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Location: Austin, TX/Chicago, IL/Houston, TX/Washington, DC
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I mean I like the state, almost all my friends do too. I guess its because its very opportune, I am a nature lover but I am realistic, I am not at the beach everyday, I am not climbing mountains everyday, I am not doing those things everyday. So for me its great here. Great food, great people, amazing integration, great everything to be honest.
One thing I hate is the transportation, Austin & Houston really need to kick it into gear and get better transit systems, the entire state does. I don't have much state pride, and I don't think I've ever uttered the worlds "I'm proud to live in Texas" before in my life. States, they're just not my thing, I am mostly into my cities and that's all.
I wasn't born nor raised in Texas. I was born in Chicago, lived in India & Singapore before Texas. I like what Texas has, and I've never seen so much inspiration before than I have here. I really like it here, and I do have the option with Chicago, Washington DC, or Texas but overall I like Texas more, really no other place I would rather live in the country.
Saving the extra money annually off what isn't high taxes or whatever has given me the opportunity to see much of the country and travel a bit, and I really like that. Very comfortable lifestyle, and very happy.
I should probably add "Texas Expat" to my tag, along with "Ever Leftward". Born in Corpus Christi, have lived in Lubbock, Fort Worth, Dallas, rural Denton Co., Beaumont, Mineral Wells, Austin; and frequent childhood visits to the Permian Basin to visit grandparents and in adulthood to Tyler to visit now deceased parents. I don't think the DFW Metroplex is a very compelling place historically, geographically, climatologically, or politically. My views of Austin and the Central Texas Hill Country are quite different.
Hey doctorjef, It's no "thang" if you're not particularly happy in Texas, not at all. Everyone has their likes and dislikes; that's what makes the world go around. Wherever you are now, if you are happy, that is what matters the most friend.
In point of fact these weather issues don't have much to do with loyalty towards one's home. People live in Texas in spite of the weather for the most part, not because of it. Robert E. Lee was supposed to have said - commenting on Texas weather - that if he owned both Texas and Hell, he'd rent out Texas and live in Hell. An interesting thing I've noted on this forum, however, is that in actual practice people tend to be loyal to their local community/city and think it's the greatest, while often opining that other places in the state are pretty awful. The loyalty to the state as a whole is, then, much more of an abstraction. Like a resident of Lubbock who thinks Austin, Houston and Abilene are all a pile of crap. Or a resident of Austin - me for example - who wouldn't dream of living anywhere else in Texas. The prejudice of small differences, perhaps. As far as generalisations about Texans, I think that's kind of dodgy actually. I found the attitudes of people in Beaumont to be quite a bit different from those of people in Fort Worth or Austin, and some of the attitudes and ways of doing things in Mineral Wells to be different from any other place in Texas I ever lived and worked as an adult. I feel a bit like Margaret Thatcher on this one, in terms of her contention that "there's no such thing as society", or words to that effect, i.e. these are just abstractions that have no real, objective existance. I think, then, that loyalty to the State of Texas as a whole has to do with subscription to a particular national and ethological "mythology" of Texas. Aside from that you just have the natural and universal human loyalties and attachments to place, home, community, all those things that are experienced as familiar, comforting, safe.
I've been all around, and just like it here so very much. You bring up a lot of good points though doctorjef, and your opinion is very much appreciated.
Earlier today I went back to re-read the OP, which is really asking a different question than a lot of what has been talked about here, including by me. The OP really observes that people in his/her experience who are from Texas always tend to return there after living other places. The OP in turn asks why this is the case. One of the initial responses particularly cited living near family as a big reason. Of course this applies to any state where one was reared and where the majority of one's family are still living. And I do think there can be something compelling about one's hometown (much more so than one's home state). Even if one no longer has friends living where one grew up (if you grew up largely in a single place), there are all sorts of strong memories and associations associated with that place. In my case I have very happy memories of Lubbock, because it was the place I spent most of my teenage years and certainly the most crucial part of my teen years. In point of fact I had lots of conflict, personal difficulties and the usual adolescent mess, but the developmental experience of adolescence is so important to one's identity, I think, that you're likely to treasure the memories of those days, no matter how messy they were. But I wouldn't choose to live in Lubbock for a whole host of reasons. Austin is where I spent the greatest portion of my productive adulthood, as well as most of my time as an undergrad and for a year after that before I moved away for grad school. So the place is integral to my life's narrative. Yet there's little chance that my partner and I will return there. This may be crucial: my family members are almost all deceased; I'm financially independent, largely thanks to legacies stemming from maternal-line holdings in Denton Co. (where I continue to pay property and school taxes), so my maintaining my private practice in Austin was no longer important; and I wasn't brought up in any single location (dad in Marine Corps and then built a career in academia that entailed career moves). That covers the bases of one of the early responses on this thread as to why people move back. I offer that by way of validating the considerations stated in that early response to the OP as far as reasons for moving back: family and economic considerations, with the addition of the general theme of returning home. But again I've seen these themes played out in places that completely lack the great national mythos of Texas -- my next-door neighbors here in Delaware located here because 1) the economy had fallen apart in Pittsburg where they had been living and there were job opportunities here, 2) the wife felt too far from her family in New Jersey and this was within easy driving distance, 3) she's very much a Jersey girl and apparently just felt really misplaced in Pitt. Obviously if she had a good job offer in Jersey they would have been there (husband's work is less specialised and he seems to be a lot more flexible). Anyway, it seems to be the same dynamics, the same set of factors coming together as those cited early in this thread.
In point of fact these weather issues don't have much to do with loyalty towards one's home. People live in Texas in spite of the weather for the most part, not because of it. Robert E. Lee was supposed to have said - commenting on Texas weather - that if he owned both Texas and Hell, he'd rent out Texas and live in Hell.
*grins* Sorry to call you on this one, DocJ, but it wasn't Marse Robert that said that. It was W.T. Sherman (of marching thru Georgia notoriety) who made that remark. Damn Yankee. But he was better than Sheridan...who at least openly admitted he hated Southerners and especially Texans.
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An interesting thing I've noted on this forum, however, is that in actual practice people tend to be loyal to their local community/city and think it's the greatest, while often opining that other places in the state are pretty awful. The loyalty to the state as a whole is, then, much more of an abstraction. Like a resident of Lubbock who thinks Austin, Houston and Abilene are all a pile of crap. Or a resident of Austin - me for example - who wouldn't dream of living anywhere else in Texas. The prejudice of small differences, perhaps.
I think that is a given. That is, a first attachment to kin, hearth, community, church, etc.
As an historical aside here, this is why I get so frustrated (so to speak) when discussing the WBTS with those who see it in such simplistic terms as Southern traitors against the United States. Never seeing that it was NOT a matter of CSA vs. USA with diametrically opposing ideas of the original Consitution or DOI, but a matter of Southern states against Northern states fighting for what they felt was the best interpretation of both (and yes, I know that is simplictically put) of the same. It was Americans against Americans (and as another aside, I sure do hope that Stan in San Diego gets back into this!)
Regardless of all that mush, the larger point is that (IMHO) the abstraction, in terms of loyalty, really begins MUCH beyond the state level (I am talking about Texas here).
Yeah, folks in DFW might slam Houston, and Lubbock be ready to fight Amarillo, and etc, etc. However, there is a common bond of Texas that is not an abstraction at all. Or, at least not much of one in relative terms as compared to just where we feel is truly home.
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As far as generalisations about Texans, I think that's kind of dodgy actually. I found the attitudes of people in Beaumont to be quite a bit different from those of people in Fort Worth or Austin, and some of the attitudes and ways of doing things in Mineral Wells to be different from any other place in Texas I ever lived and worked as an adult. I feel a bit like Margaret Thatcher on this one, in terms of her contention that "there's no such thing as society", or words to that effect, i.e. these are just abstractions that have no real, objective existance.
Well, while I sure admire Maggy in lots of ways? If she said this, then she earned her rep as Iron Britches (or somehing like that!), because emotional attachment to a place and time and ones own is REAL. We live it in every day existence. And how could it be any other way?
Maybe to some, it is an abstraction. Ok, I accept that. But I honestly feel sorry for those types. That is to say, no sense of home and place, no sense of feeling an attachment to the place/land/traditions/ one grew up with. And it be the hill that, if it comes to that, one chooses to cast their lot and die on.
These things -- anachronistic as they may be in this day and age -- are really what made the United States. Like concentric circles. The inner makes for a tighter connection to the outer.
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I think, then, that loyalty to the State of Texas as a whole has to do with subscription to a particular national and ethological "mythology" of Texas. Aside from that you just have the natural and universal human loyalties and attachments to place, home, community, all those things that are experienced as familiar, comforting, safe.
Exactly. And it IS human to feel that way. Spock aside, we humans operate as emotional creatures, not always guided by sheer logic. The ties of blood and soil and history and culture are stronger pulls than the tide of the moon.
My first loyalty to Texas DOES comes down to emotion, on many levels. It is my home, my place in the cosmos. My antecedents raised, nurtered, shaped, diciplined, me in a way which made me proud to be part of the Texas/Southern tradition and faith.
I came to believe and embrace (with good reason) that our ways (Texas/Southern) was/is, the best way. Is this a value-judgement? Of course is. But I stand by it.
It might be interesting to contemplate why some native Texans do in fact leave the state quite early on -- say for college or at the beginning of their careers -- and never return. I know several people like this who psychologically should have had - one would have thought - greater attachment to Texas than I, since I spent almost all of my elementary and jr high years out of state, most of those in Virginia and DC to which I felt very attached as a kid. But I know people who completely grew up in Texas but left early on, probably never to return other than for obligatory visits. One in New Mexico, another in England, another in Boston, another to Scotland and Canada -- and so it goes. The short answer is that some people construct a personal narrative early on that envisions something other than living in the familiar surroundings where they grew up. Some are more ambitious than others. For one person that might mean getting the hell out of Big Springs all the way to the big city of Lubbock. For another person it might be moving from Lubbock to Austin for the rest of one's life. But for others it entails a narrative that can only be realised somewhere very different than the regional culture in which they grew up. Of course, that equally occurs with kids who run away from the Midwest or the Deep South to find a new life in Cali or NYC. I'm not a good example of that because I had regional identifications from formative years outside Texas, so that could easily explain my willingness to leave and likely not return. But it's more interesting when someone who was brought up in Texas leaves early on, never to return. You can pathologize the underlying motives if you like, yet it seems to me that these cases do imply a relatively unique independence of mind in the willingness to make the break and to actualize a personal narrative very different from what was conventional and normative in one's upbringing.
It might be interesting to contemplate why some native Texans do in fact leave the state quite early on -- say for college or at the beginning of their careers -- and never return. I know several people like this who psychologically should have had - one would have thought - greater attachment to Texas than I, since I spent almost all of my elementary and jr high years out of state, most of those in Virginia and DC to which I felt very attached as a kid. But I know people who completely grew up in Texas but left early on, probably never to return other than for obligatory visits. One in New Mexico, another in England, another in Boston, another to Scotland and Canada -- and so it goes. The short answer is that some people construct a personal narrative early on that envisions something other than living in the familiar surroundings where they grew up. Some are more ambitious than others. For one person that might mean getting the hell out of Big Springs all the way to the big city of Lubbock. For another person it might be moving from Lubbock to Austin for the rest of one's life. But for others it entails a narrative that can only be realised somewhere very different than the regional culture in which they grew up. Of course, that equally occurs with kids who run away from the Midwest or the Deep South to find a new life in Cali or NYC. I'm not a good example of that because I had regional identifications from formative years outside Texas, so that could easily explain my willingness to leave and likely not return. But it's more interesting when someone who was brought up in Texas leaves early on, never to return. You can pathologize the underlying motives if you like, yet it seems to me that these cases do imply a relatively unique independence of mind in the willingness to make the break and to actualize a personal narrative very different from what was conventional and normative in one's upbringing.
So are you essentially saying they were "so Texan" that they couldn't live in Texas, they had such an independent streak that even their home state of Texas couldn't contain them? Interesting...
Well, that personal independence would be part of the Texas mythology, wouldn't it. And actually, so-called rugged individualism is a basic part of the American mythology (some author a few decades back referred to Texans as "the super-Americans" -- exaggerated expression of generally American aspirational qualities). However, no, I don't think they were "too Texan for Texas", because I think the reality is in fact different from the mythology or the collective ego ideal. Most people largely accept what they were brought up with, with usually only incremental change or development relative to the previous generation. There certainly were some major societal leaps in America during the 1960s-70s (even if some of the ground-work was actually laid earlier) that created bigger generational attitudinal differences. Even with those differences (e.g. attitudes toward matters of sexuality, race and social justice), I think there's still more generational continuity than not. So I think it's truly exceptional when someone makes a big break. However, in thinking about this, there may in fact be a continuity between parental values-behaviour and that of their ambitious children who strike out on a path that takes them out of the state, never to return. The fathers, in particular, of the kids that I knew who left early, never to return, were very independent-minded, ambitious and disinclined to let sentimentality over-influence their actions (not to say that they didn't harbour sentimentality, just that they could deliberately dispense with it as a factor in their decisions). So I'm left with the conclusion that this pattern can occur anywhere and isn't unique to Texas or to some putative Texas personality type.
I will say that while Texas is my favorite state, none of my absolute favorite cities are located here.
I'll probably regret saying this, but while I do love this state (and always will), I seem to have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Texans. Although, hate is a strong word .
Texas is my home, and there is no other state like her, especially when it comes to history. size, climate, hospitality and geographic diversity
If I had been born and raised in New York I would be loyal to New York.
If I had been born and raised in California I would be loyal to California.
If I had been born and raised in Florida I would be loyal to Florida.
If I had been born and raised in Kentucky I would be loyal to Kentucky.
If I had been born and raised in Georgia I would be loyal to Georgia.
If I had been born and raised in Louisiana.........oh wait, I WAS born in Louisiana!
hmmmmm Nevermind.
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