[Disclaimer:
I sincerely hope that I do not offend anyone by what I am about
to say. If Texas is the state of your
birth, please forgive me. I understand
that you had no choice in the matter and would naturally feel somewhat defensive. I apologize in advance for my unbridled
antagonism toward your home state. If
Texas is your adopted state, however, then we must simply agree to disagree. Since you are gay and because Texan's in
general are about as homophobic as you can get, I have no desire to add to your
mental anguish. I hope you can get some help.]
It's safe to assume, I
suppose, that by the term "ex" is meant "erstwhile". It would also likely be safe to assume that
the "erstwhile" refers to lovers.
Since I have had only two lovers in my lifetime and one of them is dead
and the other lives in Michigan, there is very little I can say about this
subject directly. However, I do have a
few things to say about the state of Texas in general.
If I ever have a lover who
says to me, "Let's move to Texas", the next words out of my mouth
will be, "So long, pardner.
Remember to roll your pant legs up so they don't get in the horse
shit". I hate Texas so much that,
whenever I think of the Alamo, I'm overcome not with pride but with
regret. My most hated actor, John Wayne,
not only directed the movie, The Alamo,
but cast himself in the role of Col. Davy Crockett. As fate would have it, I had been planning to
watch the movie the very evening the call came that my father had died of a
massive stroke. That was not the cause
of my regret, however. No, that was
because the wrong side lost.
My daddy had a brother--the
youngest of four--who moved his family to Austin. He was a high muckety-muck with the state
school Board. When I say
"high", I mean tall--he was about 6 foot 4. He was also the first of the four brothers to
die. I'm not going to say that Texas
politics killed him but the Texan he married might have been implicated had
there been an investigation. Not only
did she have a drawl that would have shamed the two Andy's--Devine and
Griffith--into going back to acting school, she had a temper that had me hiding
beneath the dining room buffet in abject fear.
Oh, they sure do take their
football serious down there. I once attended
a game between the Texas Longhorns and the Aggies. It was the only time I saw a referee get
knocked out. I think the crowd made more
noise over that than any of the scoring plays.
During the OPEC-induced
recession of 1984, I and several of my co-workers at Ford Motor in Dearborn,
MI, were laid off. One of them moved to
Texas looking for work. He stayed less
than a year due to culture shock.
And what's the deal with
"The Lone Star State" as their motto?
According to Wikipedia, "Texas
is nicknamed the Lone Star State to signify Texas as a former
independent republic and as a reminder of the state's struggle for independence
from Mexico". Sounds like a lot of
"Texas hooey" to me. I think
the motto is a way to remind the other 49 states how special Texas is and that
they just might secede at any time.
Secession is no idle threat,
coming as it did from Texas' governor himself.
I would humbly suggest that the U.S. cede Texas to Mexico in exchange
for Tijuana. Not only would this overnight
raise the cultural and political intelligence of the United States as a whole
but also cure a good bit of our problems with border security.
As a boy, I was enamored of
the Lone Ranger. As a man, I've learned
that the real Texas Rangers used to take Mexicans out into the desert and shoot
them, leaving their corpses to rot, just as I've seen John Wayne do in the
movie, Red River.
Well, I don't want this to
turn into a rant. If you've ever been to
Amarillo, you'll understand why I think that the people of Texas have suffered
enough already. I'm just biding my time
for the day when the brown-skinned immigrant voters outnumber the knuckle-heads
that control the politics down there today.
Better the state turn purple than my face.
© 13 January 2014
I came to the beautiful state of
Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married
and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of
Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an
engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26
happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I
should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn't
getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just
happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both
fortuitous and smooth.
Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver,
my husband's home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in
October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility
is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there
to light the way.
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