Don't Mess With Texas...I Get It.

So after yesterday's post about chili, I was deluged with comments from people in America's second-largest state about how chili is supposed to be made. In those comments, one could not help but discern that Texans consider themselves to be a breed apart from the rest of us, or "special", if you will.

Well to be fair, I spent a week in Austin once, and I can attest that many of those that I met there were "special" indeed.

OK, stop the hate mail before it gets here. I know that saying Austin is representative of Texas is like saying that Anchorage is what Alaska is really like or that all of Michigan is just like Detroit. Still, how can you not poke fun at Texans every now and again? I mean, you've got a whole state where it's apparently required by law that every citizen must own a cowboy hat. Plus George W. Bush. Just saying...

To be fair, the multiple invites down to the chili cook-off were really nice, and I will definitely have to try that one of these days, although probably without the dogs, since, while Belle rides nicely and just curls up and sleeps, Murphy bounces around the vehicle like a hyperactive pinball, whining and pacing and doing his damnedest to get up in the front seat with me the whole trip. I'd sooner volunteer for an unneeded root canal at the local dental school than make a cross-country drive with him in the car. Plus, he can't really be trusted around food. There have been at least three incidents at neighborhood barbecues and local picnics where Murphy has walked up to people, looked them square in the eye, and taken their hamburgers or hotdogs right out of their hands. And for some reason, no one wants to tell a German Shepherd "no".

But I digress.

Texans got grit, and you have to admire them for that. Seriously, who else would have stood up to Mexico like they did back in 1836, basically telling Santa Ana, commander of the largest army on the continent, to go suck eggs? That was bally, right there. And that stand at the Alamo? Beautiful. I have been to the Alamo and I could only imaging what it must have felt like, trying to hold that place with just a hundred and eighty nine volunteers against the thousands of Mexicans that everyone knew were coming.

Of course when I was there, I just looked around and decided that had it been me in charge, I'd have moved my forces into the US Post Office just across E. Houston Street to the north. That building has a smaller and much more defensible perimeter, the highest rooftop in the area, and air conditioning. Yeah, I'm thinking I'd have made my stand there instead. But hey--that's just me.

Yeah, I do like Texas, and if Texas ever gets around to being the first state to secede from the present-day union like some of them keep hinting at, I'll likely buy me a big cowboy hat and drive down and join them, even if it means a road trip with Murphy. (But if we do this, Sheila Jackson Lee has to go, ok?)

Yeah, Texans are pretty cool. Of course, there are those who might disagree:


And yeah, I'd probably not have dared post that if Texan Ed Rasimus was still around. Not after the ear-blistering I got when I innocently asked him how to do an aileron roll in a Cessna 172. I got the feeling after that short and mostly one-sided "discussion" that old R. Lee Ermey would have had himself some competition.