Notes From Texas: On Writing in the Lone Star State

11. Saved to the Uttermost: The Life and Times of a Naïve West Texas Writer

JOY CE GIB SO N R OACH J O Y C E GI B S O N RO A C H holds BFA and MA degrees in English from TCU where she was adjunct professor from 1984 to 1997 specializing in the western novel and literature of the Southwest. She is a three-time Spur Award winner from the Western Writers of America, Inc. for both fiction and nonfiction. Along with co-author Ernestine Sewell Linck, she received the Carr P. Collins prize for nonfiction from the Texas Institute of Letters for Eats: A Folk History of Texas Foods (TCU Press). She is a fellow of the Texas Folklore society and the Texas State Historical Association and a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and the Philosophical Society of Texas. 183 Arthur McWhirter SAVED TO THE UTTERMOST: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF A NAÏVE WEST TEXAS WRITER I ’M F R O M Jacksboro, Texas, and have never gotten over it —and I’m not trying. I wear that corny phrase around my neck like an albatross, and, like the ancient mariner, am compelled to hold any and all with a glittering eye while explaining my rural, small-town West Texas background. The remark brings laughter and that’s probably why I say it, but I learned the hard way in front of the wrong audience that it’s an inside joke. If you aren’t from West Texas or haven’t spent some time there, you don’t get it. Those who do get it understand that my beloved home town of Jacksboro stands for every small West Texas settlement from the Trinity to the Rio Grande, from the Panhandle to the Big Bend, from the Southern Plains to the Brush Country with a population hovering around 3,000, give or take 1,500 or 2,500. Small towns are alike in their differences; or different in their likenesses— something like that? But in West Texas the one constant was —is—never enough rain. If rain occasionally comes, can drought be far behind? Crowded into that one sentence, folks understand that the place of my dry, rocky, thirsty, oak trees and grassland genesis and personal historical time frame of the 1930s through the 1960s, somewhere between the music of “The Old Chisholm Trail” and the “Dawning of Aquarius,” free love and hippies, made all the difference in what I am and am not; has inspired, confused, helped and hindered me; given me NO T E S F R O M TE X A S 184 great confidence and terrible insecurity, pushed me way ahead, and held me way back from all sorts of notions. It will surprise no one that I write from and about that West Texas background; can’t get away from it; tried but failed. The stage and setting were provided, almost supernaturally it seems, appearing without my summons, and populated with all the supporting cast—pioneering ancestors who marched undiluted through generations, those at home in the kitchen (the most important room in a house), neighborhood, church, around the square of a county seat. You just can’t trust a town that isn’t built on a square—the countryside complete with an old military fort, Fort Richardson, ranches, a red brick school house, and a city set on a shining hill located a far piece away so that getting to go there was a big trip, an event. You can guess just how short the play and how small the stage, but understand, too, that exploring every trail, furrow, fork in the road, creek, and river, knowing intimately the land and the people, and yearning to tell about it all has been the ultimate for this writer and all I could write about with any authority or ownership. Sound naïve? Yes, indeed. My babyhood took place during the Great Depression, my childhood encompassed World War II, and my coming of age embraced (and I do mean hugged it up tight) the world as it still was—mostly rural, patriotic, innocent, gullible, familial , optimistic, religious, honorable, decent, civil, and for me, wanting an education, to know and be known, all this right up to the edge of Integration-Bra Burning-Pill-Hippie-Cold WarKennedy -Camelot era. There is suspicion that rural West Texas stayed twenty-five to fifty years behind the philosophical, political, and religious nonsensical fads. Yes, all were...