Goodbye to Texas?

 

There’s a song called, “Leavin’ Old Texas.” The cowboy/singer laments that they’ve roped and fenced the cattle range, “and the people there are all so strange.” Well, it’s true—the open range is fenced, the mythic days of the cowboy are gone, and some of the people in Texas are purely strange now.

But when a writer friend posted on Facebook that she didn’t understand why anyone would live in Texas and not leave, let alone move there, I jumped to our state’s defense. Possibly she was referring to the strict abortion restrictions, so much in the news with the Kate Cox case recently. Or maybe she meant the absence of gun control—no training, no screening, no license. Want to carry a concealed gun? Be our guest. Or perhaps it’s the troubles at the border with record number of illegal immigrants last month. Maybe it’s the restrictions on what can be taught in classrooms, from kindergarten through college—don’t even think of mentioning DEI, which is now outlawed. (How you can outlaw an abstract concept is beyond me, but Gov. Greg Abbott has managed it.) Maybe she meant book bans—we lead the nation in the number of titles marked for “consideration” or actually banned. There are many reasons to leave Texas for states, even countries, where there is more personal freedom and you are not forced to accept the state doctrine. (Does that echo of Nazi days? The state doctrine? Yes, it does).

I haven’t seen statistics on how many people leave Texas because of our extreme right-wing politics, but I know from personal experience—friends who have thrown their hands up in the air and said, “I’m through. I’m leaving.” Often they are couples of child-bearing age. And new corporations? Again, I don’t know statistics, but I have heard of companies that refuse to relocate here—despite our attractive tax laws and other incentives—because employees with families would not follow along.

I credit Texas’ disastrous reputation to Governor Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and Attorney General Ken Paxton. I’m not sure what fascination these men hold for Texans, except perhaps the habit of voting Republican and a blind, inbred of fear of Democrats that makes it hard to pull any lever, mark any ballot except the red one. Why would you ever vote for a man who puts razor wire in a river to injure and kill people? Or who sent poorly dressed, hungry migrants by bus across the country to a northern city where no provisions have been made for their unannounced arrival? If you live in a small town or rural area, why vote for a man who desperately wants to close the school that is the center of your community? It makes no sense.

But I digress. When I read that post, angry as I am at our state government, I immediately felt defensive, compelled to leap to the defense of Texas. I am not a native Texan, but I have lived here almost sixty years, and my two careers—as an author and as a publisher—have relied heavily on the history and literataure of this state. I feel invested in it, and I’ll be darned if a mean little man like Abbott is going to ruin Texas for me and my family.

There’s so much to treasure about our state, politics aside. We have, I suspect, the most varied landscape in the 50 states. In Texas, you can go from beach to mountains, from the stark, spare country of South Texas to the lush high plains. We have forests and pastures and rolling hills and vast expanses of empty land. Texans value their history—okay, we now pretty much agree much of the Alamo legend is in large part myth, but there’s still valuable history in the basic story. And in Sam Houston’s Runaway Scape and defeat of Santa Anna’s troops at San Jacinto. There’s history in the early cattle drives and the gradual shift from an agrarian to an urban economy in too much of the state. We have a proud and strong literary tradition, with writers who chronicled Texas history and wrote their own versions of it, from J. Frank Dobie and his pals to Larry McMurtry, Cormac McCarthy, and Elmer Kelton. Women writers too—Sarah Bird and Sandra Cisneros come to mind. Dr. Ron Tyler has given us several books documenting important artists of our state. Texas food, once mocked as brown food, can compete with upscale servings across the country. We have James Beard award-winning chefs and upscale restaurants with offerings for the sophisticated palate. We also have Tex-Mex, chili, barbecue, and down-home food.

Enough singing the praises of the state I love. My point is Texas is too wonderful to abandon to the narrow minds of right-wing politics. I am not leaving. Greg Abbott was not always governor and will not always be. I will stay to fight his inhumane policies, joining such groups as Mothers Against Greg Abbot, the Texas Democratic Party, and Beto O’Rourke’s Power to the People and speaking out whenever I feel the need. Texas needs to regain its proud reputation, and I want to help. How about you?