I lived in Manhattan for ten years. I have lived in Louisiana for the last twenty-five years, but I was born and raised in Texas, and I'll always be a Texan.
I left when I joined the Marines in 1965. In 1970 I hitch hiked to NYC to join the anti-war movement. My new heroes were Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.
I worked on the National Staff of Vietnam Veterans Against The War. I was editor of our newspaper. My book about those days, STOP WAR AMERICA,
came out in 2007. It won an Honorable Mention at the New York Book Festival.
What is a real Texan? As a kid,my first heroes were actual cowboys, soft spoken and slow to anger, not afraid of the occasional fist fight. I will always be a Dallas Cowboy fan. I no longer hunt but I still eat meat. I have had a gun carry permit for the last ten years. Three times in those ten years I have intervened to help out someone in trouble - a woman being dragged towards a pickup truck, a child being struck with a belt, and a state trooper alone on a highway fighting with someone resisting being arrested. The courage I read about in men like Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie at the Alamo gave me strength in 68 when I climbed up the ramp of a chinook bound for Khe Sanh. I spent 29 days in that hell hole, under a constant crossfire of incoming long range North Vietnamese artillery batteries located in Laos and North Vietnam. In 74 I spent four months in a VA psych ward in Waco, Texas. I am 100 % service connected for PTSD. These days I still write and travel a lot. I spent the month of May keeping a journal as I roamed around Cuba. I am currently shopping around a five thousand word article about that journey. I voted for Obama. Next year I will do it again.
Molly Ivans and Barbra Jordan and Rick Perry are Texans. George W. Bush is not. He will always be a Connecticut Yankee. There are many such creatures in Texas strutting around in Stetsons and cowboy boots. Real Texans enjoy a laugh whenever they see one walk by. Do I take pride in being a Native Son of the Lone Star State? Damn straight! If you've got a problem with that, it's your problem.