75 Things We Love About Texas
Bluebonnets? Check. Enchanted Rock? Yup. Barton Springs? Duh. You probably guessed those. But what about buckle bunnies? Or goat barbecue? Or Thong Island? From Texas trademarks to personal favorites to the just plain weird, you’ll find everything here. And we do mean everything.
1. Bluebonnets
Yes, they are a clichè. And no, they don’t smell particularly good, and you aren’t supposed to pick them on the highway, under penalty of something like death. You can get stung by bees or fire ants and God knows what else when you sit down for that annual photo. Even so, who can resist them? Every year, the fields along the roadsides blossom into a blanket of blue—in some parts a deep purple, in others a dusty gray—and we know spring is here. And then, in just a few weeks, the show is over. The fields go from green to brown, and the sun scorches the roads, and we speed from San Antonio to Houston again, claiming there’s nothing to see. Mimi Swartz
2. The Astrodome
As a baseball stadium, it had its shortcomings—foremost among them Astroturf—but there was a time when it was second only to the Alamo as the most important building in Texas. Houston in the early sixties yearned for recognition but, aside from NASA, had little to attract it. The Astrodome put Houston on the map. It was the manifestation of a Texas attitude that we could do something that everyone else thought impossible. Now it’s a reminder that all things must pass. Paul Burka
3. Big Red
With barbecue. But not by itself, and not with anything else. John Morthland
4. Friendliness
Being glad to see you—no matter who you are—is something our mamas taught us from birth. The wide smile, the firm handshake, the slap on the back—it’s the way Texans meet the world, the social grease that makes living here so pleasant and easy. Most of us were probably a little older before we realized that all that good humor had other uses; it masks intention and throws people off their game, particularly lawyers and businessmen from other parts of the country who mistake us for happy hicks. Glad to see you? Sure we are. But keep your hands on your wallets, guys. Mimi Swartz
5. The sopa azteca at El Mirador, San Antonio
Available only on Saturdays. Mimi Swartz
6. Booker Ervin’s version of “Berkshire Blues”
A classic cut by the late, great tenor saxophonist, who hailed from Denison. It never fails to put me in a good mood. Or make me regret that I quit smoking. Evan Smith
7. Everyone has a story about a pickup
Mine is called Ol’ Blue, a baby-blue 1977 Chevrolet Scottsdale three-quarter-ton with mud grips, dual gas tanks, and a Delco set to a station that plays country music and the farm report. With subtle hints of hay, pesticide, WD-40, chain saw gas, and manure, the cab has a genuinely rural smell, and the sides are scratched and dented, grill to tailgate, from years of deflecting tree limbs and mesquite thorns. Ol’ Blue lives on the farm that my father, a lawyer by trade, bought as a weekend hobby in the seventies. When I was a kid, my dad would drive and I would ride in the passenger seat. We’d head down the steep and rough road to the pecan bottom that sits on the Little River, near Temple, or to the back side of the farm, where there’s a stock tank half-circled with tall cottonwood trees. Sometimes I’d ride in the bed, and we’d stop every once in a while to look at a snake, an armadillo, or a cottontail. As I grew older and busy with teenage distractions, I lost interest in the farm. Still, my father would ask me to ride out with him to check on things; if there was trouble or concern, he would insist. Until his death, in 1998, the invitation was standing. Only recently did I realize that what he was checking on had very little to do with farming. Not often enough, for those few hours, it was me, my attention, and my dad, undivided in the cab of Ol’ Blue. David Courtney
8. The free advice at White Rock Lake, Dallas
If you live in Dallas and have a question—any question—then you know the drill: Get up on Sunday morning, stroll around White Rock Lake until you come to Jackson Point, and look for the sign “Free Advice.” That’s where all-around-good-guys Neal Caldwell and Roderick MacElwain have been waiting in their lawn chairs for the past ten years. Stock tips? Got ’em. Career trouble? No problem. Romantic quandary? Pull up a seat.
To think: Even Lucy charged a nickel. Brian D. Sweany
9. The humidity
It was August, a swampy, monsoonish August, when I moved from Albuquerque to Austin. I was living near the University of Texas campus in a co-op boarding house where mildew appeared on my shoes and toothbrushes never dried. For a desert girl, it was like living in a blister. One extra-sweaty day at dinner a fellow resident, a girl from Houston, bounced in and announced in a preternaturally perky tone, “Y’all, don’t y’all just looove Austin? It’s so dryyyy here!” Well, I didn’t just looove Austin then and it wasn’t dryyyy. It was weeeeet. But the years pass and the skin shrivels into beef jerky and the hair flattens to the shape and consistency of a thatched roof and you do come to looove Austin precisely because it is not dryyyy. In fact, you exalt every molecule of Lone Star moisture as it goes about its blessed work of plumping up skin and hair. I know, I know. Vast desiccated swaths of our state are as dry as anything New Mexico can dehydrate. But still, for me, in my mostly moist corner of Texas, it really isn’t the heat. It is the humidity. Sarah Bird
10. Barton Springs Pool, Austin
It’s only rocks and water—just as the Hope Diamond is only squeezed carbon and the Mona Lisa is only oil paint on wood. But in a burst of creative genius, triggered by a shift in the Balcones Fault, the earth partnered these humble materials in a geologic magic act that has wowed ancient people and Franciscans, deep thinkers and humorists, blue-lipped toddlers and topless hippie chicks, endangered salamanders and political activists. All—except maybe the salamanders—stare into the clear, green depths, test the temperature with a toe (even though everyone knows it’s always 68 degrees), shudder, then take the plunge into the heart-stopping chill, trying to absorb a smidgen of the irrefutable grace of this place. Suzy Banks
11. Nachos
They are as Texan as the Alamo, and they have gone where no snack has gone before. I have personally eaten or seen nachos made with (not all at once, mind you) lobster tail, feta cheese, portobello mushrooms, fried oysters, crème fraîche, beef fajitas, caviar, hummus, hoisin sauce, crabmeat, Napa cabbage, barbecue sauce, boiled shrimp, chipotle mayonnaise, soy sauce, chili, and tofu—whew! And whatever the permutation, their Platonic nacho-ness remained intact. Patricia Sharpe
12. The three bells at Mission San Francisco de la Espada, San Antonio
The simple facade of the oldest, smallest, and most remote of San Antonio’s five missions centers on a Moorish door frame, and above the door stands a tower with three bells. Every Sunday those bells call parishioners, many of whom are the descendants of the natives who built the missions, to worship in the white stucco chapel. The ringing of those bells reminds me that three centuries ago Texas was a small, rebellious Mexican province and in some ways still is. The past is not distant at Espada. Already, 60 percent of the people of San Antonio are Mexican American, an easy majority. Soon, a majority of all Texans will be Latinos. The three bells at Espada toll not only for our past but for our present and our future. Jan Jarboe Russell
13. Keller’s Drive-in, Dallas
The flashing red-and-green sign on Northwest Highway is as high-tech as it gets. No Sonic technology has elbowed its way in over the past four decades; heck, at Keller’s you still have to pay with cash. Just park under a metal carport that sags with age and turn on your blinkers when you’re ready to order (I suggest the no. 5 special, a double-meat cheeseburger for only $2.70). A carhop will be out in an instant. Don’t forget to spring for onion rings and a cold bottle of beer, and leave your window up just a bit for the tray. Then relax and take in the crowd, which includes biker clubs and classic-car enthusiasts. Your food will be ready in no time, but with all of the sideshows, it’s almost beside the point. Brian D. Sweany
14. The sky
And no one captures the clouds and lightning strikes, sunsets and stars better than photographer Wyman Meinzer, whose new book, Between Heaven and Texas (University of Texas Press), was published in March.
15. The Alamo Drafthouse
This theater chain, with locations in Austin, Houston, and San Antonio and plans to expand, proves that the way to a cinephile’s heart is through his stomach—and his liver. By serving better-than-passable food and booze before and during whatever’s showing and by perfecting an indie sensibility that’s evident not only in what’s playing (a mix of art house fare and Hollywood must-sees) but what’s playing before the show (archival video, hip cartoons, trailers for movies that were released decades ago), the Alamo has won fans on this coast as well as the other two, including the editors of Entertainment Weekly, who christened it “the best theater in America.” My favorite Alamo-ism: the on-screen admonition before every show that patrons should keep their mouths closed and their cell phone ringers off or “we’ll take your ass out.” Let’s see the theater in the mall try that. Evan Smith
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