The Plaid Pladd

After four years at Rice even the most reclusive among us tend to pick up at least a little bit of knowledge about Houston, such as where the closest Whataburger is and what animals have lately been caught in precarious yet adorable situations thanks to the H-Chron’s hard-hitting reporting. However, when it comes to Houston’s surroundings, I’m guessing most of you only know where to find the airport, pretty much the only reason normal people visit Humble, Texas. As an un-normal person whose fiance happens to live there, I can fill you in on what you’ve been missing.

1. Its Wikipedia Page

My favorite fact about Humble is definitely that its Wikipedia Page features this picture prominently:

You Know Your Town Is Classy when the Highway Exit to get to it is a "Point of Interest"

2. The Dump

Now with ravenous bands of seagulls!

Little known fact: all of Rice’s trash ends up here in the Atascocita Landfill! If you ever want to revisit that old 80s costume you couldn’t bear to look at anymore or the Bio homework you threw out after you dropped being a premed and started having a life, Humble is the place to go! This is by far the biggest and most important aspect of Humble. Apart from the airport, natch.

3. It’s Pronounced without the “H”

The first time I heard about Humble was on my second date with Steven Wiggins (the first being Screw Date), during which a drunk man at a bowling alley told us that his girlfriend was also from there, and that she often beat him for pronouncing the “H”.

Drunk Man: Man, how am I supposed to know you don’t say the H, man? It has an H! What are we, man, French or something?
Steven: Lots of people make that mistake. It’s no big deal.
Drunk Man: (big, scared eyes) My girlfriend once kicked me right in the balls for saying the H. (to me, loudly) DON’T SAY THE H! WHATEVER YOU DO!
Me: Okay.
Drunk Man: Okay. (pause) Do you want to be on my bowling league?

Naturally, this made a lasting impression.

4. “The Fast Food Capital of Texas”

Steven’s particular suburb of Humble, Atascocita, touts itself on its own website as being “The Fast Food Capital of Texas”, an impressive claim, which they back up with the admittedly solid evidence of this logo collage:

Hey, at least they're proud

MS Paint: clearly the best way to prove any point. I’m not sure if this claim is legitimately true, but they do have at least six Sonics within a ten minute radius of Steven’s house. He already google Earthed our apartment in Chapel Hill next year and discovered the nearest Sonic is thirty minutes away. He has thus deemed Chapel Hill a “thirsty wasteland”.

5. The Park That Claims to have Buffalo

When I first went to this park, on the shores of murky Lake Houston, I kept seeing these signs for buffalo but was unable to locate them:

Granted, it's a confusing sign. Is it a buffalo or Jeremy Caves?

I guess I was envisioning herds of mighty bison having free run of the park, crashing children’s birthday parties and smashing the pinatas beneath their hooves. In reality this is not a “Caution: Buffalo” sign but a “This way, down a road that looks closed you can see some clearly malnourished and miniature buffalo” sign. I guess I just didn’t realize that the drawing on the sign is actually to scale. In conclusion: Buffalo at Humble’s parks=mad anti-climactic.