw President Roosevelt approving $1 million allocation for the Houston Ship Channel and this combination of private and government backed initiatives turned Houston into a major growth center with the population doubling between 1900 and 1910 to 78,800.

Finally in 1914, President Wilson opened Port of Houston as a deepwater port and by 1930, Houston was the most heavily populated city in America.

World War 2 saw a decline in the shipping sector as the ports on the East coast dominated trans-Atlantic shipping however, enormous growth in the petrochemical sector more than made up for this. Enormous new military bases were also constructed including Ellington Field which was reconstructed in order to train bombardiers and navigators while medical facilities were also greatly expanded and research took off. The end of the ware saw a reversion to deep water port activity as the bases were wound down and moth-balled and the physical area was doubled by the addition of surrounding land and the metropolis started its sprawling growth.

Post-war saw the establishment of the NASA Manned Spacecraft Center (now known as the Lyndon B Johnson Space Center) and with this the aerospace industry came to town. The city is also home to the Astrodome which was the world’s first indoor domed sporting arena. In the seventies, population again boomed as the oil industry boomed but by the 1980′s the boom abruptly ended with the aerospace industry also suffered as a consequence of the Challenger space shuttle disaster in 1986.

Today, Houston has fully recovered and now has one of the broadest economies of any city in the United States. Only New York is home to more Fortune 500 companies while the city is now the largest international port of the United States. The wealth created has led to Houston also becoming home to a wide range of cultural institutions which now has over 7 million visitors each year while Houston is one of a very few cities offering year round resident companies for all the major performing arts.

Freelance author Lawrence Reaves uses SnagAJob when searching for Houston jobs. The largest source for part time Houston jobs on the web.

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Tucked up in the north east corner of Bastrop County almost to the Lee County line is the sleepy little “burb” of Paige. The elevation is approx. 535′, the weather is moderate year round. The school system is Bastrop ISD and depending on where you live kids might attend Lost Pines Elementary, Bastrop Middle School or Bastrop High school. Paige proper is not much bigger than a total of 18 blocks and as is typical of small Texas towns there are still some beautiful old vintage/historic homes and buildings still standing or still in use. The area surrounding Paige is a mix of rural residential properties and farm and ranch land. Horse enthusiasts covet the sandy loam soil that can be found in parts of Paige such as out Old Potato Road, or Old Pin Oak, or Antiock and Cardinal Roads.

Paige was established in 1872 along the Houston and Texas Central Rail. The old abandoned rail line is still there which runs along side parts of Old Highway 20 and would make a great section of “Rails for Trails” as it is not in use at all now. Paige was named after one of the civil engineers that worked on the railway. There was a rail station in Paige up until 1876 and then it was moved to its present location approximately 3 miles to the east. There is a volunteer fire department which was established in 1982 along with the Paige Community Center, and Paige has had a Post Office in town since1874. In those days the majority of the population was of German heritage as was much of the Central Texas area. The population of Paige has fluctuated over the years. In the late 1880′s the town was said to have had a population of 500. Back then the Paige rail station was a shipping point for livestock such as cattle and hogs. Local industry included a pickle, creamery, and broom factory. Today some of the local businesses include The Old Frontier Store which is on Highway 290 and has a little bit of everything to offer from groceries to a meat counter to a small deli/diner, and Yarnorama a yarn and fiber shop.

Paige is approx. 40 miles outside of Austin on Highway 290. Bastrop is 14 miles away on Highway 21, and has just about everything anyone could want or need with coffee shops, two feed stores, box stores such as Home Depot and Lowes on the way, great restaurants, a movie house and bowling alley. About half way to Bastrop from Paige on Highway 21 is Lake Bastrop which offers campgrounds, swim beaches, boat rental and boat launch on both the north and south shores. If you decide to head to Smithville, the town where the movie Hope Floats was filmed is just less than 13 miles on FM 2104. Just before you get to Smithville on the west side of the road you will find Buecher State Park and Lake. If it is the coast you crave you can get to the Gulf in just under two hours from Paige. Circle D, Pioneer Pines Farms, Pine Valley and Pine Tree Cattle Ranch are just a few of the subdivisions that fall in the Paige area that offer rural residential living in the ‘lost pines” of Bastrop County. The Paige area is also full of wonderful ranches and recreational properties (great for hunting) and periodically they do come on the market.

Provided by an Austin Texas real estate company with services for resale and new home sales. Information for Hutto and other area towns like Georgetown

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Texas Natural Gas Co. came to Upton County, Texas in 1950. They selected a site to build a Natural gas processing plant 17 miles North East of Rankin. Men and equipment were brought to the site in unheard of numbers.

The Plant design was laid out in seven different stages, beginning with the engine room. The engine room floor and side wall were poured with cement mostly mixed by hand. The engine pedestals were then poured and made ready to receive the engines. Most of the engines were9 – 880 H P Clark engines with 1- 660HP and 1 440HP. The engines came unassembled, the bed section was laid first and grouted in place. The crank shaft was then added along with the block and cylinders. Pistons rods and heads were then put in place to complete the process.

The compressor cylinders were then added to the back of the engine. Not all of the engines had the same type of compressor on it. There were 4 types of compressors to be installed, low stage, second stage, high stage and propane compressors. The pressure on these cylinders ranged from 35 lbs inlet on the low stages to 800 lbs discharge on the high stage.

While crews were working on the engine room other crews were setting forms to pour the bases for the towers that were to be erected. The first tower the gas went into was the absorber, the gas went in the bottom and came out the top, as it traveled to the top of the tower lean oil or # 2 crude naphtha was flowing down wards taking all the heavy ends out of the gas, what was left was methane gas which is what we burn in our homes.

The gas then went to the de ethanizer, the same process was followed as the absorber, on this time the ethane was removed and the rest of the heavies went to the next tower.
The heavies then went to the de propanizer where he propane was removed then they went to the de butanizer where the raw gasolene went out the bottom and the butane and iso butane went out the top.

The methane, and ethane were put in different pipe lines and shipped to various places. The propane, butane, iso butane and gsaolene were pot in tanks and then loaded onto trucks and was hauled out.

The hot oil heaters were set on the West side of the plant as far away from the towers as possible. The heaters heated the hot up to be pumped back over the towers again in an endless cycle.
The generator room had 4 generators in it. There were three Coopers and one Ingersol Rand to power the generators. These were the heart of the plant, when one would go off line it usually meant the plant was going down and lots of work was ahead of every one.

The cooling tower was 50 foot tall and 300 foot long had 5 large fans in to cool the water. The hot gases were pumped through coils to cool them down and bring them back to a liquid stage.

There were 4 boilers at the plant to serve as a heat source during the winter to keep the pipes from freezing and heat some of the water and products up before shipping.

The train rack was on the East side of the plant. The train rack could hold1 small tank cars and 8 jumbo cars. The regular cars held about 13,000 gallons of butane or propane while the jumbo cars held 30,000 gals. At one time the plant was shipping over 300,000 gallons of propane a day out of the Benedum plant.

There were 5 storage wells at the site which were used to store propane under ground. These wells were the fist in the world to store products in this way. The wells had a combined capacity of 65 millions gallons, At one time there was no demand for propane
And there were over 300,00 gallons of propane a day being burnt through the flare at the plant, the flare could be seen for miles.

The company built housing for the men and their families working there. They were mostly 2 bedroom homes with a garage and 6 3 bed room homes. All together there were 24 homes built at the site. A local contractor out of Rankin was given the contract to build them. In 1967 the company sold the houses to the employees living in the houses for $250.00. The employees had to buy a lot in the place of their choice and pay to have them moved to their new location. Sixteen of the families moved their houses to Rankin, 8 went to Big Lake.

The families quickly became involved in their communities and wound up making a difference. Some became, fireman, city council members, school board members, mayors, hospital board members, and Lions Club members.

The Benedum Plant is still in operation but owned by a different company, it no long has the hot oil system but a Cryo system That uses cold instead of heat and a turbine that rotates at 85,000 RPM to separate the product. It is a skeleton of what it use to be but it still stands proud.

We live in a small town in West Texas close to Midland and Odessa. We have been married 47 years, have two daughters, four grandchildren and a spoiled dog. We visit the area nursing homes to check on the elderly and make sure they are taken care of. We have gathered a mountain of hugs and smiles doing this. My wife likes to work in her flower beds and cook, while I pass the time in my shop or doing work for the elderly that they can’t afford to hire someone to fix for them. We stay active in our community and church.

My wife and I have started a new web site. ( http://www.wesellnmail.com ) We are new at this but we are having a great time learning. We have Bulova, Casio, Seiko, Invicta, Pulsar and Timex watches on our web site at this time. You can also sign up for a free new letter that has a new Pecan recipe in it each month. We have tried to make it a family web site so every one can enjoy it.

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