Word: texan
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...many ways, they are the yin and yang of the American experience, poles of the national character. One is "back East," a little overbred and intellectual for a Texan's taste. The other is "out West," big and rough and physical. Massachusetts evokes Calvinism and Brahmins and John Kennedy. Texas is the fenceless dreamland of American individualism, where the native exuberance went to herd cows and sling guns and strike oil. It means Giant, Lyndon Johnson and everything bigger and louder than it ought...
Texas harbors surprises: Germans in the hill country, for example, still speaking in the accents that their forebears brought over in the 1840s. Says Robert Strauss, the Texan who is former chairman of the Democratic National Committee: "Texas is a montage of America. From the financial center of Dallas to the high-tech areas of Austin to the agricultural communities. It represents the sea and the mountains and the valleys, great wealth and pockets of poverty...
Texas is a state with strong flavors and themes and a peculiarly distinct identity. Arkansas celebrates its sesquicentennial this year, but with nothing like the noise of self-proclamation to which Texans are treating themselves. Why should that be? In part because Texas is the vestige of an independent nation. Texas proclaimed itself a republic, not a state, 150 years ago. The Texan's ancestral memory is strong. The state's highways are lined with historical markers, as well as with antilittering signs that sound just the right note of truculent nationalism: don't mess with texas. Texans cherish...
Despite the appeals for safety measures, there is little support for strict firearms laws. In Houston, gun control is as unpopular as zoning. A Texan with a driver's license or similar I.D. can walk into a gun shop, sign a federal firearms form and purchase a weapon. No waiting period or local registration is required. The absence of any significant restrictions on gun ownership has helped put firearms in more than a few bedroom closets and night-table drawers --and, it seems, into the hands of youngsters who do not realize how lethal the weapons...
...National Basketball Association staged its All-Star festivities at Reunion Arena, where come March the National Collegiate Athletic Association will house its Final Four tournament. To complete the mood of a basketball world slightly out of whack, the N.B.A.'s annual slam-dunk preliminary was won by an undersize Texan, 5-ft. 7-in. Atlanta guard Spud Webb. Meanwhile, the long-range shooting medal went to a 6-ft. 9 1/2-in. forward, Boston's Larry Bird. The game that followed was overpopulated with seven-footers, but the most valuable player happened to be 6-ft. 1-in. Sprite Isiah Thomas...