Choice gleanings from 45-plus years of Unregistered Bull.

"I learn from the Associated Press," said John, "that one of our state legislators down at Austin has got all worked up because somebody wrote an unflattering article about Texas in Esquire magazine. Seems like this writer suggested the United States might as well secede from Texas. He left the impression that Texas is highly over-rated, whereas there's not a whole lot to it except emptiness, poor soil and a big water shortage.

"Personally, I wish people in Texas wouldn't get mad at magazine writers who say things like that. After all, these poor magazine writers have to eat, too, and it seems like Texas is the only thing they have to write about. They get a little advance money from a magazine editor, fly over the state, and go back to New York with factual information which the editor hopes will help sell some extra copies of the magazine in Texas.

"In order to learn all there is to know about the livestock business, these writers go to the King Ranch. It only takes a few hours to see that Texas ranches are rather large. They see, on the way down and back, that there's a drouth on, as usual. The water shortage is plenty apparent. Also, they notice a number of oil wells scattered around. So, the only conclusion they can draw is that Texas is made up of King Ranches, drouth and oil wells.

"I've been living in Texas, it seems like a thousand years, and I only wish I knew as much about it as some of these eastern magazine writers. But I never get to see the broad, general picture like they do. I’ve been from Amarillo to Houston several times, which is a little under a thousand miles, and from Fort Worth to El Paso, which is only a little over six hundred. I’ve been in Brewster County a lot but I haven’t seen it all. The Texas Almanac says it’s bigger than Rhode Island and Connecticut put together.

"The same almanac says Texas in 1951 had over 11 percent of the cattle in the U.S., over 56 percent of the oil reserves, 55 percent of the natural gas, raised 22 percent of the wool and 95 percent of the mohair in the country. That figure on natural gas is pretty impressive, I think. It proves all the wind coming out of Texas isn’t plain hot air. Some of it is flammable.

"However, I wish we Texans would quit bragging about our state. It only makes more people want to come in here, and it’s getting so crowded now you can’t drive 500 miles without seeing two or three dozen other people cluttering up the highway. I bet half of them are magazine writers from the East, down here to find out about our water shortage.

"I admit they’ve got a point about our water. The state’s biggest rain on record, according to the almanac, fell at Taylor, in Williamson County on September 9 and 10, 1921. They had a regular floater — 23.11 inches in 24 hours. I bet if it had come another one just like it a week later, they’d have had a pretty good season that fall, but it didn’t happen.

"One of these eastern magazine writers was asking me about our water situation in Texas one time, and I said Texas would be a pretty good place if it had a little more water. He said the same thing could be said about hell. I said yeah, but magazine writers would starve to death there because they don’t know anything to write about except drouth and the King Ranch, and there probably wouldn’t be much interest in either subject down below." — (S.F. 03/12/53)