When you're from Texas, 

People that you meet ask you questions like,  "Do you have any cows?";   "Do you have horses?";
 "Are there really Indians and cowboys?";  "Do you have buffalo?"; 
"Bet you got a bunch of guns, eh?"? 
They all want to know if you've been to Southfork. They watched Dallas.

Have you ever looked at a map of the world? Look at Texas with me just for a second.
That picture, with the Panhandle and the Gulf Coast, and the Red River and the 
Rio Grande is as much a part of you as anything ever will be. As soon as anyone 
anywhere in the world looks at it they know what it is. It's Texas. 
Pick any kid off the street in Japan and draw him a picture of Texas in the dirt and 
he'll know what it is. What happens if I show you a picture of any other state? 
You'll get it maybe after a second (maybe), but who else would?
 Even if you do, does it ever stir any feelings in you?

In every man, woman and child on this little rock the Good Lord put us on, 
there is a person who wishes just once he could be a real live Texan
 and get upon a horse or ride in a pickup. There is some bit of Texas in everyone. 

Do you know why? Because there's no place like Texas. 
Texas is the Alamo.   Texas is 183 men standing in a church, facing thousands of
 Mexican nationals, fighting for freedom, who had the chance to walk out and save
themselves,  but stayed instead to fight and die for the cause of freedom.  

We send our kids to schools named William B. Travis and Bowie, and do you know why?
Because those men saw a line in the sand and they decided to cross it and be heroes. 
John Wayne paid to do the movie himself. (I did not know this)  That is the Spirit of Texas.

Texas is Sam Houston capturing Santa Ana at San Jacinto. 
Texas is Texas Independence Day. 
Texas is huge forests of Piney Woods like the Davy Crockett National Forest. 
Texas is breath taking mountains in Big Bend. 
Texas is shiny skyscrapers in Houston and Dallas. 
Texas is world record bass from places like Lake Fork. 
Texas is Mexican food like nowhere in the world, even Mexico. 
Texas is larger-than-life legends like Willie Nelson and Buddy Holly, 
Earl Campbell and Nolan Ryan, Denton Cooley and Michael DeBakey,
 Sam Rayburn, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and George Bush. 
Texas is huge herds of cattle and miles of crops. 
Texas is skies blackened with doves, and fields full of deer. 
Texas is slowly nodding oil well pumps and hissing gas wells. 
Texas is crystal clear Hill Country streams racing through rock bottomed
 canyons to empty in to plodding rivers.  If it isn't in Texas, you don't need it.

No one does anything bigger or better than it's done in Texas. 

By federal law, Texas is the only state in the U.S. that can fly its flag  at the same height as the U.S.
flag. Think about that for a second.  You fly the Stars and Stripes at 20 feet in Maryland, 
or California, or Maine, and your state flag, whatever it is, goes at 17. 
You fly the Stars and Stripes in front of Pine Tree High in Longview at 20 feet, 
 the Lone Star flies at the same height--20 feet. Do you know why?

 Because we place being a Texan as high as being an American down here. 

Our capitol is the only one in the country that is taller than the capitol building in Washington, D.C.