Why Amarillo? (Day 8)

We’ve had another nice day of travel from Oklahoma City to Amarillo, passing over the old Chisholm Trail and into the panhandle of Texas.  The campsite provides a free shuttle service to The Big Texan Steak House that our grandson, Matt, recommended to us last spring.  We tried it then and I want to do it again this evening.  There is no other good reason for us being here!  The fellow who owns the Steak House also owns the RV Park.  If you can eat a 72 oz. steak you can eat free!  I don’t think I’ll attempt that feat, but I will enjoy a nice steak dinner of appropriate size!

Driving through the western half of Oklahoma this morning I thought about the famous personalities this State has provided our world.  Will Rogers, Tony Hillerman, Louis L’Amour, Bill Moyers, Sam Walton (founder of Walmart) General Tommy Franks, Jeane Kirkpatrick (US Ambassador to the UN) and Elizabeth Warren (US Senator) Garth Brooks, Anita Bryant, Roy Clark, Vince Gill, and Woody Guthrie are just a few of the famous from Oklahoma.  I think of Will Rogers as soon as I cross the state-line.  What a gift he gave the world—the gift of humor!  Garth Brooks has a boulevard named after him in Oklahoma City.  Tony Hillerman moved to New Mexico and wrote wonderful stories about the Navajo people, and Louis L’Amour wrote  western novels.   Woody Guthrie wrote one of my favorite songs:  “This Land is Your Land.”  I listened to it several times during the drive this morning and sang along.  

This Land is ours!  It belongs to all of us!  It belongs to the native American, it belongs to us—the immigrants of years ago and the immigrants of today—it belongs to the refugees who have sought asylum here.  It is a land of a rainbow coalition and a land of religious tolerance.  It is the land of the dream!  A land where it is written that every person is endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.   To deny this worth of the human personality to any group on any grounds whatsoever is a betrayal of the dream.  This land is your land, this land is my land!  It is not fair to make it only “your’s” or “mine,” (it never was and never can be).  Nor should it be!