As Goes Texas

Etched in Stone

Made me think of the original Texas, split into categories, striated subdivisions, lands that were. Where the natural land forms a series of different areas, and, when I was growing up?

There were five distinct regions, each bounded by a single phone area code. Ft. Worth was 817, Austin 512, San Antonio and South Texas, 210 — five zones. Dallas, clearly East Texas, with Ft. Worth definitively the gateway to West Texas. El Paso, on Mountain. time, obviously an entity all its own, 915. New Mexico was all 505. AZ 602.

My favorite map of old Texas include the notion that the western flank runs up the front range of the Rocky Mountains, all the way to Wyoming. The western terminus, was, at one time, the Rio Grande, all the way through its headwaters in what is now northern New Mexico. Never popular to note that.

Another historical, or hysterical, notation, the idea that Texas reserved the right to split into five states, along the lines of the geographical delineations, as outlined by the phone company’s demarcation. Back in the bad, old days, Dallas was one area code and calling the sister city, Ft. Worth, was “long distance,” wherein the usual rate applied.

One client, born in a trailer park near the hard, New Mexico line, had a certain knack, an ability to tell within a sentence or two, which place in Texas that accent derived from. From whence they came? Speaks to a certain skill set and, of course, facility with language, plus a damn fine ear, but that’s not the point, it’s about the distinctly different geographical ares, all part of one state.

Texas was a country, once.

Texas, somehow, refused to be balkanized, and historically, I’m unsure of how that happened.

Despite our differences, this might be a more usable model.