This week by Dave Roberson

“Texas is a state of mind.  Texas is an obsession.  Above all, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word.”  John Steinbeck 

For all of you who are following this waltz through Texas History, we are going to take a break from 1836 and explore another part of the Texas story; that is, why is there a Texas story.  Or more importantly, since everyone has a story, why is the Texas story such a big deal?   Well, the mere fact that you are reading this must mean there is something going on.  When Hollywood wanted to make “The Alamo”, it took John Wayne to play Davy Crockett.  When James Michner wrote Texas it took over 1000+ pages to tell the story.  When Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove was put on television, it took a week to show it.  So what is it?  Well, for this 7^th generation Texas it is three things, People, Land, and Oil.

People

Let’s take a look at who settled Texas.  First, it was Indians or I guess as we are supposed to say these days Native Americans.  Two of these Native American nations were cannibalistic Karankawas along the Gulf Coast and some of the toughest, cruelest people on the planet the Comanches out on the West Texas plains.  So if you are your average peace loving Fransican monk setting up a mission in Texas in the 16 and 1700’s, you quickly learn to become one tough hombre or you earn a quick trip to visit St. Peter.  You see, there was a very good reason that your run of the mill Juan and Maria down south of the Rio Grande in the 1800’s did not say, let’s go vacation up to Padre Island for Cinco de Mayo or let’s go to Big Bend and start a new rancho.  I can just imagine when ole’ Moses Austin asked the Mexican government for a land grant in Texas, the answer was come on down gringo.  No only are our Native Americans some of the nicest people you will ever meet, but you will also love the weather.  And I cannot overemphasize that there was nothing in Texas in the 1820’s that remotely resembled civilization.  By contrast when the British colonies were established in North America, there was contact and support back to Britain.  There was capital for investment and frequent shipments of supplies from the mother country.  Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston quickly grew into wealthy cities.  Roads were built and trade between the colonies began.  

In Texas, there was no infrastructure, no army, no money and very little contact with the rest of the world.  For those who came to Texas, it was you and your gun.  You fought and won, you fought and died, or you went back to from wherever you came.  Those were the only choices.  Most stayed.  And for those who did stay, they had to figure out how to survive.  Those that did were like the Franciscan’s before them, they became a very tough people.  As future waves of immigrants in future years came, they learned from those who came before them.  As civilization began to take hold in Texas, it was a different kind of civilization, one that valued self-reliance.  There were no large urban areas until the 20^th century.  It was basically farms, ranches and small towns; and a long distance to your neighbor.  It was you and your family.  A typical small Texas town might have a population from a few hundred to one or two thousand.  For many towns, half the population might be related to just a few families.  And every little town had its churches that filled both the spiritual and social needs of the town.  In summary, Texans were tough, independent, hard working and Christian.

Land

“Second, said state…shall also retain all the vacant and unappropriated lands lying in its limits…Third --- New States of convenient size not exceeding four in number, in addition to the State of Texas and having sufficient population, may hereafter by the consent of the said State, may be formed out of the territory thereof, which shall be entitled to admission, under the provisions of the Federal Constitution…”  Ordinance of Annexation, July 4, 1845.

Texas is one of only two states that were admitted statehood after being first an independent Republic, but the only one that had a long enough self-sufficient history to be recognized by other nations.  All of the others were either the original 13 English colonies or were first organized as a US territory.  As a condition of trading independence for statehood, Texas successfully negotiated the two clauses quoted above in the Ordinance of Annexation.  Although the 3^rd one has been threatened over the years, it is the second that has led to phenomenal wealth for the state and much resentment in Washington, D.C.  When the Federal government closed the frontier in 1890, all vacant land within the country was claimed by the US Government and to this day is managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM); all the vacant land outside of Texas that is.  The vacant land in Texas is the property of the state, not the federal government and is managed by the General Land Office (GLO).  One of the early actions of the Texas Legislature was to set aside some of its vacant land for education and subsequently dedicated some as Permanent School Lands for primary and secondary schools and others as Permanent University Lands.  But when you have tens of millions of acres of vacant land, it is easy to hand out a few million acres here and a few million acres there.  So even today, all of the land within the borders of Texas is owned either by the state or its citizens, except for those tracts that the United States has bought for such purposes as post offices, interstate highways, national forests and parks, army forts and air bases. 

People do not think about it much today, but land ownership is a foundation for most of the wealth in the world.  Think about why you would want to be a dictator of some third rate Latin American, Middle Eastern or African country.  It is because the country owns the land, which includes its resources, and the dictator owns the country, which leads to phenomenal wealth.  Think Arab sheik.  I do not want to get too political, but you really have to question the motive of our leaders when they encourage its citizens to become renters, not owners.  But that is a discussion for another day.  There are over 261 thousand square miles in Texas and most of it is blessed with some kind of natural resource, be it timber, water, fertile soil, wildlife, or sources of energy.  The people who became Texans learned first to survive on the land, then next tame the land, then finally create wealth from the land.  Whether it is a ranch in West Texas, a hunting place in the Hill Country, a lake house in East Texas or a lot in suburbia, Texans have become very attached to their land.

Oil

January 10, 1901 was a big day in Texas history; so big that what happened that day is still dominating both the Texas economy and its pop culture.  Whether it is the movie “Giant”, the television series “Dallas”, or the football team formerly known as the “Oilers”, oil and Texas go together like peanut butter and jelly. Since 1892 Patillo Higgins had been trying to find oil on a salt dome just south of Beaumont called Spindletop.  Nearly out of money but not faith (isn’t that always the case), Higgins looked for a partner.  Hearing about the drilling effort in Texas, Anthony Lucas decided to head to Beaumont and partner with him, bringing both greatly needed capital and drilling experience.  Lucas was drilling that January morning when at 1139 feet below the surface, first mud, then gas, then oil blew out of the hole.  As Jed Clampett would later say, he had discovered black gold, Texas tea.  The oil industry that we know today literally exploded onto the scene.  Millions of barrels of oil flowed out of the Spindletop oil field and hundreds of oil companies were born.  Within 10 years, dozens of salt domes were explored and oil fields discovered all along the Gulf Coast. As exploration techniques improved, oil was found in also every region of Texas.  Boom towns started popping up in Kilgore, Desdemona, Burkburnett, Wink and Borger.  There is great risk in drilling for oil and there were many more dry holes than discoveries, but taking a risk is in a Texan’s DNA, so drill they did.  Millions of barrels a year of production became million barrels a day statewide.  Fortunes that would impress Warren Buffet or Bill Gates were made every month somewhere in Texas.  And fortunes were also lost every month.  Since most of the land where this oil was being discovered was owned by either common everyday Texans or the State of Texas, you did not even have to invest in a well to make money.  You just needed to lease your land and hope that it held an oil reserve below.  Mailbox money was born.  Many of these tough, independent, hard working people now had something else; money and lots of it.  But the fun died with the stock market collapse of 1929 and The Great Depression brought down many a millionaire.  Oil prices dropped to as low as 5 cents a barrel in the 1930’s.  But when the nation went to war in 1941, it floated to victory four years later on a wave of Texas oil.  From Spindletop until 1980’s, oil and natural gas was the single largest component of the Texas economy.  Combine this wealth from the land with a relatively small and generally self-reliant population (only 9 million people lived in Texas as late as 1960), taxes were low and government services were scarce.  Things have changed some today as the population has grown and more people moved into urban areas, but much of the reason that the Texas stereotype exists today is because of the role that oil has played.

So there you have it, People, Land, and Oil.  You put it all together and you have a good window into the soul of a Texan.  But wait, some of you are saying that I am missing the greatest part of Texas culture.  Ah, you may be right about that, but you will have to wait until August to read that chapter.

“I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that.  It is a mystique closely approximating a religion.”  John Steinbeck 1962

So what’s the BIG deal about Texas Anyway

By Dave Roberson

Did you know that this is Madagascar? 

Did You Know?

Did you know that Africa is a landlocked country, so it is hard to trade there?

I sure didn't....I guess I learn something new everyday. 

 Now in all serious...I'm proud that my students try to use new vocabulary like "landlocked" in their essays, (even if they use the word wrong) but i'm still kind of worried that some think that Africa is a country.  They know that the Suez Canal cuts trade time in half, and they know where it is located, but they still struggle with the difference of a Continent vs Country.  

The good news.......everyone can now point to Africa on the map!!!!  Believe it or not, that is a big step for some from the first of the year.....YAY

Remember The Alamo

“remain in this fort…resist every assault, and to sell our lives as dearly as possible.  I now want every man who is determined to stay here and die with me to come across this line.”  Colonel Travis at the Alamo, March 5, 1836

By the time dawn broke on March 6, 1836, those Texans still alive within the walls of The Alamo surely new the end was near.  The Mexican army of several thousand strong was advancing on 200 or so defenders from all directions.  For 13 days, the Texans had withstood cannonade and infantry assaults.  But during that pre-dawn Sunday morning, General Santa Ana had unleashed his entire force.  Before noon, the battle was over.  Except for a couple of women and their children, everyone fighting within the walls was dead.  This is not an attempt to re-tell the battle; there are plenty of books and Hollywood films that have done that.  I will however attempt to give a reason as to why these men so willingly gave their lives that day.

At first glance it would seem that there would be no reason whatsoever to fight for a place that would come to be called Texas.  As late as 1820, there was only a very small population living in the land between the Rio Grande and Sabine Rivers.  In fact, there were so few people living in the entire northern portion of Mexico that two of its states, Texas and Coahuila were combined into one with the capital in Saltillo.  About this time, Moses Austin was petitioning the Spanish government in Mexico City for a land grant to bring in colonists to settle land along the Brazos River.  In 1821, shortly after gaining Spanish approval, Moses Austin died and the Mexicans drove the Spanish out of Mexico.  Stephen F. Austin took over the land grant from his father and successfully convinced the infant Mexican government that the colony his father was preparing should be established.  From 1822 to 1824, the first settlers began arriving and have become known as the Old 300.  The land called Texas would never be the same.

There are many rivers bigger than the Brazos, Colorado or San Bernard and other lands more fertile than these, but for the people who came to Texas, it wasn’t just any land, it was their land.  They came mostly from Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Missouri, were generally Protestant Christians of British ancestry, fiercely independent, brash, and quick to speak out.  Their hosts were of Spanish ancestry, familiar with subservient living under royalty, and Roman Catholic.  A clash of some kind was inevitable, a matter of when, not if.  By 1828, there were an estimated 1200 families living in Austin’s colony.  Other colonies were established later and by 1834 there was an estimated 9000 people living in Texas.  As word spread throughout the U.S. of the almost endless amounts of land available in Texas, thousands began to pour in, not always worrying about the details of paperwork with the Mexican government.  By 1836 it is estimated that 35,000 people lived in Texas, mainly on the coastal plain, along the inland riverbanks, and scattered throughout the forest of East Texas.  That is 35,000 independent minded, self-sufficient landowners and a few hundred Mexican officials trying to collect taxes and enforcing Mexican law.  It would take an army to gain control of Texas and in late 1835 that is exactly what the government in Mexico City did when Santa Ana began sending his north.  After several skirmishes in late 1835 and January 1836, the first big test for Texans would start the afternoon of February 23 when the leading edge of Santa Ana’s army reached San Antonio.

But this still does not tell us why 200 men went to San Antonio to fight the Mexican army.  After successfully pushing a Mexican garrison out of San Antonio in December 1835, they still had time to think about what was about to happen.  General Sam Houston had ordered San Antonio evacuated and the old mission there blown up.  But the men did not consider themselves soldiers in an army subject to orders from someone not at the fight; they were just fighting men organized as a militia, with each militia commander doing pretty much whatever he get his men to do.  The two leading militia leaders in San Antonio that winter were Jim Bowie and William Travis.  They had reclaimed San Antonio from the Mexican army and they had no intention of just giving it back.  But still,

they knew that a huge military force was headed to San Antonio and most if not all the men there still had relatives back in the U.S.  They could have decided that this experiment of living under the Mexican government was not at all what it was advertised to be and could have just gone back to from wherever they had come.  But they did not.  There was some kind of crazy mixing of land, culture, and dreams that fueled their desire to stay and that crazy brew is still alive today.  And that old mission, well it just happened to be known as The Alamo.  Twice James Bonham would leave the fortress, breaking through the Mexican lines with letters from Colonel Travis pleading for more volunteers; and twice he would return to the fight.  Some men from Gonzales made it in, but that would be all that would make it.  By the time Travis gathered his men together on March 5, he knew the last chance to leave The Alamo was near.  With a line in the sand, he asked who would join him.  Everyone, including a very ill Jim Bowie crossed over.  One last time a rider left The Alamo with Travis’s famous letter.  The rest made their peace. They were no longer Americans from their past and they were not going to become Mexicans in the future.  Their ancestors had fought the British twice, once for independence and once for survival.  It was now their turn to fight for this new land and a country of their own.  

Santa Ana would lose 600 men that Sunday and his army lost a lot of its fighting spirit.  Before April would end, Texas would be a free and independent country.  For the next 9 years, Texas would answer to no other sovereignty.  Some say that we still do not.  Maybe David Crockett said it best when he was leaving the U.S. Congress in 1835, “You may all go to hell, I will go to Texas.”  Crockett and some 200 others died March 6, 1836.  But from their death a new people were born; those people are Texans.

The Men of The Alamo

by Dave Roberson

An Ode to Bluebonnets

Since my dad is tributing this month, and most of April (ok, 21 days of April) to Texas, I thought I would put in my 2 cents.  For those of you who have never been to the best state in the world, you have probably never seen this flower....

Ok, so it looks like a plain ole flower, right?  WRONG!  Now that spring is springing quite early here, this little flower is popping up all over the place.  And the good news, this little blue flower has millions of friends and together, it is one beautiful sight to see.

So here is to Texas' State Flower,  The Bluebonnet.

SO HERE'S TO YOU.... 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TEXAS!!

Happy Birthday Texas

by: Dave Roberson 

Today is March 2, one of two great days for Texas.  But for most of the 25 plus million people who reside here, it is just another Friday.  There was however a time not too long ago that every Texan knew why we celebrated March 2.  You see, when you entered 7^th grade, you were taught history, Texas History that is.  American History, well that could wait until 8^th grade.  Every young Texan needed to be well grounded first and that meant learning about Cabeza de Vaca, Robert La Salle, Caddo Indians, Stephen F. Austin, Washington-on-the-Brazos, Sam Houston and Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.  There was Travis, Bowie, and Davy Crockett dying at the Alamo and Emily Morgan, the Yellow Rose of Texas, helping the Texans (not the football team) secure a victory over the Mexicans (not in a soccer match) at the Battle of San Jacinto.  And no, the big ole battleship Texas was not a part of that battle (try WWI and WWII).  But that was then.  As we sit here in the 21^st century, March 2 seems to be just another day on the calendar.  So, before another generation becomes hopelessly lost to our heritage, I am going make sure the readers of Julie’s blog are properly educated.  Between now and April 21 (your first homework assignment is to learn why this story will end on April 21) you will learn the story of Texas as you have never heard it before.  Take good notes and do your homework, there will be a test at the end.  Next posting will be March 6; that is your second homework assignment.

“…the people of Texas do now constitute a free, Sovereign and independent republic, and are fully vested with all the rights and attributes which properly belong to independent nations…”  Declaration of Independence, March 2, 1836