HOUSTON -- The draw and the downside of this sprawling, flat, booming, humid, youthful, bilingual, business-oriented city is pretty well covered by the two occupants of 8 Sweetgum St. in the northern suburb of New Caney.

	Dave Rossman, Houston Chronicle Formerly from Pittsburgh's South Hills, Will Dieterle migrated to Houston to become a police officer in 1981 when no local municipalities were hiring. He's applied for jobs unsuccessfully since then in Western Pennsylvania.. Click photo for larger image. Graphic: Houston, Texas

Will Dieterle is a policeman from Western Pennsylvania. His wife, Ann, is a nurse from western Maryland. They have not been out of work since they arrived in Houston in 1981 -- and they have never agreed on the merits of their adopted city.

"The city itself doesn't have any character. Nothing seems to be permanent here," said Will, 53, who has seen every part of Houston as an officer. "I could blindfold you and you couldn't tell what part of the city you were in. It's very flat, with no definition to the area.

"It's ugly."

Ann sighed. She's heard this before. She also knows what's more important to her.

The graduate of Carlow College's nursing school believes she suffered from seasonal affective disorder up north -- a form of depression from lack of sunlight during the winter. Early in their marriage, she had nightmares about being stuck in cold, gray Pittsburgh the rest of her life because of her husband's South Hills ties.

"You're not immobilized here by the weather," said Ann, a native of Cumberland. "From the time he said he was taking me to warm weather, I had my bags packed."

The southeastern Texas region where the Dieterles live grew more than 50 percent from 1980 to 2000 -- and that included a mid-1980s interlude in which the local oil industry took a beating much like the one taken by Pittsburgh's steel industry.

But unlike Pittsburgh, Houston grew in the 1970s and early 1980s, and grew again starting in the late '80s.

It's known as a place where the cost of living is low, but where there's a good buck to be made for anyone who's hard-working.

"Economics, weather and family are the main reasons people relocate," said Shell Oil project manager David Snyder, 45, who found the first two to his liking when moving down in 1981 from Edgewood. He filled in the third when his mother moved five years ago to join him and his wife, who have a roomy home with a pair of large SUVs and a spacious pool they use from April through September.

"My wife and I are both managers with a comfortable combined income that would be difficult, if not impossible, to match in Pittsburgh," said Snyder, an Indiana University of Pennsylvania graduate.

Many aspects of Houston are as foreign to Pittsburgh as its 90-degree days in October. There are no zoning laws, for one thing. There are no income taxes, for another.

It's truly multicultural, with more than one-third of the population Hispanic, one-fourth of the population black. The city council has representation from those groups, as well as members from Chinese and Pakistani backgrounds. Women make up half the council.

People keep moving out from the city in all directions, commuting on increasingly congested highways to their energy and aerospace and health care jobs.

"Houston to a large extent epitomizes sprawl," said Robert Litke, director of planning and development for the city. "We are overwhelmingly an automobile-dominated society. But growth has enabled an awful lot of people -- minorities -- to get out of the ghetto or barrio and get into decent housing on cheap land in the suburbs, as long as you're willing to spend a little extra time in the car."

Plenty of former Pittsburghers view it as an open society, where enterprising newcomers are treated better than strangers are received in more clannish Western Pennsylvania. A few others, however, said neighbors don't go out of their way to talk to one another. It's one of the things lamented by Iris O'Rourke, 54, who intends to return to small-town life in Lawrence, Washington County, after two decades away.

"When I take food over to a neighbor, they think I'm weird. In Pennsylvania, that's what we do!" said O'Rourke, who left her hometown as a single mother with a few suitcases and $400 to jump-start life for her and her daughter.

All the Pittsburghers here seem to know other Pittsburghers who came and then decided to leave.

But there are also plenty who have stayed, embracing the good points and adjusting to the bad. They simply find somewhere air-conditioned during the summer and assume every drive will take at least a half-hour. Such inconveniences become easy to tolerate when you've got a reliable paycheck.

"I come back home and see my buddies stuck in the same rut," said Joe Szypulski, 45, a Steubenville, Ohio, native who used to work for Weirton Steel, like nearly every other male in his family. He tired of getting temporary layoff notices, so he came to Houston on a Saturday and had a job by Monday with a utility company that liked his steel worker background.

"It's the best move I ever made, though I hate it because nine brothers and sisters are still up there," Szypulski said when joining Pittsburgh area acquaintances at a Steelers bar here. "I was homesick, but now that I've got my own family here, it's eased the pain."

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