Texas begins with a river and ends with a gulf, starts with a cool green pine forest and stops with a blast furnace. In winter, you'd swear there's nothing 'tween us and Canada 'cept a bob wire fence, and half of it's down.
This State is a mystery, even to experienced insiders, the native-born Texan. It is a rigorous mathematical puzzle created by TI and simultaneously the most emotional and irrational of states.
Cowboys come and go (but not to the Super Bowl), Native Americans come and then hurry to Oklahoma, Yankees come and sometimes stay, native-borns move away. But Texas endures.
Texas is a series of renamed streets and reconstructed highways so enormous, so contrived, so frustrating that no one has uncovered the secret of how to get from work to home in under thirty minutes.
Texas is fueled, not by oil, but by greed; and oiled by cupidity. The slightly-less-than-sonic boom of Spindletop has hushed to a whisper, as quiet as the shuttle hangars in Houston.
There are many fine buildings along I-35. Some house prestigious firms whose probity cannot be questioned. And then there are the concrete barns with stalls for cash cows and others for spavined beasts not worth the feed to keep them alive, although they continue to exist until fatally stricken by Chapter Eleven.
The people of Texas have come up with a few sayings to explain the economy.
1. If it sounds too good to be true, it is too good to be true.
2. Never panic - - but if you do, make sure you're the first to panic.
3. Happiness can't buy money.
4. I've been rich and I've been poor; rich is way better.
So just what is all this leading up to? A friend of mine suggested I should write down some of the colloquial gems I've heard since I moved to Texas fourteen years ago. Especially from the seniors who have seen more than they care to remember - most of them can remember twenty years ago much better than they remember yesterday. (I'm fast getting that way myself.)
As we moseyed along the corridor of her residence, when asked about her wedding ring, which was all scarred up, and almost worn through on the under side, my darling little white-haired friend said, "Yeah, this one's been through the ricks." I asked her to explain, because this saying, like most, was foreign to my Alabama-born-and-bred vocabulary. She described hay baling in Marshall, her home town, and the way the rick wound up with little bits and pieces of everything along with the hay. I guess her marriage was like that, too. (But then, truth be told, aren't most of them?) She stopped her amble for a little while, smiled to herself, and then slowly walked on up the hall, aided by a cane in one hand, and a conveniently-placed wall rail in the other.
I despair of ever having hair as beautiful as my friend's. But one day, God willing, my wedding ring will look like hers. And I hope I'm still here, in my Texas, when it does.
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