dallashistory

I am not so unhappy not being a Texan by birth. Oklahoma was just fine, thank you. I do wish at times I could be a Dallasite again although I realized I could not go home many years ago. I've lived in my present location far longer than anywhere else, but the Southwest will always be home.

I never had a snap down shirt or trousers to match, Outgrew the only pair of boots I ever had years ago. The area where you want that dress is not my Texas or my Oklahoma although I have cousins who look just fine in those clothes. I saw Larry McMurtry in one of his book stores once, back to the door of his office and busy I guess. Anyway I felt too unimportant a visitor to interrupt although I have read all his books. And the Big Rich is mentioned in the blog. I reading it right now. Those where (are) not my people either. But I miss it all.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent ... 81833.html

George Getschow: I'm a wannabe Texan

04:02 PM CDT on Saturday, August 1, 2009

I'm sitting in Archer City's Dairy Queen, a place Larry McMurtry visits often for its chicken fried steaks and vanilla shakes. Above my head are covers of Horseman, Pass By, Cadillac Jack and Lonesome Dove. In my hand is a signed copy of Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, McMurtry's autobiographical essay examining Big Oil's and Big Ranching's impact on Archer County's way of life.

Blog: Points Summer Book Club

It seems like a good spot to reflect on Texas and Texans. I've lived in Texas for 30 years. My wife is a Texan. My kids are Texan. But my wife and kids like to remind me that I'm "not Texan." They're like a lot of people in Texas who feel if you're not born in Texas, you'll never be a Texan.

In the introduction to The Big Rich, Bryan Burrough felt the need to apologize to his Texas readers because even though he grew up in Texas and worked in Texas during his early years at The Wall Street Journal (with me), he wasn't born in Texas and has spent the last 20 years living in suburban New Jersey. "For you native Texans out there, I hope you won't hold that against me."

Don't hold your breath, Bryan. Most Texans firmly believe that if you're not a native, you'll never understand Texas or love it the way they do. And if you are a native Texan, and you're living somewhere else? Good God, man, you need your head examined.

I've grown weary of asking my Amarillo-born bride questions about peculiar Texas customs and practices. "Forget it," she'll say, giving me a pitying stare. "You're a Yankee. You'll never understand."

But I'm trying my best. I'm wearing cowboy boots and jeans, a snap-down western shirt and Stetson. I wave and tip my hat politely to all the cowboy hats moving toward the counter as I chow down on my chicken fried steak. But the moment I open my mouth to chat with one of the diners, I see their faces fall, suspicion in their eyes. "He sure ain't one of us," I suspect they're thinking. "Must be a Yankee."

Too bad – because I wannabe a Texan, more than anything. At a time when the nation seems to have lost its sense of self and is spinning out of control, Texans seem as strong, as cohesive and as devoted to their nation-state as when John Steinbeck crisscrossed it 50 years ago with his native Texan wife.

"For all it's internal squabbles, contentions and strivings," Steinbeck wrote in Travels With Charley, Texas has a tight cohesiveness perhaps stronger than any other section in America. Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study and the passionate possession of all Texans."

I've spent the day reflecting on Steinbeck's words, eavesdropping on conversations and carrying on a few of my own with the natives. All the social and economic ills facing the rest of the nation – rising crime, teenage pregnancy, drugs, the exodus of youth from the countryside – weigh on Texans' minds, too. But there's not even a hint of fear that they might crumble under the weight of these problems.

"Remember the Alamo! Remember Goliad!" says Dianna Wray, a Texas native sipping a Dr Pepper. The 27-year-old writer has Texas-sized ambition to become the next McMurtry. She says her "kinship" with the land and the defenders of the Alamo run deep, assuring her that she and her fellow Texans can ride past the dark economic and social clouds hanging over the rest of the nation.

"We can do anything we set our minds to," says Archer County Judge Gary Beesinger, chomping on a fat burger. "We're bigger than life's problems."

And if Uncle Sam messes with Texas' way of handling matters, the natives inside the Dairy Queen remind me that Texans retain the right to secede anytime, a power Gov. Rick Perry raised in a debate over President Barack Obama's stimulus package.

I can understand, I suppose, why some folks outside of Texas might conclude from such sentiments that Texans are full of themselves. But not me. If I could with the stroke of a pen secede from some of my crazy aunts and uncles, I'd do it in a split second.

The Archer City Dairy Queen encourages patrons to write a story focusing on "What Do You Like About Texas?" I wrote that I like everything about Texas – its friendly people, its scraggly Western plains, the rolling Hill Country, the Big Bend mountains, the wide-open Panhandle, the coastal region. But when I started talking to one of the Dairy Queen workers about my love affair with Texas, the first thing she asked me was, "Are you a Texan?"

I tossed my story in the garbage.

George Getschow is writer in residence for the Mayborn Literary Nonfiction Conference. His e-mail address is getschow@unt.edu.

How come there are so many of these? I'll switch cards with somebody

Don't kill me now, Ronnie

I was born in Bryan County, Oklahoma, about a mile from the Red. I spent my first five birthdays in Texas,
the next five in Oklahoma then back to Texas. Other than the few years I lived in Europe I've been a Texas resident.
When my son rags on me for not be a native Texan like him I remind him that I've live in Texas longer than him. When others ask I explain that I'm Texas by choice.
I don't wear cowboy hats, boots or western shirts and the only time I was ever on a horse was to get my picture taken.
Mostly I don't worry about it one way or the other. Being Texan is what you make of it. Touting that one is native born yet never seeing the state is empty braggin'.

Well, some of the most famous "Texans" of all weren't born here. Sam Houston. Jim Bowie. William Barrett Travis. Etc.. I have no problem with somebody who comes to Texas and embraces it calling himself Texan. I do have a problem with incomer metrosexuals trying to change Texas to match wherever they came from, though.

Lol, Clyde ... while some of us are strung up by the neck with the gills poking out, gasping Texas is my breath ...

Clyde Howard wrote:Well, some of the most famous "Texans" of all weren't born here. Sam Houston. Jim Bowie. William Barrett Travis. Etc.. I have no problem with somebody who comes to Texas and embraces it calling himself Texan. I do have a problem with incomer metrosexuals trying to change Texas to match wherever they came from, though.