A real lone star

Over the past week or so I’ve seen — like those great Western swingers Asleep at the Wheel sang — “miles and miles of Texas.”

It has been years since I could get in a car and drive and pretty much drive non-stop for hours on end. I’ve driven what is near the widest width of the Lone Star State several times, from near the Sabine River in Newton County to El Paso. The last time I remember making that drive was on Christmas Day 1985. I practically had I-10 to myself that day except for the occasional black and white of the Texas Highway Patrol. That was a 16-hour drive. I do good to make it three hours without having to find a hotel to spend the night these days, due to a variety of back, neck and knee ailments that only get worse the more you set in a little moving box.

One fact I have gleaned from those trips both east-west and north-south in Texas is as follows: If you love Texas you will come to love it more after seeing it from miles and miles of  highway. If you are disposed to hating Texas, those miles and miles will make you a dyed-in-the-wool Texas hater. I fall in the former category. Oh, there’s quite a few things I don’t like about Texas. Its governor for one. Ol’ Good Hair Rick making those outbursts during the beginning of the Tea Parties on how Texas could secede from the union and divide itself into five different states? That’s a crock, of course. Texas, if its folks chose, could divide itself into five different states but it would still be in the U.S. and would  have much more congressional representation than everyone else.

The provisions that would presumably allow Texas to divide itself came about as a result of the 1845 annexation deal between the Republic of Texas and the United States of America. That division will never happen though. As the proud little book from long ago, “Texas Brags,” which you could buy at the Stuckey’s stores on the Interstates, pointed out none of the five states would ever be able to let the others have the Alamo.

Oh and secession? You ever hear of the Civil War, or as some call it down South suh, the War of Northern Aggression? Frankly, for all its flaws, I’m pretty damn proud to be a born and bred citizen of the US of A. I served in its military and as part of its government, and yes, I’m pretty damn proud of that too.

A song I heard on the “Outlaw Country” channel of Sirius XM satellite radio — a pretty good thing in my mind that satellite radio thingamajig — while cruising down I-45 on Friday kind of puts this big old piece of Earth known as Texas into a big ball o’ perspective. It is a tune by a fellow named Bob Cheevers called “Texas Is An Only Child.”

“Texas is an only child/A real lone star/you can be a friend, no matter who your are/the Alamo’s still stands/the rivers running wild/the great state of Texas is an only child.”*

Check out the link, where you can hear that and other songs by Cheevers, or while you still can. Musicians change up Web sites like they change their non-existent underwear. That is, all musicians except Los Lobos. As far as I know, you can listen to I guess everything they’ve ever recorded on their Web site “Player.“ Those ol’ boys from East L.A.: David Hidalgo, Louis Perez, Cesar Rosas, Conrad Lozano and Steve Berlin are one of America’s musical treasures. They form a blend of rock, Tex-Mex, folk, country, R&B and various sounds from South of the Border. I will probably head over to their radio as soon as I’m finished to get my fix of “Good Morning Aztlan,” one of the band’s best rollicking ballads. Los Lobos isn’t from Texas but they’ve played on “Austin City Limits” probably more than a lot of Texans and they’d certainly be welcome in Texas by all but a  few cops who just don’t like brown folks very much. Oh well, it’s their loss.

Cheevers has a great song in “Lone Star.” Who cares if it is somewhat hokey and Texalitionist. Hey, Texas is where I live and I’d wrestle a bear to protect this great state, provided I had a very sturdy anti-bear suit, a tranquilizer gun, a baseball catcher’s mask, a Smith and Wesson .357 Model 19, a Remington 870 pump, a bazooka, or perhaps my friend Tere whom I haven’t seen in years. She once whacked an alligator upside the head with a .22. Weird? Why of course not, it’s just Texas.

*Bob Cheevers musical lyrics are reprinted through the “Fair Use” doctrine.