 Well, good evening ladies and gentlemen welcome to the I almost said Truman Library note to the Johnson Library It's great to have you all here. I'm Kurt Graham. I'm the director of the Truman Library up in Independence, Missouri And it's my great pleasure to have been invited to come down here and See some old friends at the Johnson Library and and get to visit with these great authors about the books that you've all come here to to hopefully buy and have signed and And hopefully we'll have a great conversation here. It'll be very meaningful to you I've read these books and so impressed about this this question of Texas And I know I can just see in this audience how much being from Texas means to you and and so I have to I want to give a little bit of an introduction about myself just since you don't know who this weird guy is that just parachuted in on you, but I grew up in Wyoming and You know spent my my youth and and whatnot there And so I have this really strong sense of what it means to be from somewhere But I also have a very strong sense of what it means to be of somewhere and I sense that that's something that the Texans have in spades and so And I think both of these authors have captured that sense and I think you'll you'll appreciate that I wanted to make that disclaimer about not being from Texas because I feel like I've kind of walked into a Lyle Levitt song You know that one that's right. You're not from Texas But but I console myself with the refrain in that song ends up saying but Texas wants you anyway So I hope that will hope that will be the case that that we can have a great conversation here anyway I'm also delighted to be here just on behalf of the Truman Library because you know President Johnson and President Truman had such a great Relationship and so much respect for one another I have a tape of Johnson calling them on Christmas morning 1968 Saying to best Truman his that his staff had just given him a list of all the things he'd accomplished all the legislation That had been signed during his administration and he said you know best I look back on that And I realized that about half those things started with Harry and he gave him credit for that And I thought that was that was wonderful He came to the Truman Library as you know to sign the Medicare Medicaid Act in 1965 So I feel like Harry Truman would want me to be here I feel like it's it's a little bit of a debt that we can that we can pay back and again We all have a profound respect for both of these really incredible presidents But speaking of two very important and profound people we have here with us a Couple of great authors Well, I mean they dress alike they act alike. I mean it's just that there's it's really it's really quite impressive I and I overdressed I was so afraid. I didn't know how to work Well, you know, I I have like a whole bunch of bullet points about each one of these guys And I said I could spend 45 minutes introducing you and they said they all know us. They all know us. They'll get it So you all know professor Brands who is here University of Texas Published in all kinds of places and written some amazing books including the one that we're gonna visit about tonight And of course Larry Wright is an author and screenwriter playwright rights for the New Yorker among many other Publications, it's also written some great books. I know he's also a known quantity to you here So I won't I'll dispense with any further introduction if that's all right, but you can give him a hand You know just reading their work, I have a profound respect For them, but the thing that has really solidified that for me tonight already is that They both look younger in person than in their pictures Which I want to get better photographers. I want to know I'm using the picture this ten years old. Thank you. I'm telling you. I mean these guys they have it So I want to figure out how you do that anyway, we're here tonight to talk about the great state of Texas and I as I said, I read both these books and and by the way Bill wrote a great book also on Harry Truman and MacArthur And so we had a chance to do a program just like this at the Truman Library a couple years ago And they're still talking about it So I have every confidence that you're gonna enjoy this this thing tonight But I kind of wanted to throw it to our authors here and ask them kind of a an opening statement if they would You know, we talk about Texas as being somewhat unique. It's it's a it's a you know call it Texas exceptionalism call it whatever you ever you will but my question is a Lot of other states would feel that way if we were in Massachusetts or Virginia or Missouri or California These states would say well, we've had a profound impact on on the Republic. We've had a profound impact on America so I Hate my first question to be so what but what's the big deal about Texas anyway? You want to start no you start okay well part of the big deal of Texas is that there's a when people When Americans will start with sort of when Americans first envisioned Texas they knew the Texas was foreign territory and that was what appealed to Texas about the first Americans who came here and This group was led by Steven Austin and Steven Austin came to Texas Precisely because it was not the United States. So in the 19th century there was this Western movement in the United States and people were moving west they would move west from Virginia to Kentucky and from North Carolina to Tennessee and by the early 19th early 1820s The frontier had moved essentially to Texas But the appeal of Texas was that it was not the United States people were going To Missouri which is part of the United States. They were moving to Illinois, which is part of the United States They're moving into Michigan, which is part of the United States the appeal of Texas was that it was not the United States And the reason for that particular hook was if you came to Texas you came to Texas with Steven Austin you got Enormous amount of free land from the Mexican government You didn't get free land from French from the Mexican government You didn't get free land from the American government the American government didn't get in the business of giving away land until the 1860s so there was this huge draw to Texas and you could get 4,000 acres of land for free you could get a league of land from tech from the Mexican government for coming to Texas and This was utterly at odds with American policy, but you could go to Texas So part of the appeal was you could get all this land but the other thing is that part of the appeal for a particular group of people like James Bowie and William Travis and any number of others was that it was beyond the reach of American law and These were people who had reason to want to leave American jurisdiction among debt collectors Among sheriffs and litigators you probably many of you will be familiar with the shorthand GTT Which you would ride across a bill and it meant unpayable. I mean I'm collectible because it meant gone to Texas they're not coming back and so but Texas attracted all these people all these Americans who eventually got it in mind that maybe Texas should become part of the United States and This group was led by the first group was led by Steven Austin. This group was led by Sam Houston who came to Texas as What in those days was called a filibuster and a filibuster in those days was not? Delaying tactic in the US Senate. It was a person and it came it comes from the Dutch freeboot It was a pirate it was a land pirate somebody who was going to go and take over foreign territory anyway So the second group came and then eventually we'll get to the Texas revolution and Texas declares its independence and this is where Texas exceptionalism kicks in because Texas was that Well Texans would say that unique instance of a people that gained their independence without being part of the United States and Then they created their own Republic and but this is where history Plays its ironies of people so the part of Texas history that Texans are most proud of and the thing that they will say when people ask So what's the big deal about Texas? Texas was an independent Republic Texas was this independent country and that's one of those the one of the six flags is flying over Texas But the irony is that Texans in 1836 had no desire to be an independent country They wanted to immediately become part of the United States. So this Formative episode in Texas history came about because the United States would not take Texas in Texas came knocking and the United States said go away and So what would become the pride of Texans history and an emblem of this Texas? exceptionalism was something that was forced upon Texans, but Like good Westerners who sort of make use of whatever comes at hand. This was turned around But he came the source of Texas pride. I'll elaborate more on this later That makes sense because you really do have to be special to be rejected by the United States This was a time that we're taking anybody except Texas well It's interesting to me because you know if you think about being of a place or from a place In the rest of the world or even in the United States There are only a few places that have such a strong cultural identity that That people immediately ascribe things to you And you know sometimes they're a little out of date like if you're from Chicago You're not in the mob anymore, but still you know there is that well hangs over the Reputation, you know and so Hollywood Places like that they have but Texas is an entity that everybody in the world has an opinion about and there's a phrase in Norwegian Denver Health, Texas Which means according to my Norwegian friend. It was totally bonkers Every they says that they say it a rather ad and pay you know admiringly But everybody in the world has an opinion about Texas, and I think it goes back to this mythology that You kind of bill laid the groundwork for it, but you know the idea of being independent Even though the rejection part we don't play up, but you know the being independent was part of it and then You know the cowboy myth was very very powerful the oil myth all of these things and all of a lot of it amplified and Doctored by Hollywood Where all those old John Ford movies were shot in Arizona Parkland and everybody thinks that you know, that's what Texas looks like But this myth is so So deeply grounded in the world imagination I remember when when Roberta and I were young we taught at the American University in Cairo and I used to go horseback riding out at the pyramids and I grew up in Dallas I'm not you know cowboy, but they found out somehow that I was from Texas. I probably told them And so they just came up So I they started calling me Texas, and you know, they don't call you New Jersey or Illinois Just doesn't happen and so one time, you know Roberta and I went out there and they gave her this old nag and And oh, Texas, we've got a horse for you and two guys bring Stygian he's his paws are ripping the air his nostrils are flaring and scared the crap But being Texas, you know, I had to get on this horse and he took me halfway to Libya and I felt I was literally astride the Texas myth and Then I then later that year During Ramadan, which is the fasting period in Islamic countries And they don't eat in you know all during the daylight hours, and I was teaching during the daylight hours, and I had two occasions where Students passed out in class, and I thought this isn't gonna work So I started I decided I'll take them to movies and back then there were Cairo was full of English language movies and I took them to midnight cowboy and and Probably the wrong movie to take these very impressionable young Egyptians to see but If you can remember the movie the John Voight plays a young man who was working in a drive-in theater movie theater in Big Spring, Texas and he he has a little place behind the theater and on the wall of his squat little bedroom is a picture of Paul Newman and HUD and and Here is John Voight trying to be that character and So but he winds up going to New York and dressing up like a cowboy and being a gigolo Kids were having a little trouble with this but to me this was exactly what you know His journey of the distance between being a tech a real Texan and being a filmic Version of that was a lot about the tension that Texans normally endure just like me looking at that horse You know a real Texan would be able to jump on that horse and ride him without any trouble But you know they they expect me the delegate from Texas to be that person And I think it's in some ways empowering to think that people think that you're larger than life that you know you and the qualities that Texans have in the popular imagination that we're Braggadocio narcissistic careless with money careless with our personal lives Untrustworthy with the truth those are not desirable traits though. Well, there's those that's what people tend to think of Texans and it's ironic to me that the person most exemplifies that is his Manhattan billionaire in the White House, but When Texans think of themselves we tend to think of ourselves as kind of hard-working and earnest and non neurotic There's a big disparity between I think the way that Texans View themselves and others view us but a lot of it all goes back to this powerful myth Which rightly or wrongly has powered the sense of exceptionalism right from the beginning, you know, that's really amazing to hear Sort of both historically and culturally there's this kind of uniqueness to Texas that gives it You know as an outsider looking in you know because you you you see the myth You kind of see the history and how it how it feeds into that And I want to get back to both of those topics eventually if there as you both have more to say I know but I wanted to jump just for a minute. You kind of gave me the natural segue there Let's talk about politics for a minute It's very interesting to me to look at Texas from the outside because You wonder is Texas The question I have is Texas leading the way in other words is Texas a sign of where we're going or is it a Is it a reflection of where we've been? I mean is it is it is it something that's going to take us down a down a different path and just the recent Senate election here Which was so very close surprisingly close at least from an outside perspective. I Mean that that's huge to think of a state of this size possibly Being reliable in one party and possibly flipping to another. That's that's a that's a big deal What's going on here politically? You're probably more in tune with current politics of Texas tonight, but I will say that Texas in in many ways Texas is like other states in the sense that from Well from the 1860s until the 1970s or 80s Texas was just like every other state of the former Confederacy in which it was dominated by the republics by the Democratic Party That didn't mean that everybody thought alike. It was a two-party state But it was all within the Democratic Party. So they were conservatives and they were liberals More conservatives in Texas and perhaps in some other parts of the South, but they all called themselves Democrats And the reason they did was that they were Legacy Democrats they were never going to join that party that had been the party of suppressing secession Mm-hmm, and so it was played out in that regard But Texas was different in one respect from every other state of Confederacy and that was it had one foot in the west and so Lyndon Johnson Could imagine that one day he might be president of the United States at a time when that was beyond the vision of any other Southern politician and the reason for this was there was an implicit embargo on Southerners in the White House between the 1860s and the 1960s because the South was the region of Jim Crow and this was an embarrassment to the rest of the country It wasn't so embarrassing that the rest of the country made the South change that would wait until the 1960s but it was embarrassing enough that Voters in other parts of the country would not vote for a Southerner But Johnson thought to finesse that because Texas is partly a Western state as well as a Southern state And Johnson played up that Western part Of course He was a son of the Hill Country and when he traveled around he always wore a Stetson hat This is the hat of the West and he made a very big deal of that and so Johnson was the first Southerner in the sense of from the former Confederacy who could imagine that he might be President one day now in fact he only got into the White House through the side door But it was critical when he became president that he had been playing up the Western roots but now his southern roots or the southern roots of Texas became essential because Johnson recognized that it was going to be hard enough to get the South to Swallow civil rights reform But it was more likely if they were told they had to be dragged into the 20th century by a fellow Southerner someone who could speak the language to be lectured to it by let's say You know if John Kennedy had lived a Massachusetts Yankee. I don't think that's gonna work so Texas historically and in American politics has had this dual identity and Astute Texas politicians have been able to play the Western card when it's useful They'll play the southern card when that's necessary You know when I was young and growing up in Dallas, Texas was blue and California was red and you know we think of these these opposing entities and in many ways they are but they and I think of Them as being like strands of the you American DNA and they're constantly revolving In a relationship with never coinciding Texas in California and like to define themselves as opposing entities and they're fascinating models We we moved to Texas in 1960 and my dad was a veteran and You know like a lot of veterans. He was an Eisenhower man. He had you know, he fought in Europe so We moved into Dallas and Dallas, you know we were part of what we didn't realize at the time this big migration into Texas that came from different political traditions and And Dallas was the first city in Texas to turn blue to turn red And and you know and it was a part of a wave that eventually encompassed the entire state And you know, we've been red red red for more than 20 years. Not a single statewide elected Democrat and the same the opposite is true in California. Not a single statewide elected Republican but we're undergoing right now this massive immigration that is that is also turning our city turning our state into a different entity and Call it in Texas is turning purple It's slow and awkward and but if you look at this previous election The most striking thing to me was not that the cities were all blue They've all been blue for years except for Fort Worth, which finally did turn blue. It's the suburbs They had always been bright red, but suddenly Williamson County in places like this were turning blue And that's one reason you see the state legislature, which is now in session Being so much more moderate than it was last time around I think they've had this you know, they've had the riches scared off of them, you know things are really changing and they're changing fast if If Texas does change it changes the national balance, you know, totally not only it changes it it's like a somersault and and I the Republican Party has been very frightened of this not just locally but nationally and yet hasn't done nothing to mend the main problem, which is they only appeal to to wealthier White and older people and you know in order to broaden the base If they're going to continue to be a relevant force in American politics, they have to change and Texas is we have 38 electoral votes now. We're likely to have 42 after the next census California has 55, but it hasn't gotten any more delegates Electoral votes since 2003 and it won't in this next census and New York, of course has been losing you come from this Truman Library Almost since the Truman era It's been losing population and influence been surpassed by Florida now as a number two state number three state So by 2050 Texas is Expected to double in population at which time we'll be about the size of New York and California combined And so Texas really is the future. I just don't think that Texans have owned up to the fact that it's our Responsibility now I mean 10% of all the school children in America are Texans right now Well, and so the decisions that we make in the state and we're not always capable of producing the best decisions But they don't have they're not local. They're not even national. They're international in scope And you know, I think if we fail to pick up the challenge, it'll be un-Texan of us That's that's a that's a fascinating A statistic that you just shared about doubling the population in that short of time because it's not just that the population will double I mean numerically, but it will be a completely different demographic makeup as well as it as it doubles So that that will that will have a lot of yeah act on and Texas in California have very very similar demography Right, you know, we're both majority minority states, which is replicates what will happen in America soon and about 40% Hispanic Very very different models of politics and economy, but oftentimes very similar outcomes Yeah, yeah, you know, I wanted to ask you both about the in your book Larry You've got a chapter that I thought was really a very clever way of looking at this Sort of if you want to call it purple Phenomenon in different states because I'm not sure anybody's really turning purple I think that you make it you make a distinction between AM Texas and FM Texas. Yeah, tell us about that a little bit well You can drive through Texas and be in two different states You know if you're on the AM band and you're listening to Rush and Laura and you know and Yeah, and also the the evangelicals and you know, it's and that's Texas Yeah, but and that's what a lot of people outside of Texas think Texas is right and And you know and it exists But if you just push the button and you go on to the FM band You're in the kingdom of NPR and you're you know, it's it's you're just like you could be in Seattle You could be anywhere, you know, it's just very blue. It's the very same Ethic and everybody's very well spoken, you know, and you know, it's but both of those entities live simultaneously in the same space and In some, you know in Texans tend to ally with one or the other But you can't move about in that that era and I think a lot of I can't one of the things I get a kick out of in Texas is I feel like a lot of the things that people associate with AM culture like country western music and I'm in a band, you know, I mean, I I Participate in that. I like the I like the you know, the the juice you get out of this kind of raw Texas stuff And and and that's part of what? Makes Texans feel like actually blues, right? I we play a lot of Texas and Louisiana music So yeah, I just want you and a lot of rockabilly. So if you want, yeah, that would count Yeah, I just wanted to let you know that when I got my rental car at the airport I don't know what this says about me, but it took me a long time on the FM dial to find a country station I went clicking through there. I was I thought Austin would just be full of country music stations So let me ask you Larry. Do you think the FM Texans identify so clearly as Texans as they am Texans? I think I I think you know, there are these different stereotypes and there are you know, right now We're creating a whole different kind of Texan and that is you know, these are the people that are videographers of filmmakers, you know The computer the tech world and all that sort of thing is all people that really identify with Texan But I think they lie What they do is they go to Bucky's and they dress up like Texans and so I grew up in Oregon and in the early 1970s the governor of Oregon Tom McCull Very Notoriously sort stood at the southern border of Oregon and said California Please come visit, but for heaven's sakes don't stay and people were in Oregon would have bumper stickers It said don't californicate, Oregon So let me ask you what you've described people making movies high-tech is Texas becoming californicated Yes, and that's good but You know our governor It's it's crazy this this anti-California thing we have very different political and economic models and And I think it there's a tremendous like the a it's like the different poles of a battery, you know And it's one wonderful to live in a country where states can have such different approaches but when governor Abbott talks about californicating our He's talking about like plastic bag bands and stuff like that Tree ordinances and you know when he cites these things But and in my band but the drummer on on his kid. He has a Bumper sticker says don't californicate Texas music, which I means what I have no idea, but the It is true. I think that Texas has had a very successful economic model and California has struggled and I think you know Jerry Brown was a master politician to pull that state out of the nose drive that it was in economically and and come in with what he said here in the library a $13 billion surplus whereas we had an eight billion dollar deficit So it makes you wonder which is a more conservative entity, but I Think that these are all expressions of Texas So how much of the Texas identity do you think? depends on External stereotypes of Texans and Texans playing off or sometimes living up or living down to that stereotype the fact that Texans are not universally beloved outside the state of Texas and I've noticed that yeah And is that something Texans wear as a badge of pride? Oh It's a terrific liability. I think sometimes I And and I think it can be you know Just thinking about Lyndon Johnson and how hated he was In part because of the stereotypes that people had about Texas and I was embarrassed by him I remember when the first time I ever heard my voice was in language lab, you know in and I was taking Spanish And I heard myself and I sounded like LBJ ordering a plate of tacos And I had actually I had the Dallas accent where you talk through your nose and I thought man I'm gonna lose that I will never never talk like that again So I was fleeing. I was a self-hating Texan You know, I wanted to get as far away from that and a lot of that was you know The stereotypes that people have that I had about my own state And it blocked me from in for instance with LBJ from seeing clearly who he was Although I have to say, you know, I was a conscientious objector during Vietnam and that you know very much affected my life and my opinion About LBJ, but I think these stereotypes blind us to who we really are But Bill, do you think that that that could be an American phenomenon as well because certainly earlier in American history Americans were always sort of Taking their opinions of who they were based on what people in London or other places thought of them And so is that unique to Texas to say that it's the outside looking in that makes us Either feel good about or bad about who we are I hadn't thought of it in those terms, but you might be absolutely right and in some ways Texas is sort of just like The rest of the country but more so. Yeah. Yeah, and it's a smaller version of the larger country Mm-hmm. It is striking how certainly in the 19th. Oh, no, this is interesting because maybe in the 19th century Yes, Americans, especially those who are concerned with culture with the life of the mind with the arts They had to get confirmation from the old world Before they felt that they were doing okay, and often that was withheld And so there was this sort of chip on the American shoulder and somebody like no a Webster would come along and basically create this American language and we'll take the the you out of words like color and neighbor and so on and this is a different language and so so I hadn't thought of it in these terms, but The rest of the United States grew out of this Yeah And I reflected on this and I'm not a native Texan so I'm gonna put it to the native Texans in the audience I think that one of the things that gives rise to this Texas identity is that Texas as this geographical place is I'll put it this way you have to make an effort to love it Because they're large parts of Texas. They're not particularly appealing and I grew up in Oregon and I was just thinking I was just in Oregon last week and I was sort of reflecting on the fact that in Oregon Stuff just grows Whereas in Texas it seemed like every living thing has to fight hard for life and everything has thorns or Spikes or it's rocky or it's dry or it's poisonous or something like that. Yeah and and both of you have mentioned sort of California and Texas as these States and places and States of mind that are sort of comparable, but In tech in California, there is nothing like the state of Texas mind There isn't that California identity now part of that is Due to the fact that there are two California's there yet You want to could argue they're four or five at least yeah, right? But southern California is very different place in northern California's Los Angeles and there's the Bay Area And those are quite different. So that's part of it, but I think the other part of it is that I'm speaking now and I may be speaking out of term But I'm speaking as someone who's not a native Texan and I didn't get here soon enough to be indoctrinated in the seventh grade Texas history class so but with this Texas identity there is a combination of the sense of superiority, but as often happens it sort of Masks there is twin to a kind of inferiority complex Texans do care about what other people think about Texas Even though they often don't want to admit it and they don't accept it on others terms and but with I've lived in California and California, there's nothing like this. It's okay. It's as though with California. What's not to love? Yeah, you know everywhere in California you look around my god, big sir. Here's Yosemite Yeah, you know Lake Tahoe and I've really died and gone to heaven. Yeah when people get to Texas from the outside They don't necessarily think they died and went to heaven And as Phil Sheridan famously said if he owned hell and Texas he'd rent out Texas and live in hell There's one of the things about Texas You know you were talking about how California doesn't affiliate with itself the way that Texas does and and and I can see that Texas is not beautiful in most respects my friend Steve Harrigan who's here and hiding out in the back Talks about how Texas is where everything Peters out, you know the south comes to an end the great plains Mexico the West They all come to die in Texas There's there is a there is that since that It's and yet There are very few You know speaking of the brand there are a few states that one could just simply draw You know the way that almost every Texan can draw the state of Texas and and and a lot of all have a fruitcake in this State that's probably sure well They don't always have a library on this campus in the shape of a Texas, but the this actually is true The few tea doesn't brag about I know I know it's crazy, but it's not architecturally. It's not doesn't work so well But but you know there is this sense I have this theory of Texas culture I don't know how it applies to To other places, but I think of it having the three levels and there is a primitive, you know level one which is barbecue Boots belt buckles blue bonnets, you know just all be all the bees Yeah, you know this is all the raw stuff that people all over the world Associate with Texas and we do too and that's just like the primitive where we came from stuff and then my whole life in Texas has been going through this level two which is when money comes into the state and And it's an it's a period of education and sophistication and neurosis There's you start looking around and you think How do other people do it? You know, I remember remember the importance of Neiman Marcus in Dallas was a classic Level two we're going to show you how you're supposed to spend your money and how you live and And it's when you send your kids away to school It's when these build the opera companies and then you bring in world class or Jays Ross for a world class It's a real level Level two phrase. Yeah, bring in these world-class Architects so that every city begins to look like a franchise of an American city And they're all these other people's ideas on display and it is a worthy period because you you you learn what the world has to offer and and but then I think that there comes a period not always in other cultures or even in our own only rarely a Kind of level three where you have been through all the education and the cosmopolitanism and everything that level two has to offer and then you return to your roots and see what's there and This revelation came to me at Cafe Andy when I was eating a rabbit enchilada and with a creme fraiche topping it was a real level three You know, I thought about Roberta, I love Alvin Ailey in that that wonderful dance He's a choreograph called a revelation about growing up in this little Baptist church in Rogers, Texas and You know, I think you can look at Beyonce's lemonade album where she goes back and studies, you know, the The hip hop and the country music of Houston and so on there's this, you know The architecture I love the architecture of the UT campus for instance But you can the ladybird wildflower center to me is a great example of Level three in our new library. I think is a good example of that you know, you take native materials and You know and with very sophisticated take on it and you make something that is purely of the place and Of our time but it and it stands and it stands. I think Against anything else that you would see in the rest of the world, but it is of the place that you phrase it I got a question for you and so you've just hinted at it one of the things that struck me about Texas certainly Modern Texas, so let's say post World War two Texas is that it is many cultures At the same time and so Houston to me is one of those today is one of the most remarkable places on earth Houston is to the 21st century what New York was for the 19th century It was the place where the world came and there were You know dozen scores hundreds of languages spoken peep all sorts of cuisines people coming from everywhere and I was very struck by a motto I heard from somebody in Houston who said you know come to Houston We're not going to help you get ahead, but we're not going to get in your way Yeah, and New York was that way in the 19th century But as cities mature and the institutions mature then there are more regulations and now in fact I was writing in a cab where this the cab driver was it was in Houston And he had been to New York and he came back and he said there just too many regulations too much stuff in New York But Houston is that way but so but interestingly so when you get to level three as you say it you sort of come back to the roots But if you think about it, so for people like Alvin Ailey people like Beyonce their roots aren't belt buckles and boots so is there any point at which the Texas culture shifts to Acknowledge that Texas is a very different place today than it was when these myths got started Oh, that's a really good point I think that the flaw in our our mythology is that it is its angle of culture for the most part that it Exemplifies and that's what people think of Texas too You know when if you take your archetypal Texan in the minds of people Most people around the world is John Wayne the cowboy and it's it's it's not Beyonce But I think you know the first I mean half the cowboys were black or Hispanic. Yeah, exactly I think that artists today are redefining that and You know and they're powerful artists that are really, you know carrying that message and I think that's That's one of the things that's exciting about being in Texas now is it? I totally agree with you about Houston. I also think it's true of Austin You know that it's a very fertile place where the creative imagination is running wild and we're Imagining the the culture that we're living in and so do you want to respond to the book reviewer? Who said that Larry Wright claims he's from Texas, but he's not he's from Austin Yeah, I grew up in Abilene in Dallas. I feel like I've done my time. Yeah So here's something else and it just gets back to your level one two and three Yeah, so it seems to me that the formative years of Texas culture were years when the state was by and large poor and The 19th century was a time hard scrabble in Texas and again getting back to the comparison with California California was born rich right people came to California for the gold rush And so there was money. There was opera. There was high culture in San Francisco Within two years of the gold discovery So is that part of the story that the things that you're talking about barbecue? You know barbecue is where you take the worst cut of meat, right? And yet you smoke it forever and you can finally you know choke it down Yeah, and you know the boots the boots were talking about originally were not the $2,000 custom boots these were you know Five dollar boots right because these were work boots So is that it is that sort of the secret and is that is that the sort of secret of the staying power of the myth? Because even as Texas gets wealthy It's very appealing especially in an egalitarian Ethos that we live and even it's not a particularly egalitarian society the idea that we're all just ordinary folks I think the working man Part of that is is you know deeply implicit in the whole idea of the myth But luck is also a big thing, you know, I think oil is all about gambling and You know, I think about you know oil is is central to Texas's relevance to To the whole world. I mean without oil Texas would never have mattered really at all and You know and and and Texas has changed the whole world at least three times, you know in terms of petroleum 1901 with spindle top Which was a gassy hill outside of Beaumont and the school boys used to set it on fire and this con man named Patello Higgins predicted he would find oil at a thousand feet and At a thousand twenty feet suddenly Six tons of drilling pipe shot up over the Derrick and you know, it was terrifying and and all the rough necks crept back and then Is it quieted down and then suddenly this roar and rock start flying and then oil starts flying 150 feet into the air in the first gusher 1901 and Patello Higgins had hoped to get a well that would produce 50 barrels a day 100,000 barrels a day more than all the oil produced in America at that time And for the next eight days until they kept it and in the next moment 20 years later That was East Texas West Texas. There was one well in West Texas who's producing 10 barrels a day and in 1921 a guy named Frank Stardrell Pickerel Frank Pickerel Climbed on top of the Derrick and he had an envelope and he opened up the envelope and it was full of rose petals And he sprinkled you know sent the rose petals into the air the rose petals came from a group of nuns in New York who had invested in the well and They went to a priest who blessed the rose in the name of the saint of hopeless causes and the saints name is Santa Rita and That was in many ways the most important well ever drilled in America because it was in the Permian Basin They only they didn't have a geologic report that they picked the site because it was close to the railroad track And you know and and the University of Texas got his first royalty check that August for $516 now 30 billion dollars later It's it's doing pretty well and fracking I would say you know the third thing you know these these are instances where the whole world changed because of luck and persistent and ingenuity that were Characteristically Texan and I think that those qualities Are very much enshrined in the mythology that we carry around about who we are It's very interesting to me to hear you both talk about this in the sense of You know the you talked about the California kind of the the multiculturalism and how you use Houston as an example And you talk about you know this this multiculturalism that is here that is growing even more and so in a way I was thinking of well-known Western historian who once said the West is where we all met and in some ways you can say Texas is Where we all met right where everybody kind of comes together and and what what does that pretend because it does not seem politically that that is Happening, you know, there's still those really strict divides between between the groups and so there's there's this melding of culture There's this melding of you know the level three kind of brings it all together But politically there still seems to be very much stark stark divides I think cultural forces are more powerful than political forces and eventually politics adjusts to take account of culture Because when people decide to come to Houston is when they decided to come to New York in the 19th century They don't think okay. I'm gonna gonna go where that's Republican or Democrat They're gonna go where the jobs are right and that's sort of the basic thing. Texas has had very vibrant economy These last many years and that's what draws people there and whether it's the oil economy or the high-tech economy or a butting Movie economy or whatever it might be as long as the engine of the Texas economy is running Then people will keep coming and of course this is one of the arguments that Texas governors have made vis-a-vis California the California taxes taxes people too much is too much regulation and California is killing the goose that you know laid the golden egg come to Texas and We're not gonna get in your way. You just make your own way and so that part of the Kind of the frontier mythology is still there So that's interesting because that would suggest that Texas is on the front edge of this cultural change I mean as things change here the politics may be behind that or maybe a Symptom or a you know an afterthought of that, but the fact of the matter is where Texas goes so goes the nation if you follow that logic Maybe but it's The California economy was wide open. Yeah years earlier. It may be that as Economies mature as society's mature people decide, you know, I would rather Not drink polluted water then to let the frackers go to town wherever they want to go Right and so as the standard of living goes up people pay more attention to Environmental concerns they pay more attention to the fact that they need health care or whatever it might be So New York was like this in the 19th century. It was like sort of this wide open frontier of economics And as people got wealthier they asked more and more of government So it's certainly not out of the question that could have happened in Texas. In fact, I mean Texas has been Unique in many ways will it continue to be unique in that particularly Texan way? I don't know, right? I do think though that I Think identity politics to some extent is what you were asking about and you know And certainly we're very fractured in many respects, but it is Stunning to me how Texans rally to the identity of being Texan is a unifying force, right? And it Matthew McConaughey had a movie out several months ago he plays a drug dealer in Detroit and so they had a screening and Some guy Matthew, what do you think about how to Texas affect? Your approach to this role? Well, it's It's about a drug dealer in Detroit But of course growing up in you know new Baldy and that and then you know Two questions later some guy in an orange t-shirt and Matthew What do you what was so Texan about this movie for you? And You know, he looks trapped, you know, yeah, and they wanted to be reaffirmed You know, they wanted to you know to have the blessing of you know being this is some Texas experience We're having it. It's like he's not you know, but It was but I was struck again by how people people want to Affiliate with the constant in these qualities that that we ascribe to our myth Are things that people want everybody to join hands and say yes, this is us and and that can be a Lunatic in that case, but it can also be I think a wonderful quality to help Politically to bring us together I had one more question, but I'm getting a signal that we're nearing the end of our time So maybe when you go back to have your book signed you can ask this. I this notion of people Coming together. I thought that bill your portrait of Henry clay was just so compelling Because here's a guy who spends his life as a compromiser a life a guy trying to find a middle ground And we all say in our private conversations. I just wish we had some centrist candidates I wish we had some people in the middle that we could all relate to well it didn't work out so well for for clay he was sort of Seen with an eye of suspicion on both sides and and and I think that this this this difficulty of finding that compromise finding that middle road and I had sort of As an outsider, I'll tell you I do look to Texas to see if if that can be done because I feel like if it can be Done here it can probably be done anywhere and that that would be it would be a bellwether as opposed to a last gasp And that's kind of you know kind of how I look at this as an outsider But I just wanted to point out that you can read all about Henry Clay in here this lovely volume for 2995 in the back You're doing a good job of this one is a beautiful portrait very personal Just that we've talked about some of the antidotes and things that are in it But really a compelling I mean as a non-text that I found this I was I would even be willing to put up with some of the undesirable parts the climate that Bill referenced to To live in a place like this This is 1695, but I want you to know that the per page price is the same If you if you choose to buy your books in that way You would you'll come out even no matter what you won't you won't be discriminated against in any way But anyway, thank you all for being here. I'll say God bless Texas. God bless America and gentlemen. It's been a real pleasure