Texas

A black pickup.
An open tailgate.
Forearms resting on the perpendicular rails.
A foot resting on the running board.

A Shiner Bock.
The longneck pressed against the lips, savoring the dark lager.
A blazing sun hanging high; the gift of warmth, oppressive to the uninitiated.
The warm breeze that kisses the skin and musses the hair that was so neatly combed.

Skirt steak stretched over a bed of charcoal and mesquite.
The stoic man affording a keen eye overlooking savory nourishment.
The loving woman providing the crushed avocado, native fruits, and herbs.
Onions.  Tomato.  Cilantro.  Citrus.  Jalapeno.  The fusion of Spanish and Native American tradition.

Johnny Cash.
Willie Nelson.
Floyd Cramer.
Disparate music that binds a proud culture with an unmistakable melody.

Blonde hair and blue eyes.
Dark hair and brown eyes.
Tanned skin and squinted eyes; each of us.
Brilliant life-giving sun that thinly veils the unsung diversity of her people.

Expansive territory.
Stark deserts, barren and foreboding.
Vast fields of cotton teaming with life, miraculously drawn from arid soil.
Oil pumps churning black gold, a gift from distant millennia that fuels wealth and prosperity.
Rolling hills peppered with cedar and live oak.
Expansive beaches that stem the Gulf stream, the warm, life-giving tide that binds us to a larger nation.

A state carved from the wilderness as wild and free as the people who settled it.
Disciples of the Gun.
Holstered instruments of justice; cultural icons of her inception and endurance.
Proud.  Fierce.  Independent.
Inhabitants of combat fields upon which brief, decisive battles raged.

Our liberty, conceived at Gonzales where Santa Anna demanded the first cannon.
Their battle cry: Come and Take It.  The second shot heard round the world.
Draconian reprisals of the Goliad Massacre and The Battle of the Alamo.
Unjust slaughters that deeply wounded but steeled our mettle.
Our birth, labored at San Jacinto for a mere 20 minutes; a proud nation claimed her independence.

A modern culture that demands law and order—yet insists to live and to let live.
A people who embrace the willingness to fight, fomenting an oasis of security and domestic tranquility.
A place where the men are strong and the women are gentle.
A society in which women set the moral tone,
And one in which men defend her authority to assert the code by which we live.
An abode where all are welcome.

We look you in the eye.
We acknowledge you with a nod.
We offer a simple greeting.

Bienvenidos.
Wilkomen.
Welcome.