God Save Texas: A Journey into the Soul of the Lone Star State

by Lawrence Wright

Texans see themselves as confident, hardworking, and neurosis-free—a distillation of the best qualities of America. Outsiders view Texas as the national id, a place where rambunctious and disavowed impulses run wild. Texans, they believe, mindlessly celebrate individualism, and view government as a kind of kryptonite that saps the entrepreneurial muscles. We’re reputed to be braggarts; careless with money and our personal lives; a little gullible but dangerous if crossed; insecure but obsessed with power and prestige. Indeed, it’s an irony that the figure who most embodies the values people associate with the state is a narcissistic Manhattan billionaire now sitting in the Oval Office.

Once, when I was walking up Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, I saw a nicely dressed older man standing in the street beside the curb. He was turning around in small, distracted circles. All my prejudices against the city came up: here was a man in need, but people were walking by, evidently uncaring. In Texas, we wouldn’t let a confused old man place himself in danger. I approached him as any gallant Texan would and said, “Sir, are you okay?” He looked at me in puzzlement. “I’m waiting for a cab,” he said.

To strike it rich is still the Texas dream, although the state has never been rich in the way that Maryland and Connecticut and other old money Eastern states are. Even Nebraska has more millionaires per capita than Texas. And yet, when people all over the world think of Texas, they still think of big money. You can tell the oil is gushing when they start selling those oversized dollars in the airport souvenir shops.

When disaster strikes Texas, one of the most effective first responders is a local chain of grocery stores, H-E-B, which dispatches a convoy of fifteen vehicles, including mobile kitchens that can produce 2,500 meals an hour, fuel tankers, portable generators, and Disaster Relief Units that contain pharmacies, ATMs, and business services equipment.

From my lifelong field studies spent among Texans, I have formulated a theory of cultural development. Despite the legendary qualities of boorishness, braggadocio, greed, and overall tackiness associated with my state, there is a lot to love about the traditional elements of our culture. If Texas is ever to approach cultural greatness, it will be because of the juice we get from the basic stuff we recognize as Texan. We might call this Level One of Texas culture. It is the bedrock, the foundation that supports everything to come.

Living in West Texas is like being close to the ocean, with the sky serving as a natural point of focus for the contemplation of eternity.

JUST SOUTH OF AMARILLO is Palo Duro Canyon, a red gash in the landscape a thousand feet deep and 120 miles long, ranging from half a mile to 20 miles in width. Only the Grand Canyon is larger. Palo Duro was the heart of the Comanchería. The last band of southern Plains Indians who refused to submit to the dominion of the white colonizers gathered there,

Friendliness is a sort of mandate in the state. The state motto is Friendship. Highway signs enjoin us to Drive Friendly. And indeed, if you are traveling on a two-lane road and see a vehicle coming from the opposite direction, the protocol is to raise an index finger about an inch off the rim of the steering wheel in a laconic salute. Steve’s brother-in-law says he decided to move to Texas when he saw people thanking the bus driver as they disembarked.

Although income inequality in the Metroplex is below that of America’s other largest cities—New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago—when measured by neighborhoods, the greater Dallas area is the most unequal big city in America, divided by pockets of concentrated poverty and extreme affluence. One cannot miss the racial division that is at the heart of this disparity. Nationally, on average, black people make up 40 percent of the homeless population, but in Dallas, according to a census of the homeless in January 2017, that figure is 63 percent.

But Williams still held a commanding lead in the polls when he met Richards at a forum in Dallas. She stuck out her hand and said, “Hello, Claytie.” He declined the gesture, violating the cowboy code that is deeply ingrained in every Texan. In that instant, Williams lost the election.

Richards wore designer suits but picked her teeth, and she cleaned her fingernails with a Swiss Army knife. I think she was always a little amazed, after storming the ramparts, to find herself in the seat of power, but she cherished the comedy of the situation. Molly once told me that when the ACLU filed suit against a manger scene in the capitol, she called Governor Richards and asked, “Annie, is it really necessary to remove the crèche?” “I’m afraid so,” Richards replied, “and it’s a shame because it’s about the only time we ever had three wise men in the capitol.”

JOE ELY, a singer-songwriter friend of mine, marched me through an immense Walmart in Lubbock. We walked toward the rear of the store, past the appliances and ladies’ clothing, until we arrived at the diapers. Joe turned to the baby strollers and said, “Here, right here, was Buddy Holly’s house.”

Joe and I rode down Broadway, the redbrick main street, past the only skyscraper in Lubbock, the twenty-story Great Plains Life Building, which sat empty for years after being hit by a tornado in 1970. “You can see it’s still a little twisted,” Joe pointed out. There’s a vacant lot where his father’s Disabled American Veterans Thrift Store used to be, across the street from where several Mexican dance halls in the old warehouses once stood. “I was a young kid, but there was music on every corner,” Joe said, “with accordions and bajo sextos and even horn sections. There couldn’t be bars because Lubbock was dry.” I asked Joe what made Lubbock such a musical town. “I don’t know about others, but I think all the emptiness made me want to fill it up,” he said.

We headed out Highway 84 to the Cotton Club, a roadhouse fifteen miles outside of town. The club has gone through many hands, and burned down several times. Joe himself owned it for a while. It’s a one-story clapboard building, an elongated shack, really, but at one time it was considered the most important venue between Dallas and Los Angeles. Johnny Cash, Tex Ritter, Fats Domino, and Benny Goodman appeared there. Bob Wills performed every Friday night. Then in 1955, a cultural tornado arrived in the form of Elvis Presley.

Joe recalled another Lubbock musician who went to high school with him, Norman Odam, a gawky kid who would stand on the stoop of the schoolhouse, at 7:00 a.m., before classes began, and sing at the top of his lungs. Kids would throw pennies at him, which Odam gathered for his lunch money. He began calling himself Legendary Stardust Cowboy. He actually recorded a few songs with Mercury Records, including “Paralyzed.” “It’s three minutes of screaming at the top of his lungs, played on a G7 chord,” said Joe. “It nails you to the wall. T Bone Burnett was on drums. They made some test pressings and sent them to the Dallas stations, and within a week it was getting more play than the Beatles.” Legendary Stardust sank as quickly as he rose, but his persona influenced David Bowie, who modeled his Ziggy Stardust character on him and actually covered a couple of his incoherent songs.

“Growing up in Lubbock, you had to sorta make your own entertainment,” he said, and the audience laughed knowingly. “My parents had friends who owned the dry-cleaning store. We’d go out to the lake for a picnic after church, and then we’d go in the back door of the dry cleaners and they’d let us kids try on other people’s clothes. There was no greater thrill. I wish I had a song about that.”