Nuts to You!

MAIN STREET U.S.A.-- It's been kind of fun, I tell you: a Florida Democratic congressman, one Alcee Hastings, calls Texas a "crazy state." Texans -- e.g., Rick Perry -- joyfully, jubilantly acknowledged the craziness that has made our state (yes, I am one of the assorted bedlamites) foremost in the country for economic growth. How come Texas leads in job creation and in general economic wellbeing -- the oil price free-fall notwithstanding? Because we're all nuts down here? It's a nice kind of nuttiness, if so.

Not that Texas -- very much a part of our fallen, post-Edenic world -- is without its modern challenges, including deficiencies in the public schools and the persistence of poverty amid plenty: the same challenges, come to think of it, facing Congressman Hastings' Florida. To say nothing -- in variant degree -- of progressive paradises such as California, New York, Illinois and Massachusetts, where enlightened opinion would shut down quickly enough any crazy, Texas-like adventures in the spread of freedom.

The main difference between crazy Texas and the sane, rational world of the East and West coasts and upper Midwest is commitment to freedom. Texas has that commitment in what is, these days, extraordinary measure: high, hot, heavy. The other regions -- shall we put it so, for the sake of politeness -- could use a bit more of the same.

A commitment to freedom generally strikes the non-committed as, well, kind of odd. It's dangerous to strike out for unexplored territory. What if the Indians get you? What if you just plain fail? In Texas history it happened a lot. The Comanches got their share of settler scalps. Economic reverses, sometimes intensified by bad weather and boll weevils, claimed their own share of victims. The adventurous kept a comin', and still do, because in Texas there was -- still is -- the chance to put brains and dreams to work in remarkable ways

The sane, rational states aren't much on adventure. Sane, rational people rarely are. They favor security and protection; the comfortable, snoozy world of Frodo the Hobbit. Do our crazy Texans (who, in Eastern lore, would probably just as soon bag a Hobbit with a 12-gauge as give him a second look) despise warmth and comfort? Not in the least. Texans like to ally warmth and comfort with the adventure necessary much of the time to create and secure them.

Whereas the sane, rational states emphasize policies that protect through heavy government spending -- financed by wealth-"sharing" -- crazy Texas are likelier to emphasize the freedom to do and to be. To our very own wackos and nut cases we cannot fairly impute callous indifference to human suffering. Texas' do-good network -- highly informal -- of charities and churches and hospitals is extensive: the more so, one is entitled to guess, due to the lighter, looser role of government around here, compared to government's hyper-expensive role in the sane, rational states.

The benefits of freedom were once strongly attested to throughout a nation adventurous enough to assert its freedoms by fighting a world power. That was a couple of hundred years before much of the country settled into the comfortable habit of asking -- often enough, demanding -- to be taken care of. Ummmmm ... another blanket, if you please. Thanks. Feels so good, so warm, so ... zzzzz.

The habit is more deeply entrenched in Europe than in America. Government in Europe seems most of the time to resemble a welfare agency staffed by big-hearted nurses to every human affliction. The sane, rational states of America tend to look on in envy. If only they had as much money to pour into good works!

They would, but for the Lone Star loonies who go around advocating and, worst of all, practicing the freedom to take chances, risk their money, risk their livelihoods and friendships, maybe even their lives, to find out ...

Find out what? That's the thing you never know in a place unafraid to rate opportunity and expectation and personal achievement as great human goods. You have to be, it would seem on present evidence, stark raving nuts to live in such a place.

You see, this last month or so I finally went to Europe for the first time. I hadn’t ever been, and didn’t too much want to. But you know all my damned friends are always talking about “the time they went to Europe.” So, I finally went. It was a hell of a trip to be sure. All they did when they saw me was say the same thing, before they’d ever met me. “Hey cowboy, we love Texas.” I guess the hat tipped em off.

But let me tell you what, they all came up with a smile on their faces. You know why? They knew for damned sure that I was gonna be nice to em. They knew it cause they knew I was from Texas. They knew something that hadn’t even hit me. They knew Texans, even though they’d never met one.

That’s when it occurred to me. Do you know what is great about Texas? Do you know why when my friend Beverly and I were trekking across country to see 15 baseball games we got sick and had to come home after 8? Do you know whyevery time I cross the border I say, “Lord, please don’t let me die in_____”? Do you know why children in Japan can look at a picture of the great State and know exactly what it is about the same time they can tell a rhombus from a trapezoid?

I can tell you that right quick. You.

The samespirit that made 186 men cross that line in the sand in San Antonio damned near 165 years ago is still in you today. Why else would my friend send me William Barrett Travis’ plea for help in an email just a week ago, or why would Charles Stanfield ask me to reprint a Texas Independence column from a year ago? What would make my friend Elizabeth say, “I don’t know if I can marry a man who doesn’t love Texas like I do?” Why in the hell are 1,000 people coming to my house this weekend to celebrate a holiday for what usedto be a nation that is now a state?

Because the spirit that made that nation is the spirit that burned in every person who founded this great place we call Texas, and they passed it on through blood or sweat to everyone of us.

You see, that spirit that made Texas what it is is alive in all of us, even if we can’t stand next to a cannon to prove it, and it’s our responsibility to keep that fire burning. Every person who ever put a”Native Texan” or an “I wasn’t born in Texas but I got here as fast as I could” sticker on his car understands.

Anyone who ever hung a map of Texas on their wall or flew a Lone Star flag on their porch knows what I mean. My Dad’s buddy Bill has an old saying. He says that some people were forged of a hotter fire. Well, that’s what it is to be Texan. To be forged of a hotter fire. To know that part of Colorado was Texas. That part of New Mexico was Texas. That part of Oklahoma was Texas. Yep. Talk all you want. Part of what you got was what we gave you. To look at a picture of Idaho or Istanbul and say, “what the Hell is that?” when you know that anyone in Idaho or Istanbul who sees a picture of Texas knows damned good and well what it is. It isn’t the shape, it isn’t the state, it’s the state of mind.

You’re what makes Texas. The fact that you would take 15 minutes out of your day to read this, because that’s what Texas means to you, that’s what makes Texas what it is. The fact that when you see the guy in front of you litter you honk and think, “Sonofabitch. Littering on MY highway.”

When was the last time you went to a person’s house in New York and you saw a big map of New York on their wall? That was never. When did you ever drive through Oklahoma and see their flag waving on four businesses in a row? Can you even tell me what the flag in Louisiana looks like? I damned sure can’t. But I bet my ass you can’t drive 20 minutes from your house and not see a business that has a big Texas flag as part of its logo. If you haven’t done business with someone called AllTex something or Lone Star somebody or other, or Texas such and such, you hadn’t lived here for too long.

When you ask a man from New York what he is, he’ll say a stockbroker, or an accountant, or an ad exec. When you ask a woman from California what she is, she’ll tell you her last name or her major. Hell either of em might say “I’m a republican,” or they might be a democrat. When you ask a Texan what they are, before they say, “I’m a Methodist,” or “I’m a lawyer,” or “I’m a Smith,” they tell you they’re a Texan.

I got nothin against all those other places, and Lord knows they’ve probably got some fine folks, but in your gut you know it just like I do, Texas is just a little different.

So tomorrow when you drive down the road and you see a person broken down on the side of the road, stop and help. When you are in a bar in California, buy a Californian a drink and tell him it’s for Texas Independence Day. Remind the person in the cube next to you that he wouldn’t be here enjoying this if it weren’t for Sam Houston, and if he or she doesn’t know the story, tell them.

When William Barrettt Travis wrote in 1836 that he would never surrender and he would have Victory or Death, what he was really saying was that he and his men were forged of a hotter fire. They weren’t your average everyday men. Well, that is what it means to be a Texan. It meant it then, and that’s why it means it today. It means just what all those people North of the Red River accuse us of thinking it means. It means there’s no mountain that we can’t climb. It means that we can swim the Gulf in the winter. It means that Earl Campbell ran harder and Houston is bigger and Dallas is richer and Alpine is hotter and Stevie Ray was smoother and God vacations in Texas. It means that come Hell or high water, when the chips are down and the Good Lord is watching, we’re Texans by damned, and just like in 1836, that counts for something.

So for today at least, when your chance comes around, go out and prove it. It’s true because we believe it’s true. If you are sitting wondering what the Hell I’m talking about, this ain’t for you. But if the first thing you are going to do when the Good Lord calls your number is find the men who sat in that tiny mission in San Antonio and shake their hands, then you’re the reason I wrote this night, and this is for you.

So until next time you hear from me, God Bless and Happy Texas Independence Day.

—Bum Phillips

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