"All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books."
-Thomas Carlyle

by Paul Lytle

There is something different about Texas — that much is certain. Only a few states in the Union can claim an independent identity. Most of the others are simply "Southern" or "Midwestern." Some people come from "New England" or the "West Coast." There is, of course, New York (though when we speak of New York, we are generally speaking of New York City and not the state as a whole), or there is Florida, or even California. These states have identities also, but not in the same way. For Texas, it is something different.

It is almost mythic.

Maybe it is because no other state has claim to events like the Alamo or San Jacinto, which seem more like the battles in Homer's poetry rather than real historical events. Maybe it is because we have state heroes nearly as big as the national ones. After all, Sam Houston's accomplishments paralleled George Washington's closely, while we have the added benefit of William B. Travis, James Bowie, and Davy Crockett.

The quality that makes Texas what she is has something of an epic feel. To put it in terms from Norse Mythology, the Alamo was like our Ragnarok — the battlefield upon which the gods find their deaths. We can see Crockett as Thor — his Tennessee long rifle dealing thunder like Thor's hammer, Miölnir. Santa Anna, at times seemed like Loki — one minute your friend and the next your enemy.

Too close an examination and the metaphor falls apart. After all, Ragnarok was the end of the gods, while the Alamo was almost a beginning for Texas. But the elements of a mythology are there, especially in the way the myth begins. Usually, myths begin with a god overthrowing another god. Zeus killed his father, Cronos. Odin slew the eldest giant, Ymir, who was around long before Odin. And likewise did Mexico throw off Spain, and Texas throw off Mexico.

The Mythology of Texas need not have gods and giants to be mythic; it merely needs men who seem larger than life and who represent what it means to be a certain breed of person (in this case, the Texan).

There is a myth of Texas, and, like all myths, it must be explained in stories.

Cowboys and Indians

I knew a girl, named Rebecca, who lived in Canada, and one year I traveled up to Calgary to visit her. Her college was outside of the city by about an hour, and I made my way out to that small town and onto the campus.

Becky and I sat in the student center to catch up when I saw two young men enter, and their appearance caught my eye. They were both dressed up as though they were parodies of cowboys — their shirts leaned more toward pink than brown or white, and their jeans as tight as they could be and still keep blood circulating in their legs.

I was introduced to them, and when Becky told them I was from Texas, they grew wide-eyed. I was from Texas? They said the word as though Texas was the Holy Land, and I was not wont to correct them. In a few seconds they asked me a hundred questions, but they truly didn't understand why I hadn't brought my boots or hat. They simply could not comprehend that I didn't own boots because I don't like them, and the only cowboy hat I owned was a full size too small, so I didn't ever wear it. They left me that day more than a little disappointed with the "Texan" they had met.

It is the first part, and perhaps the least true part, of the Texas myth that we should either act like John Wayne in The Searchers or Jett Rink in Giant, or at very least we should dress like them (which meant in either case wear a hat and boots). And it is true that some of us do, but very rarely on a daily basis.

The reason we do not normally dress in that manner is simply because we are not a state of cowboys. We will wear parts of the cowboy outfit at times for style or comfort, but most of us do not need it. The style was originally born out of practicality, and it's not very practical anymore.

Unbeknownst, seemingly, to the rest of the world, the cowboy, like the Norse gods at Ragnarok, has passed. He is all but dead, for better or worse.

The waning popularity of Western literature and film has proved that we are missing the gunslinger less and less as time goes on (both Larry McMurtry and John Graves — McMurtry in "Cowboys, Movies, Myths, & Cadillacs" and Graves in chapter thirteen of Goodbye to a River — that the cowboys of films and books are gunfighers and not actually cowboys, but neither man seems to mind the poetic license). This is not surprising. The frontier is no longer in the west, but in space or in the ocean. The battle between the whites and Indians is over, or at least moved into a political battle rather than a physical one. The new cowboy is like McMurtry's own Hud, who wishes to rip up his own land on the chance that oil might be underneath. He cares for neither cows nor guns.

Few would actually want those times to return. Few would want to live on a frontier, or want to fear a Comanche raid on a daily basis. But the price of luxury is the passing of the John Wayne gunfighter.

Confidence vs. Competence

Larry McMurtry often writes about the passing of the "old" Texas and the coming of the "new." It is the passing of the county and coming of the city. In essence, it is the passing of the cowboy and the coming of the oilman. The old Texas was a place of quiet but strong people, people utterly competent and hard-working. The ultimate example of this is soft-spoken Sam Houston, so tightlipped that his own men in the Texas Revolution didn't know his battle plans and thought he was fleeing the state.

The new Texas, supposedly, is made up of people who perhaps fell into money, but are more style than substance. They are loud and confident, even though they are not as competent as the old Texan was. In Giant, Jett Rink will provide our example of this type, and the man on whom Rink is supposedly based, Glen McCarthy. McCarthy's Shamrock Hotel in Houston is a shrine to the new Texas — large and gaudy rather than understated. The tales about the hotel are legendary, but as a quick example of what a person would find there, the inside was painted 67 shades of green (Bryce 46)! The new Texan is a man who has so much money he doesn't know what to do with it.

Of course, Rink is a caricature of the new Texan. Most oilmen are not rich. Those who are rich are generally hardworking and generous with their wealth. But we are speaking of perception here, and Jett Rink is the perception. The perception is a conspiracy of unfairly wealthy and stingy men who control the world, as Robert Bryce suggests in his anti-Bush book Cronies (mentioning none of the schools or hospitals that oilmen built, but only that almost meaningless number known as "net worth"). The perception is simply not usually the case. We have our McCarthys, of course, but most people are not like that.

But even understanding this distinction, there is still a change. A hardworking rancher is not the same person as a hardworking oilman. That change in Texas has been definite. An example can be found in Texas guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan, though, in this case, the change happened in reverse.

Vaughan appeared on Austin City Limits twice, once in 1983, at the beginning of his recording career, and the second in 1989, just before his premature death.

The first appearance was almost a circus, and Vaughan's colorful outfit (his hat had a rainbow band and his shirt was some sort of blue Asian robe) did not refute the claim. But the man was on fire. He was dripping in sweat, and the reason was obvious. He did not simply play, and he did not simply play well or quickly, but you get the sense that he was almost bragging by the way he played. He performed with the guitar behind his back, which looks impressive, but is, in reality, not terribly difficult. Next he bounced the guitar back and forth, hitting a chord in the normal position, and then striking another with the guitar behind his back, and then back and forth in rapid succession. That was a much better trick, but it was only a trick. Stevie Ray could keep up with the best guitarists in the world even then, but his stage show was full of tricks. It was style rather than substance.

But the second time he did none of that. He was no longer wearing blue, but tasteful black. There were no tricks; he simply played. On that level, it seemed that he had perhaps lost a step in the years between the appearances, but then he played "Look at Little Sister."

The solo blazed. His solos often do, but by this time in his life, Vaughan had sobered up, and his performance showed it. He had been rough before — good, but rough. By 1989, he had smoothed out the harsh edges. The solo on "Look at Little Sister" was not uncommon for that point in his career: fast, smooth, and soulful. And then he broke a string.

A guitar has six strings, and a guitarist like Stevie Ray Vaughan uses every one. Looking at a transcription of a typical solo is almost like looking at the peaks and valleys of the Rocky Mountains, so much and quickly does he run up and down the scales. So the loss of that string should have been a great hindrance to this type of guitarist. At the very least would it be surprising, and should cause a moment of pause so that the guitarist might get over the shock and adjust to the change.

Vaughan, with his eyes closed and his face twisted in the passion of the song, never missed a note.

The later Vaughan was the one from "old" Texas. Utterly competent in every way, but not bragging about it. He never made it obvious what he was doing. The early Vaughan was the "new" Texan. He was good, of course, but more of a showman than an artist.

Almost everyone agrees that Vaughan was better in 1989 than he was in 1983. Maybe McMurtry is right to mourn the passing of that sort of Texan.

The film Hud, based on a McMurtry book, portrays a battle between these two types of Texans. Homer Bannon is obviously the old Texas — a rural-type of man, quiet unless he must speak, and hardworking. Hud, his son, is almost completely without morals. He does not wish to work, and shirks his duty often. He longs to inherent the land, but only so he can put up some oil rigs and fall into money.

Caricatures again, but they make the point.

Maybe a more real example would be John Graves himself (I fight the urge to call him Saint John Graves — those who have read his brilliant book will understand what I mean). Goodbye to a River chronicles his last journey up the Brazos before it is dammed, and through his journey we get to know the land and Graves pretty well. He is a loner; multiple times in the book does he lament the fact that he occasionally runs into other people on the river. He loves nature, but is not a naturalist, since his canoe is filled with all sorts of modern marvels. He loves the environment, but is not an environmentalist. A careful reader will note that he does not even take a stand on whether the river should be dammed or not. He merely wants to go about his way in peace, and the modern world continues to crowd him.

The old Texan is not perfect, it should be noted. Just as we should not buy into Bryce's vision of the Texas oilman, we should not think that the cowboy of Westerns represents the true cowboy. In The Searchers, John Wayne plays a perfect old Texan, but he is also racist — so racist that we are hard pressed to believe his change of heart at the end of the film. Homer Bannon cannot have been perfect since he was the one who raised Hud. Even Sam Houston drank. So this is not a change from Heaven to Hell. It is probably more a lateral move, and McMurtry dislikes it, as do I, out of personal preference. The new Texas is a richer, safer, and more giving and diverse place. If she is a little haughty and tacky, those are small prices for such prosperity.

Size Does Matter

After I came home from Canada, I invited Becky to, in turn, visit Texas "for a spell." She refused my offer kindly, but her explanation surprised me. She said that her brother had told her that everything was bigger in Texas, and that she didn't want to deal with a Texas-sized roach.

I wanted to comfort her and tell her that our roaches were not that big, but I didn't want to lie to her. I don't remember seeing a roach in Canada, but I'm pretty sure that ours are a touch on the large side.

At least, I hope that ours are the anomaly.

The most undeniable part of the Texas myth is the one of the size of this state. Texas is simply big. Alaska, of course, is larger, but few Americans have to deal with Alaska on a regular basis, while all of the States have to work with Texas, especially now, when the occupant of the White House is from here.

A friend of my wife was coming from out of state to a conference in Dallas, and she wanted to know if it would be convenient for her to stay with us, near Houston, instead of getting a hotel room. We had to explain that it wouldn't be convenient for anyone, since Dallas is a five-hour drive from Houston. Her experience with states was that, within a state, most places are within driving distance from wherever you are. Not so in Texas. This state measures eight hundred miles from southern tip to the top of the panhandle, and almost eight hundred from east to west.

The Brazos is eight hundred miles also. Certainly there are longer rivers, such as the Mississippi, but the Mississippi cannot be contained in one, or even a few states, but many. No other state but Texas could possess the Brazos. It is so big that John Graves' 300-page journey upon it does not even cover a fourth of its total length.

But it isn't just the size of the state. The pride in our size infiltrates our everyday lives. Size over taste was the unstated philosophy behind the Shamrock Hotel and the Astrodome.

McMurtry, in "Love, Death, and the Astrodome," predicted that whatever came after the Astrodome would "be bigger, better, sexier, more violent, and, above all, costlier, than anything we've had before" (141). The prediction was made when the 'Dome was new, and so there have been several things that have come "after." The fact that the new Minute Maid Park in Houston does not fulfill that prediction may be its greatest flaw. It's not that it isn't big, because it is, but there is nothing new about Minute Maid. There's nothing innovative like the domed roof was or Astroturf. There's nothing there to make Dallas jealous.

But though Minute Maid itself does not fulfill the prediction, it is part of its fulfillment. What fulfills the prediction is that Minute Maid, a new football stadium, and a new basketball stadium were all built in Houston within one mayor's administration. The largeness of that project is staggering, plunging the city into debt like all good Texas projects should do, or so the politicians seem to believe. "Costlier," indeed.

If Texas acts big, it has good reason. This is a state with a big mythology, and heroes that are larger-than-life. No other state can claim a Crockett or Bowie or Travis, and certainly no other state can claim a Sam Houston.

When reading a Houston biography, such as The Raven, one of the things that struck me was how much Houston did in the amount of time he did it. He was a soldier, held various offices for the State of Tennessee and the Federal Government, traveled extensively, lived with the Indians, was a shop owner, moved to Texas and led the Revolution, became the President of Texas twice, helped with annexation, served Texas as Senator and Governor, and was forced out of public office because he opposed succession. And a good half of this or more was done in the eight years Andrew Jackson was President.

But what is most amazing is that he stuck to his convictions, whether he was popular or unpopular. He was not afraid to debate on behalf of the Indians when he felt they were right. He proudly led a small group of Texans against Santa Anna, even when sheer numbers suggested that he would lose, and even when his own men were criticizing his command. And then he won the battle in under twenty minutes! Finally, he stood up against his adopted state when that state wanted to leave the Union. Here was a man who knew something of revolution speaking against revolution. Texas would probably have been better off had she listened to Houston a little more.

The point is that here a man so big that he can hardly be contained by even Texas. This is an example of our state's heritage, so we should be forgiven if, at times, we get a little too big for our britches.

The Alamo

The Alamo is one of those rare instances where a historical event has become a critical part of a people's culture. The signing of the Declaration of Independence would be another of these events, but, for America, the battles fought in the name of freedom are generally too long ago or too far away to be on the minds of Americans on a regular basis. It is unfortunate that we do not remember, but it is true.

San Antonio is almost a Mecca for Texans. There is no admission fee for the Alamo, only a few donation boxes placed around the grounds, and so it is that much more welcoming to tourists.

But it is not just for Texans. The last time my wife and I were there, we ran into a large group of French tourists coming out of the shrine. When I was in Canada, I asked Becky and her friends there if they knew what the Alamo was. They did not have all of the details right, but they knew.

It's strange that the Alamo should be so important. After all, Sam Houston ordered it destroyed. He thought it was indefensible. Besides which, he needed Travis, Bowie, and their men with him.

Furthermore, it was a defeat for Texans! Yes, it was a defeat that probably led to victory, since it gave time for Houston to build his army, but it was a defeat nonetheless.

So why is it so important to Texas? The answer, I think, is because the Alamo gives Texas something that America really doesn't have: martyrs.

The primary heroes of the American Revolution were primarily politicians. Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin were known more for their philosophies and writings than anything else. George Washington is the only one of our Founding Fathers who is known for his actions in battle. Not that the contributions of the others were not vitally important, but there is not a single well-known martyr of the American Revolution.

Of course, there were martyrs. There are grand tales of what the signers of the Declaration and others gave up for their beliefs. They did wonderful things. The only problem is that few know who they are.

Of the five best-known founders of Texas (Houston, Austin, Travis, Bowie, and Crockett), three of them died at the Alamo. Martyrdom is impressive (even though death in battle is not something to desire), because it proves beyond doubt a man's conviction. It makes the world think, "If this person is willing to die for this cause, there may be something there."

The martyrdom of those men gives to Texas some bragging rights. If someone doubts the strength of character of Texans, we can merely point to the Alamo and say, "There is strength of character."

Of course, those three men were not originally from Texas, but that hardly matters to Texans, as we will see below.

Fire Up Ol' Smokey!

I work for one of Texas' many county courts, and I had a woman call the office about a Driving While Intoxicated charge against her. She was rather panicked, because she had heard about Texas Justice and was a little worried about being executed for the crime.

Right now, most of the big state offices are held by Republicans, so it's pretty clear that the state leans a bit to the right.

The perception is that we lean a lot to the right, but that might be because we are the only large state that is serious about the death penalty, and so when they make lists of what states perform the most executions, we are well ahead of everyone else.

But since polls continually say that most of the country supports Capital Punishment, Texas cannot really be called the extremist state in this area.

Yes, we are Conservative. Not Conservative enough for some, but Conservative nonetheless. But we are not as Conservative as it is said. The major cities are controlled by Democrats (Moderate Democrats, at least), and Sheila Jackson-Lee keeps getting elected by landslides, and she is as Liberal as DeLay is Conservative.

That being said, I kinda like the idea of the electric chair lingering on the minds of criminals. Let the perception remain if it causes that woman to think twice before she drives away from the bar.

Culture Shock

My wife, before we were married, when to school in France for a semester. When she was walking down the streets of Paris one night, she saw a sign that read, in English, "Tex-Mex."

There were no places she found which served "Mexican Food." It was always Tex-Mex. Here, the Texas version of Mexican food is sometimes ridiculed as not being "authentic" by those who think that food being authentic is more important than it tasting good, but it is that mix that has become famous throughout the world. Texas is likewise mixed, and that may make our flavor even better.

Of course, the reason for Texas' diversity comes first from the fact that the revolutionaries kicked the Mexican government out of Texas, not Mexicans in general. In fact, several Mexicans signed the Texas Declaration of Independence. Secondly, slavery was legal in Texas when she was part of Mexico, when she was her own nation, and when she first became a state. A large number of black slaves were brought in unwillingly, and here they stayed.

Of course there have been problems with race relations around here. Slavery did exist, and not in a small way, and the war was, for the most part, whites against Hispanics. We should not forget these facts, and we should learn from them.

That being said, Texas is so diverse that there has almost been a natural integration that just sort of happened. Even people who would normally be considered racist sometimes find themselves fallen into that integration. There is a saying that northerners love minorities as a group, but dislike them individually, while southerners hate minorities as a group, but like them individually. I haven't spent a great deal of time in the north, and so I cannot say how much of that part of the saying is true, but I find wisdom in what it says about the south.

My wife's grandfather would use almost any racial slur in the book. He would constantly speak on how worthless a particular group was and so on. He died not long ago, and I will never forget his funeral. Imagine my surprise, when a full half of those in attendance were Mexican.

I will not condone his words, but a man's actions are certainly more important, and his friendships proved that he would give anyone a shot.

That is the sort of man I think of when I think of a Texan. I think that the film makers who made Giant, which sought to expose the racism of Texas, may have seen people like my wife's grandfather when he was at the dinner table talking about immigration policy but were absent when he was around his actual friends.

Now, certainly there are people in Texas who act like Jordan Benedict does in that movie, but a true critic of Texas would be hard pressed, I think, to place that particular flaw on us as a people, at least in relation to the other states and nations. The world seen in Giant is not one I have really seen much of.

Of course, I was not alive during the era in which Giantwas set, which was several decades before the film was even made. So perhaps the Texas of the past was more like the one in the movie. However, the fact that Mexicans sat at the table at Washington-on-the-Brazos and signed the Texas Declaration of Independence should not be overlooked. That Stephen F. Austin was glad when Mexico temporarily forbid the importation of more slaves into Texas is an important point. Chances are that Texans then were a lot like the ones now — some good, and some bad.

The founders of Texas, ultimately, were not originally Texans. The five famous ones were from the Unites States. But they became Texans, and we are proud to have them. For most of us, it doesn't really matter where you're from. Sam Houston was an immigrant, so it's tough to be too hard on the modern immigrants.

Also was the view of the gender relations in Giant a little skewed. Of course, the film is seen from the point of view of a northerner who obviously has no problem exploiting minorities, so long as you are nice to them while doing so (consider that the servant she had in Maryland is black, and she does not seem to have a problem with the wages the Mexicans or what they are asked to do, only that no one else makes a halfhearted attempt to speak Spanish or give them medical care).

Leslie is excluded from a political debate, and we are supposed to infer that Texans are sexist. I can see where someone from the north may think this just looking in on a Texan family. When my family gathers, for example, the women do the cooking and cleaning, simply out of tradition. This tends to segregate the group along gender lines for a while.

This does not mean that women are thought of as stupid. The women in my family are never excluded from a conversation, and would push their way into one if they ever were.

A good example of this is Alma Brown in the film Hud. She is a housekeeper, a profession that seems the bane of the feminist movement. She spends her days cooking and cleaning and keeping the house in order. She should be an example of that evil Texas sexism, but she is not. She is, in fact, a very strong woman, an equal to any other character in the film. Her wit can overcome Hud, and her will keep him at bay until he finally decides to become violent (and even then he doesn't succeed). She is never excluded from any conversation, and anyone can see that, even though she is not a member of the family, she runs the house.

Texans generally still hold doors open for women, but that does not necessarily mean that Texans think women are too weak to do it themselves. Men and women are thought of as different, but neither is that a matter of a stronger sex or a weaker one, merely that they are different. Alma is a true Texas woman, and, in my opinion, a stronger woman than Leslie Benedict. She is a stronger woman because she doesn't need to tear someone else down to build herself up.

Conclusions

Of course, a true tour of Texas will tell you that everything I have said is as much wrong as it is right. The new Texan and the old Texan are as different as night and day, but they are not the only Texans there are. We may have Tom DeLay but we also have Sheila Jackson-Lee. We have the Ku Klux Klan and the Black Panthers. Dallas is almost part of another state, and what I said about race relations in Texas doesn't seem to apply there at all.

Texas music, ultimately, cannot be declared to be Stevie Ray Vaughan's Texas Shuffle, Buddy Holly's guitar-driven oldies, Roy Orbison's soulful ballads, or any reincarnation of Country-and-Western. Any label would simply leave too many people out. John Graves says it best, and even though he is speaking of the Brazos River, the sentiment is universally Texan: "All that touched the Brazos country, of course — changed its tone" (198). A lot of different people have touched Texas, and it is still changing.

The old myth of the Texan, in other words, is passing on. Maybe that is why I think of the Norse gods most of all when I think of the myth of Texas. Everywhere else the mythic gods are eternal, but the Norse believed their gods would die one day. Maybe our Ragnarok has passed.

In reference to a Yeats quote that people were once married to the land by mythology, Graves muses that "People are less 'married' now, in the Yeats sense, to surrounding rocks and hollows and prairies" (46). He sees the myth passing on also, as well as that old Texan who would have been married to all those things. The new Texan is too tied to the city for that.

But what else should be noted was that it never was about being actually different than other places. Everything I have mentioned (except the part on cowboys, which was never really true anyway) is psychological. Texas is different only because she thinks herself different. It is because we think of ourselves as Texans, not Southerners, or Anglo-Saxon, or to an extent even American, that makes Texas different.

But then, that's probably the most important part.

Bibliography

Searchers, The. Dir. John Ford. With John Wayne. Warner Bros. 1956.

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