'That Other Thermopylae, the Alamo'

A reader asks for impressions of Texas, a place she, a lifelong Northerner, has never visited. Twenty years ago last month I saw Texas for the first time, and the first surprise, seen from the air, was abundant greenery. I was expecting desert and tumbleweeds. Houston is dense with trees, especially oaks. Our neighborhood is Oak Forest, and for once that’s more than developer’s hyperbole. The day I arrived in 2004 I met Kinky Friedman, whose car had stalled and I helped push.

Here’s a vast generality: Texas, or at least Houston, is a notably friendly place, a compound of Southern hospitality and Mexican graciousness. Our mailman, my barber, various librarians and even neighbors have become friends. I routinely have conversations, usually polite, with people I’m unlikely to meet ever again. Every day I hear a veritable Finnegans Wake of languages other than English.

The weather is difficult. As I write, the temperature is ninety-one degrees and the air is cloyingly humid. The hurricane season officially started on Saturday and won’t be over until November 1. I miss winter, snow and the rhythm of demarcated seasons. Like New Jersey and Arkansas, Texas is a punch-line state. Up north you can get a laugh in certain crowds just by saying “Texas,” and Texans take pride in that and call it envy. I came here with the customary load of Texas prejudices and snobberies, most of which I’ve shed.

Jorge Luis Borges first visited the United States in 1961, when he lectured as a visiting professor at the University of Texas in Austin. He returned several times and in 1967 wrote a sonnet, “Texas” (trans. Mark Strand):

“Here too. Here as at the other

Edge of the hemisphere, an endless plain

Where a man’s cry dies a lonely death.

Here too the Indian, the lasso, the wild horse.

Here too the bird that never shows itself,

That sings for the memory of one evening

Over the rumblings of history;

Here too the mystic alphabet of stars

leading my pen over the page to names

Not swept aside in the continual

Labyrinth of Days: San Jacinto

And that other Thermopylae, the Alamo.

Here too, the never understood,

Anxious, and brief affair that is life.”

 

I’m not a booster of the state. I just don’t like stereotypes.