I grew up in Texas, in a home where the Old West shaped our culture and our perspective on the world. For many school days I spent my afternoons after school with my grandmother, a proud daughter of Texas and YES, the Confederacy, who taught her grandchildren about their Southern heritage. Her grandfather George Durant (a founder of Alvin, Texas) had been a captain of the Magnolia Rangers, and she had their beloved gargantuan flag, created at the onset of the War Between the States, stashed away under her bed. (You can find reproductions of the flag on ebay!) She had Major Durant's cavalry sword standing in her closet behind the unbrellas. Whenever I would steal a cookie from the shirt boxes full of cookies and brownies baked in advance for the holidays, hidden under her bed, I would glance at that venerated flat box containing the old tattered silk flag and imagine my great-grandfather's gallant service. In one battle alone he was reportedly wounded but continued to lead his men, having two horses shot out from underneath him. She loved to tell about his heroism during the infamouus Battle of Galveston, considered by many historians as the single most humiliating defeat of the United States Navy. In fact I had at least four ancestors who fought for the Southern Confederacy, all whom survived and contributed to the taming of the frontier and the establishment of civilization in Texas. Their sons worked for the railroads, or in the oil industry. Texas pride and love of Texas icons was in my blood.
