Back from Texas

We have the Bible of my husband's great-great grandmother, on the flyleaf of which that lady recorded the journeys of her children:

Robert left for B--Aug 30, 1882; Baker left for Roanoke, 20 Aug 1882; Baker came home sick Oct 5, 1882 & left for Baltimore Jan 2nd, 1883; Baker & Robert left Sept 18th, 1884; Baker left for Texas October 28th, 1884; Robert left for Roanoke Mar 13, 1885; Robert left for Texas Aug 31, 1886; Baker reached home from Texas July 7, 1886--left for Texas again July 26, 1886

I thought of these lovingly recorded events while wandering through the Texas History Museum in Austin this past week. "Gone to Texas" was the title of one of the exhibits on the movement of people from the east to the west, from the United States to the Mexican territory of Texas and later to the state of Texas. My ancestors have their own "gone to Texas" stories: the Dugats, Cajuns who moved into Southeast Texas from Louisiana around 1832, with a Spanish land grant; Simmonses and Coles who moved into East Texas in the mid-to-late-1800s from west Louisiana; German immigrants--the Schlobaums--who landed in Galveston, Texas, in the mid-1800s; the Bentons, who traveled west from Alabama, leaving behind a history that they never talked about in Texas.

On the Dugat side of my family, I am a sixth-generation Texan. (The Dugat patriarch who immigrated to the New World in the 1600s, to what is now Nova Scotia, was born in France, in 1616.) I am a daughter of Texas, proud of the toughness of my ancestors who left familiar landscapes for the unknown. But when I drove across the Texas state line, from Merryville, Louisiana, on a lone drive that took me from Georgia, to Louisiana, through Alabama and Mississippi, I had very mixed feelings. The marquee at the Texas line on Hwy 190 says "Welcome to Texas, Proud to be the Home of President George W. Bush." I could feel my heart sink into the pit of my stomach.

As an antidote to the Father of American Torture and the Quaintness of the Geneva Conventions, I was listening at the time to the music of another transplanted Texan, Eliza Gilkyson. Heading toward Jasper, I sang along with Gilkyson's song "Man of God," which really is much too positive, I think. The narrator of Gilkyson's song is looking forward to the day when the whole world is going to rise up and say "that ain't the teachings of a man of god," when everyone is going to know what a bill of goods George W. Bush sold this country.

Based on my few days in Texas, that hope may be mightily misplaced. George W. Bush would still be welcomed as a man of god by many people.

Torture? "I don't have any pity for terrorists," said one person I know. He hadn't heard the story of Dilawar, the Afghan detainee tortured to death at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan. But, no matter: "Those things always happen in war," he replied, excusing our government's official use of torture.

Everything comes down to the fact that too many people just want to be safe. "There have been no terrorist attacks since 9/11," I've heard some people say, conveniently forgetting the anthrax attacks which, as far as the public knows, have never been solved. And, of course, the attacks in Spain and London don't count--because those attacks aren't on American soil.

Just as George Bush looks into the eyes of leaders and decides that he can "see into the soul" of them and base his judgment on that alone, so do people I know. Their gut feelings, as far as I can tell, are fed mainly by a steady diet of Fox News and no other news sources.

I was glad to leave Texas. It makes me too sad to visit these days. Not that Georgia is much better--but my heart isn't in Georgia.