Texas Yet Again

Steve Bates is in an unfortunate position.   Actually he is in more than one unfortunate position, but the one I have in mind is that he is, to my thinking, somewhat more sensitive than is good for him, to the myriad slurs that he hears leveled against his beloved state, that Lone Star place that, though undoubtedly real, still quite often appears to be mythical.

I can speak to this because I am from another place, Washington, D.C. that also is the longtime butt of unwelcome observations that it gets, often at the hands of ingrates reporting there for work, a trap into which even our current President fell, the first day it snowed there after his inauguration.

And when someone commenting on Steve's weblog particularly has something derogatory to say about Texas, he replies in kind, usually with their permanent departure from his world of the ones and zeroes strongly in mind.

The other day, when such a post of his expressing that attitude stayed up on his site without anybody else responding, I had the temerity to leave one there myself, against the background of having already said several things through the years about Texas that he had had reservations about, though they hadn't been strong enough, I suppose, to rile him up to any noticeable extent.

In this latest "Texas" remark of mine I just said, as far as I can remember my own several words, "Texas is the U.S.'s  Great Symbolic State.  As such, it is the source of far more than its share of the country's metaphors.   So no point in getting stirred up over the things that are said about it too often."

I haven't yet checked out Steve's response.   To his great credit, he always responds to every comment he gets, and I don't know of anyone else who matches him in doing that, though a couple of ladies come close.

And now, in the movie I just mentioned in my previous post, "The Express," the two Rainbow stars of the great 1961 Syracuse football team, rated No. 1 in the country,  are contemplating going to Dallas to confront the Texas Longhorns, the No. 2 team, in the Cotton Bowl. After having already had a harrowing experience playing in West Virginia in those terrible days of  racial segregation and extreme animosity,  one of the players, with mainly the fans in mind, says to the other, "You haven't been south till you've been to Texas."

That, my friends, is just what I meant!

I've been thinking of recommending to Steve this movie and the way in which the Texas football team is vividly depicted as being indeed a collection of fearsome, long-horned monsters that it would have appeared to be indeed impossible to beat, and in their own surroundings.  Steve might not mind having some aspect of Texas having the ability to throw the fear of God into its erstwhile critics.  But do I dare?

Nevertheless "The Express" is indeed an excellent movie of its kind, in all respects, with not a false step to be seen anywhere.