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Pertinent Texas History after the Alamo for those of the other 49 states and foreign nations.
To make an analogy of what the non-east Texan is like for those in Pennsylvania one might say it is similar to the difference in attitude between Philadelphia and Pittsburg. Comparatively, one might say west Texans are more like those in Pittsburg when comparing them to the rest of the nation. However, Dallas keeps trying to act like an east coast city but today it is most like Atlanta – It is no longer really southern and is a place one wants to get away from - but the money is too good.
The eastern part of Texas is hicksville. Land is so poor in minerals that cows starved to death on the plentiful grass. One couldn’t get rich farming the red-clay soil either. Most east Texas farmers raised pigs. East Texas is pine timber, logging country.
Before the Republic of Texas but after the Louisiana Purchase the USA and Mexico contended over an area between the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican province of Tejas. This area along the Sabine River became a “no man’s land” where criminals from both countries escaped from the authorities. These criminals and their children became early settlers of east Texas. The region had its undeserved comeuppance when oil was discovered. East Texas being the second large oil field discovered in the USA. The first was in Pennsylvania. The east Texas hicks got rich and moved to Dallas or Houston and tried to act like New Yorkers. Thus was born the image of the flamboyant bragging Texan who is nothing but an east Texas hick who descended from criminals and happened to have land on which oil was discovered. Even today, in east Texas, those with a little money put on highfalutin airs. The T.V. series Dallas got it right about these newly rich east Texas hicks.
Just thirty miles east of Dallas is Fert Wurth (Fort Worth). This is where the west begins.
The other image of being Texan is about Fert Wurth and westward or at least it was before the T.V. series Dallas. The settlers were ranchers and not farmers - ranch hands and not cowboys. Cowboys were the unskilled teenagers hired to drive cattle herds to the railheads in Kansas. Even in my childhood it was an insult to call a ranch hand a cowboy.
Cowboys and trail herding have been glamorized by Hollywood in western movies. Ranch hands and ranchers didn’t wear denim (Levies, etc.). Denim was the cloth of farmers, miners, and boys. Hollywood did get the no denim right but got the fringe and frills wrong. Embroidery, fringe and frills were part of the dress in the wealthy Mexican ranching community in California.
The east Texas oil man Clint Murchison Jr. of Dallas must not have known anything about the ranching communities when the football team was named Cowboys. Initially, everybody in Fert Wurth thought it was a joke. One might as well have suggested switching the name of the Steelers to Coal Miners or the Parisians of Hill Billy Country.
Ranchers in Texas don’t ranch to make money. They ranch because that is what Texas men do. Every Texans dream is to make enough money to start ranching. That is what many Texans do in retirement and all wealthy Texans buy a ranch. It is the first commandments to be Texan. It is like the character Ole Jake in the Cowpokes Cow Country Cartoons said when asked what he would do if he won the lottery. “I’d jus keep on ranchen ‘til all the money ran out.”
To make an analogy of what the non-east Texan is like for those in Pennsylvania one might say it is similar to the difference in attitude between Philadelphia and Pittsburg. Comparatively, one might say west Texans are more like those in Pittsburg when comparing them to the rest of the nation. However, Dallas keeps trying to act like an east coast city but today it is most like Atlanta – It is no longer really southern and is a place one wants to get away from - but the money is too good.
The eastern part of Texas is hicksville. Land is so poor in minerals that cows starved to death on the plentiful grass. One couldn’t get rich farming the red-clay soil either. Most east Texas farmers raised pigs. East Texas is pine timber, logging country.
Before the Republic of Texas but after the Louisiana Purchase the USA and Mexico contended over an area between the Louisiana Purchase and the Mexican province of Tejas. This area along the Sabine River became a “no man’s land” where criminals from both countries escaped from the authorities. These criminals and their children became early settlers of east Texas. The region had its undeserved comeuppance when oil was discovered. East Texas being the second large oil field discovered in the USA. The first was in Pennsylvania. The east Texas hicks got rich and moved to Dallas or Houston and tried to act like New Yorkers. Thus was born the image of the flamboyant bragging Texan who is nothing but an east Texas hick who descended from criminals and happened to have land on which oil was discovered. Even today, in east Texas, those with a little money put on highfalutin airs. The T.V. series Dallas got it right about these newly rich east Texas hicks.
Just thirty miles east of Dallas is Fert Wurth (Fort Worth). This is where the west begins.
The other image of being Texan is about Fert Wurth and westward or at least it was before the T.V. series Dallas. The settlers were ranchers and not farmers - ranch hands and not cowboys. Cowboys were the unskilled teenagers hired to drive cattle herds to the railheads in Kansas. Even in my childhood it was an insult to call a ranch hand a cowboy.
Cowboys and trail herding have been glamorized by Hollywood in western movies. Ranch hands and ranchers didn’t wear denim (Levies, etc.). Denim was the cloth of farmers, miners, and boys. Hollywood did get the no denim right but got the fringe and frills wrong. Embroidery, fringe and frills were part of the dress in the wealthy Mexican ranching community in California.
The east Texas oil man Clint Murchison Jr. of Dallas must not have known anything about the ranching communities when the football team was named Cowboys. Initially, everybody in Fert Wurth thought it was a joke. One might as well have suggested switching the name of the Steelers to Coal Miners or the Parisians of Hill Billy Country.
Ranchers in Texas don’t ranch to make money. They ranch because that is what Texas men do. Every Texans dream is to make enough money to start ranching. That is what many Texans do in retirement and all wealthy Texans buy a ranch. It is the first commandments to be Texan. It is like the character Ole Jake in the Cowpokes Cow Country Cartoons said when asked what he would do if he won the lottery. “I’d jus keep on ranchen ‘til all the money ran out.”
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