Warday

One of our problems in Texas is that we haven’t got the banking technology available to run the state at a deficit. We’re limited to straight-line budgeting. I’ve been thinking of issuing a Texas currency, but I don’t see the underlying assets to do it. I could peg it to the state’s proprietary oil holdings, but with oil at eleven cents a barrel, I wouldn’t get very much out of it. And full faith and credit aren’t going to wash, especially not overseas.

Look at this. Isn’t this beautiful? A Texas dollar. It’s an engraving, done for us by an outfit in Lubbock. For a while we were dreaming of Texas currency. We’d have bills denominated from a quarter to ten dollars. Sam Houston’s on the one, Austin’s on the two, Davy Crockett’s on the five. We haven’t had the others made up, because Texas hasn’t got any underlying assets that would support a currency, as I said. Texas got hurt so bad in the war, sometimes I’m surprised that it’s still here at all, that everybody didn’t just move.

But we are still here. You travel around this state as much as I do, you’d end up with a deep feeling of confidence and reverence.

Texas is the land of the strong. People are working to rebuild. You know who really runs this state? Volunteers. People see something that needs doing and they just do it. Fill a pothole. Pull down an abandoned house. You name it. When we censused in 1990, every single census taker was a volunteer. That project of mine, naming the dead—you must remember it, Jim, you wrote a tiling about it in the Dallas paper—that was all volunteers. I know you didn’t think it made sense, Jim, and maybe it didn’t. But it means something to name the dead. I think it does. Here’s what they did.

There’s over a million names in these books. Handwritten, every one. Over a million.

San Antonio was so pretty. God, I remember when I had my Austin Healey and we were running the Archdiocesan Council of Catholic Youth, right? We were a bunch. Who was that priest in charge of the thing? Oh yeah, Martin. Father Edwin Martin. I remember him well. He always had high hopes for us. We put on some pretty good things, really. For a bunch of overheated intellectuals we did a good job.

Is that thing running? Lemme see it. Sanyo. You got this from the paper? I’ve never seen one like it. Two hours of recording on that? It looks like a quarter. That’s amazing. Well, let me get back to business. You’ll have to edit this tape a little.

Another thing we’re doing is working very intensively with some of the other states. California, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona. We’re going to form a sort of loose coalition. California will lead it. That’s got to be. They’re ten times the size of Texas. You know that California is almost like the old days? You been out there? Well, it’s just beautiful. One thing, the Japanese are everywhere. And electronics are a good bit easier to get. I don’t think there’s any conspiracy to deprive America of electronic devices, by the way. That’s a subject the Legislature’s been farting about an awful lot lately. They don’t want to debate Aztlan. Don’t want to think about the rough stuff. Can’t say as I blame ’em. But I’m going to have to get the Speaker to get the House off its ass on my military bill. Trask’s got the Senate wrapped up tight. No problems there. I need an army to go after Aztlan. Or they’ll come after us. I wouldn’t be surprised at all to find them on their way to Midland–Odessa within a year if we don’t take some very damn decisive action.

Anyway, getting back to the electronics. This thing is really beautiful. How big is it—let’s see—yeah, I could put two of these inside a cigarette pack. Three of ’em. Nice to see a Japanese thing like this again. Beautifully made. Running flat out, the Japs can build fourteen million televisions a year. If we bought ’em all, we’d be back to prewar standards in about 2000. But we can’t afford the foreign exchange. We imported six million last year and made eight hundred thousand here in the States. We managed to get a hundred and thirty thousand of those sets in Texas. That tells me we now have a million televisions in Texas. Here’s a piece of sweet news. Starting next July, we are going to be getting HBO via the new communications satellite California sent up from Vandenberg in June. And NBC is starting up again in the fall, broadcasting from Los Angeles. It’s going to be all reruns at first, but who the hell cares? Maybe you ought to go back to writing, Whitley. Somebody told me you’d become a gardener. Well, I’ll bet you could make some money in television. A growth industry all over again.

We’ve got the Texas State Network, of course. I think the Hunt brothers bought two prints of every John Wayne picture ever made. I do a program once a week, “The Governor’s Desk.” I think people need to feel that the governor’s there. Without a President, the governors are that much more important.