Stranger in a strange land

Things are different enough in a new culture that you search for common behaviors that are part of every human being. It’s easier to see those when you first arrive.

After you’ve lived somewhere for a while, I believe, you don’t notice those behaviors because it all just becomes what you consider “normal.”

With that as a preface, here are my first impressions of Texas.

Went to a doctor’s office in Waco. The MA was typically smiley and deferential. She asked the questions her computer demanded. She applied wires and tubes, generating numbers, which she fed to the machine.

I steered the conversation away from medical stuff and learned that she came to Texas from Chicago. Her words were homesick in spite of Lake Michigan winters.

“Texans,” she observed, “are very proud of their state.”

I nodded. I’d seen the bumper stickers. “And they want you,” she added, “to be proud of it, too.” That level of hubris invites irony. Think I found some.

Proud of their oil:

A friend and I drove through the 12,000 mile stretch of West Texas on almost deserted Route 10, a narrow highway flanked by never-ending sand. Rocks. Shrubs. The occasional cactus looked like a king.

Or one of those “come buy what I’m selling” inflatable stick figures. Eventually, a mirage broached the horizon. It approached at the speed of a snail. It came into focus as vast herds of iron Archeopteryx, back from extinction like zombies, bobbing their slow heads at us, gulping million-year old juice in small sips.

Tall pipes (made me think of redwoods on fire) flaunted hair of perpetual flame, heating the desert air. Wasting gas that the world will someday wish it had.

Our narrow ribbon of desert road suddenly became chaos. Giant trucks laden with massive (and unrecognizable) steel thing-a-ma-jiggers blasted past us, spewing rocks. Swarms of road workers scampered, ant-like, alongside the torn-up route, widening it to expand the heavy-duty oil traffic.

Then, what passes for civilization out there — Midland and Odessa — nightmared me into flashbacks of Mad Max. Dusty trailer parks. Rusting pickups perched in cement blocks. Haphazard buildings. Hey! Where did the cacti go?

Glad to leave that foul scene in the rear-view mirror, even understanding that humans will want to convert the decayed organic molecules into cash. And that oil promises to make everyone’s lives easier, more comfortable and more efficient.

Here in Waco, expecting to reap rewards from the martyrdom of Midland-Odessa, I find myself ensnarled by long ribbons of foul air which undulate over the main streets and freeways. Pythons of vapor.

The gas is cheap ($2) and the gas pump nozzles are naked — no vapor recovery. Cheap petroleum means cheap driving, and has spawned never-ending traffic of commuters, shoppers hop-scotching to multiple malls, cruising pickups with chrome everything.

This small city has sprawled, single-story, over a large area, stitched together by entangled freeways and century-old meandering farm roads. Amid all this traffic, 18 wheelers blast from Austin to Dallas and back, farting dense black clouds.

So the promises of Texas oil are lost in the air pollution from inefficient combustion, escaping vapors at the pump, and a transportation system unsuited for public transit.

Proud of their “Western” Heritage:

Back when my age was in single digits, Saturday morning was cowboy time on TV. Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, the Lone Ranger. Later, Gunsmoke and Maverick. All with perfect hair, faces as smooth as a baby’s butt and sparkling teeth. And, of course, white skin.

From these Real American Heroes I learned rugged individualism (he saves the damsel, then rides off into the sunset mounted on the horse he loves). I learned of the glamorous life of the cowboy. I learned about Freedom.

So — like that, “Western.”

But, No.

Texas is a Southern state.

There’s a confluence of two rivers in Waco and word is that the alluvial deposits therefrom resulted in great farming soil. Natives discovered the area, farmed it, and were evicted by Spanish-speaking Europeans.

All that remains of that group of Wichita people is a small group in Oklahoma and the name they called themselves — the Wi’iko. Thus the town’s name.

Then English-speaking Europeans evicted the Spanish speakers. But many name places remain, including the two rivers — the Bosque (Forest) and the Brazos de Dios (Arms of God).

Way-el, y’all unnerstand that, if the soil’s good, you gotta plant. So you create yourself a plantation.

By 1849, the Waco area was growing cotton. And you know who did the work. Those kidnapped Africans were joined by a large number of slaves brought from Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia as southern landowners fled the advancing American army at the end of the Civil War. The number of African-American slaves in Texas reached 250,000.

And you can see the remnants of all this on the street my daughter lives on. Drive west on her street and you pass large mansions, painted cadaver-white, with Greco-Roman columns and statues of African boys, their arms held out, awaiting the reins of some white man’s horse. Drive east just a few blocks and the homes are small wooden squares in disrepair, reflecting the poor descendants of slaves who live there.

Lincoln proclaimed emancipation in January 1863, but strangely, the Texas slaves didn’t hear about their freedom until 6/19/1865. AKA “Juneteenth.”

Tangent: Mexico had abolished slavery way back in 1829, so many escaped Texas slaves ran, not north to the Underground Railroad, but South.

Yippy–Kay–Yay!

But, yes. There were cowboys in Texas. At the end of the Civil War, Texas ranch owners tossed away their gray uniforms and returned to find that their cattle had reproduced prodigiously.

These were Longhorns, descendants of Spanish cattle gone wild and adapted to the dry brushy plains. Up north, there was a hunger for meat among returning soldiers and city dwellers. So the cattle drive was born — moving hundreds of ornery wild Longhorns 1,000 miles from San Antonio to Abilene Kan., through hot and thirsty days, cold and wet days, across river barriers (including the Brazos at Waco).

No showers, no toothbrushes, no razors or underarm deodorant. Not Roy Rogers for sure.

So who were these cowboys who had to work as a team on the Chisholm Trail? About 25 percent were African-Americans. Recently freed slaves trying to carve out a place for themselves in a racist society. A smaller percentage were Mexican vaqueros (“vaca” means “cow”).

That cattle drive phenomenon didn’t last long. Railroads replaced them. But Texas, including Waco, still has plenty of folks stomping in $500 boots, wearing $200 Stetsons, sporting big ol’ silver belt buckles. Some older Texans refer to these would-be cowboys as “all hat and no cattle.”

So the image of clean, white-skinned, glamorous, rugged individuals, working alone, enjoying freedom, conquering the wilds doesn’t fit with reality.

Proud of their medical infrastructure

MD Anderson is a world-class cancer center in Houston. But the government of the state has aligned with the current administration in D.C. and the impact is undermining both public health and private practice.

During the pandemic, Texas passed a law prohibiting “private employers” from requiring Covid vaccination. Problem there is that included institutions where employees had direct contact with patients, turning the unvaccinated employees into transmitters.

I’ve previously discussed the abysmal death statistics on Covid for the U.S. compared to most other countries. Such policies played a role.

Because the public lost trust in public health during the pandemic, vaccination rates dropped. You may have heard about the measles outbreak in Texas. This highly contagious and damaging disease was declared “eliminated” in the U.S. in 2000.

But in January of 2025, it erupted in Gaines County, near the New Mexican border. That outbreak grew to 762 cases, 99 hospitalizations, three deaths and an unknown number of complications. The disease can cause blindness and deafness.

All but a handful of cases were unvaccinated. Cases have cropped up in New Mexico, Utah, Arizona, South Carolina and California — a total of 2,671 so far.

Remember “herd immunity?” An outbreak like this is what happens when the percentage of immunized kids in a population drops below where disease spread is controlled.

In spite of all this, the attorney general (and candidate for senator), Ken Paxton, is launching a wide investigation “alongside President Trump and Secretary Kennedy — to ensure that Big Pharma and Big Insurance don’t bribe medical providers” to give unnecessary vaccines (Texas AG Office).

All this is a conspiracy hoax. Not only have I never, in 50 years of practice, heard of a physician being paid based on the number of vaccines they administer, but in truth, most MDs only break even or actually lose money on vaccination.

Upping the anti-public health ante, the governor of Texas opposed a proposed World Health Organization Pandemic Agreement which is designed to help countries “plan, prevent and respond to health emergencies” (WHO).

The role of public health is to protect the community. That’s why we inspect and occasionally (rarely in Mariposa) shutdown food facilities which are risking illness in their customers. That’s why we inspect septic systems to be certain they don’t contaminate neighbors’ wells.

Do we really need the WHO to help us prevent pandemics? There is an outbreak (small, so far) in India right now. The virus is called Nipah and it has a 40 to 75 percent fatality rate.

This outbreak has already triggered airport screening in some Asian cities. The WHO includes Nipah among its top ten priorities, largely because there is no treatment and no vaccine.

President Trump has withdrawn our country from WHO.

California, you’ll be relieved to hear, has just joined WHO to plug in our public health system to world-wide intelligence on potential threats.

One other thing helping to relieve my withdrawal from California symptoms — a small town just outside Waco is called Beverly Hills.

I’m not comparing and judging these two states. As I stated at the beginning, I’m reminding myself of our common human behaviors by observing a different society here.

As we tool along, believing that we’re doing good things, maybe even being proud of how it’s going, we humans often miss the air pollution, the crimes like slavery, the trap of being a loner and how our selfish actions may injure others around us.

Humans are capable of using reason to foresee both reachable improvements and potential disasters from our actions. But we spend most of our time focused on our next meal.

We are each capable of the empathy, kindness and generosity that many — including Jesus — have taught. But when we are a part of a cluster of people who are acting irrational or immoral, we abandon those values to be accepted by the crowd.

I try to be aware of this trap (it’s not easy) and act in a way that protects the community around me. May we all make that effort.

Dr. Charles Mosher, M.D., M.P.H., was Mariposa’s county health officer from 1988-2014. Prior to his work at Mariposa County, Mosher served in the Peace Corps, worked for the state of Georgia and served for 11 years with the Merced County Health Department. He can be reached at author@greaterstory.com.