A love note to Texas, Sweetheart

The Column: 02.29.24

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I was in Texas last week doing shows, which is my line of work, and was sorry to leave because, frankly, it was the most fun I can remember having while wearing a suit and tie and now I look at this sentence and am surprised to be writing it. We Minnesotans aren’t known for euphoria, we experience sexual ecstasy and we think, “Well, that wasn’t bad, a person could do worse, that’s for sure,” and on top of my northern self-restraint, I grew up fundamentalist which, even after you depart from the fold, leaves you with a lifelong allergy to pleasures of all kinds.

Fun is not our thing. We leave the party before the dancing starts. I do a show and remember what went wrong. In photographs I look like a defendant the jury has just voted unanimously to convict after ten minutes of deliberation. We are susceptible to alcoholism because we keep drinking, waiting for it to make us happy, until we lose consciousness.

And now as a self-righteous 81-year-old liberal, I tend to look down on Texas because it gave us the Bush who gave us the war in Iraq, and Ted Cruz, the man who grew a beard to try to hide his smirk. It gave us a whole slew of people whose idea of gun control is to hold the pistol very steady and take aim. We liberals love to feel righteous and just looking at the word “Texas” makes us admire ourselves more.

So when I go there, I remind myself: whatever else you might say about it, Texas gave us Molly Ivins. Also George Jones and Roger Miller and Willie Nelson. A state that considers itself conservative and also loves Willie Nelson is a state that’s comfortable with its own contradictions.

Molly was the one who said, “I think of Texas as the laboratory for bad government.” She wrote a book about politicians, Who Let the Dogs In? She was the last of the great satirical newspaper columnists. When she died in 2007, even Dubya, the man she called Shrub, said that he missed her.

I loved my five days there. I encountered keen politeness. The truck stop guy who said, “I appreciate your business” when I paid for my two Butterfingers. The hotel clerk. I walked a long hall to my room and three cleaning ladies looked up and said, “Good morning.” When I left Austin on Monday, a man walked up to me in the airport and said quietly, “I want to thank you for all the pleasure you’ve given people over the years.”

Nobody ever said that to me before in just that graceful way. I was touched. At my age, you should’ve given some pleasure to people and he was thanking me for it, not as a fan but on behalf of people in general. Now I wish I had thrown my arms around him.

And then I came through the scanner and the lady TSA agent said, “You have a good day now, honey.” No female TSA person in New York or Minnesota would address any male over the age of eight as “honey.” She would feel marginalized if she did. But in Texas, it’s part of the culture. Not required, sweetheart, but not forbidden either.

And then there were the shows. They weren’t bad. For the first time in my life, I got up the courage to sing a George Jones song in public, “He Stopped Loving Her Today” and it was okay. I led the audience in singing a cappella “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” and “Faded Love” and Jimmie Rodgers’s “T for Texas” with the yodel ­­— 1,600 people yodeling, it was thrilling — but what made me and the whole Prairie Home Companion gang happy was that all those people came Expecting To Have A Whee of A Time. Their hair was on fire from the get-go. In Minnesota, audiences tend to feel dutiful, as if they’re all related to me and felt obliged to come and just hope it won’t be too embarrassing.

I met Molly once when I went to Texas for a party in her honor and she picked me up at the airport in her pickup. She was easy to talk to, full of beans, we were like old pals as soon as we left the parking ramp. I loved being back in her state last week. Rest in peace, dear Molly, and rise in glory.

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