So I'm just cruising along in the bike lane on my way to campus. I'm in my motorized wheelchair. Well, really it more of a motorized lawnchair, ever since I took the old falling apart deeply uncomfortable wheelchair top off the wheelchair and replaced it with a reclining lawnchair. So anyway, there I am almost to campus, and I notice there is this pickup truck driving along next to me. Now the top speed on my chair is about 6 miles an hour, so this is slower than most pickup trucks would be going. I turn my head to see what they are doing. There are three guys in their thirties in this pickup pointing and laughing at me, and one of them is holding his cell phone out the window. Taking pictures of me and shouting something about lazy hippies. And suddenly it pops into my head that these guys must be from Texas. And just as I am chiding myself for being prejudiced against a whole state that includes millions of good people, they laugh and speed off. Texas license plates.
Now mind you, I know that this is a coincidence. I could tell the guys in question were not from Berkeley, but their are knuckle-draggers in trucks all over the country. There was no reason they had to be from Texas. I don't know a Texas accent from a duck. It just fit so well with my preconceived notion of what Texas is like. With my prejudice. And I wish they hadn't been from Texas, because I try hard to identify and expunge my prejudices, and this just served to reinforce this one.
My next door neighbor and good friend, Bill, grew up in Texas. He has nothing good to say about it. When I told him this story, he said, "there are lots of lovely people from Texas. Not to many lovely people actually stay in Texas, but lots of lovely people are from there." He was unsympathetic when I told him that his comment was not helping me overcome my anti-Texas bias.
So there must be Kossacks from Texas. There must be Kossacks who actually live in Texas. Somebody educate me. What is there that is good about Texas. Why is Texas not just the land of obnoxious oil men, bible-thumpers and drunkards in pickups? I know this stereotype is wrong, but I need help internalizing this knowledge. Anybody?