Who shot B. F.?

Fact: From 1995 to 2004, I lived and worked in San Antonio, Texas.

If I have any regrets about leaving Texas--and occasionally I do--they are as follows:

• Only visiting Big Bend once
• Not visiting Palo Duro Canyon at all
• Never attending Rodeo in San Antonio
• Never touring South Fork Ranch on one of the few occasions I was in Dallas and had the time to do so
  

There are times that I miss living in Texas. Oh, I hated (and constantly bitched about) the summer--that nine months of hot, sticky heat that resulted in the birth of a mewling, sickly autumn. Plus, that suburban Republican mindset that supported George Dubya through two governorships and now two terms of presidentin'--well, I could definitely live without ever witnessing that again.

But there is a Texas mystique, an exoticism, if you will--equal parts sexiness and sagebrush, cowboy style and country pleasures--that you just don't find in many places in the modern U.S., which seems determined to franchise and homogenize itself into submission to a capitalist master.

For me, the TV show Dallas, at least in its early years, really captured this mystique.




Sigh. Infidelity, hunky cowboys with bad perms and amazing waistlines, spousal abuse, and bitter, bitter loneliness surrounded by ranch-style opulence. They don't make 'em like that anymore, except perhaps today in the suburbs of the real Big D. Tip: Watch Cheaters sometime.

After Texas, I eventually wound up in Pennsylvania. The Keystone State indeed has its charms--a glorious, brightly decorated fall is definitely one of them, along with rowhouses, pierogies, whoopie pies, the Amish and Mennonite communities, and the leftover riches of the 19th century robber-baron class.

But a style? Exoticism? A mystique of its very own? Alas, no.

I think it's safe to conjecture that no one is ever going to make a TV show with Henry Clay Frick's Claymore Mansion in Pittsburgh as the opening shot for every fraught-with-tension family scene. No one's ever going to collapse on their bed, bitterly rueing their trap of a loveless marriage, while in the background, an announcer at the Pennsylvania State Farm Show blares, "Ladies and gentleman, the award for best cowboy goes to Joe Warhola of Altoona." No one's gonna tune in to watch the lives and lusts among the Plain People, even if the show is set in a town called Intercourse.

And ain't no one into the 21st century wondering who shot Ben Franklin. Although I'm pretty sure it wasn't Sue Ellen's baby sister Kristin.

Editor's note: What kind of name is Kristin for a Texas woman in the 1970s anyway? You knew she had to be up to no good with a Yankee name like that.