Culture Clash: Handguns For Cucumbers

I have existed in two worlds in my half-century here on planet Earth.

There were the 49 years I spent in Illinois------then there have been four very interesting years here in The Republic.

Every once in a while I laugh out loud at the differences….

Today was one of those days.

I had just spent a weekend in Illinois to see my family and visit Carol’s folk. There it was green, sometimes less than conservative and I loaded up on way too much food.

This afternoon I took my daily walk about the campus of Western Texas College and one of the students came up to me in the college’s commons building.

“Hey….Ya’ll the dean?” he asked.

“Well…..ya I guess….what can I do for you bud?” I responded.

He had a number of complaints…..but the one that caught my ear was his displeasure with the college’s insistence that he not bring firearms onto campus.

“I’ve got my double-ott and my .22 and I like to go hunting now and then,” he said.

It was hard to take the whole conversation seriously. But I tried to explain there was an incident at Virginia Tech, at a high school in Colorado and at least a couple of times at the University of Texas that made gun-totin’ a problem on college campuses.

I can’t imagine such an exchange in Illinois. But then, my home state is nothing like my adopted state.

While home, Carol and I gorged ourselves on a Geno’s 140 Club Stromboli…..fresh garden veggies….and a delicacy called a Sancho, the featured morsel of a drive-through in Fairfield called Taco Tierra. We don’t get Italian food in Texas. Our gardens are dead from a killer drought…and Mexican food here is real Mexican. I don’t know if Mexicans have a staple called a Sancho. We also ate the coveted Fairfield porkburger as cooked by Carol’s father, Harry.

And while guns are certainly prevalent in southeastern Illinois (as evidenced by the arsenal in Carol’s brother’s car trunk)….I was having an exchange with a student that could only happen in Texas.

“I won’t hurt anybody,” explained the distraught cowboy. “I only shoot game.”

I convinced him I understood his constitutional right to bear arms……I just couldn’t have him putting up a gun rack in his dorm room. He finally broke off the conversation.

Texans know exactly what they want and sometimes they find an edict from a Yankee to be difficult to swallow.

I don’t really mind the fascination Texans have with guns…..I just don’t share it.

I don’t need more than my hunting shotgun, which hasn’t been used in four years….the same amount of time I have proudly called West Texas home.

I do need a concerted effort on my Lone Star friends to offer me some fresh tomatoes…..some cucumbers….and maybe a little pasta now and then.

Handguns don’t kill people……

Dead gardens and non-existent pasta can…