"The people who built this suburb knew they were running out of oil," Laura said. "But they wouldn’t plan for it. They built everything around their precious cars, even though they knew they were turning the downtowns into ghettos. Now the cars are gone, and everyone with money has rushed back downtown. So the poor are shoved out here instead. Only they can’t afford the water bills, so the lawns are full of scrub. And they can’t afford air conditioning, so they swelter in the heat. No one even had the sense to build porches. Even though every house built in Texas had porches, for two hundred years!"