Tejas

So, if you're saddling up and riding to Texas, you have to decide whether you're going to be the Gus you want to be or the Call you ought to be.
If you've never read 'Lonesome Dove' by Larry McMurtry, you should get up from the computer right now, and then sit down again and go to Amazon, and order yerself a copy of that there book. If'n you ain't got the energy to take up such an assignment, you should at least click over to Netflix and get them to send you out the best mini-series ever made.
To summarize for those who have foresaken my encouragement and stuck with this epistle, Gus and Call are old cowboys in Old Cowboy Texas and the challenge is to ride that there herd of cattle all the way to Montana. Now it might not seem on the surface to be much of a plot, but there are both hijinks and adventures that ensue -- plus the most attractive 'sportin' woman' and the scariest Native American ever captured on the printed page -- and you, dear reader, will find yourself carried away to an America that is so foreign to the one in which you live, that you might just start mixing a little rye whiskey in with your Starbuck's Mega Grande.
Your two main compadres in the story are the wild and whimsical Captain Augustus McCrae and the decidedly practical Captain Woodrow Call, both heroes of the fabled Texas Rangers. They get sucked into old Jake Spoon's stories of a magical wild land to the North, and Gus and Call have no choice but to saddle up and go find what's out there for them in life.
Which reminds me, I was in the middle of the ongoing autobiography of an overeducated redneck boy that was on his way to the biggest state in the lower 48.
With public school teaching behind me and a surprisingly serious girlfriend befuddling my mind, I went about the business of shutting down my Eastern life and setting my sights on Tejas, the Spanish translation of the Caddo Indian word for 'friends.'
As I stumbled my way towards Atlanta, and argued with myself over the implied advantages of I-20 to Dallas vs. I-85 to Mobile, it really hit me. I was leaving Georgia. I was taking my little provincial production "on the road." Oh sure, I had spent the last couple of summers in Boston with the boys, and I had logged my share of road trip miles, but I always knew that if I really needed my passport or my old softball glove, my stuff was in a bedroom, basement or under a loose floor tile somewhere between Bremen, Marietta and Athens. Now, Texas,... Texas turned out not to just be a continuation of the story. Tejas turned out to be a whole 'nother' story.
I sent out the applications like a good little boy. I hit all the districts in Austin metro, and all the counties within driving distance. Surely, I thought, my next teaching job will come as easy as my first. I mean, almost as easy, since I got that one in an phone interview sitting in my boxer shorts in a Boston summer sublease. But, yee-haw son, turns out life in the slightly bigger city than Athens ain't all soft butter and hot cornbread. First of all, there's 10,000 annual UT education school graduates who have no intention of leaving this city I've just discovered is the center of the universe, and they're all hotter than me. Secondly, two years of teaching experience in nowhere Georgia is not the job seeker's equivalent of a Visa Gold Card. And, most importantly, I knew that Austin was a one-year semi-retirement, and I wasn't going to convince any public school H.R. person that I was doing anything more than messing with Texas.
I already knew I was going to end up wherever the girl did. Somehow, over the course of my year of (T)Exile, we managed to hold it together. When my retirement money ran out, I had started subbing in the neighborhood daycare center. I took care of babies as little as 6 weeks old. I specialized in nap and snack, but mostly outside time. My buddies ended up in the same line of work as well. It seemed so odd at the time, but fast forward to when my own kids came, and later when I ended up running a school for kids ages 1-12, everything seemed to make a lot more sense.
When I tell the good stories about the year in Texas, it sounds like an extended frat party, and in a lot of ways it was. But really, we had to dance that final Fandango (ooh, after 'Lonesome Dove' get Netflix to send you 'Fandango' starring a much cooler than you think Kevin Costner). That last round at the Showdown Saloon on Guadalupe left me certain that going with Lisa to Boone, somewhere in the North Carolina mountains, was the only thing for this cowboy to do.
And somehow I knew they weren't going to have a teaching job for me either. But I knew that going after my own Clara Allen would be the only way for me to continue to be the Gus I had to be. And settling back into a nice, quiet newspaper job was the most practical way to be the Call I ought to be.