Here is a little more from the eBook turned blog post. I have seen versions of this elsewhere, but I like my version best.
Next up, the first of 25 ways to be Texan, Wherever You Are…
Have you looked closely at a map lately?
Have you looked closely at a map lately? Look at Texas with me just for a second. That picture, with the Panhandle and the Gulf Coast, and the Red River and the Rio Grande is as much a part of you as anything ever will be. As soon as anyone anywhere in the world looks at that map they know what it is.
It’s Texas.
Pick any kid off the street in Australia and draw him a picture of Texas in the dirt and he’ll know what it is. What happens if I show him a picture of any other state? He might get it maybe after a while of studying, but who else would? And even if he did, did it ever stir any feelings in him like Texas would?
Texas is an Icon. You know instantly what it is just by looking at an outline.
The Alamo is also an Icon. Just by looking at this picture, you know what it is.
Just a simple drawing of that famous Texas Shrine with no caption and no explanation and a person in Iceland will know what it is.
In every man, woman and child on this planet, there is a person who wishes just once he could be a real Texan and get up on a horse or ride off in a pickup. Yes, there is a little bit of Texas in everyone.
Did you ever hear anyone in a bar say, “Wow…so you’re from Iowa?
Cool, tell me about it?”
Do you know why?
Because no one, except the good folks who live there gives a darn about Iowa. Have you ever watched corn grow? Exciting, eh?
Texas is the Alamo. Texas is 185 men standing in a mission, facing thousands of Mexican soldiers, fighting for freedom, who had the chance to walk out and save themselves, but stayed instead to fight and die for the cause of freedom.
We send our kids to schools named William B. Travis, Toribio Losoya, and James Bowie and Davy Crockett, and do you know why? Because those men saw a line in the sand and they decided to cross it and be heroes. We remember our heroes in Texas. We honor them.
John Wayne paid out of his own pocket to pay for filming the movie “The Alamo” himself. That is the Spirit of Texas. Texas is Sam Houston capturing Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana at San Jacinto.
Texas is huge forests of Piney Woods like the Davy Crockett and Sam Houston National Forests and the piney woods of East Texas.
Texas is breathtaking mountains in the Big Bend.
Real Texas is an independent minded piece of the planet commonly called West Texas.
Texas is the unparalleled beauty of bluebonnet fields in the Texas Hill Country, and beautiful they are!
Texas is the warm beaches of the Gulf Coast of South Texas.
Texas is the shiny skyscrapers in Houston and Dallas.
Texas is the capitol dome in Austin.
Texas is world record bass from places like Lake Fork.
We’re bi-lingual in Texas. We speak Texan and Tex-Mex. It’s not unusual to hear both languages in one sentence.
Texas is Mexican food like nowhere else, not even Mexico. After a trip out of the country (out of state), the first thing most Texans want is a plate of nachos, enchiladas, and homemade tortillas.
Texas is the Fort Worth Stockyards, Bass Hall, the Ballpark in Arlington and the Alamodome. It’s a West Texas sunset, an East Texas forest, and a coastal storm. Yes, it’s even Jerry Jones and the new Texas Stadium.
Texas is larger-than-life legends like Bob Wills, Red Adair, Mary Kay Ash, “Dandy” Don Meredith, Carol Burnett, Joan Crawford, 
Jimmy Dean, Walter Cronkite, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Freddy Fender, Lance Armstrong, LBJ, George Foreman, Larry Hagman, Ben Hogan, Barbara Jordan, Lyle Lovett, Star Trek’s Gene Roddenberry, Barbara Mandrell, Steve Martin, Mary Martin, Babe Didrikson Zaharias, Dale Evans, Michael DeBakey, Vince Young, Denton Cooley, Oliver North, Elmer Kelton, Roy Orbison, Tommy Nobis, Chester Nimitz, Ross Perot, Richard Petty, Willie Nelson, Nolan Ryan, Sissy Spacek, George Strait, Buddy Holly, Gene Autry, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Ernest Tubb, Tanya Tucker, Audie Murphy, Tommy Lee Jones, Waylon Jennings, Farrah Fawcet, Janis Joplin, Roger Staubach and Tom Landry. Sandra Bullock, Kris Kristofferson, Eva Longoria, Darrell Royal, Dan Rather, Tex Ritter, ZZ Top, Robert Worth, and Eric Dickerson.
Add to them, Earl Campbell, Sammy Baugh, Joe Don Baker, Sam Rayburn, Howard Hughes, George H. W. Bush, Lyndon B. Johnson, and George W. Bush, and movie star Rene Zellweger. We could go on and on like that….
By the way, Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier of WWII, was from north Texas and was considered too small for the Marines, not old enough for the Navy, and was dismissed by nearly everyone as just too little to make a difference. They forgot about his big-as-Texas heart. Click on his name and learn more about this remarkable soldier from Texas just in time for Memorial Day
Texas is great companies like Dell Computer, Texas Instruments, big oil, big banks, Bell Helicopter and Lockheed Martin Aerospace, H.E.B., AT&T, Southwest Airlines, American Airlines. Stream Energy, Hewlett-Packard, Halliburton, Texas Industries, USAA, and Whole Foods Market.
In fact, Texas is home to more Fortune 500 companies (58) than any other state. New York comes in second. (55) And more are coming here every year. Why? We are business friendly and Texas does NOT have a personal state income tax and probably never will.
Texas is NASA.
Texas is the little guy like D.D. “Pee Wee” Poynor who strung together a truck doing most of the work himself and self made his business into a multi-million dollar construction company.
Texas is huge herds of cattle and miles and miles of cotton fields.
Texas is Sam Houston. He built a nation, a state, and was a leader of men. A larger than life statue of Sam Houston, the hero of San Jacinto, was erected near Huntsville, home of Sam Houston State University.
Texas is roughnecks and roustabouts drilling for oil under the hot Texas sun.
Texas is slingin’ Sammy Baugh, the rough talking, great passing quarterback who still holds several football records today after 60 years. He died in 2008.
When he went to tryout camp Coach said to him, “I hear you are a pretty good passer.”
“I’m pretty good,” Baugh replied.
The Coach yells at his fastest man and tells him to run toward the end zone as fast as he can. Then he pitches the ball to Sammy and tells him to hit the guy in the eye. “Which eye?” Sammy asked.
Texas is home to the most amazing sunsets of gold over a mesquite forest.
Texas is skies blackened with doves and fields and pastures full of deer.
Texas is Jimmy Dean. You might know of him through his sausage. The rest of us here in Texas know him through “Big Bad John,” a song about a man who saves others in a coal mine. Click on the blue link to hear the song.
Texas is a place where Odessa and every little town in Texas literally shuts down to watch the local high school football games on Friday nights and then roots for the Cowboys or the Texans on Sunday afternoons and Monday Night Football.
That same story is repeated in cities and towns all across Texas. Opposing colleges and universities all across the USA feature Texas boys playing against each other. It’s a way of life here.Just a couple of years ago, Texas born quarterbacks led their colleges and universities in dozens of schools and states. Two Texas quarterbacks played against each other in a national championship game.
Boys become men on the playing fields of Texas on Friday nights.
Bottom line: Don’t mess with football in Texas.
Texas is Jimmy Morris, the oldest Rookie. Morris was coaching baseball in the little West Texas Town of Big Lake and after throwing down a challenge to his team members; he was pitching at the ballpark in Arlington three months later. He never gave up on his dream.
Some Texans live for weekends in San Antonio on the riverwalk. Or on 6th Street in Austin on a Saturday night after a Longhorn football game. Many Texans drive for hundreds of miles to see a Texas Aggie game and get there several hours early to watch the Corps of Cadets march into Kyle Field.
To drive across Texas is to drive 1/3 the way across the United States.
Texas is dogwood trees in east Texas. When the dogwoods bloom, Texas is alive and well. In that part of the world of Texas, dogwoods in bloom rival the bluebonnet for their beauty.
Texas is ocean beaches, deserts, forests, lakes and rivers, mountains and prairies, and modern cities. It’s small towns and Dairy Queen coffee shops where old men sit around and save the world.
Texas is Texas A&M and its legendary 12th man tradition. Nothing anywhere compares to that kind of loyalty.
If it isn’t already in Texas, you probably don’t need it.
No one does anything bigger or better than it’s done in Texas.
Texas is dominating in wind energy and wind power. If Texas were a separate country, we would rank 6th in the world in generating power from the wind. In fact, last year Texas added more wind capacity than any other nation except China and the U.S. In Texas, we’re serious about energy whether it is blowing in the wind or oil and gas from the ground.
If you drive in West Texas from San Angelo to Big Spring, you will see hundreds of wind turbines turning into the wind, generating clean pure power for Texas and America. Drive through the Sweetwater area and you will see the same thing. Drive from Mertzon to Eldorado and you will see a new wind farm above the fog, turning the West Texas wind into clean electricity. Is Texas leading the ‘green’ revolution?
Texas is Taylor Publishing Company, a true Texas rags to riches story of hard work and determination by brothers who built a fabulous publishing empire and preserved our high school memories in the annual year books each school makes available to students. It’s quite a story and you can read about it here.
Texas is discovery wells like Santa Rita # 1 in Reagan County which opened up the vast Permian 
Basin and made the University of Texas one of the premier universities in the nation. A replica of that famous well is located near Darrell Royal Memorial Stadium in Austin. Hundreds and hundreds and thousands of students have benefited from the risk and hard work of a few determined individuals out in the hot West Texas sun in drilling the discovery well of the Permian Basin.
Santa Rita was patron Saint of ‘The Impossible.’ Nobody thought there was oil out in that West Texas wilderness except a few determined Texans who fought and clawed their way to success. And don’t forget Spindletop and Kilgore.
Texas is the Lone Star flag.
Texas flies its flag at the same height as the U.S. Flag. Think about that for a second. You fly the Stars and Stripes at 20 feet in Maryland, California, or Maine, and your state flag, whatever it is, goes at 17 feet. You fly the Stars and Stripes in front of Fredericksburg High School or anyplace else at 20 feet, the Lone Star flag can fly at the same height – 20 feet.
Do you know why?
Because it is the only state that was a Republic before it became a state. Also, being a Texan is as high as being an American down here.
We consider ourselves American by birth, but Texans by the Grace of God. Our capitol is the only one in the country that is taller than the capitol building in Washington, D.C. We can divide our state into five states at any time if we want to do so!
We can also become a republic again at any time the voters of Texas choose, and we included these things as part of the deal when we came on. That’s the best part, right there. We have a very active Texas Nationalist Movement. They make a compelling case for Texas to once again be a separate republic.
Texas even has its own power grid!! Texans use more electricity than Spain. And our GDP is bigger than Russia.
And don’t even lie to yourself about Nashville…. Did I mention Austin, Texas is THE Live music capitol of the world?
Texas! Yes, it’s a whole other country.
Is it any wonder we are proud to call this paradise our home.
P.S. Remember, next up is the start of 25 ways to Be Texan, Wherever You Are!
If you are a true lover of all things Texan, sign up to receive the free newsletter at the top left of this page. Lots of cool stuff there, and it’s All Texas, All The Time. See ya there!!
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Damn Dave, that’s impressive! All I can say is “AMEN”. God Bless the Republic of Texas
I was born(1933) and raised in Texas and I will die in Texas if god is willing….Bob M.
The map at the top of the page is very interesting but I haven’t been able to see the legend so that I can get to know Texas better. My husband and I are considering relocating, and we will be taking an exploratory trip after Thanksgiving. Can you provide a link that has the legend?
Thank you.
Hey Virginia: I don’t know that there is a legend to that particular map. However, Texas is so vast, a trip here might be in your best interest. We have mountains, plains, seashores, forests, deserts, small towns and big cities. Define your interests and pick a geographical region. You won’t be disappointed.
Love all the Texas facts.
I was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and have never lived more than 10 miles from there. I honestly could not imagine living anywhere else, but I absolutely love the Texas Hill Country. When my ancestors came here back before 1850, they settled in what is now Georgetown (25 miles NE of Austin). My G-G-great grandfather donated to the state of Texas, the land that is now Sawyer Park (55 acres) on Lake Georgetown. Also, my great great grandfather (William Martin Sawyer), his brother (Costos Sawyer), and his brother-in-law (George Thayre) were on their way to buy a herd of cattle in Mexico (contrary to what other accounts have stated – I know the truth, it is family) with 6 other men, and $1,000 in 1863. They were intercepted by a Confederate Posse, and were accused of being Civil War deserters (they were actually on leave), and they were all hung without a trial, except for a 16 yr old boy (he was released, and disappeared). The posse was found guilty of murder at court marshal, in absentia, but none of them were ever found, nor the $1,000. Some men from nearby Bandera buried all 8 men in a single grave, after being found 2 days later. There is a historical marker at the location, it is called the Banderra Tragedy Tree.