Regional generalizations about the character of a people are usually avoided these days. They can come across as caricatures and seem unfair to outliers. They cannot possibly apply to everyone. For this reason, writers hardly ever engage in this, given the deprecation of sweeping and clearly unscientific claims.
Still, I’m going to disregard all these warnings and just observe something that is perfectly obvious to anyone visiting Texas from New England. Texas is a radically different culture. It is a happier place. After a three-day trip there, I found myself overwhelmed with the dramatic differences.
I spent time in Austin and central Texas. I shopped and socialized and went about commercial life in a normal way. What Texans experience every day came across to me as shocking, like I was part of some strange movie fantasy or something. It was dreamy by comparison with the cold and often cruel world of Connecticut and Massachusetts in winter.
Start with the drivers. In New England, to be a pushy and unrelenting driver, always trying to gain some small advantage over others on the road, is completely normal. Drivers are competing with each other for space and time. At some point, you stop being offended and just go with the flow. It happens daily that someone speeds up, crawls up your rear bumper, and angrily flashes his lights, demanding that you get out of his way.
No one ever lets you merge. You have to fight your way through a thicket of cars and trucks everywhere you go.
Such normal experiences do not happen in Texas. There is instead a culture of polite and safe driving for everyone. Drivers are not competing with each other. They regard themselves as part of a community of travelers who are sharing the road. They move over, give you space, slow down for you as you enter the highway, and have a habit of deference and politeness, even to the point of offering a friendly wave as they pass.
It seems incredible. Here we have identical spaces and the same rules of the road but two completely different cultures in operation. I’ve marveled at how this comes to be. It surely is not that New England is full of jerks while Texas is packed with sweet souls. There is something else going on, something extending from a culturally embedded habit. It seems like everyone shares it. The result is a safer and happier experience.
Another point that rattled me, even while renting a car at the Austin airport: The clerks behind the desk greet you with a smile. That’s when the corners of the mouth extend outward and upward and you see teeth and the eyes brighten. You don’t see that much in New England these days, but it is everywhere in Texas. Yes, people smile as they speak to you, almost as if you are a friend.
It’s discombobulating at first, but then you get the hang of it and smile back. It feels good, even if it hardly seems real at first. Eventually, even within an hour or two, you get the hang of it and join in.
I went to the drug store to pick up a medicine for my mother. The clerk pointed out that there was a cheaper generic version of what I wanted, the same product at half the price. I nearly fell into shock and said, “Are you really pointing out ways that I could spend less money at your store even though you make less?”
The man said, “Of course.” Scrolling through my memory bank, I could not think of a single time when anything like that had ever happened to me in Connecticut. It seemed almost contrary to human nature. It was a pure action of goodwill even at the expense of revenue streams. I swore that if I lived there, this place would earn my loyalty.
I’m not exactly a stranger to Texas. I grew up there. In fact, my family migrated to Texas from New England in 1830. My ancestor tried farming in East Texas before settling in the wild country of the Southwest as a blacksmith. They fought all the wars: the war for Texas independence and then the Civil War, in which Texas reluctantly joined the Confederate cause. My ancestor performed duties as a medic in the war, simply because he owned the tools for doing surgeries.
The frontier is what forged the culture. Everyone was forced to depend on everyone else and be quite integrated with a diverse population: Native American tribes of many types, Spanish settlers, mixed-race Mexicans, German immigrants, and New England settlers. They all depended on each other to tame this wild country, and that infused Texas with a kind of egalitarian ethos that you do not find in the Deep South or New England.
This democratic outlook sustained itself as the state grew more prosperous. The well-to-do have a way of maintaining communication and contact with a wide range of people. The oil magnate is on good terms with the foremen and workers. The rancher knows the people who tend to the animals and maintain the feed lots. The industrialist is often on the factory floor, shaking hands and following all the processes.
There is almost a superstitious fear among the rich in Texas of separating themselves socially or geographically from everyone else. You hear it in the accents and see it in their manners. They pride themselves in being able to hang out with all the guys at the bars or joining in line dances at social gatherings. They are what are called “good ol’ boys” who don’t think of themselves as set apart but rather as beneficiaries of good fortune.
As a result, the culture of Texas is less hierarchical than cultures you find in other parts of the country, with fewer enclaves of wealth, almost no prep schools, and a ready willingness of everyone to participate in activities as a community. A politician who presents himself as better than others will never get elected, nor can a banker who cannot communicate with a small farmer expect to advance very far professionally.
It’s just the way the state is. As a result, you learn early on that it is impossible to tell who has money and who does not. When I was working in the clothing business, it was at a fairly high-end store in Lubbock. I learned that the most well-dressed customer was least likely to buy, while the man who arrived in jeans and muddy boots could throw down for seven suits and a $3,000 shearling coat.
In my own extended family, there were people of modest income and those who benefited from oil prospecting in the 1950s. The only way you could tell them apart at family reunions was by the car they drove. Otherwise, they looked the same, and everyone regardless of means was expected to sit around the community center shelling peas and cracking pecans so that the whole family benefited.
This is what I mean by the democratic and egalitarian culture of Texas. It was forged by the difficulties of frontier life, which tended to shave away all pomp and pretense and remind everyone of their dependence on everyone else, regardless of class or financial means. It’s not a classless utopia of the sort imagined by Karl Marx, but rather a humane and empathetic culture shaped by the exigencies of weather, the struggle against nature, and the freedom for everyone to make a life for himself.
Somehow, this culture still survives in this great state. Although many Texans to whom I spoke worry about recent trends and fear the loss of core values, they truly have no idea just how different the state feels when compared with blue coastal states where people are still masking, drivers never let you merge, and smiles are as rare as warm days in January.
My wild generalization now complete, you can now proceed to tell me all the ways in which I’m wrong, I’ve engaged in overgeneralization and caricature, and unfairly neglected important outliers in my sweeping claims. I’m profoundly aware, but one point stands out to me: It’s been years since I’ve seen so many authentic smiles. That surely means something important.
