I didn’t move to Texas until I was 51 years old. Previously, I had spent all the years of my life in either the town of my birth, Pensacola, or in the town I chose to move to twice, Los Angeles. I left Pensacola because I found it to be limiting, both culturally and economically. I left Los Angeles because I found it, and this broke my heart, a place where I could never fit in culturally, and I was barely fitting in economically.
I see now that both places had very distinct cultures, which was not my perception at the time. I thought, like many Americans, that the entire United States was lacking in culture. I would have said about Pensacola at the time that is was ‘too Baptist’ and I would have said about Los Angeles, that it was ‘too Hollywood.’ I lacked the ability to appreciate the cultures I interacted with and barely recognized them as cultures as all, and I was not alone.
No one thinks about the United States as having a culture, or at least not one to be admired. Many outside the United States may clearly see our cultural imperatives, but within the country, at least in part because it’s so big and diverse, we rarely think about our food, dance, and social habits as being part of a distinct national culture. We don’t think of hotdogs and hamburgers as expressions of culture except to denigrate them. We are only vaguely aware that blue jeans are American. We may think of our music as being of American origin, but American music has so totally dominated the world that it’s hard to specifically remember that it is ours. Neither the British, Germans, or Koreans invented blues, jazz, rock and roll, hip hop, or any of their downstream forms. Americans did that as part of our distinct ethnic and cultural heritage.
American movies are utterly and completely dominate as a cultural export, and yet, few Americans think of the American movie business as being a cultural product at all. And yet, few cultural products are as American as Top Gun, and few Americans as specifically American in character as Tom Cruise, or John Wayne.
Likely, few Americans could identify the specific American attributes of American literature, and yet it is there. Most of the great ‘lost generation’ writers were American expats, like Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Writers like John Steinbeck captured the American experience in the depression. William Faulkner captured the deep south as well as any Russian writer captured the essence of Russia. This short list doesn’t include the American women, like Eudora Welty, or the playwrights, like Tennessee Williams, or the poets, like EE Cummings.
Why couldn’t I feel like I was part of a culture, and celebrate it? As with so many things, I lay this at the feet of the counterculture that was ascendent during my formative years. Many traditional American things became passe or fell out of favor in that period. To love the United States and celebrate the country became a sign of ignorance and lack of sophistication. All the tropes now so fully in view were there on the fringes, which is where I spent a lot of time. I was a leftist. The view was that American culture was ‘toxic,’ and that Americans were racists and sexists. It was said that most Americans couldn’t find any other countries on a map because we were all rubes without passports. The only good people in America were the remnant natives, most of whom we had killed so we cold ‘steal their land’ or the coastal elites, who formed the only good American cultures.
Of course, another factor was the incredibly diverse ways in which American culture expresses itself and the tendency of the inventors of those subcultures to claim them as their own. I listened to a lot of what was then and now, call ‘black music’ from black musicians, Prince among them. But I also listened to a lot of Michael Jackson and Steve Wonder. I never thought of their music as being ‘black music’ and still don’t. It’s American music, as much mine as anyone else’s, and yet, this became somehow the culture possession of a few rather than the whole. Elvis, it was said, ‘stole’ black music, and he had no culture of his own, and yet he did. Elvis represented the culture of his birth in Mississippi and Memphis.
It did not help, in the same period, that American food came in for harsh criticism as being universally bad compared to all the other food traditions. My grandparents had big gardens, and we ate a lot of the food from them, things like lima beans, squash, snap peas, and corn on the cob. These vegetables were cooked in a particular way, and we had them with a lot of fried chicken, pork, and each Thanksgiving, turkey. Of course, these foods are a part of a cultural food tradition, and some of them were good, and most were perfectly healthy. Everyone else’s food, it was said, was better than what my grandmother served me. We heard about the loving Abuela, and Tia, and the big family meal in Italy. My meal, from my grandmothers, made with love too, was not celebrated.
Finally, all the fine arts we studied and supported in the cities, like New York and Los Angeles, was from the canon of European artists. Symphonies sometimes played American composers, like Arron Copeland, but mostly, the arts crowd was still formed around the Europeans, including Mozart. Beethoven, and in the visual arts, Picasso, Rembrandt, and Van Gogh. These same people gravitated to Europeans films, especially the French ones. Art films were synonymous with foreign films.
At 51, I moved to Texas because of a job my ex-wife took in Houston. When I moved to Houston, I did not like country music, own a pair of cowboy boots, or a cowboy hat, and I drove a tiny Honda Civic. Texas solved a real problem for me in that it was right in the middle of the poles from Pensacola to Los Angeles. It’s still kind of in the south, but it’s kind of in the west too. Texans love to play this game. They promote the southern vernacular, posting ‘y’all’ on everything, but they celebrate the cowboy ethos everywhere. Houston is a big city, like Los Angeles, and few people in Texas own horses, but everyone goes to the Houston Livestock and Rodeo each year. It’s a very Texas thing and people love it. I love it.
Texas solved a cultural dilemma for me. Now, I own a whole bunch of boots, several cowboy hats, some for the winter and some for the summer, I listen to, and love, country music and I drive a big truck. Further, I work in oil and gas, and when I’m not at work, I can often be found out dancing the dances popular here, mostly the two step. I found a real cultural home here. Did I mention the brisket and BBQ? It’s good too.
Finding a cultural home here has made me realize that of course there is a culture in Pensacola. It’s the culture of the deep south, but also seafood and gospel music. It’s a religious town, but that is part of the Christian culture and it’s the culture that incubated my family and gave me my values. I shouldn’t hate it.
Los Angeles is the capital for the American cultural industry, but it also has many cultural aspects that are wonderful. I participated in them when I lived there, including a great love of the outdoors. I hiked, camped, and went scuba diving. I worked in the movie business and went to movies constantly. I tasted food from around the world, met and was friends with many Jews, Indians, Latins, Brits, gays, and lived right at the beach in trendy Santa Monica. Los Angeles has so many cultural forms that I just couldn’t get to them all. I regret the political direction California has gone, but I miss the place. I still visit California often, then come home to Texas.
Realizing that I have a culture, that I live a culture, and that my culture makes me happy has made me think of another big issue, which is about civilization. Americans don’t think of our country as being part of a great civilization anymore, but we are a particular civilization, and I should say, the greatest one ever known on the face of the earth. Were the Greeks better than us? The Romans? The Persians? The British? The Shogunate in Japan? The dynasties in China? Any of the empires? The American ideals of liberty are unique in their ways, and we’ve innovated tremendously in the realm of governance, legal forms, and rights. Our freedoms make us leaders in tech and industry. There were many Americans who spoke of the ‘American Way’ and the American civilization in the decade I was born, and the president of my birth, John Kennedy, spoke of the American civilization. It was, and is, real. Our lack of care for the American cultural traditional and the constant attack on our civilizational inheritance is why the great American civilization is in such steep decline. These attacks must be resisted, and the attackers defeated.
I love my culture and all its expressions that I so enthusiastically inhabit. I love my boots and hats. I love Texas, and I want to love and save our American civilizational forms, but there are so many who have made great profit on tearing down our civilization and so many more that don’t care. But just because it’s in decline doesn’t mean it isn’t there, or that it’s fall is inevitable. My culture matters, it always has, and I’m glad I realized it. God bless Texas, and God bless the United States of America.
TomRoushOnline 