A Death in Texas

[kentauros]

Re: Scalia's passing

So, will the rest of DU now acknowledge that "positive" things do happen in Texas every now and then?

[saltpoint]

1. kentauros, I was forced to re-evaluate

my feelings about Texas after reading Larry McMurtry.

Particularlly, In A Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas

and

The Last Picture Show.

It's fair to say he shut me up real quick. He gives people who have never been there the bones and blood of the place, the romance of risk. It was the equivalent of an adrenaline rush. A Respect Rush. And it's lasted ever since.

And it was Texas that gave us Molly Ivins, and that in itself is a very generous gift.

[kentauros]

2. I've never read McMurtry's books,

but will have to look him up, including the Essays books. So far, the only Texans whose essays I have read are Molly Ivins, Jim Hightower, and Bill Moyers, mostly thanks to past subscriptions to The Texas Observer

The following appears to be a good (and well-researched) article on Texas literature.

Literature
Handbook of Texas Online, Don B. Graham, "Literature," accessed February 14, 2016, http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/kzl01.
Uploaded on June 15, 2010. Modified on August 10, 2012. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.

Also, I happened upon these two sentences as I was skimming, and I can't say it's changed all that much since the mid-1800s!

Although most travelers in early Texas wrote favorably of the inhabitants, one memorable exception was famed urban landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, whose A Journey Through Texas (1857) painted a grim picture of slavery-ridden East Texas, indicting the people as crude, the food as bad, and the level of civilization as negligible. Not until he reached New Braunfels, recently colonized by Germans, did Olmsted find anything fit to eat or any civilization worthy of the name.

[saltpoint]

4. 'Am getting a kick out of Olmsted's account, but

wonder if he needed to stretch out his trip a bit more to capture the flavor better.

I wonder if he references chicken-fried steak, for example. McMurtry drove the length of Texas, east to west, and wrote down his observations. In the western end of the state he stops in for a bite to eat and orders a chicken-fried steak, declaring,

“I stopped at a cafe in Dalhart and ordered a chicken fried steak. Only a rank degenerate would drive 1,500 miles across Texas without eating a chicken fried steak.”

Thank you for the Graham link. I will have to do some exploring.

[kentauros]

7. Was chicken-fried steak even around yet

in 1857?

And I can't eat that kind of thing anymore. There isn't a vegetarian equivalent. Still, that quote alone shows me his writing style is something I could get into

[saltpoint]

8. Can't speak to the history of chicken-friend steak.

I'm kind of neutral on it myself.

McMurtry's Texas traces a long history, but I think he feels his fictional small town of Thalia, Texas as the setting for a Western -- pickups instead of horses but more or less the same cowboys and cowgirls.

It works for me, anyway.

[lapfog_1]

3. so I was wondering...

just what were the circumstances of his death...

west Texas luxury resort..

hunting trip?

will they do a toxicology report?

did Scalia has Viagra in his system? Other drugs?

was he really alone when he died?

[Paladin]

5. Any report on what species he was supposedly hunting?

I took a quick look at TX hunting regs last night; it's open season on javalina and quail right now, and that's about it. Of course, it might have been a canned hunt for some exotic species......

[WolverineDG]

6. Quail nt