My wife and I spent two decades teaching in North Texas, at a Fort Worth-area high school. She taught special education, and I taught English. We retired at the end of the school year in 2020. COVID warped that final semester. We returned to home—Wyoming—and have lived happily in a state with only around 600,000 souls ever since. We enjoyed our time in Texas, but by 2020, the influx of people searching for the American Dream unavailable elsewhere was becoming trying.
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Two weeks ago, we drove down to Texas once again to visit friends–our teaching colleagues. Spending time with them was wonderful, but you really can’t go home. We drove past our former home, and lawn care obviously isn’t a priority of the current owners. The tall, beautiful Evergreen we nourished on the front lawn was, sadly, gone. The lawn on which we lavished tender loving care, scorched.
What was most striking, however, was the rate of growth of homes and apartments necessary to house everyone moving to Texas to enjoy the climate, no income tax, good business climate, and standard of living. The sheer number of housing developments, amounting to hundreds of single-family homes in each, is staggering, as is the speed with which they’re finished.
It turns out that’s no surprise:
Graphic: X Post
What’s more, Texas isn’t relying on a single boomtown. Dallas-Fort Worth added more residents than any metropolitan area in the country over the past year, while Houston, Austin and San Antonio also ranked among the nation’s fastest-growing metros.
Driving through Ft. Worth—2026 population 1 million+—we realized there were more people within a few miles of us than in Wyoming.
The Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex, as locals call it, was our neighborhood. The suburbs extend outward for incredible distances, and the traffic, even then, was incredibly bad. I only ventured into Ft. Worth when I was performing or rehearsing, and did the same with Dallas, where it was worse. Circa 2026, the traffic was even worse than 2020.
Of course, that’s relative. Traffic in Colorado—we took that route on the way down—from the Wyoming border until well past Colorado Springs was abominable. That’s largely due to Denver, but my wife and I have vowed to avoid Denver and Colorado in general in the future. It’s a promise we’ll likely find easy to keep.
We took the eastern route—through Oklahoma City and Wichita—on the way back, and were annoyeded by seemingly endless road construction on I-80 through Nebraska. Yet, we were also impressed, not only by road construction, but by the orderly, rapid, and affordable housing construction in Texas.
Democrats and their Socialist/Communist/Islamist allies/frenemies constantly whine about “affordability” and about how horrible America is, particularly Flyover Country where the unsophisticated live their pathetic, meaningless little lives, fearful of trans, gays, Muslims, etc., and plotting insurrections.
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That, of course, is not what we saw, and it’s not how Americans live. Texas is booming, and we saw similar developments and booming small businesses in every state we traversed. In every restaurant—not just Chick-fil-A—the service was fast and friendly, and the choices of restaurants and choices on the menus were virtually limitless.
Sure, prices of everything were higher than we would have liked, but we saw gas as low as $3.28.9 in Texas. And we don’t forget that inflation peaked at 9% under Biden’s handlers, and at its low point was higher than now: 2.02% in the second quarter of 2026.
People can’t afford to eat out, to fill their vehicles, or to buy groceries? We didn’t see that on our trip, nor do we see it at home. If that was true, if it really was as serious as Democrats claim, all the businesses we saw flourishing wouldn’t be in business, would they? Developers wouldn’t be building thousands of new homes, nor would banks be financing them, nor would home loan interest rates be reasonably low.
And about all that highway construction…from where does the money come? From taxpayers who have sufficient money to pay those taxes, particularly in red states who somehow manage to maintain their highways and roads far better than blue states despite many having no state income tax. That, and everything else we saw, is one of the everyday wonders of America so many foreign visitors saw during the World Cup.
How much did our fuel cost? For a 2024 Ford Maverick, about as much as a two-way airline ticket for one person. That’s affordable.
At our ages, little adventures like this are important. Also at our ages, we have the perspective to remember when times were far worse than they are now, and we can see that they could be very bad again. But for now, we have no doubt that because we were born in America, we won life’s lottery—even when we’re cursing the wonder of highway construction.
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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, lifelong athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer, and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.
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