Texans, and Others, on What the State Means to Them

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/11/us/texans-and-others-on-what-the-state-means-to-them.html

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HOUSTON — It was a simple question: What makes Texas Texas?

That was the headline for an article I wrote about the Texas identity. The question is impossible to answer, but the readers who responded in more than 1,000 comments, emails and Twitter posts seemed to enjoy giving it a try.

Two distinct groups emerged: those who identified as Texans, and everyone else. There were subsets, such as those no longer living in the state (“Texpats”) or those who took the state’s obsession with secession one step further by calling for it to be expelled from the United States.

We heard from a member of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas, a sixth-generation liberal Democrat Texan, “an advanced-degree-holding, modern-dance-loving, skinny, lefty lesbian.” And there was talk about Texas dirt being used in other states during childbirth as a stand-in for the state itself. One reader, Rick Stauts of Homestead, Fla., had something to say about Texas dirt. He sent me an email I have been reading and rereading for days now. Mr. Stauts wrote:

“In 1968, I was in the Army and was issued orders for Vietnam. At Love Field in Dallas before getting on the plane, I bought a small jar of cherries and flushed them. I went outside the terminal and scooped up some Texas dirt and filled the jar. When I got to Chu Lai, South Vietnam, I put a label on the jar that simply said ‘Texas.’ I have no idea how many soldiers tried to buy that jar of dirt from me, but I would not sell. It was my little bit of Texas in South Vietnam. I still have the jar full of dirt today.”

My Portlandia daughter has a discreet tattoo stating “Texas Forever.” This state embeds its past, present, and future into the native consciousness.POST MOTHERHOOD, Hill Country, Tex.

My boyfriend (from N.Y.C.) says he’s never been in a state that prints pictures of itself on everything.ALLISON, Austin

Texas is a state of mind more than anything else.TED NELSON, Houston

I am Italian and I’ve been living in TX for 2 years (San Antonio). Never find any people more welcoming than Texans. Never felt any issue with my initial pain with language, people always said, “Don’t worry about your English, it’s much better than my Italian.” VITTORI, Italy

A boy asked a stranger where he was from. His father gently corrected him for his bad manners, saying: “Son, if someone is from Texas, they’ll tell you. If they aren’t, don’t embarrass them by asking.”GR, Texas

The Texas I grew up in guaranteed university access, at $50 per semester (that is semester, not semester hour) to all its high school graduates, and its constitution provided for public support of a “University of World Class.”DAVID McNEELY, Spokane, Wash.

One thing is sure: You can’t understand Texas without spending time in the country and talking to the farmers, ranchers, hunters, teachers, veterinarians, etc., who live there. In an age when everything seems prepackaged, prerecorded, prefabricated, this older, slower Texas, disconnected from urban and digital ephemera, can provide a welcome dose of the real.SHARON, Texas

My neighbor and friend is 72 years old but looks 50. He drives a semi-truck hauling rig and industrial equipment across Texas and America. When asked why he’s still working if he doesn’t need to, he says, “God gave me the ability to and if I stop, I don’t have a purpose.”SAMUEL, Austin

Need to unwind? Nothing like sipping a Shiner Bock with friends and taking turns shooting a metal target from 300 yards or a drive to West Texas ... just set the cruise on 85 or risk getting run over.HOUSESOOP, Dallas

I’m a fifth generation Texan on one side, seventh on the other. We’re all as liberal as the day is long. Many of us grew up sliding fluidly between two cultures, two languages, where Barbacoa and Big Red were points of pride.JENN, Texas

I now am living temporarily in Louisiana, 20 miles from the Texas State line. I drive the extra miles to spend my money in Texas for food and anything else we need. My money is better spent in my home state.MARGARET PELETIER, San Antonio

A sixth generation Texan, I moved to New York City in 1976, into Rosedale, Queens. One of the first questions I was asked by any New Yorker I met was, “What are you?” Meaning was I Jewish or Italian, Irish, etc. I had never been asked that in my life and responded the only way that mattered to me: “I’m a Texan.”DUANE D., Ruidoso, N.M.

Despite the differences in politics, Texans and New Yorkers are very similar in grit, self-confidence and the unshakable belief that no place is better than their place.DENISE, New York City

My dad always said we were Tejanos and helped settle the areas from Monterrey to San Antonio. Older Tejano families, who faced so many injustices, know what makes Texas and that’s to continue to fight for equality and fairness and to have some good fajitas and beer. Adelante. JACK, San Antonio

I was born there, grew up there, and graduated from The University of Texas. I still follow Longhorn football. But I left. In 1965. And I have no intention of moving back. I’m perfectly happy where I am, in California. JOHN, Los Angeles

It is a great place to be if you really do not have an opinion and are just focused on money, barbecues, pickup trucks and football. RAMAKRISHNAN RAJA, Bangalore, India

We have a state just like this in Brazil: Rio Grande do Sul (Great River of the South). It is in the frontier of Argentina and Uruguay. They love horses, country life and think their state is more important than the whole country.LUIZ CARLOS, Brasil

If you’ve ever tried to discuss politics with a teenager, then you know what it’s like to discuss politics with a Texan. I saw lots of very simplistic, jingoistic, firmly held beliefs that didn’t necessarily have a basis in fact, or a practical application in the actual world.The people are self-reliant, much as they are in my state (Vermont). YANKEE, Vermont

I’ll never forget standing in San Antonio and seeing more Texas flags flying atop buildings than American ones. MEGHAN, Norfolk, Va.

I was an Easterner who lived in Alaska for 4 years, surrounded by Texans some of whom worked in the oil fields off Cook Inlet and Prudhoe Bay. … Texans were fun to be around even if they were too much in love with their guns and bragging “on” their State, but what may have seemed to be either narcissism or self love, it seemed to me, really was an insecurity about being able to live anywhere other than Texas which, of course, was not true. JOHN McDONALD, Vancouver, Wash.

There is a genuine mutual feeling of happiness that you receive from everyone when you are here. Only people who have lived or been to Texas knows this. TRUITT, Maryland

The best thing I ever saw in Texas was the state line in my rear view mirror. RICK, Cedar Rapids, Iowa

My state also has its radical-right, but you don’t ever hear talk of secession, maybe because we stayed loyal during the Civil War, or maybe because as much as some people hate the Federal Government, they also don’t want to go without the benefits that come with being part of the United States. AUSSIE AMERICAN, Malvern, Pa.

My family over the last few generations has been nomadic and so am I. I admit I’m a little jealous of Texans. NAVAH, Washington