Richard Carnes: You can take the boy out of Texas

I am just a few hours shy from completing my 48th journey around the sun.

It’s taken quite a while; damn near 50 years, in fact.

Though not really meaning much to anyone other than my immediate family (and even a few of those could care less), the seemingly innocuous milestone stands out to me personally for one distinct reason: I have finally reached the point in my life where I have spent more time living in Colorado than in Texas.

Yippee. Hooray for me.

One could twist the trivial juncture to mean I never really “lived” until settling in Happy Valley in the first place, but they would not only be wrong, they would be setting themselves up for nasty retribution from a fiery, 77-year-old Texas woman I commonly refer to as “Mom.”

Born and raised around a very particular North Dallas neighborhood known as “The Bubble,” I finished high school living at a Texas lake and college in a West Texas sand trap, but never lived outside the state until moving to Minturn in 1984.

A few rentals in Intermountain, a house in Avon, and now a home in Edwards, and one could easily say I have simply traded one “bubble” for another, but again, they would be wrong.

Both are just as real as the property tax checks most of us write to Eagle County each spring.

Yet even after 24 years, my mom still declares me to friends and family “a Texan living up there with all those damn liberals in ka-ler-a-doe.” Although a certain adage involving old dogs and new tricks comes to mind, she means well.

“It’s just a big square full of tree-huggers with barely enough sense to stay out of California,” she says in a twisted attempt to give her son a back-handed compliment.
I think.

While true that I still bleed cowboy blue and silver at heart, a small cut reveals a few drops of Bronco orange and blue as well. Lucky for me, they rarely play one another except for the occasional, meaningless, pre-season warm up.

I remember being told I had a “twang” in my voice in the mid-’80s, but the only time it rears its vocal head nowadays is when I return to my birth state for a visit, and of course when I use words like “nowadays.”

You can feel the drawl coming up in the back of your throat upon crossing the state border. Not to be confused with bile, it begins with a tightening of the larynx, forcing you to slow down each syllable, especially stretching out the vowels, pretty much like George W. talks when he’s wanting to make sure those even slower can understand words like “stru-tee-jury.”

I still use words like “ya’ll,” “fixin’” and “reckon,” because, well, because I reckon they make sense. Besides, I feel sure even native Coloradans know what I mean each time I use them, just like I’m confident most of my Texas cousins know the word “shredding” is no longer limited to jalapeno-flavored cheese.

Anyway, now living a little more than 50 percent of my life in Colorado is symbolic of something, I’m just not exactly sure what.

For instance, I now realize that for about 18 percent of my life I have had the pleasure of writing this weekly column, yet all that proves is a long-lasting, internal, P.T. Barnum moment.

For around 45 percent I have been a father and married (although one of those has not been in a continuous state), and for a full two-thirds I have not been a virgin, which is a little bit longer than I have been able to vote, but again, I’m not exactly sure of the relevance.

Maybe my Mom is right, and sometime in the “near” future — say around the time I start collecting social security — I’ll grow up and get a “real” job and live in a “real” town.

Or perhaps it’s little more than me simply noticing a passage of time that I have had the sincere pleasure of enjoying from both sides of the border.

Either that, or just call me a Texoradon (which doesn’t sound nearly as weird as Colorexan).

Richard Carnes of Edwards writes a column for the Daily on Tuesdays. He can be reached at poor@vail.net.