are funny and recognize the truth in all of them -

HOWEVER, in NO way do we accept 'outsiders' who

critize or make fun of our GREAT CITY! You have been

warned!

You know you're in Houston if...

You're on your way to work one FEBRUARY morning and

suddenly you're trapped in a traffic jam caused by a

chuck wagon and fifty horses - with; riders and you

look around to see that everybody in the trucks around

you; is wearing a cowboy hat.

The "farm-to-market" roads have seven lanes.

If you want to be a snob about your grocery shopping,

you can go to a Randall's Flagship, a Kroger

Signature, a Rice Epicurean, or soon, an HEB Central

Market to buy bread and milk (but you have to dress

up, and your dog and cat are out of luck if you go to

the latter -nothing as mundane as pet food there.)

You have to turn on the air conditioning in January,

two days after a low of 29 degrees.

You have a Roach Story: You opened your flatware

drawer to find a roach the size of the Taco Bell

Chihuahua. He stood up and looked you in the eye. You

closed the drawer, bought new flatware - and stored it

in the oven.

Or your friend has a Roach Story: - about a dive

bomber who crashed her formal dinner party, made

several passes at guests whose heads were bobbing like

little dogs in car windows, and finally landed in

somebody's soup.

When you see your neighbor dancing around the front

yard, you don't think he's won the Publisher's

Clearing House Sweepstakes; you know that he just

stepped in a fire ant bed.

The name "Bud Adams" makes people snarl, and "Bum

Phillips" doesn't mean bad screwdriver.

Luv ya Blue" still makes you smile, even if you did

run the Oilers out of town.

You know that the Astrodome will always be the Eighth

Wonder of the World.

You come to work in short sleeves and walk out at noon

to find that a <"blue-tailed northern" has blown

through and the temperature has dropped 40 degrees in

a matter of minutes.

Your neighbor's Christmas yard decorations look like a

re-creation of the gunfight at the OK Corral, complete

with a ten-foot tree decorated with boots and cowboy

hats, and a Santa Claus who looks a lot like Wyatt

Earp.

You wander into a section of town where you can't read

the street signs because they're written in Asian

characters instead of English, but you don't care

because you can get great prices on fake designer

merchandise there.

You go to an art festival on Westheimer and you're

almost run down by two handholding cross dressers on

roller blades.

You hear everything but English spoken when you go to

the Galleria to window shop. (You can't afford to buy

because the prices are jacked up for all the foreign

tourists.)

You know that "Dad gummit" has nothing to do with your

father's failure to practice good dental hygiene.

You think "Y'all" is perfectly good usage if you're

referring to more than one person.

For a Chili Cook off, you'll use anything from

armadillo to frog's legs, but you know that the only

GOOD chili is made with chopped - not ground-beef, and

it has NO beans and NO tomatoes.

Spring is not the season, Katy is not the lady, and

1960 is not the year (The first two are towns and the

third is a farm to market road number).

Society matrons of "a certain age" still sport big

hair and faces that have gone east, west, and north

rather than south.

You can leave your house, head out of town, and an

hour later you still haven't left the city limits.

(During rush hour, you haven't left your

NEIGHBORHOOD.)

You've never seen I-45 and I-10 in any condition other

than under construction - and you've lived here for

more than 30 years. When highway construction is

finally complete, the new highway has the capability

to grow potholes in random locations without rain nor

abuse.

You know that "Clutch City" has nothing to do with

automobile transmissions.

"The Dream" is not a fantasy.

The only REAL Mexican food is Tex-Mex.

A 747 with the Space Shuttle riding piggyback has

actually flown low right overhead, and nobody paid any

attention to it.

You know that while saving you money, "Mattress Mac"

has amassed more than the U.S. treasury.

You're happy to have beaten Los Angeles out of a

football team, but you'd rather they keep the title of

"Smog Capital."

If the humidity is below 90 percent, it's a GOOD hair day

You see nothing unusual about an eighty-something

former sheriff's deputy who wears a white pompadour

toupee and blue sunglasses, mispronounces names,

allows televising of his frequent plastic surgeries,

seems unnaturally obsessed with slime in the ice

machine, and screams, "MAR-VIN ZIND-ler, iiiii-witness

news" into a television camera every night. But some

folks are still upset with him for shutting down the

Chicken Ranch.