The Great State of Texas [antikvár]

mTHE GREAT STATE OF TEXASTexas!Is there another state whose hold on the popular imagination justifies an exclamation mark? California, perhaps, in Hollywood's prime, or Alaska in the Gold Rush days. But the very thought of Delaware! or Arkansas! or Minnesota! reminds us that states, like nations, develop characters of their own, and the character of Texas is nothing if not emphatic. On this, those who love it and those who do not can readily agree: Texas is a place of mythic proportions.From peripheral significance in the days of the Confederacy and decades as a tributary of eastern finance, Texas has grown to be the third most populous state in the Union. When, in 1959, Alaska seized its bragging rights as the biggest, Texas rebounded with the consolation that it was, still, the largest fully thawed state.The central fact about Texas is that it once was a country. Admittedly, it is a fact not uppermost in the minds of the millions of newcomers mostly easterners and midwesterners, white collar and blue who have moved there in the great sunbelt migrations of the past fifteen years. The visible reminders of nine years of Texan independence (1836-1845) are few: a modestly restored French Legation in Austin; a towering memorial obelisk (taller than Washington's Monument, of course) at a decisive battlefield near Houston; the hallowed Alamo. It is the invisible reminders that matter.The Republic of Texas is at the root of the Texan psyche, subconsciously setting Texans apart from their fellow Americans. Texas has its own national heroes. Its history, which by law must be taught in its schools, recounts a distinctive struggle against the Indian and the Mexican foe: the Texan won his land in blood. Texans celebrate not only their own independence day on March 2, but also the battle of San Jacinto on April 21 that made their independence possible. And for good measure the state government shuts down on Lyndon B. Johnson's birthday, August 27, and for the anniversary of the date, June J9, when Texas slaves first heard they were free. No place not convinced of its own uniqueness could invent such holidays.Of all the startling facts about Texas, the most unexpected one is this: Texas is the only state which has the right to divide itself into five new states. In 1845, theJoint Congressional Resolution that brought the Texas Republic into the American LJnion contained this provision: "New statesof convenient size, not exceeding four in number, in addition to said State of Texas, and having sufficient population, may hereafter, by consent of said State, be formed out of the territory thereof, which shall be entitled to admission under the provisions of the Federal Constitution."For years after Texas joined the Union, division into more states was simply taken for granted. Texans of that era probably would be surprised to discover that Austin has remained the capital of one solitary state. Serious attempts to split Texas surfaced in 1847, 1852, 1866, 1868, 1871, and 1915. All failed. In the early 1970s, the idea gained currency again, more or less tongue-in-cheek, when OPEC appeared on the world scene and Texas pols began casting about for notions that might give them more clout in national affairs for instance, ten United States Senators.Why, outsiders may wonder, does Texas not go ahead and do it? In our litigious age, it is surely not because the United States Supreme Court might stomp on Texan toes and throw the whole notion out. The reason goes to the heart of what makes Texas a different sort of place: Texans have a stubborn loyalty to their state, and they just do not want to let go. "Who," asked nineteenth-century opponents of division, "will give up the bloodstained walls of the Alamo?"Any outsider who has traveled much in Texas will marvel that people in communities as diverse as Amarillo, where the high plains cattle culture has the orderly look and feel of Kansas, and Brownsville, eight hundred miles away on the Rio Grande, where the rhythms of Mexico punctuate the very air, hold the passionate conviction that they share the same Texan identity. Unlike New Jersey, a state that sometimes seems apt to fly apart in response to the pull of its neighboring metropolises, New York and Philadelphia, Texas is centripetal: it holds together its own. Texans are proud, and they are loyal.When, at eighteen, I first became a Texan myself, it was as a college student at the Rice Institute (now Rice University) in Houston. The Bayou City, a nickname so