Hi friends,
First, a note for paid subscribers—I’m briefly pausing subscriptions for a few weeks, which will push back your next payment processing date by a few weeks. Brain on hiatus so I’m dialing down my output for a bit. Thanks for your and support. <3
We’re musing today on a topic I never felt qualified to write about: home. But who owns owns the story of home? Who owns the story of Texas? Surely none more than the people within it, which I suppose should free up my attempts at tracing our contours.
What is a Texan
a public school cheerleader with pale gold locks, driving her pale gold convertible to class, financed by amber oil under pale gold fields;
a Californian meets a Bostonian (we have an absurd number of bubble tea shops and Dunkin’s per capita);
taxidermy walled steakhouses, meet you at the ranch after lunch, no wives allowed, BYOA(mmo);
a certain strain of American who pledges allegiance to their own flag1, wearing it on their Nike shorts and cotton masks
indie film Minari’s2 target audience: bougie Asians and people who vacation to Hot Springs, Arkansas during hot ass TX summers;
alguien que habla español either from birth or from middle school;
Juneteenth3 descendants of delayed and stolen birthrights
a culture of death4, an energy market designed for the mean not the margins5, an everyday boom to bust6
taco fiends7
I first realized I was Texan in 2015, while twiddling my thumbs waiting in Ted Cruz’s capacious office lobby in DC. There stood a large US flag in the corner of the room and a nice blonde receptionist who reminded me of my high school classmates: symbols to remind me where I was and where I came from. You can run, but you can’t hide.
I’d come on volunteer assignment from an anti-hunger advocacy group, on le grand mission to change childhood nutrition policy for the better!. The nice receptionist assured me yes, someone will be out shortly to speak to me about saving the children. I sat down and repeated statistics under my breath while waiting for the unlucky legislative intern to hear out me out, from minion to minion.
When my words started to sound meaningless I instead fixated on the only interesting thing in the room: the lobby fridge filled with four packed rows of Dr Pepper. [Visual below. Curious subtweet but ignore the Twitter drama for our purposes.]
In retrospect Cruz reads like a social influencer who has sold out to corporate. The type to share #sponsored products they don’t use themselves, or sneak away to Cancun during public health crises, just to be canceled thanks to some salty friend in the groupchat8. But in the moment my jittery spirited idealism was enough to brush aside any connections that Dr Pepper Snapple Group was the very ghost of my own public school past, supplying sugared, caffeinated drinks to eager recipients seeking to get wired before they discovered weed.
Instead, I only paused to think of my hometown Plano TX, also the headquarters of Dr Pepper Snapple Group. Rows of maroon and white reminded me of the stands at Texas A&M football games, 84,000 strong, gazing from the highest (read: cheapest) row of seats like you literally couldn’t climb higher and we could touch the belly of the pre-game aerial salute. I thought of not drinking anything past halftime so you wouldn’t have to brave the bathrooms (remember, 84,000 people strong).
I recalled my dad keeping our own fridge amply stocked so he could spontaneously pop a cold one, downing it straight or dousing it over vanilla ice cream. (His unspoken hierarchy: Pepper is god, Coke is king, Pepsi is sacrilegious.) If he found himself at a barbeque joint at 9am in the morning and the coffee wasn’t ready yet, I’m sure he’d happily take a side of Dr P with his jalapeño link9.
And no matter how he took it, it was with unrestrained glee. It was in subconscious tribute to the early days he spent in LA working back of house in restaurants, carrying fifty pound bags of rice and the small hopes of gleaning an ice cold coke in reward, if the shop owner was kind enough to spare 10 cents of wholesale cost.
But my story is not my dad’s. Despite being born and raised in Texas, my ties to my home state feel tenuous at best. I do like Dr Pepper’s “distinctive taste [that] lies halfway between a cola and a cherry-flavored soft-drink10,” but black cherry Boylan excited me more easily as a kid (no clue why). Meanwhile, it’s been a decade since my last inoculations of TX identity: high school summer camps via Congressman Pete Sessions and UT’s business school. More than enough time for the black cherry koo-laid to drain out of my system.
—
A languid legislative aide finally came out to greet me. I delivered my Concerned Constituent Spiel and considered grabbing a roadie from the frig before deciding it wouldn’t be a good look for the cause. Though if I did, it might’ve looked something like this:
“At the company’s Dallas headquarters, a pretty receptionist greeted us by reaching into a cooler and withdrawing a frosty bottle of the venerable beverage. With an approving smile she watched us take a polite swig. “Isn’t it good?” she asks.11”
And I’d return the approving smile, yes, it is good. I’d walk out pass innumerable doors and chambers where words are tossed and guns are drawn (circa Jan 6, 2021), and wonder at how I ended up here.
Maybe that’s what a Texan is. Skim off the saccharine niceties and there it is—a soul carrying the small hope that your words matter, your work means something, and your pop never loses its fizz.
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some good texas readin’
we said this in school every day: "Honor the Texas flag; I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible."
trailer for A24 indie film minari, and Critics Choice Best Young Actor winner Alan S. Kim crying the cutest small tears you’ve ever seen
a illuminating photo, poetry, and prose deep dive on juneteenth (new york times)
on the trauma of the death penalty (tx observer)
a 63 yr old army vet owing a $16,752 electric bill post-snowstorm (new york times)
the ultimate food feature beyond bon appetit’s wildest dreams (tx monthly)
fyi, what a texas mask looks like (tx tribune)
a good story by a good guy 🥲 (tx monthly)
a 1973 feature on understanding dr pepper and the business of big soft drinks (tx monthly)
same link as above!