TEXANS

TEXANS


Some of you know that I lived in Texas for a decade. Well, really it was seven and a half years, but it seemed like a decade. Please don’t tell any Texan I said that. Texans are the most loyal to their state of any state citizens I’ve ever met. And they’ve been known to hurt anyone who doesn’t think like they do.

Texans have their own customs. For example, this year a meeting I was supposed to go to in August in Galveston was moved to another date because the original date fell on Lyndon Johnson’s birthday—a holiday in Texas. And nowhere else, I might add. One year they gave the state workers the day off to commemorate the Battle of San Jacinto. For those of you not up on Texas history, that’s the battle which, if Texans had lost, would have made Texas part of Mexico, and then all the people driving coast to coast on I-10 would have to carry passports. Texans are also fond of Cinco de Mayo, the day Mexico defeated France, I think it was, in some War which I’ve never remembered. Then there’s Juneteenth, really June 19th, which, according to the story. was the day the slaves in Galveston heard about the Emancipation Proclamation (months after it was delivered in the rest of the United States).

When I first moved to Texas, Ann Richards was Governor, and not only was she female, she was a character, so I was lulled into thinking this was the way Texas politics was—liberated. Ann Richards was sort of the Bella Abzug of the next generation—outrageous, funny, out-spoken, and in the next election, out of office. I was crushed. She was such a treat any time she spoke in public. Like the special type of strong Texas woman she represents, she speaks her mind, but with a coating of humor and that Texas twang that takes any of meanness out of what she says.

But then our current Presidente, W (or Shrub, as the columnist Molly Ivins calls him) became Governor. From my vantage point in Texas, it was obvious that the governorship was just the next step (actually, pretty much the FIRST step) toward his presidency. Never mind that as Governor, W made just as many verbal gaffes, maybe more, than he has as president.

And where else than Texas would perfectly sane men greet each other with a “hook ‘em, Horns” hand salute. If you don’t know what that is, you’ve never lived in Texas and I can’t explain it to you.

Texas is so large, and Texas drivers are so accustomed to driving long distances, that patients who come to the emergency room in the evening complaining of chest pain and shortness of breath are always asked if they’ve driven in from El Paso today, as they are at risk of pulmonary embolism from the long hours in the car, not moving. I’m not kidding.

Texas has so many more big and good-sized cities than any other state (Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, to name a few) that Southwest Airlines could get its start just doing hour-long flights early in the day and late in the day to cities in Texas. You haven’t lived until you’ve flown on Southwest Airlines at state government rates at 5pm on a Friday out of Austin back to Houston on a smallish plane with no reserved seating, some seats facing backward, and 100+ business men and women dying to get home. The reason Southwest has those funny announcements by the flight attendants and the captains is that they had to do something to keep the passengers in line. And, I admit, it worked. It almost made flying fun for a few brief moments.

I have failed to mention the weather in Texas. I had almost blocked it out of my memory. But think of any undesirable weather feature, and Texas has got it somewhere in the state. In spades. Unbearably high humidity? Got it, all along the coast. Unbearably hot? Most everywhere in summer. Unreasonably cold? Most of the upper two thirds of the state in winter. Tornadoes? Everywhere. Floods? Hurricanes? Dust storms? And don’t get me started on the critters—scorpions, ticks, poisonous snakes. And diseases. I bet you didn’t know that dengue (or breakbone fever) exists in Texas, likewise plague. I could go on, but I won’t.

So what’s to like? Well I’m not sure, but I do know that the typical native Texan who is living in another state usually considers it a temporary condition, and non-natives living in Texas often sport a bumper sticker that reads “I’m not a native, but I got here just as soon as I could”?