You Can’t Have All of Texas.

by Little Miss Attila on May 14, 2010

No, no, Ms. Jiliani: Eastern TX is “the South[east].” But West Texas is ours: Southwest, Baby. A very different region. Hot, dry, and studded with chili peppers.

Home.

{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }

Mikal May 14, 2010 at 10:21 am

And the Texas Panhandle is definitely the Midwest.

California can also be split three ways. The Southern part, which I define as everything below Point Concepcion and the Tehachapis, is the Southwest. On the coast, from Point Concepcion to the OR border, we’re physically and culturally part of the Northwest. Everything else — the Central Valley, the Sierras, and especially the Northeast — is Mountain Western, and has far more in common with Nevada or Colorado than it does with the other two parts.

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jc May 14, 2010 at 11:27 am

Yes, Joy, but she’s in Houston

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Little Miss Attila May 14, 2010 at 11:39 am

But throughout the piece she uses Texas-wide figures to discuss “the South,” and it hit me wrong.

As Mikal points out, our home state can easily be divided into 2-3 pieces or more, but at the very least SoCal, for all its flaws, is part of the Southwest. And Northern CA is in the Northwest. To discuss either of those regions and use CA in general to buttress one’s points would be strange.

I get that any regional listings that require whole states (like the ones I used to do for Hunting magazine, which discussed hunting seasons, permitting processes and the like) has to do SOMETHING with CA and TX. But culturally and geographically, neither state can be placed into neat little categories: both are too big for that.

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Ric Locke May 15, 2010 at 6:29 pm

If you don’t know it, check out an old (late 1970’s) book by Joel Garreau (sp?): The Nine Nations of North America. Garreau defines three “nations” that intersect Texas — Dixie (the Southeast), MexAmerica (the Southwest), and the Breadbasket (the Great Plains). The Wikipedia article is unusually good.

I was born in Dixie, and now live in The Breadbasket. When I lived in MexAmerica (San Antonio) a friend and I spent many an enjoyable hour defining precisely where the boundaries are. Sulphur Springs is Dixie, no question; Greenville is equally certainly Breadbasket. I could almost tell you the nearest milepost to the transition.

Regards,
Ric

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Mikal May 16, 2010 at 8:08 pm

Ric,

Yes, that’s a good and quite accurate book. Garreau calls my neck o’ North America “Ecotopia”, after the Ernest Callenbach novel wherein NoCal, Oregon & Washington secede from the US.

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