Texas_Highways_-_October_2019

14 texashighways.com

OPEN ROAD (^) | ESSAY
intertwined with human history? Dobie
explained that Native Americans relied
on mesquite bean pods as a food staple,
that the long thorns served as pins, and
that the tree’s amber-colored sap was
used as a glue by Apaches to make woven
baskets watertight.
He described how the beans, leaves,
I

T WAS A LONG JOURNEY FOR ME TO

appreciate Dobie, who died in 1964.

I’d grown up in the backwash of the ’60s

and was raised in the Dallas suburb of

Mesquite. I was dimly aware of a Texas

mystique, but the only world I knew was

tract homes and chain stores, bordered

by interlocking expressways. Like other

school kids, I dutifully regurgitated the

gospel taught in our Texas history classes,

but I had little sense of what it really

meant to be a Texan, or what made this

place so special. That process would take

many years, and it would require a lot of

help from Dobie.

As I stood on the old truck at Dobie

Dichos, I felt welcomed here as a paisano,

Spanish for “fellow countryman,” a term

Dobie favored. Above all else, Dobie

wanted to educate Texans about their

surroundings. He said, “It seems to me

that other people living in the Southwest

will lead fuller and richer lives if they

become aware of what it holds.”

The mesquite logs crackled in the fire,

and I thought of my old hometown. As

a kid, I only knew mesquites as brushy

trees no one much liked. It wasn’t until

reading Dobie that I came to understand

their greater significance.

“The mesquite seems to me the most

characteristic tree or brush that we have

in the Southwest,” Dobie wrote. “Its name

comes to us from the Aztec, and its asso-

ciation with the land and the peoples’ of

this region is dateless. The mesquite is as

native as rattlesnakes and mockingbirds,

as distinctive as northers, and as blended

into the life of the land as cornbread and

tortillas. Humans and other animals have

been making use of it for untold genera-

tions; they are still making use of it.”

Who knew that mesquite was an

Aztec word? Or that it was so closely

As for Texas, we were

known for cattle, not

books. Still, Dobie

understood that our

state had a proud

oral-storytelling tradition.

He adapted these tales

into books and thus,

Texas literature was born.

Through October 31

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organization supported, in part,

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