Dear Texas, I am driving through your state today, and I just wanted to say that I am a big fan. I’ve always loved your heart. Your mind. Your hands. And above all, your Willie.
Also, your food. Your brisket. Your beanless chili. Your batter fried steaks. Your jalapeños and chiltepíns.
Your Kolaches.
I love your unabashed sense of regional pride. And I love how you manage this while also defying stereotypes that are so wrongly cast upon you.
I have never been able to successfully generalize Texans. I have sipped Shiner Bock with Sephardic Jews who judge chili cookoffs. I have visited the Sri Meenakshi Devasthanam temple, guided by a Hindu cowboy. I have attended Pentecostal potlucks held by non-English-speaking Guatemalans.
This is why I love your culture. It’s wholly and completely your own.
Your Lapland Cajun humor. Your Mexican pathos. Your African-American grit and perseverance. Your Great Plains cheerfulness. Your German work ethic. Your Scot-born stubbornness. Your Irish tolerance for distilled corn liquor.
Your Cherokee, Comanche, Apache soul, Caddo, Choctaw, Karankawa, Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, Alabama-Coushatta, and Kickapoo.
You are “Austin Weird.” You are acres of lonesome prairie. You are the majestic Hill Country. You are miles of Monahans sand dunes, without a gas station in sight, testing the weary road-tripper who really needs to pee.
You are 80 mph wind gusts in Amarillo. You are Bob Wills. Blind Lemon Jefferson. Stevie, Strait, and Selena.
You are arresting vistas, beautiful rios, and a pristine Gulf Coast. You gave the world the towering Guadalupes, the mighty Chisos, the soaring Franklins, the magnificent Davises, and most of all, you gave us H-E-B.
You are the “Cradle of Liberty” in San Antone. You are “America’s Stockyard” in Fort Worth. You are a Yellow Rose. A bluebonnet. The Piney Woods, the Palo Duro Jacob’s Well, and Doctor Pepper.
When I began writing, as a young man, I was sometimes given the job of writing about your beautiful state. Mostly, during your times of headline tragedy. And you always moved me.
It was your strength. Your bravery and determination amidst freak storms, fires, statewide power outages, mass shootings, and eras of truly bad pop-Country music.
Once, after a snowstorm, I interviewed several farmer-moms who fed their families without electricity or gas, cooking over crude fires, butchering their own meat, serving as their own pit masters.
They were undaunted. Amazingly, neither their families nor their horses ever missed a meal.
I stood with the rest of America after a lone gunman opened fire in one of your schools, killing 19 of your students and two teachers.
I interviewed your paramedics. I spoke with your parents and teachers. One local man who had suffered an incredible loss, said, “This tragedy only forces me to trust God harder.”
Somehow, Texas, your belief in Things Unseen only grew stronger. I don’t know how you do it.
I have watched your fathers navigate bass boats across flooded rivers, searching for the bodies of their 25 drowned daughters and two camp counselors from Camp Mystic.
I carry a small keepsake from Camp Mystic wherever I go, given to me by a former camper. Often I hold this keepsake in my hands and think of those 27 souls. I pray for their families. I pray for their communities. And I pray we never forget their names.
I flip on my blinker. I pull over at a rural, Central Texas filling station.
An elderly Marlboro Man is standing out front, lighting up. There are turkey feathers draped from his hat. Beadwork on his belt. His hair is in a long braid.
He notices my out-of-town plates and says, “Haddy,” he says.
“Hello,” I reply.
“Just visiting?”
“Yessir.”
“Where from?”
“Alabama.”
“How you like Texas?”
“God bless Texas,” I say.
“Too late.” He clicks his lighter shut. “He already does that.”