In Texas, our heritage is a sacred cow. We close our eyes and we can see the huge sky, the mesquite trees in the hill country, the spindly pines in the east, where I am from, and the green waters of Galveston. We watch Westerns—my father loves them—and we see ourselves in the outlaws, the cowboys who rode across the open range with their cattle, bandanas pulled over their noses to keep out the dust. Though I am from the suburbs, a creature of air conditioning far removed from any kind of cowboy living, I spent nearly every weekend for a decade in a more rural corner of Harris County, riding horses behind a limestone house. There was perhaps nothing I heard more during my lessons than, “Get tough!” And as I did, a small child alone atop a horse kicking him along with all of my might, I had a latent sense that I was participating in some grand tradition. Under that sticky, humid, unrelenting Texas sun, you whip the horse, you do the work, and for the love of all things good, you do not talk back (which of course, I was liable to do, anyways). This was what we got for being born in Texas: an inheritance of grit, land and rugged individualism that our state has proudly fought for since its inception. Hell, even our zip-loc bags, purchased from beloved local grocery chain H-E-B, read “Texas Tough.”

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