O Pioneers

“Texas is the best state in the U.S.” Governor Perry says this. His fierce opponent in the 2010 governor’s race, Senator Hutchison, says the same thing.

Texans agree with them. I am surrounded by Texans. Kind, gentle people who annoy me with their smug provincialism. Of course, most of them have never been anywhere else. Never having tasted the wonderful ways Greeks and Spanish cook fish, they say, “The only fish I’ll eat is fried catfish.”

Texans believe God dictated every word of the King James Bible (in English, of course), and anyone who believes in “the Theory of Evolution” will never get to Heaven. That makes a problem in our public schools for teachers who want to teach science.

These are my people. My parents were just like them.

Mother’s habits and attitudes were shaped by the experiences of generations who moved west in covered wagons. My grandmother, Sue Wade McDonald, said her grandmother was “the first white child born in Kaufman County.” That child’s parents came to Texas “in the days of the Republic.” That’s the Republic of Texas. The Comanches were still raiding, and buffalo roamed between Fort Worth and Dallas.

Those pioneers were truly on their own in this wild, empty land. Men needed guns to hunt for food and to chase away those Comanches. My three brothers all had guns. They did not hunt, and I don’t know of a single instance when a gun prevented a home invasion. But they were all avid supporters of the NRA.

Pioneer women cooked game and boiled beans in the fireplace of the log cabin. My grandmother thought she was a good cook. All she knew was how to fry things in a skillet or brew black-eyed peas and beans in a pot on the stove, just like her mother. The other day Erleen told me she spent the night before soaking kidney beans before cooking and seasoning them with salt pork. Typical Texan, like my grandmother.

The early settlers were pious folk. The Wades got together with a few neighbors and formed the First Baptist Church of Rockwall. Their only guide was the King James Bible. Last month, when I mentioned evolution, a gentle old lady said, “I believe man was created in the image of God.” She and reads her Bible every day.

In visiting Europe many times, I discerned that the main difference between Americans and their European relatives lay in the European tendency to accept the status quo, while Americans are constantly seeking change, new ways of doing things. It took a lot of courage for our ancestors to leave England or Germany or Italy and come across that great ocean to an entirely different life in a new land. Most Americans, whatever their ethnic background, are still looking for ways to improve their lives.


The pioneer spirit drove people to move westward into a new land. In me that spirit caused me to seek new experiences in many different places. With others, Texas was the end of the trail. Their minds became stuck, like the Europeans who did not migrate, and what their ancestors did as necessity became the only “proper way” to do things. With them pioneer spirit became pioneer prejudices.