A state of mind
Why are Texans so flamboyantly proud of Texas?

Sunday, May 1, 2005 / Here & Now  Page D1

By Ron Franscell
The Enterprise

Mike Miguez is a Texas-sized guy at 5-foot-10 and 245 pounds. He looks like he can take care of himself -- and a small village.

So even if somebody hated the full-color Texas tattoo on the back of his head, they'd probably never be brave enough to say so.

Miguez, 37, was born in Port Arthur, and he's damn proud of it. He's so proud, when he saw a cheap souvenir marked "Made in Texas," his pride went to his head. "I was made in Texas, too, and I just thought it'd be funny to have it on my head, like a toy from China or something."

But when he arrived at the tattoo parlor -- totally sober -- he decided to add a 3-inch-square outline of Texas, colored in red and Lone Star-blue.

Now nobody has to guess what's in the back of Miguez's mind, literally.

What makes a perfectly sane, nice guy like Miguez go out and have the state of Texas tattooed on his noggin?

Pride.

OK, but why not just get an authentic "I t Alamo" T-shirt just like Jim Bowie wore? At least you can change it when it gets old.

"I guess if you really had to explain to someone your pride in Texas, then they really wouldn't understand," Miguez says. "It's just ... something. I'm kinda at a loss for words. I don't know how to explain it."

In Texas universities, we employ sociologists and anthropologists who study UFO abductions, feminist theory, industrial welfare, assorted deviants, Wiccans, gun owners, religious zealots, grandparents, African diaspora, death-penalty lovers, functional morphology, "the semiotics of spatial relationships in human interaction," amateur strippers, female politicians, tattoo freaks, headbangers, cohabitators, pre-Incan burials, ethnopoetics and other scintillating cocktail-party conversation topics.

But, dang it, apparently nobody has studied why Texans are so proud to live in Texas ... and express it so flamboyantly. No data exists, and no studies have investigated a phenomenon that's as big as ... well, Texas. They study other incurable diseases, so why not Texas pride?

"This is an interesting question," says Dr. Paul Johnson, a sociology professor at Texas Tech University in Lubbock. "I haven't delved into it very deeply myself so probably can't be much help. ... There are probably several factors that contribute to Texans' overly swelled sense of state pride, not the least of which is probably the size. Also, Texas has multiple sources of being marginal and distinctive as compared to adjacent areas. ..."

What the Perfesser might have meant was: We think everything is bigger and unique-er in Texas.

And it doesn't matter if it's a fact or a lie.

In Texas, size matters more than truth.

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"Outsiders never understand that Texas tall talk is not a lie.

It is an expression of the larger truth."

-- Paul Crume, "A Texan at Bay" (1961)

~~~~

Gary Cartwright is one of the best storytellers Texas ever raised.

Now an author, screenwriter and senior editor at Texas Monthly, he's told some of the tallest true Texas tales that ever deserved ink -- and a few that were merely tall. He spent his formative years alongside legendary newspapermen like Blackie Sherrod, Dan Jenkins and Bud Shrake. Since those days, his writing has appeared in the Texas Observer, Esquire, Saturday Review and Rolling Stone. Did you see the gritty anti-hero Western "J.W. Coop"? He co-wrote it.

"Kids in Texas grow up learning about the state from movies, songs, comic books, jokes, legends, tall tales spun by family and friends -- the taller the better -- and, finally, by the seventh grade, from a full-blown course in Texas history," Cartwright says. "Does any other state have a history so compelling that it requires a full year's curriculum?

"By the time a kid moves on to high school, the Texas myth is part of his being, like it or not. All the boasting and preening that appear to be part of our shared heritages are, at their core, manifestations of a well-deserved inferiority complex."

That's because there's an irony. Native-Texan Cartwright, being a good reporter, knows exactly what it is.

"For most of its history, Texas has ranked at or near the bottom of all the states in its social and educational beneficence," he points out. "As the saying goes, thank God there's Mississippi."

Unfortunately, it's true. Texas is No. 1 in the production of oil, gas, cotton and hay, commodity exports, living presidents named Bush, bass fishermen, profits from deer-hunting -- and in percentage of population without health insurance, toxic emissions from factories, percentage of uninsured children, unvaccinated 2-year-olds, traffic deaths, executions, home foreclosures and registered machine guns.

It's also home to America's fattest city (Houston), its sweatiest (El Paso) and its least charitable (Dallas).

But what other state is stamped on Budweiser bottles? What other state makes schoolkids recite a pledge of allegiance to the state?

The Texas Capitol building is America's biggest (although not tallest.) We invented the frozen margarita and Dr Pepper. We have more miles of road than any other state, and the parking lot at DFW is the biggest in the world.

So there.

Whatever its virtues or vices, Texas is a place that people literally died to create. That's not unique in American history, but it's worth noting.

Cartwright knows. Except for a short sabbatical to New York City in the mid-'70s and an 18-month writing assignment in Taos, N.M., in 1980-81, he has lived his whole life in Texas. But it was his time away that made him more Texan than ever.

"New York was particularly instructive," he says, recalling his time in oh-so-chic Manhattan, which turned into an urban cowtown, embracing everything Texan from Peter Bogdanovich's film version of "The Last Picture Show" to Daddy-O Wade's ultra-hip Lone Star Cafe.

"I hung out a lot with Larry L. King, another Texas writer, and we both discovered that during this time in our lives our Texas accents became more pronounced and we invented cornball Texas sayings like "this steak is tough as my granny's elbow" and made up stories about gunfights and Indian raids we had survived.

"When I returned home to Austin a year later, I felt a genuine pride in my home state that I had never really felt before. I was seeing Texas with new eyes. It was like returning to the arms of an old and troublesome lover, wiser now and more forgiving, comforted by the realization that I'm not better than anyone else, but I'm damn sure just as good."

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"Texas does not, like any other region, simply have indigenous dishes. It proclaims them. It congratulates you, on your arrival, at having escaped from the slop pails of the other 49 states."

-- BBC'S Alistair Cooke, on Texas Cuisine

~~~~

Sometimes Suzanne Stavinoha feels out of sync in Los Angeles, where she's an aspiring screenwriter.

Blame it on Texas.

And sometimes she's feels right at home in sometimes imaginary, always mythical Hollywood.

Again, blame it on Texas.

"I think being a Texan, you grow up with a certain expectation that you've got to go out and make things happen for your life. Not just an expectation, really, but a right!" Stavinoha says. "The thought, 'Oh, I better not try that,' or 'That seems like too big an undertaking' -- I don't think that computes in the typical Texan's mind."

Stavinoha graduated with 76 high school classmates in tiny Canyon Lake, Texas. Eight years ago, the lifelong movie buff realized somebody was getting paid to write those pictures, so she uprooted herself from Austin and moved to New York City, then L.A.

"When I was growing up in Texas, it never occurred to me that other people didn't feel as connected to where they lived as I did to Texas," she says. "It's when I left that I realized how unique it is. When I introduce myself to people, one of the first things I tell them is that I'm from Texas -- like they can't tell from my accent! -- but I do it because it always gets a reaction."

Texans get a reaction that North Dakotans, Arizonans, Wisconsonians and Connecticutians combined don't get. Not just in the United States, but in the world.

One of Dublin's most popular pubs is Judge Roy Bean's, just down the street from the 400-year-old Trinity College (which doesn't even play in the Big 12). Judge Roy Bean's bills itself as Ireland's "only Tex-Mex pub."

University of Texas historian Richard Francaviglia's 1995 book, "The Shape of Texas," explored the intersection of cartography and pop culture. He concluded the borders of Texas formed the most recognizable U.S. state outline in the world, and thus was a potent, marketable symbol.

Ford Motor Co. pioneered Texas-centric marketing in 1999, and now everybody -- even Toyota -- does it. Larry Hall, Ford's Dallas-based marketing manager for the Southeast United States, declares unequivocally: Ford plays on Texans' pride in a way it doesn't do anywhere else. It's not just TV commercials; Texas is the only place in the world you can buy Ford's Texas Edition F-150 pickup.

"Texans believe they're the best in everything," Hall says, "and so we tell them that the best people drive the best trucks ... Ford."

And last February on eBay, some enterprising junk-food junkie sold a tortilla chip shaped like Texas. The seller swore: "I have not cut it, clipped it, chewed it or changed it in any way. What you see is what came out of the bag." Do you think somebody from Montana bought it? Not likely.

Stavinoha recounts how, on a lark, she attended a University of Texas professor's speech in L.A. recently. But when the Austin academic felt it necessary to clarify his nativity for the California crowd -- "I'm from Texas, but I'm NOT a Texan," he assured them -- she bristled.

"I think asking a Texan what's so great about Texas is like asking a fish what's so great about water," she says now. "I guess it is a pride thing -- not only the way I feel about being a Texan, but because of the mystique it carries with everyone else. It's a shorthand, I suppose, for people to know and understand a very important thing about me."

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"There is a growing feeling that perhaps Texas is really another country, a place where the skies, the disasters, the diamonds, the politicians, the women, the fortunes, the football players and the murders are all bigger than anywhere else."

-- Pete Hamill, New York columnist and author

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Pride has a downside, even in Texas. Every once in a while, something's gotta give, and everybody will be watching.

Legendary former Associated Press reporter Mike Cochran has watched some of Texas' darker moments unfold. He was a pallbearer for Lee Harvey Oswald because only reporters showed up for the JFK assassin's Fort Worth funeral. In 1966, long before Columbine High School even existed, sniper Charles Whitman massacred 15 people from the UT tower in Austin -- Cochran was there. And he wrote a book about the sensational murder trial of billionaire Cullen Davis in Fort Worth.

Cochran is a Texan's Texan, and a newspaperman's newspaperman. So he knows Texas news is bigger and sometimes badder.

"Texans rape, pillage, plunder, philander and kill with a flair," he says. "A dubious and curious distinction, but a distinction nonetheless. That's not to suggest we do it expertly or even well, but somehow differently.

"Texas might not have some kind of lock on world-class skullduggery ... but consider this: Who would pay to see the 'Iowa Chainsaw Massacre'? We are all sick to death of J.R., Sue Ellen and 'Dallas,' but would a hundred million people watch 'Des Moines' or 'Salt Lake,' or, God forbid, 'Cleveland'?"

Cochran shares a quote from his late sidekick, reporter Jerry Flemmons.

"From the beginning, there was something about Texas and Texans that required the world's attention," Flemmons once wrote. "Texas is a historic story, the stuff of dreams and myths. Borne of an impossible revolution, settled by people from somewhere else, Texas engendered the epic American notion of freedom and independence, of self-sufficiency and derring-do. Texas, above all, has been a spiritual adventure."

And for the crusty Cochran, it's occasionally a criminal adventure.

"Could any place but Texas glorify a bordello? Better still, would any place but Texas glorify a bordello? Can you visualize a Broadway musical called 'The Best Little Whorehouse in Rhode Island'?"

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"I dearly love the state of Texas, but I consider that a harmless perversion on my part, and discuss it only with consenting adults. "

-- Columnist Molly Ivins

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Texas-philes abound.

Steve Hicks of Beaumont wears his pride proudly. It's tattooed on his left shoulder in the outline of Texas.

Rhianna Schoonover is a 26-year-old Texas native stationed with her Air Force husband in England, and she runs a Web site called "A Texan Abroad."

"We (expatriates) are, in effect, ambassadors for a way of life," she said recently. "We exude an air of confidence and power, we have a mystique about us. We are showy without meaning to be, but anyone can guess if you're a Texan just by looking at the way you walk and dress."

And Mary Walker of Crockett comes from a long line of proud Texans. Actually the longest. She's president of the Daughter of the Republic of Texas, whose membership is limited to descendants of pre-1846 settlers.

"Unlike the Colonial Dames, the DAR and other earlier dated groups, we are mostly the descendants of just ordinary people -- second sons, widows and others who inherited little and moved to the frontier to provide a better life for their families," Walker says. "And these plain people have built this fabulous empire that we call Texas."

Brook and Julie Syers of Houston wrote a book, "Everything Texans Need to Know about the Other 49 States."

For those Texans who haven't ventured beyond the Red River, it's apparently important to understand that in the other 49 states:

"Vegetarians and pagans are not the same thing ... cheerleading is a cordial, friendly sport ... trucks are not the only method of transportation ... and traffic tickets are not punishable by the electric chair."

Who doesn't ooze Texas pride? Everybody else. The outlanders from "lesser" territories -- like Oklahoma.

But even Oklahoma respects Texas.

Sort of.

"Texas does a great job educating residents about the state's assets," says Tina Gilliland, director of Oklahoma's tourism division. "Practically from birth when they receive their first 'Don't Mess with Texas' T-shirt, kids are bombarded with pro-Texas messages from all fronts. That's why it can be a little difficult for them the first time they come to Oklahoma, because we give them so many reasons to question their 'Texas is Best' theory.

"We help them see one of the truly great things about Texas is how quickly you can be in Oklahoma."