Lone Star Loner: Culture Shock in Lubbock, Texas

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March 23: The wind is blowing, but not so furiously as yesterday. Wendell [a professor in the office next door to mine] tells me this is the day his brother has to castrate, brand, and vaccinate the cattle on his ranch.

April 14: We ride out on the Slaton highway past grain elevators and the smell of feedlots, pay the $3.33 cover charge at the Cotton Club, get our hands stamped, and go in. Mary taught me—and I stumbled through—the Cotton-Eyed Joe. During the John Paul the men hold hands and dance a circle around the women, who hold hands and move in the other direction. Then the music stops and each man dances with the woman he's wound up opposite. At one point I wound up with a big lady in red pants and Betsey wound up with a beer-bellied man who owns a flower shop in Abernathy and whose wife looks like Margaret Dumont. He says to Betsey, "Honey, I'm gonna git you twice!" And he did.

May 3: To the office to grade the short-answer parts of the test. Fill-ins. One of the sophomores fails to remember "We are not saints, but at least we have kept our appointment" and puts down "but at least we have kept our virginity."

May 15: I am presented with a rubber chicken as a final token of appreciation, and as I head for the boarding ramp they all break into "Happy Trails." The last thing I see before the plane takes off is a jackrabbit running across a field near the runway.

From The American Scholar (Spring 1999). Subscriptions: $25/yr. (4 issues) from 1785 Massachusetts Av. NW, 4th Floor, Washington, DC 20036.

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