That was the year I fell in love for the first time, or so I thought.
That was the year we moved from tiny Skellytown, population 800-and-something, to its sister city of White Deer, population 1200-and-something.
That was the year I had one of the most profound spiritual experiences of my life.
That was the year I became a PK (preacher's kid).
That was the year I started my never-ending climb up the family tree.
And that was the year James A. Michener published Texas, his largest work ever, which befitted the largest state in the continental United States.
I don't recall how I first found out about it, but I remember reading a brief (very brief) excerpt in Field & Stream, of all places. It was taken from one of the middle chapters, the tale of young Texas Ranger Otto Macnab's courtship with the beautiful German immigrant Franziska Allerkamp on the banks of the Pedernales River. I remember the excerpt left me with the impression that this was going to be some kind of sappy love story instead of a sweeping epic about my home state. To my great relief, it was both.
Skellytown had a small library with an equally small budget. They weren't going to get a copy of their own; I had to order it through inter-library loan. I signed up as soon as I knew the novel was out, and waited patiently at the beginning of that summer to receive it. I remember the anticipation of going to the library every day to see if it had arrived. I remember my excitement when the answer was finally yes, the care with which I took the 1096-page tome in my hands, and the overwhelming awe I felt in opening the hard-cover to the dust-jacket blurb and the front-and-back-piece maps.
Keep in mind, I was twelve-almost-thirteen years old. Through the course of the previous year I had read Centennial and Chesapeake. I'm pretty sure I had also read The Covenant and Space, and I might have even tried my hand at Poland by then. I was nothing if not precocious, and daring in my reading adventures. Each huge historical novel took me about six weeks to read. And I read faithfully every day, thought without much understanding beyond the basic plot points. It would take me another twenty-five years to discover there was a deeper message proclaimed through the perspectives of the various characters in those novels.
Michener didn't start writing those large historical novels until he was nearly fifty. By the time Texas was published, he was almost eighty, and after it he wrote two more epics and a handful of other fictions before he died at age ninety. What did an adolescent know about life and the world, an adolescent form Skellytown, Texas, no less? I didn't understand that then that Centennial was about the conservation and preservation of what God had given us, about being takers or caretakers. Or that Chesapeake was about cycles in nature and in life, generation after generation having to face the same decisions again and again with either courage or cowardice. The Covenant was about cultures in conflict, with every one believing themselves to be the one's ordained by God to be in the right. Poland demonstrated all to well how the more things change, the more they stay the same; poor people.
A couple months ago, I picked up Texas again. In the thirty years since its publication, I've probably tackled the enormous story ten times. I have four copies of it--two worn paperbacks with the covers taped on, and two hardbacks--including a first edition. I read it again as if it were the first time, and tried to give those characters new life in my Technicolor imagination. And I was pleasantly surprised to find myself touched on so many levels--intellectual, emotional, and spiritual included.
There are images burned into my soul from those 1000+pages (the paperback has 1320): The tragic loves of Trinidad de Saldaña in early Spanish San Antonio, culminating in that desperate, daring, and devoted ride of Domingo Garza save her; Mattie Quimper's struggle to carve out a life and a future on the banks of the Brazos River, ending in her defiance of Santa Anna's army on their way to San Jacinto; the brave sacrifice of the Immortal 32 from Gonzales at the Alamo as seen through the eyes of the infamous antihero Zave Campbell, and stirringly retold by Miss Barlow 130 years later; the lifelong love story of Otto & Franza; the terrors of Indian captivity experienced by Emma Larkin, and the tenderness of the foolish Earnshaw Rusk that brought her back from it; the oil boom; the preservation of the Longhorns; the armadillo invasion; the real-estate game of getting in, getting rich, and getting out; the outrageous escapades of one outlandish character after another; the ups and downs of a Texas millionaire who became a Texas billionaire, and then became a regular human being; the two things most seriously Texas, football and religion; and that final chapter about academic endowments, bull auctions, and art galleries. Let me tell you, there is no adequate way to sum up in just a few words how awesome this enormous book really is.
Texas Monthly awarded Michener one of its famous Bum Steer of the Year Awards for what they saw as a stereo-typical misrepresentation of the great state of Texas. But as much as I like the magazine, I'm afraid I have to disagree. James Michener did as much justice to the state of Texas and its history as one volume would allow. It's a big state; he couldn't tell every story. But what an overview of the life of wonder one can live in places as diverse as El Paso & Brownsville & Fredericksburg & Houston & Dallas & Lubbock & Waxahachie & Jefferson & Austin...
If you love Texas, if you love history, if you love reading...tackle this book! I even have a couple of copies I can share if you need one. You won't be disappointed.
