The UnTexan

WHY PORTLAND IS PORTLAND AND AUSTIN ISN'T

Austin will never be Portland no matter how many tattooed geeks, techies and Asian engineers move here. Portland is a smart place to live. It has trains and brains and bike lanes. Austin's not smart enough to overcome its greedy, strip-developing, lethal-injecting, pickup-driving, traffic-jamming Texas heart and none of the Austin cheerleaders and Austin boosters can shovel enough shit to cover that up. It is what it is and it ain't what it ain't.

Which is what makes this little tale so heartwarming:

My neighborhood's community email has been hopping. Folks have been in a tizzy the past few days over a low-flying cop helicopter. Of course, it doesn't take anything more than a couple of black guys fishing in the local pond to get people tizzy-fied and emailing about the imagined horrors of urban crime and dark invaders with evil intentions (someone who saw the guys fishing said she suspected they were selling drugs because one of them kept talking on his cell phone and she called the police even though she had no idea what the guy was talking about; a black neighbor sent out an email saying it seemed like the neighborhood hasn't changed much in the 20-plus years he has been here and that "fishing while black" -- in fact, doing anything while black -- still seemed to be enough of a crime for neighbors to bring the cops down on a man's ass. But many a proud Austinite's lily white breast hides a dark and racist heart; it comes with the territory, just like the pickup driving and lethal injecting and that last little bit of the Old South that J. Frank Dobie couldn't bury with cowboy talk). So, for a couple of days, the angsty emails have been flying and dark and violent urban fantasies growing around that cop chopper that was flying so low.

Well, here's what happened (directly from the email traffic): "OK! So, There were two individuals stealing livestock... one was detained. Then the other was found and both transported to jail. They were stealing goats and the goats were already loaded in the truck. So the police were just in time! And they got the bad guys!! I hope the bad guys have to pay for the hours worth of helicoptor fuel, etc."

And this was almost in the shadow of the highest tech Samsung factory at the edge of town.

Now if I happened to be the police reporter at the local newspaper, I would make a special effort to write about those goat rustlers just to give Austinites a little perspective about the past they cannot escape no matter how much they twitter and tweet. But the newspaper won't do that. The American-Statesman is not in the perspective business, it is in the cheerleader business. The Austin Chronicle is just about as bad, with overlong stories in little-bitty type. And if you give folks a real glimpse of themselves, the whole damned thing might fall apart. Austin is dreaming hipster dreams. It can't afford nightmares about goat rustlers.

DEATH AND TEXAS AND GOV. PERRY

There is a good chance that Texas has executed an innocent man. What else would you expect from the state that elected Rick Perry to be its governor? Todd Willingham was executed in 2004 for setting the fire that killed his three children. Now it appears that there are huge questions about whether the blaze was arson or not. Ooooops! But Gov. Perry isn't letting that bother him one little bit. When asked about the case, Perry said he thinks Willingham was guilty even if the arson evidence doesn't stand up to scrutiny. The question (appropriately raised by Michael Landauer of the Dallas Morning News): "How does the governor think Willingham killed his kids if not by arson?" If the arson wasn't arson what was Willingham guilty of? Even for Gov. Perry, not known for his intellectual prowess, this seems pretty damned dumb. The sad thing about the whole case is that no matter what, Perry goes on being governor and Willingham goes on being dead.

And Texas goes on killing people who kill people (or not). Christopher Coleman is due to die today while the rest of Texas settles in for a good dinner and an evening in front of the TV. Kenneth Mosely is scheduled to die Sept. 24. And John Ballentine on Sept 30. Six more are scheduled for execution by mid-November.

There was an op-ed piece from the New York Times in the local newspaper this morning. It quotes President John Kennedy telling his wife as they prepared to fly to Texas on the last day of his life, "We're heading into nut country today." Texas will kill you if it gets half a chance. JFK knew it. Todd Willingham knew it. I know it. And two of the three of us are already dead. I think about that sometimes.

After seven years I remain the UnTexan. Texas kills.

THE TEXANTHROPE

I always wondered why Davy Crockett liked Texas so much. It turns out he left Tennessee on Oct. 31, 1835, swore his allegiance to Texas in January 1836 and died a couple of months later, March 6, 1836.  It turns out he wasn't here long enough to matter. He wasn't in Texas six months before he died (some people might consider that a lucky break) but I'll bet he had plenty of time looking over the Alamo wall at all those Mexicans and first wondering where the hell they all came from (subsequent generations of Texans have had a similar response) and then wondering why he came. Maybe it was the last thing that passed through his mind as the Mexicans were killing him in a language he couldn't understand: "Why in the hell am I here?" The answer: It seemed like a good idea at the time. That happens to lots of people. It happened to us.

After all this time in Austin, my wife and I are just about to arrive in Texas or just about to begin leaving. I would like to think it is a toss-up, but probably not.

I have been battling Texas since our arrival -- for more than seven years. Now it appears Texas is winning. Or perhaps it has won already. Or the toss has been lost. At any rate, I feel tired, defeated and destined to spend the foreseeable future here. My wife and I came to Texas for the best of reasons (my wife's Texas-paid-for ph.d.) and the UnTexan was born out a mostly lighthearted, jesting disregard for a place he knew he would be leaving in a few years (four years at the most). Now we are three years past that and we have stayed for the worst of reasons (job, money, stuff, inertia, exhaustion, depression, fear, failure of imagination, more stuff, more money, more inertia or more fear or more exhaustion or less imagination, whatever) and over those "extra" years the UnTexan's lighthearted jesting has been drained of its lightheartedness. In fact, the UnTexan is well on the way to becoming the Texanthrope. We have stayed too long. We might not be leaving. She wants to stay longer. I am ill-prepared. Things have turned serious.

How does a man begin to survive such a place? Davy Crockett's no help; if he taught us anything it is that Texas will kill you.

First, I must remind myself that I am with my wife, not in Texas. Wife. Texas. Two distinctly different things. Looking at things this way has seen me through so far. And henceforth, I also will count on two documents to see me through to the end: 1) A Passport, which at least offers the illusion that I can leave though it seems more and more likely I never will; and 2) My Last Will and Testament, which will insist that my remains never be buried, spread, entombed or otherwise disposed of on or in Texas soil (unless they are with those of my wife because then I would remain with her, not in Texas). Remember that part of Lonesome Dove where Gus made his old friend Call haul his corpse all the way back to Texas in a buckboard? Now start after they arrived in Texas and run the film backwards and you will see what has to happen with me. I will insist on it. I'm sure it's something Gus would understand. One man's Texas is another man's unTexas. And it will be in writing. Gus understood that too.

My wife, my passport and my will. It's so simple. It's so complicated. It is the best I can do, at least for now. Texas is big; Texas looms large for us. And here we are like weary children on a long journey in a hot car who ask repeatedly and monotonously from the confines of the car's backseat, "Are we there yet? Are we there yet," and receive no answer. Still we can't stop asking. "When will we get there?"

"Have we left yet?"

Will it be soon?

SARAH PALIN RESIGNING BECAUSE SHE'S A GUY?

From Alaska, the relative of a friend emails that the rumor among some folks on Sarah Palin's frozen  home turf is that Gov. Hockey Mom is resigning because she is having an affair with Texas Gov. Rick Perry. All well and good (and in line with recent Republican tradition). But in Texas there is a persistent rumor that Rick Perry is a "man's man," but not in the way Texans usually understand it. Not saying any of this is true, but, if we add one rumor plus one rumor, we come up with the answer to why Sarah Palin is resigning:

She is a guy.

In love with Rick Perry.

Face it. This as good an explanation as any Palin has come up with so far. More fun too. Besides, these are strange days, indeed, for Republican governors (the party of family values). As James Brown said, "This is a man's world."

TEXAS LONGA, VITA BREVIS: THE WACKO-WACO VERSION

Some film folks wanted to spend $30 million to make a movie about the 1993 shootout between the feds and the followers of David Koresh up in Waco. And they thought the state was going to offer them tax incentives to shoot the movie near the scene of the crime and give it some actual Waco, Texas, verisimilitude. They had even scouted some sites with a member of the state's film commission. Then, much like the actual Branch Davidian debacle, some state official decided to burn the deal down. The tax incentives were jerked away because some guy on the film commission claimed he found "factual inaccuracies" in the script. This would be factual inaccuracies concerning an event about which the facts have never been clear in the first place? Go figure. But a flimsy excuse is still an excuse. The movie people claim it is censorship wrapped up in politics. But the film commission claims that even though what it is doing might seem like censorship, it's not really censorship and blah, blah, blah, and there is no politics involved. It turns out Texans are a sensitive bunch and they made a rule about it: If you want to get a tax break to make a movie in Texas, you can't be planning to show either "Texas or Texans in a negative fashion." That's actually part of the tax incentive deal, an idea introduced a couple of years ago by State Sen. Steve Ogden, who seems like a pretty ordinary Texas Republican guy when he is talking about things like the budget (he's smart about stuff like that) and until he opens his mouth and starts to pray (I heard him pray once at the beginning of one of those big toll road projects) and becomes a henchman for the God of development, roadbuilding, paving and generally fucking with the environment (a God Texans love to invoke), who Ogden claims (like James G. Watt before him -- remember him? The Reagan appointee who wanted to destroy the environment, insulted the Beach Boys and said charmingly of his own staff, "we have a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple and we have talent" before being forced to resign) gave man the job of controlling and taming the earth and all the creatures on it (or paving the earth and killing all the creatures on it, or something like that). I guess Ogden's God (obviously a spindoctor deity at heart) must have handed down a similar directive about controlling movie content and keeping Texas and Texans unsullied (keep in mind that Ogden is always screeching about big government and how its rules intrude and hinder the work of ordinary people). Utah is the only other state with such a provision in its tax incentive regulations. Maybe Mormons and Texans both have things they need to hide. But in the effort to make Texans look good in the movies, Ogden and the film commission have simply made Texas look silly -- again -- this time in front of the world at the Cannes Film Festival. But Texas doesn't need some Hollywood types to make it look silly. Gov. Rick ("I'm not really a seccessionist, I just can't stand the thought of THAT WOMAN being governor") Perry takes care of that all by himself. The man can't help showing Texas and Texans in a negative fashion. Maybe Ogden can think up some sort of regulation that would take away Perry's salary for doing and saying dumb stuff. It would save Texas money. It would save Texas face. Somebody might make a movie about it if they received the right incentive.

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A Report from the Stephanie Klein Universe: The queen of hubris and bullshit wrote a bit about the final episode of the television series Lost last week. She really gets into it and apparently likes to bring the full power of her undergraduate education to bear on the topic. In other words, she loves to show off. Which led her no doubt to write the following paragraph:

"FYI: Everything that rises must converse by Flannery O'Connor, the book Jacob is reading as Locke is pushed out the window by his father, 'aims to expose the sinful nature of humanity that often goes unrecognized in the modern secular world.'"

Well. FYI. Not really. Everything that rises in Stephanie's universe must (unfortunately) "converse" even when it would be better to simply shut up. Or maybe things "converse" in the Cliff's Notes version. However, in Flannery O'Connor's version of the world, things that rise must "CONVERGE." It's Everything that Rises Must Converge. And talking about it doesn't help. And just where did that unattributed quote about humanity and sin come from? Surely not from Steph herself.

WHEN STEVE SINGS TOWNES, I LISTEN

I first heard Townes Van Zandt in 1977. It was in New Mexico at my friend Tom's house. He told me it was an album I needed to hear called Live at the Old Quarter in Houston and it was a two-record set. I think I sat there listened to it all the way through, both records, both sides. It was just about the newest music (with some of the corniest jokes) I had ever heard. The words. The words. They weren't strung together like other writers string words together; Townes' words gathered wherever words gather to lean against each other, touch each other with meaning, and be heard. In 1977, New Mexico was new to me too so I figured at first maybe Townes belonged to that time and place in my life, but that wasn't it. It is always the time and place for Townes. I bought my own copy of Live at the Old Quarter and played it nearly to death. It was among the first cd's I bought and among the first albums I put on iTunes. When I hit shuffle on the iTunes and a Townes song pops up, I still stop and listen. I have heard "Pancho and Lefty" hundreds of times; I even learned to play and sing it myself. It plays, I listen. Townes' songs remain some of the newest music I have ever heard. I know he ended up a sorry-assed drunk and a burden to his friends and family, but as I heard the novelist T.C. Boyle say a few minutes ago on television, a man doesn't have to be a good person to make great art (he was talking about Frank Lloyd Wright, but Townes probably falls into that category too). Having known some artists in my life, I have to agree.

Now Steve Earle has made a new album called Townes. Steve has been Townes-obsessed for a long time, even named his son after Townes. It turns out Steve is the right man at the right time to sing Townes Van Zandt songs. Steve is a word guy and he seems to have recognized the same thing I did a long time ago: Townes didn't write lyrics; he gathered words together and turned them loose to do what they needed to do. That is what the best writers do. Steve has that knack of setting the words free too. Of course, there is one song Steve should have left alone. A few years ago Willie Nelson turned Townes' song "Marie" into the saddest song I have ever heard on a Townes tribute cd and Steve doesn't even come close. But he makes up for it with a particularly raw version of "Lungs." Steve lifts Townes and all his darkness up into the light. This is a set of songs worth owning.

The New York Times did a good piece recently on Steve and Townes.

If only Texas could be as wonderful as its music.

TEXAS LONGA, VITA BREVIS or IF AUSTIN WERE IN CALIFORNIA...

I received an email recently from a guy from someplace else who visited Austin and didn't particularly like the place (he was refreshingly un-gaga about it). I liked him right away. In fact, he didn't seem to like Texas and Texans and what he called the "Texan indoctrination-hive mentality thing" (and he is right; Texans are as prickly as a fistful of barbed wire -or "bobwar" as they say down on the ranch - about who they are and where they live and how many generations they've been here and who you are and where you live and how long you have been here). That made me laugh and like him even more. As for the "Keep Austin Weird" thing that is some sort of local rallying cry, this guy had one thing to say: "...if Austin were in California, it would be called Sacramento" (with music). And I agree there too. The weirdest thing about Austin is that no one seems to recognize the Sacramento-ness of the place (the "Keep Austin Weird" slogan has been so formalized and institutionalized it belongs in Sacramento). But when you always look at the world through Texas-colored glasses, you are bound to miss a lot. The guy went home and I have to admit I envy anybody who can say of Austin, Texas, U.S.A. (as he did), "I just drove out of there and the further I got, the better I felt." I can imagine saying something like that. Bit I am not sure I will ever get the chance to say it. "Texas longa, vita brevis" or, to translate that so the locals can understand it, "Texas are long, life ain't, y'all."

'Y'ALL' GONNA BE THE DEATH OF ME

I grew up in the Land of Y'all. My wife didn't. She spent most of her life up north. I love her Yankee-ness. She was born in Kansas and grew up in Minnesota and Ohio. She lived in Utah for a short time years before I met her (not long enough to do any permanent damage); then we spent a decade in New Mexico. Her accent reflects all of those places -- there is even a little Spanish sprinkled in here and there from the time we spent in New Mexico. But she does not talk Southern. Not a word of it. Of course, she married a southerner, but I started trying to break myself of the habits of southern speech years ago when I was nearly grown and my wife was still in elementary school somewhere far to the north (and I have been pretty successful at it, unless I am back home in North Carolina hanging around relatives too long or bourbon too long or both). I never heard her talk Southern until yesterday.

In a brief telephone conversation about having her car repaired, she used the word "Y'all" four times. That was frightening enough, but when I pointed it out to her and she said she didn't even realize she had done it, that was downright scary.

The Land of Y'all was not where I wanted to be. It still isn't. I left, but here I am again, stuck in Y'all, Texas. And my wife is going native but she doesn't even know it. It's enough to give a person a sick headache.

'T' FOR TEXAS, 'T' FOR TIGHTER AND TIGHTER

 

A popular Texas bumper sticker, but there should be others.

Nearly seven years of my life have been lived in Texas. My wife is here, my house, my dogs, my job, her job, our bank account. My therapist is here (I finally realized that an UnTexan needs a therapist to live in Texas, even if it is in Austin). In a few months my son will be living a couple of hours down the road (he is blithely moving to Houston, but I suspect he is no more cut out to live in Texas than I am, and when he is ready for a therapist of his own, I will give him the name of my guy). Texas hangs on me like a cheap suit pulled off the rack at the discount store. No amount of tailoring can make it fit. I have been wearing it for more than six years. For the first few years I had a reason to wear it. For the past couple of years I have worn it because I feel like I have to. Either way, it never has been a comfortable fit. And to make things worse, I feel my Texas suit shrinking around me, narrowing through the shoulders, shortening in the sleeves, shriveling in the pants. Already my movements are restricted and my life feels a size or two too tight. I fear the time is coming when I will not be able to move at all. In fact, I know the time will arrive in a few months. My son is moving to Texas. And I am proud of the accomplishments that are bringing him here. My wife is happy (she would like to lure our other son from Tucson too). And I am glad she is happy. She is eager for him to get here and will be immobilized with joy when he arrives. I will be glad to see him too. But I fear he will pull the door shut behind him and there will be no way out for any of us -- even if the time comes to leave.

EMBRACING THE NEW YEAR (SORT OF)

 Saguaro cactus in the national park east of Tucson, AZ.

My wife and I didn't go home for Christmas. And we didn't stay at home either.

Whoever wrote that song about how "There's no place like home for the holidays" didn't know what in the hell they were saying or - worse - they knew it was a lie and said it anyway just to sell some records (people will tell a lot of lies when there is money to be made). Still, home always sounds like a good idea before Christmas, especially the way Bing Crosby describes it. But after Christmas most people make it sound like they were taken prisoner immediately upon arrival and held against their will until the festivities ended. "I'll be home for Christmas," Bing Crosby sings. But Christmas at anyone's home can easily become a hostage crisis. My wife and I like spending Christmas on our on turf -- or at least on our own terms. We don't pressure our adult children to come home.

Sometimes we travel, sometimes we don't. This year we went to visit our sons - one in Tucson, the other in San Diego. We left on Christmas Day and returned on New Year's Eve. We enjoy both our sons' company and we never run out of things to talk about when we are with them. They are grownups and we talk about grownup things. And we did. In Tucson we reminded ourselves of how much we love desert places; in San Diego we stayed on Coronado Island and spent time walking on the beach, getting caught in the fog, indulging our love for the sea. It was a good trip. And the only Christmas trees involved just happened to be there when we arrived. There was one at the Mexican bar on the south side of Tucson and another at the home of our son's friend on Coronado. The only bad part of the trip was coming home and that was only bad because home is still in Texas.  But I always have the nagging feeling that our real home is somewhere else, somewhere not Texas, maybe even somewhere we never have been. But that is old news. I don't call myself the UnTexan for nothing.

But it is 2009 and I am still here in Texas. I love my house in Texas and I love the life my wife and I share in it. I have a wonderful wife (we have been married more than 20 years), a loving family (our sons were happy to see us), a good (but stressful) job. I have a sailboat, art on the walls, a nice car (hers) and a pickup truck (mine). I have great dogs. I have some friends. I love my patio. I like the weather here. It's a wonderful life but I do not feel wonderful. I feel like I am being held hostage by an enemy I do not recognize in a place I don't like. I am at odds with myself. I am a remarkably happy man who is remarkably unhappy and I do not understand how that can be. I understand the Texas part. But there are lots of things that I do not understand. I do not look my age, but I feel my age. A lot of men my age have appeared on the obit pages recently. My eye always drifts to the ages of the dead. The year always 1944 jumps off the page. I have thyroid surgery coming up next week. Musician Delaney Bramlett (he was sort of a star back in the day and collaborated with George Harrison, Eric Clapton, Leon Russell and others) was a little (not much) older than I am, but he died last week of complications from the same gallbladder surgery I am supposed to have later this year. Perhaps it is simply mortality that is on my mind, but I don't think so. But it is 2009 and I am still here in Texas, trying to understand.

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ALICIA PARLETTE SIGHTING: Hundreds of people have come to my site in the months since I wrote about Alicia (Where Is Alicia Parlette). Finally someone passed along this link to a piece about meeting Alicia and says on her site, "she she looks healthy and vibrant and that was inspiring to me since she had written about many unpleasant cycles of chemo." It is good to know she is still out there.

Happy New Year.

Christmas tree in a bar. Tucson, AZ.