What Does It Take To Be A Great Texan?
And do I qualify? (Probably not)
My old man was gentle unless you managed to piss him off, and then you’d see the preacher’s boy inside him summon some of the Old Testament. The people who could get his dander up included snobs, bullies, and Republicans, especially the Country Club types, who are often both snobs and bullies. He loathed inconsiderate men, the smart, self-centered kind who never cover their noses when they sneeze, knowing full well how sickness spreads but don’t give a shit.
He was a Texan and I am not. I was raised outside of Washington DC, in Northern Virginia, which Southerners will tell you isn’t really the South but Robert E. Lee is still the second most famous person from that part of the country, right after George Washington and before Shirley McClaine.
He had moved to the suburbs of DC to work for a powerful Democratic Texas Senator, the last of a breed, a WWII vet, the son of a tycoon who cared about the poor and struggling the way many patricians of his generations did. I don’t know if those well-heeled goody-goodies truly believed in helping the disadvantaged, but they liked to talk about it. My dad was his press secretary, a job title that embarrassed me as a boy because only women were secretaries.
