“.....our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”
-JFK
Well, some of us anyway.
I was sitting in the Majestic Steakhouse across from the Majestic Theater on that terrible day. The waiter had just brought my lunch- a medium rare top sirloin seasoned to perfection- when I heard the screams and shouts:
"Kennedy's been shot!"
I immediately abandoned my appetite, sighing in the resignation that I knew this would happen-just not here, not now, not in the state I had chosen for my home.
Texas has been home to me for many decades now. I have lived in the spectacular Hill Country- so like the Scottish Highlands of my past- with its silver and freshwater pearls. I remember how one could ride the plains, black with buffalo, without fear of running across the ATVs or dirt bikes that tear up the soil so carelessly now. I have wandered along the Gulf coast, taken to the waters with the shrimp boats; have ridden across the deserts in the West, so like the rocky, rough terrain of the Middle East.
And the flowers! To see a field of Texas wildflowers is to wonder why the gardens of Versailles even bother to bloom.
It is untrue to say Texas is "like a whole 'nuther country:" it is rather like many different countries, rich and varied in its tradition as Europe itself.
I prefer the solitude of the suburbs now- the city life holding no fascination for me any longer. Dallas especially, looking like a Southern version of Miami with all its pretty buildings and pretty people who think they are somehow more privileged to live in a city made so mythical by the media. Oh, yes, they look down on other Texans like they are foreigners- laughable, but sadly true.
Nope, give me the Old West charm of Fort Worth, the Stockyards barely changed from the time I arrived by stagecoach from Houston. "Hell's Half Acre," "The Paris of the Plains" as it was known back then: the last major stop along the Chisholm Trail with its gambling halls and saloons. Just the place for a singer like myself to lay low for a while and have some fun.
With the coming of the Texas and Pacific Railway, it became known as "Queen City of the Plains" and "Cowtown," as it is still known to this day. So many other cities like to bury their past beneath grandiose buildings of steel and glass, but not Fort Worth. The city revels, celebrates, even breathes in its past: from the regular parade of longhorn cattle down Main Street to the annual Chisholm Trail ride that follows the same route taken so long ago, albeit with development and highway traffic as scenery. Even the same wooden sidewalks and bricks upon which walked some of the most famous Western legends- Jim Courtright, Butch and Sundance, Billy the Kid, just to name a few- still can be walked on today.
So, unless my vagabond heart decides to go a-wandering, for now Texas is home.
As much as home can be for the likes of me.....
