We traded mild winters for mild summers, Darrell Royal for Bo Schembechler, and the Cowboys, Rangers and Mavericks for the Lions, Tigers and Pistons.

Before leaving, we heard a lot of horror stories about the cold, frigid northland (not to mention the weather). Good friends implored us not to throw away our children's lives, or our own.

Life was sort of dicey on this end, too. The first Michigander I met informed me that all Texans were - well, you'll just have to fill in the blank yourself. Suffice to say, it was not a term generally connoting warmth, affection and filial devotion. It did, however, have a certain anatomical piquancy to it.

Well, news flash: There's just not that much difference. Oh, sure, the climate's different; growing seasons and optimum crops show some variance. And Michigan sort of has two political parties to Texas's full-featured Democratic Party. But there are more similarities than differences.

Neither sovereign state has a fast food franchise that can correctly fill an order to go, but you can come by indigestion about as well in one as in the other.

In both states it's a well-established fact that a man incapable of earning an honest living should be elected to Congress, thereby keeping him out of the state as much as possible.

Both states have elevated road kill to a high culinary art.

Detroit has its crime; Dallas, its Southern Baptist preachers.

Neither state is willing to get serious about public education, both sustain significant racial prejudices, and both tolerate the poisoning of the environment by large industries.

Both states have many good, honest people who care deeply about their families, their friends and their communities. Neither state has a monopoly on people who give much of themselves to make their part of the world a better place for all who visit or come to stay there.

I don't have emotional roots in any one place. I have moved several times in my life; none of my immediate family lives where we did when I was growing up. I have very few friends in those places. My wife has deeper geographical roots than I: until recently her mother still lived in the town where Glenna grew up. Even now, going back to Portales, New Mexico is "going home" for her.

And I've been fortunate to make some very special friends here who have lived here all their lives. They have a depth and a richness, almost a oneness with this part of the earth, which continually pours out to me.

There is an excitement of discovery in moving about. There is much to be learned, and there are countless wonderful people to meet. There is an ongoing revelation of those things which unify us all.

But there's also an exceptional gift given to those who stay and put down roots. Theirs is the knowledge of a land and its people. And theirs the sharing of this gift with the wanderers who pass their way.

Let us celebrate together the greatness of a Creator who gives us growth whether we go or stay, and who gives us friends with whom to share the joys of the roads not taken.