Texan am I

Written on a Saturday night/early Sunday morning when I really should be sleeping... too often I find myself compulsively writing when I should be in bed. Not sure what that's all about...

Really, you should see the Iron Giant.

I'm not kidding.

***

Culture. Watched some home movies sent to my buddy Erik Hood from his brother Carlos, a lieutenant with the national guard. Carlos and the others in his Hawaiian outfit are training in El Paso to go to Fallujah. Carlos, surrounded by his homeboys, speaks in a thicker variation of the accent Erik has. And there they were, having target practice, going through drills and whatnot, and at one point they burst into this song. Something about being back home on the islands, about the girls and all that. Pretty cool, spontaneous stuff.

And what would have a bunch of Texas boys done? Think we'd have done a little musical number? I don't think I even know all the words to "Yellow Rose of Texas." I doubt a bunch of us would feel compelled to sing it. Or anything else. I might vote for "Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother" or something.

So Carlos and his boys struck me as being perfectly comfortable exhibiting their Hawaiian culture. And there just doesn't seem to be an equivalent in my experience.

Oh, I guess that's not totally true. I wore my boots, those beat-up Nocona's one day last week. And I got the jokes: "Gonna rustle some cattle, Briscoe? Mend some fences on the back 40?" Only a couple of us ever wear boots: Jennifer from (close to) Texarkana and me. She never catches grief for it, but then again, she proudly speaks in a very thick Texas accent. I lost a lot of my accent in radio classes, and my penchant for "50 cent words" makes me the target of a few jokes. Fine. There's nothing wrong with being semi-well spoken.

But shit, I'm a Texan. I grew up in boots. I don't ride a horse, don't wear a cowboy hat (just personal preference; I do wear a baseball hat a lot). I speak some Spanish, love my barbecue, eat jalepenos, love my state and feel most comfortable around Texans/Southerners (as I've discovered in my travels; I'd rather visit a place where people don't look at me funny when I say "ma'am").

And you know, I'm sure this struggle for cultural identity and validity gets played out more strikingly in some arenas. I know that when I was a kid, the kids who could drive a tractor, ride a horse or bring back a trophy buck were considered more redneck than most of us. To this day I'm sure there are Texas kids who long for acceptance as genuinely country while their parents' culture fades fast around them. I know the same thing happens to Mexicans living here whose parents opted not to teach them Spanish. They gain no cultural advantage or foothold here, and their own people may look down on them for it.

Maybe I'm part of a transitional generation. God knows Dad was more country than I'll ever be, growing up in the woods of Brazoria, Texas, dogs by his side as he fished in Freeport and hunted on the acreage around his home. He went into the navy and worked hard, did his job. Got a good blue-collar job that he somehow stuck with for 30 years, even after they made it a policy to treat him like crap. Raised Amanda and me the best he could in Angleton, which is not exactly rural. It's fairly suburban I'd say, even though our home was walking distance from the county livestock show each October.

And now I live near Ft. Worth, work in downtown Dallas. I ride the train sometimes. We had a possum problem a few years ago, and I was frustrated that I couldn't just shoot the little bastards. Wouldn't go over well in Hurst city limits.

I dream of leaving this area for someplace more secluded, someplace more like the spread in Brazoria where Dad grew up. But am I kidding myself? I sure love my Thai food, love being close to the ballpark.

If I had a double-wide on a few acres in Buda, do you think I could get the Dish network and DSL?

Hitting the dusty trail...