Michener, James A. (94 page)

It was said of James K. Polk: 'He entered the White House determined to serve one term and accomplish two goals. Having attained these aims, he retired as he promised he would. No President can perform more capably.'

Polk's two aims were simply stated: he wanted to bring Texas into the Union, regardless of the slavery issue or the feelings of Mexico; and he thirsted to extend American territorial sovereignty to the Pacific Ocean, even if that necessitated seizing vast portions of Mexico. To the pursuit of these aims and against venomous opposition, he dedicated his energies and his life itself, for soon after attaining them he died. Quiet, retiring in manner, he was remarkably daring, risking possible war with European powers as he hacked his way to the Pacific and provoking actual war with Mexico when he proclaimed that the Nueces Strip belonged to the new state of Texas, with the Rio Grande as its southern boundary

He would bring into the United States more new territory than any other President, including even Thomas Jefferson with his extraordinary Louisiana Purchase. He was the personification of

Manifest Destiny, and when he left the White House the outlines of the continental United States would be set, geographically and emotionally. Every nation, in time of great decision, should have in command a man of common sense like James K. Polk, for such men strengthen the character of a country.

When Polk won the 1844 presidential election on a program of annexation, the outgoing President, in obedience to the will of the nation, rushed through a joint resolution, offering Texas immediate annexation. But now Texas, certainly the sliest potential state ever to dicker with Congress on terms of entry, delayed acceptance of the belated invitation until Washington approved the draft constitution under which the new state would be governed. It was a document which reflected accurately the beliefs and prejudices of the Texians: no bank could be incorporated, never, under any circumstances; married women enjoyed full property rights; no clergyman, regardless of his church affiliation, could ever serve in the legislature. Two provisions enshrined principles to which Texians were committed: on the side of freedom, the governor would serve for only two years and not for more than four out of every six years; on the side of bondage, slavery was enthusiastically permitted. State Senator Yancey Quimper, campaigning for the constitution, shouted that it made Texas a nation within a nation, and when the vote was counted, it stood 4,000 in favor to 200 against.

And then the Texians demonstrated what a canny lot of horse traders they were. They wheedled the American Congress into awarding entry terms more favorable than those enjoyed by any other state, including two unique provisions: Texas and not the federal government would own all public lands, and the state would retain forever the right to divide into five smaller states if that proved attractive, each one to have two senators and a proportionate number of representatives.

But Congress, liberal in all else, issued a stern ultimatum on timing: Texas must accept this final offer before midnight, 29 December 1845, or annexation was killed. This did not faze the Texians, who waited till the last practical moment, the twenty-ninth, before voting acceptance, after which Senator Quimper roared: 'Texas will now lead the United States to greatness.'

Ceremonial transfer of power did not occur until 19 February 1846, when a soldier started to lower the flag as President Anson Jones uttered these words: 'The final act in this great drama is now performed. The Republic of Texas is no more.'

As the beautiful Lone Star fluttered downward, it was caught in the arms of Senator Quimper, who pressed it to his lips while tears streamed from his eyes. The free nation of Texas was no

more, but the resonance from its brief, bankrupt, chaotic and often glorious existence would echo in Texas hearts forever.

. . . TASK FORCE

As I was certifying our year-end expense accounts I uncovered a fascinating bit of trivia. Quimper's legal name was not Lorenzo, but Lawrence, and when I asked about this, he volunteered a revealing explanation: it happened one morning like a bolt of lightning. I was a sophomore at UT, forty-five pounds overweight, bad complexion, making no time with the coeds and accomplishing zilch in general. I stared at the mirror and said: "Son, you are not a Lawrence. You're more like a Lorenzo."

'Where'd you get that name?' I asked, and he said without hesitation: 'Heard it in a movie.'

'About the Medici?'

'Knew nothing about them. This was a thriller and Lorenzo was the villain. Played by Basil Rathbone, 1 think. Very slim, good at dueling, dynamite with the ladies. That's how I fancied myself.'

'Where did II Magnifico come from?'

'Girl named Mildred Jones. Freshman history major. Nuts about Italy. She gave me the name. And do you know what? I lost forty pounds. My face cleared up. I became manager of the football team. My entire life salvaged.'

'What happened to Mildred Jones?' I asked, and he said: 'Never married. Teaches history at San Marcos. Each Valentine's Day, I send her two pounds of Godiva chocolates.'

For our February meeting in Abilene, intellectual and religious capital of West Texas, the two young men on our staff, abetted by Rusk and Quimper, said: 'We've had enough outside professors to address us. We want to hear at least once from a real Texan.'

I had no idea what they were talking about, and was further confused when they explained: 'We want to invite this professor from Tulane in New Orleans.'

'But you just said you were fed up with outside professors,' but when they told me his name I had to admit that he was about the finest example of 'a real Texan' extant.

Diamond Jim Braden was a wiry, tense thirty-eight-year-old folk hero from Waco, and his name was doubly identified with Texas

virtue. That is to say, he was a former football player. His father, also known as Diamond Jim, had played on those immortal Waco teams of the 1920s when scores were apt to be Waco 119-Oppo-nents 0.

The first Diamond Jim, much larger than his son, had been a legendary halfback, scoring so many touchdowns that the record books exulted. Volunteering quickly in World War II, he had risen to captain and had led his company through the roughest fighting in Italy, had been repeatedly decorated, and had died just as his battalion was preparing to capture Rome. 'He behaved,' as a Waco editorial said, 'the way we expect our football heroes to behave.'

Now, there is nothing in Texas to which a man can aspire that is held in more reverence than skilled performance on the football field, especially a high school field, and Diamond Jim II, born in 1945 as a happy result of the compassionate leave granted soldiers with older wives, was reared on one simple truth: 'Your father was the best halfback this town ever produced, and he proved it against the Germans.' The second Diamond Jim might have been smaller than his illustrious father, but he had equal grit and determination, if that was possible. He, too, played halfback at Waco High, but fell short of equaling his father's scoring records because competition among the high schools had been equalized. However, he was All-State and he did win a scholarship to the University of Texas, where under Darrell Royal, patron saint of Texas football, he won All-Conference honors and nomination by quite a few national selectors as All-American.

By such performance he had assured his future; insurance companies, banks, oil prospecting consortiums and a score of other businesses sought his services. Because nothing opened the doors of Texas business more effectively than for an older man to be able to say: 'And this is our new star, Diamond Jim Braden, who scored those three touchdowns against Oklahoma.' The young man was required to know nothing about insurance, banking or oil; he did have to know how to dress, how to smile, and how to marry some extremely pretty and wealthy young woman from Dallas, Houston or Midland.

Diamond Jim, however, followed a more individual route, ignoring established precedents except for wanting a beautiful cheerleader as his wife. Selecting early and with great determination a most attractive English major at the university, he had entered the long and tedious course leading to a professorship, which, with the help of his wife, who took a teaching job in Austin, he attained."

As a lad playing football he had been fascinated by the various parts of Texas to which his team traveled, and by the time he was

a senior he was a confirmed geographer, even buying with his own funds books on the subject. He grew to love the dramatic manner in which the regions of Texas changed, and once when his team played a title game in Amarillo, he sought permission to stay behind and spend three days exploring the great empty flatness of West Texas, responding to its messages as if he had been afoot in some celebrated area of geographic greatness like the Swiss Alps. As early as age eighteen he could read the messages of the land, and they thrilled him.

At the university, after his athletic advisers had arranged what they called 'a pushover schedule,' he astonished them by enrolling for a geography major. Taking the toughest courses available, he drew down straight A's and started compiling a notebook of hand-drawn analyses of Texas land types. His coaches, after their initial shock, supposed that their boy was training to go into the oil business, and with the prudence that marked the behavior of Texas coaches, they arranged for several legendary oilmen to make him offers of employment after graduation.

To their further consternation, he announced that he really wasn't interested in oil. He wanted to be a geographer, and at this critical point two vitally important things happened that altered his life: he had the great good luck to run into Regent Lorenzo Quimper, who said: 'jinx, if you really want to be a geographer, great. We can buy all the oilmen we want from the University of Oklahoma. But if it is geography, be the best. Take your graduate work at this top school in Worcester, Massachusetts. Clark University. They've forgotten more geography up there than anyone down here in Texas ever knew.'

When it was revealed that Diamond )im lacked the funds to enter such a school, Quimper mysteriously provided a fellowship that enabled the football hero not only to study at Clark but to travel widely on field trips and explorations. There was no discussion as to repayment of the fund, only the admonition: 'If you're gonna do it, son, do it Texas style.'

Jim's second experience was one which comes to many young people. He read a book that was so strikingly different from anything he had ever read before that it expanded his horizons. Imperial Texas had been written by D.W. Meinig, a cultural geographer from Syracuse University, a far distance from Texas, but it was so ingenious in its observations and provocative in its generalizations that from the moment Jim put it down, he knew he wanted to be such a geographer, showing the citizens of his state the subtle ways in which their land determined how they acted and governed themselves.

With his Ph.D. from Clark, Diamond Jim landed an instructor-ship at Lyndon Johnson's old school, Southwest Texas State at San Marcos. From there he was promoted to an assistant professorship at TCU in Fort Worth, and he was obviously headed for a tenured professorship when he abruptly quit his job, took a lesser one in New Mexico, then one in Oklahoma, and finally a full professorship at Tulane, in New Orleans.

'What the hell are you doin', son?' Quimper asked during one vacation. 'Hopscotchin' about like a giddy girl?'

'I'm trying to learn the borderlands of Texas. When I've learned something, I'll hit you for a job at Austin.'

'I'll be your blockin' back,' Quimper assured him, and it was this remarkable scholar that Rusk and Quimper had invited to address us at Abilene.

Braden's thesis was simple and provocative: 'I have worked in Old Mexico, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Louisiana, trying to identify the factors which those areas share with Texas, and I must confess that I find very few. Texas is unique beyond what even the most ardent Lone Star patriot realizes, and the difference lies in the marvelous challenge of our land. New Mexico has primarily an arid, beautiful wasteland, but so does Texas. The difference is that we have five or six other terrains to augment our wastelands. Oklahoma has striking plains, and so does Texas, but we also have a wild variation to supplement them. Louisiana has a charming Old South terrain, but so does Confederate Texas in the Jefferson area, plus so much more.

'If a settler didn't cotton to one type of Texas land, he could move to some other that suited him better, and his options were almost unlimited. That's fundamental to an understanding of the Texas mind. The land was worthy of being loved. And both Texas women and Texas men grew to love it.'

At this point in his talk he quit his posture of lecturer and sat on the edge of a desk, legs dangling, cowboy boots showing: 'I think your committee is aware that any Texas man who makes it big in anything, first thing he wants is a ranch. If he's an oilman from Houston, he finds his ranch in the hill country back of Austin. If he's from Dallas, he finds it out toward Abilene. And if he's from Abilene, he wants his out toward the Pecos River. And when he finds his Shangri-La, he tends it as lovingly as if it were his mistress.'

Abruptly he pointed at Quimper: 'How many ranches do you have?' and Quimper said quietly but with obvious pride: 'Nine.' He' then asked Rusk, who answered: 'Seven.' He was about to continue his interpretation of Texas geography when Miss Cobb said almost

petulantly: 'Ask me,' and when he did, she said: 'Three.' Again he was about to proceed, when Professor Garza asked; 'And how about my family? Originally some forty thousand acres along the Rio Grande, and I still have a very small ranch down there, like you say.' Now Braden smiled at Quimper and confessed: 'I have my own little ranch. Near Hardwork, the old German settlement. Mr. Quimper made me buy it with my first savings.'

I felt naked. 1 was the only one in that room without a ranch, but when they teased me about this, as if I were somehow disloyal, I defended myself: 'I've been working outside the state for some years, and I'm not a millionaire.' This did not satisfy Quimper and Rusk, who said that if I was really a Texan at heart, I'd own some small piece of the countryside, no matter where in the world I worked.