Waltz across Texas

New Jerseyites, New Yorkers, and Californians, Dance with the One Who Brung You and Stop Moving to Texas

Here’s 7 reasons why in no particular order — because that’s how we do in Texas

Photo by author Carol Lennox of my good buddy Gaylen, originally from Oklahoma.

I’m in a quaint, touristy store in Fredericksburg Texas, wine capitol of — well, Texas. A perfectly coiffed, blonde, white lady, in a buckskin dress with fringe down to here, walks into the section where my sister and I are shopping.

My sister admires her dress and asks where she got it.

“In the Fort Worth Stockyards,” she announces with a Jersey wives’ accent.

“I also got this Indian blanket coat there.” Which she’s carrying, because November in Texas isn’t Fall weather. It can either be colder than a witches teat, or hotter than blue blazes. Today the blazes are leaning toward blue.

We’re from Fort Worth. We love it. It’s a wondrous place of art, culture, music, and western history. Some call it Cowtown. There are actual stockyards there, from the days of Santa Fe trail cattle drives — now converted into boutiquey shops and honky-tonks. That’s where she bought her appropriation swag.

She moved to Fort Worth from New Jersey, then to Houston. She says she doesn’t like Houston because it’s “too liberaL”