Unlike the majority of Americans who took the day after Thanksgiving off, either to sleep late and spend extra quality time with their families (that would be the sane ones) or viciously fight with each other at the shopping mall over things they don’t need (that would be most of them, unfortunately), I went to work and made money. Quite a considerable amount, in fact – I was booked solid all day from eight in the morning until six-thirty at night, advising Brazilian diplomats, economists from the World Bank, and a couple of freshmen Senators, to mention but a few.
Gretchen came in, too, attracted, no doubt, by my customary double time pay for holiday work – even though, technically, Black Friday isn’t actually a holiday. I was busy enough, in fact, that I brought my lunch – of course, a lot of restaurants downtown were closed yesterday, anyway. And yes, it was Thanksgiving leftovers – slices of roasted, lemon-herb brined wild North Dakota pheasant with kumquat and maple syrup glaze, in a double-decker sandwich prepared with eleven-grain bread and mayonnaise I made myself in my large and well-equipped kitchen at my home in Great Falls, Virginia, accompanied with slices of Truffle Tremor goats’ milk cheese, hydroponic Boston lettuce, heirloom purple tomatoes from my backyard hothouse, a paper-thin slice of organic Vidalia onion and a dash of freshly crushed peppercorn medley. On the side, from the office fridge – orange coconut cranberry relish my friend Cerise made with Barbados turbinado sugar, a shot of Cointreau and a dollop of her family’s secret recipe holiday seasonings; and from the microwave, my signature Yaqui blue corn bread, roasted Sardinian pignoli and kumamoto oyster pheasant stuffing. And yes, I brought enough of both for me and for Gretchen. Her sandwich substituted slices of Mount Tam cheese. “And hold the onions.” Gretchen instructed me on Wednesday afternoon when we discussed the particulars. “Could you put some of those chopped fresh chives from your hothouse in that Tuscan olive oil mayo of yours instead?” I did.
It was during lunch that the phone rang. “Mr. Collins,” Gretchen told me, obviously a bit irritated at the interruption, “it’s that nasty, obnoxious, horny pig Nazi cowboy from Texas.”
“Oh,” I replied, “you mean Austin Houston Crockett Bowie Bonham III?”
“Yes,” she sneered with an annoyed tone. “That one. Did you know, every time that [expletive] hole visits this office, he makes a pass at me?”
“No,” I confessed, “I don’t believe you ever told me that.”
“Well,” she huffed, “he does – and he’s married, too, isn’t he?”
“As a matter of fact,” I confirmed, “he is.”
“Well,” she inquired with just a touch of pique in her voice, “would you like me to put him through or tell him to call back Monday?”
“Put him through,” I directed.
“Okay,” Gretchen snipped, “but could you have word with him about trying to pick me up every time he comes here? It’s getting kind of old.”
“Will do,” I promised.
Bonham: Howdy, Tom! How you doin’?
Tom: Just fine, partner. To what do I owe the honor of this unexpected telephone call?
Bonham: Well, I figured, it bein’ just after eleven in the morning here in Texas, I might catch you at your desk right before lunch time there in Washington DC. And right now, I’m having a… discussion with my wife, Bluebonnet, about the uh… advisability of Texas seceding from the Union, what with Barack Obama back in the White House for a second term and all.
Tom: Your wife wants Texas to leave the United States because Obama got re-elected?
Bonham: No, I do. She’s against it. That’s what we was… um… talkin’ about. Then Julio – he’s one of my ranch hands, see – he came in here about ten minutes ago and interrupted us while we was… considering the pros and cons of Texas becommin’ its own sovereign nation, and he says, that Bert – he’s our foreman, see – Bert says that the vet says that he’s gonna have to put down our middle daughter’s State Fair blue-ribbon, prize-winnin’ longhorn heifer, ‘cause there’s nothin’ more to be done for this terrible case of colic it got after it broke out and cut loose and disappeared for three days and then came back with the blind staggers from eatin’ Jimson weed. And when Bluebonnet heard that, she took off like bat out of Hell to… um… go have a few words with the vet, I suppose. At which time, I figgered it would be a good opportunity to call you up and ask your advice – at your usual rates, of course?
Tom: Of course. So – I take it your wife’s not there?
Bonham: Well… yeah, that’s what I just told you.
Tom: Good. First of all, then, I have a request to make.
Bonham: A request? What is it?
Tom: When you visit Washington and come by my office, please don’t make any more advances at Gretchen.
Bonham: You mean, that purty little receptionist of yours?
Tom: She’s my private secretary; and she’s brought it to my attention that you’ve been a bit… fresh with her. She specifically asked that I let you know that, well, “no” means “no,” at least here in the Nation’s Capital.
Bonham: All right, no problemo, mi amigo. But just between you and me and the gate post, that filly don’t know what she’s missing.
Tom: She’s made it quite clear that she’d rather not, however.
Bonham: And now, you see – that’s exactly what I’m talkin’ about, right there! Why should a hard-workin’ Texan man such as myself pay federal taxes to support a city like Washington DC, full of nothin’ but stuck-up Yankee women like her, anyway?
Tom: In 2010, the United States government returned ninety-four cents out of every federal tax dollar collected in Texas right back to the state – and that’s not even counting federal disaster relief expenditures.
Bonham: Yeah, maybe, but what about those six cents, huh?
Tom: For the six cents out of every federal tax dollar Texans paid in 2010 that they didn’t get right back from Washington, you received the protection of the finest, most powerful and best-equipped military that has ever existed in all of history.
Bonham: Yeah, but with a black-[expletive] Communist Kenyan [expletive] in charge of it!
Tom: And the law enforcement services of the FBI, Federal Marshals and the rest of the Justice Department…
Bonham: With another [expletive] in charge of that! And now, Obama wants to have a [expletive] woman as Secretary of State! As if havin’ a dyke headin’ up the State Department wasn’t un-American enough! Hell, the Democrats have even gone and put a bisexual in the House of Representatives!
Tom: She’s from Arizona.
Bonham: See? That’s what I mean – that’s why Texas wants out! Nowadays, we Texans can’t even trust a state like Arizona to do the right thing and put a Protestant white man in Congress, like the Good Lord intended! And like it says in the Texas Declaration of Independence, Tom, “When a government has ceased to protect the lives, liberty and property of the people, from whom its legitimate powers are derived, it is the inherent and inalienable right of the people to abolish such a government, and create another in its stead.” And that’s why we started that there petition, too!
Tom: Is it the petition posted on https://petitions.whitehouse.gov that you are referring to?
Bonham: Yeah, that one.
Tom: Don’t you find it just a smidgen… ironic… that Obama’s White House set up the site you Texans are using to demand secession from the Union?
Bonham: Why, no, not at all. If our enemies want to give us the rope to hang them with, why not take it?
Tom: Interesting point of view – you know who else said that?
Bonham: Who?
Tom: Lenin.
Bonham: You mean, the Limey hippie in the Beatles who took up with that peacenik Jap woman and got himself shot by a psycho in New York City?
Tom: Never mind. Tell me – how many signatures has that petition of yours collected so far, anyway?
Bonham: As of today, about one hundred and sixteen thousand!
Tom: There are over twenty-five million people in Texas. That’s less than one-half of one percent of the population.
Bonham: But all ya have to do is look at the facts! We’ve got an excellent case for independence here in Texas, Tom. Our economy is more than a quarter larger than Australia’s! And that’s not just a country, it’s a whole continent, and the world’s largest island, too, with just about as many people as Texas, and here we are with an economy that’s over twenty-five percent bigger! Texas has a self-contained agriculture and manufacturing capacity, sea ports, energy resources and its own power grid. In 2011, our gross state product was more than one-point-three trillion dollars! Our economy is bigger than all of Scandinavia, over there in Europe, and that’s countin’ Denmark and Finland! Texas has a bigger economy than Russia, too! We got more people in Texas than there are in Switzerland, New Zealand, Ireland and Austria combined, and every one of them is a perfectly respectable country, doin’ just fine by itself!
Tom: There are more than one hundred member states in the United Nations with populations less than that of Texas.
Bonham: Right – not that Texas would ever join the United Nations, but just the same, if all them little doodly-squat, chicken-[expletive] little countries like… I donno…
Tom: Tuvalu…
Bonham: Yeah… or… uh…
Tom: Grenada…
Bonham: Uh-huh… or… um…
Tom: The Maldives…
Bonham: Sure… like that… all those little [expletive]-ant places that don’t amount to more than a teeny-tiny little speck on a [expletive] map, for Christ’s sake – how come they get to be countries and Texas has to kiss up to Washington DC?
Tom: I agree.
Bonham: You do? I mean… uh… of course you do! So what can patriotic Texans do to get out of the United States of America without firing a shot? How do I convince other Texans, like my wife Bluebonnet..
Tom: You don’t need to convince other Texans.
Bonham: We don’t?
Tom: No.
Bonham: Then… who do we need to convince?
Tom: You need to convince the rest of America.
Bonham: Convince them of what?
Tom: That the USA would be much better off without Texas.
Bonham: Huh?
Tom: It shouldn’t be very difficult. All you have to do is change your pitch.
Bonham: Change it how?
Tom: Well, for example, at http://www.texassecede.com instead of complaining about how the US illegally annexed Texas in 1845; or that the outcome of the Civil War is null and void because the reunification of Texas with the rest of the country was coerced; or that the Supreme Court reasoning in Texas vs. White is inconsistent with President Grant’s Writ of Readmission to the Union, and so on and so forth, they should start pointing out other things.
Bonham: Other things, such as what?
Tom: For instance, they could point out that if the United States got rid of Texas, then Texans would all just be a bunch of rude, bragging foreigners – you know, like the French – and that would make it much, much easier to just ignore them.
Bonham: I’m not quite sure I follow that.
Tom: They should point out that if Texas becomes another country, then the US can establish an immigration policy that keeps Texans from just entering the US at will, any time they want, and spend all day yakking their heads off telling everybody within earshot how great Texas is and how inferior everything where they happen to be is to the same things in Texas, and how they just can’t wait to go back to Texas where everything is so incredibly great, and so on, and so forth, ad infinitum.
Bonham: Immigration policy? For Texans?
Tom: Yeah, I think a nice, tough, no-nonsense immigration policy would really sell quite well in places like Louisiana, Kansas, New Mexico, Missouri, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas and Colorado, where, frankly, everyone has just about had it up to their ears with Texans.
Bonham: They have?
Tom: Oh, yeah, sure they have. Didn’t you ever notice that men’s room graffito?
Bonham: Graff… graff-a-who-toh?
Tom: You know – that little rhyme that’s scrawled on the walls of stalls all the way from Atlanta to Albuquerque? The one that goes, “Here I sit, my buns a-flexin’/ Giving birth to another Texan.”
Bonham: Oh… that one.
Tom: Yeah, that one. See what I’m saying? Don’t bother getting half or even two thirds of the Texans to sign a petition for Texas to leave the Union – get fifty or sixty million Americans who aren’t Texans to petition Washington to throw you out! I assure you, of the two options, the latter will be far easier and less expensive to achieve than the former.
Bonham: But… but… why would that be?
Tom: Because, besides thinking that Texas is better than Heaven and everybody else is just a Yankee carpetbagger, stupid cracker or dumb pepper-bellied Mexican, Texans can’t agree on a damn thing. Seriously, all twenty-five million Texans are so naturally cantankerous they’d rather shoot each other than agree on who has the best barbecue; and they’re so innately contrary that as soon as it looked like the majority of them might sign a petition for secession, the rest of them would immediately come up with some reason to be against it. Whereas, on the other hand, getting more than twice as many other folks to ask Uncle Sam to run Texas out of the family and off the farm would be nothing short of a dead cinch. As a matter of fact, I’d be glad to prepare some talking points for you to use – there would be no more presidential candidates from Texas, for example, or presidents, for that matter; no more Texan senators or representatives, either; no more pushy, smarmy, ignorant, drawling, cartoon characters like Ron Paul, Rick Perry, George W. Bush, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Phil Gramm, John Cornyn, Pete Sessions…
Bonham: Okay, okay, I get the idea. Um, thanks… I think.
Tom: You’re welcome, I’m sure. So, should I put together a List of One Hundred and One Reasons why Texas Should be Expelled from the United States? I’m tellin’ ya, good buddy, if y’all want out, that’s the way to go.
Bonham: Um… let me think about… Oh damn, Bluebonnet’s back and she’s cryin’ up a storm. Who? Just some feller I know up in Washington, that’s all. Ah… never mind what we was talkin’ about, what’s the matter? Tom, I gotta go – looks like that heifer up and died while my wife and the vet were arguin’ about what to do with it. Lemme get back to ya on that… idea of yours.
Tom: Sure, any time.
Bonham: Okay, then… No, no! Put down that down! No! You are not going to shoot the God-damn veterinarian! Uh, ‘bye, Tom!