How come Texans.....Part Five of a Three Part Series






Here's Taylor at the EZ3 with her fish. Taylor tells me she caught all the fish and only allowed Kacy in the picture to placate her parents.  In any case, I misplaced the shot of Kacy.  I know she'll be disappointed.

      I want to explain how these deep-seated feelings of pride, loyalty, affection, and warmth just naturally evolve and perpetuate themselves here in Texas.  That’s a simple thing.  We indoctrinate the children.  We catch our children at an early age and instill a love of Texas and things Texan.  We drink iced tea, Shiner Bock, or Lone Star beer in their presence. We play “Waltz Across Texas” and feed them chicken-fried steaks, chili, and barbeque while they are still in high chairs.  By the time they can walk, we drag them to football games, rodeos, and team ropings.  When they’re in grade school, we put Frito Pie in their lunches. ( Chicken-Fried steaks were invented in Lamesa in 1911, Fritos in San Antonio in 1932)

     I took my daughter, Devon, in her stroller, to the grand ballroom of the Shamrock Hotel when she was a year old.  I had a crew remodeling the building and I wanted her to see the “Emerald Room” Glenn McCarthy had built.  The character Jett Rink, from the Edna Ferber novel Giant was based loosely on Glenn McCarthy.  James Dean played Jett in the movie.

     My son helped unload a tractor at our farm (the EZ3 Ranch) when he was four.  By the time he was six, he drove that tractor, and at ten, he was mowing the pastures.   Both my children remember wonderful years at the World’s Championship Barbeque Cookoff at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo.  Paul was chief cook for a team when he was seventeen.  It was his thirteenth year at the cookoff.



My son, Paul, and Hugh's boy, Mac, learning to be Texans



     Hugh Ruggles and I were mending “bob war” fences (barbed wire for you non-Texans) at the Easy Three Ranch, outside Crockett.  Our new tractor was parked nearby.  Hugh casually asked, “How high do you suppose our tractor is?”

     “I imagine it is close to eight feet to the top of the hood.  Why?”  I answered.

     “Do you think a five-year-old would get hurt if he fell eight feet?” 

     Hugh’s son, Mac, a climber, had managed to get up the ladder to the driving platform, around the steering wheel and out on the hood, past the exhaust stack.  He was standing on top of the radiator, between the headlights, staring down at the ground and wondering where to go from there.

     Mac is grown now, with a boy of his own, a two-year-old named Jett.  Yes, after that Jett.  Is that cool or what?

     A friend of mine, Carlos Vacquero, had his sons, aged six and eight, entertain his father-in-law.   They did a rousing version of the Hank Jr. tune, “If Heaven Ain’t a Lot Like Texas, I Don’t Want to Go,” for their rather pompous, Yankee grandfather.  He was less than amused.  The song, incidently, says "Dixie".  The boys changed it to "Texas." By the way, their grancfather's Yankee-ness had nothing to do with his personality---that guy would have turned out pompous if he had been born in Odessa.

     The third partner in the Easy Three Land and Cattle Company, Ken Black, has a picture on his desk at the office.   Two beautiful little girls, maybe four years old, are standing on the bank of a small lake, proudly holding up fish they caught.  Ken’s daughter, Kacy, and Hugh’s Taylor are dressed in their panties, topless and just beaming.  My Devon was about eight then, and would not have been caught dead without a top.  All three girls have children of their own now--children who got their first pair of cowboy boots before their first birthday. 



Luke put in the spices and Jack did the stirring



     Another young friend, Jack Robbins, took his boys to a chili cookoff.  Luke, the younger, helped by adding spices, tomato paste, and Salsa Goya while his brother, Jack, stirred the chili with a proper paddle.  You will note that the paddle is made of wood and is unfinished, as it must be.  Good chili will dissolve varnish, remove the galvanizing from metal spoons and make plastic utensils disappear.  Because the flavors of a hand-crafted chili are so very delicate and the spices are so subtle, these instruments could impart an unwelcome aftertaste to the fragile finished product.  I prefer a white oak chili paddle, but the birch one Jack chose is perfectly acceptable.  Just think how much Luke and Jack will know about chili, and about Texas, by the time they are twenty.

     Texas history is a required subject in our junior high schools. That’s because Texas has a history---a more or less noble history.  Many other states were simply acquired as the flood of immigration moved west.  The Indians were tricked, cheated, treatied, or otherwise screwed out of their land, or simply killed off.  It is difficult to put a noble face on some of the things we Americans did as we fulfilled our “Manifest Destiny.”   



     Texans, for that matter, were not altogether pure in their relationships with the Indians, but the Indians here, especially the Comanche, were savage and hostile.  They were worthy foes and held their own until white man’s diseases and Colonel Ranald MacKenzie finally defeated them.  MacKenzie didn’t really defeat them in battle.  He burned their supplies and slaughtered their horses and left the Comanche afoot to starve on the plains.  That was in 1874, after most of the rest of the country had solved the “Indian Problem.”

     My children, and most of my friends children, grew up learning these things.  Most other kids grow up here in similar fashion, learning about Texas from their elders.  Some of the information we pass on might not be precisely accurate, but it makes a good story.  That’s really important in Texas.

This strapping young lad is named Gus.  I was going to add a paragraph about him, but his story deserves more attention.  I will delve into it with a later post.  Stay Tuned!