On Pearl Snaps, Cowboy Boots, and Fascist Pricks

After a long hard winter in Massachusetts and in need of a break from the weather I took a trip to Austin Texas in May of 2024 to spend time with friends, eat tacos, drink beer and catch a Drive by Truckers concert at Austin City Limits.  I wrote this essay after returning to Boston.

I was sitting in Austin-Bergstrom airport dreading a flight to Boston when I looked up and saw Texas Governor Greg Abbott wheeling toward me.

It was a little after noon on a sunny Friday and I was dressed in Wrangler jeans and a cheap pearl snap western shirt with the sleeves rolled just far enough to show off the new Louisiana Redfish tattoo on my left forearm. On my head was a ball cap I bought off a Turnpike Troubadours merch table. On my feet were a battered and well broken in pair of brown, pointed toe Tecova cowboy boots. They were propped on my spouse's bright purple suitcase, half full of HEB tortillas and pearl snap shirts, two things in shockingly low supply in the Boston suburbs. 

I’m not a cowboy. 

My great grandfather was. Story I heard was he ran away from a Baptist boys home in North Louisiana sometime in the early 1900s and got work on a West Texas ranch. Me? I can’t rope or ride. I hate cows. For a two month period in Hawaii in 1998 I rode four rodeo bulls for a grand total of six seconds because the girl I was dating at the time told me I’d look cute doing it. Later, around 2003 or so, I caught a Chris LeDoux show in a rodeo barn in Gonzalez, Louisiana. That’s the height of my cowboy credentials. But every Joe Rogan California Republican tech dick that moves to Austin buys a pearl snap shirt, a Stetson, and an Ar15 as soon as they come to town so I guess I’m at least better than them.

 I guess you could say I’m country, though if we’re being honest that’s probably a lie too. I came from country people. My Granny and Pawpaw were born dirt poor in the logging camps of North Central Louisiana. My Papa was a circuit preacher’s son. My Memaw was the daughter of the only protestant rice farmer in Opelousas. But me? I spent the first fourteen years of my life in a blue collar neighborhood of Louisiana’s second biggest city. I visited my great-granddaddies farm. I helped my Granny and Pawpaw with their garden. I went hunting and fishing with my old man. Hell, we moved to the sticks when I was in the ninth grade and my entire High School experience was in rural Southeast Louisiana, but the hard truth is for fourteen years I was a city kid. But I guess if some dipshit from Macon, Georgia (population 150k) can “write” a number one country song called “Try That in a Small Town” then a kid from Shreveport, Louisiana (Population 180k) can claim country status. Especially since we moved to Sun, Louisiana (Population 403) by my Freshman year of High School. 

Either way, there I sat in the Austin airport with my pearl snaps and my cowboy boots, dreading the flight back to Boston, when I looked up and saw Greg Abbott rolling my way, flanked by what had to be two Texas State Troopers in sports coats and a uniformed Austin Police Officer. 

I hate Greg Abbott. I hated him when I lived in Texas and was working as a Sheriff’s Deputy in a rural county and he was running around talking about Jade Helm. Son of a bitch was loathsome when he got elected and he’s only gotten worse since. I can list the sins of southern politicians like Abbott, and my home state governor Fucking Jeff Landry, but I want to keep this short. I loathe them because they’re loathsome and I think any right thinking decent person should loathe them. I hate them, and those like them, for their viciousness and petty cruelty. I hate them for their fascist policies that are neither conservative nor moral but posture as both. But deep down in my petty, shriveled, little heart, 

I fucking hate them because they’re the reason I’m waiting on a plane to Boston.

 I never wanted to leave Louisiana. Not forever. I joined the Army when I was seventeen. I lived in Georgia, Hawaii, and New York state and traveled the world a bit but the goal was always to come home, move to a small town, do a little deer hunting. I may not be a cowboy. I may not have been born in the country. But I listened to the old folks talk about the old ways and I loved the woods and water and I would happily spend my life on the thirty shitty, sandy, scrub pine acres in Bienville Parish my great-grandfather “retired” to before I was born. My cousins learned to be khaki and fleece vest corporate stooges or skinny jeans and black t-shirts, tattoo sleeved art kids but me…I dunno. I’ve always been battered cowboy boots and pearl snaps.

 I worked overnight as a Sheriff’s Deputy in rural Texas to put my spouse through school but by the time they graduated there wasn’t a job to be found in their field in Louisiana or Texas and the politics of both states were getting more cruel by the day. I’m no leftist. I’m no communist or anarchist. I never voted for Barack Obama, but the Republican Party lost me in 2015 and by 2017 I could read the writing on the wall. So when my spouse got a good job offer in Massachusetts we took it. 

It proved to be the worst goddamned mistake of my life. I hate Massachusetts more than I hated Fort Drum, New York (if you’ve ever been to Watertown, New York, that one sentence says all that needs to be said). 

I gotta be careful saying things like that out loud. I’ve got a thiiiiiiiick southern accent. Folks hear me drawl “I fuggin’ hate Massachusetts” and they make assumptions. 

I’ve learned a lot about assumptions in the seven years I’ve been stuck in New England. Before we moved, I assumed that the people of Massachusetts were as liberal as they pretend to be on TV and they assumed that because I have a southern accent I’m as racist as they are. When a Masshole hears my southern accent they’ll run across the street to tell me their favorite racist conspiracy theory. I made it a week in my new town before it happened the first time. I was at the town dump dropping off moving boxes for recycling when one of the city employees heard my accent and launched into a rant about how it was a shame “those people” were destroying my “heritage” by tearing down Confederate statues. 

I didn’t wear pearl snaps and cowboy boots when I arrived in Massachusetts. I’d left that look behind in college. Work required combat boots, tactical pants and polo shirts. My hobbies required other foot wear. I quit tobacco in my late thirties and put on so much weight my pearl snaps didn’t fit anymore. Cowboy boots were dress shoes, collecting dust in the top of the closet between weddings and funerals. I’d adopted a look that I think of as Southeast Louisiana dad, sandals, cargo shorts, fishing shirt and a ball cap with a pair of polarized sunglasses resting on the brim. I even bought a pair of blue Sperry boat shoes when we first moved to New England. 

But there’s no blending in here. As soon as I open my mouth I get at best, “Where are you from?” and at worst a racist screed. Seemed for good or bad everyone I ran into heard my southern accent and saw a fucking racist Republican.

 I adopted the pearl snap shirt when my Pawpaw died. He left a closet full of them that my Granny couldn’t bear to clean out, so I asked for them, and she gave them to me because my Granny rarely denied me what I asked. I wore them because if I was going to take them then by God Granny was going to see me wear them. They were comfortable, and at the time different, and I liked the look. So for two years of college that’s what I wore, old vintage pearl snaps and jeans. In the winter I wore boots. In the summer I wore sandals. I came back to cowboy boots the same way. My Memaw’s second husband Mister Billy had passed and months after the funeral his battered old cowboy boots were still sitting in their spot by the back door. Somehow me and that old man both had the same tiny shoe size, so I asked for them and Memaw gave them to me because she rarely denied me what I asked. I wore them because they were broken in and comfortable and if I was going to take them then by God Memaw was going to see me wear them. 

Also I was suffering. Homesickness was eating me alive. I was lost and adrift in a land I neither liked nor understood. I’d tried to fit in and failed. Worse, I found myself stuck as one by one the southern states where I felt comfortable, where I truly wanted to be, seemed to race each other to the bottom, like they were competing to see who could come up with the cruelest policies. Like it was a competition between governors like Greg Abbott and Mississippi’s Tate Reeves to see who could be the more vile. All the while the “good” people back home cheered it on. Louisiana voted for Fucking Jeff Landry and I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive them.

 Meanwhile Massachusetts was slowly killing me. Every interaction was a minefield. I was withdrawn, depressed, the only ray of sunshine was my spouse and kid and good country music on the car stereo. I pulled on those old battered boots of Mister Billy’s and they felt right. They felt like home. I’d worn pink  shorts and boat shoes and polo shirts. I’d worn oxford shirts with conservative striped ties. None of it mattered. Whether I liked it or not, when the people of Massachusetts heard me speak they assumed I was a racist and they told me all the dirty little racist secrets they kept hid. If that was how I had to live then I may as well be comfortable. So I bought another pearl snap shirt from a Tractor Supply Company in Plymouth.

I’d never be comfortable in Massachusetts, but I figured fuck it I might as well dress comfortable. So I went back to cowboy boots and pearl snaps. As a shield against the racists Masshole dipshits, I started collecting a certain type of t-shirt. I have one from the Mercury Lounge in Oklahoma City that reads “Mama’s don’t let your cowboys grow up to be racist.” I have another one that says “Ya’ll Means All” in rainbow font. I have another that reads “Protect Trans Kids” in the font and layout of the old Don’t Mess With Texas anti-litter campaign. I have a rainbow “He/Him” pro-noun pin on my Turnpike Troubadours ball cap. I wear them as a talisman to ward off evil spirits. I wear them in the hopes that they make my allies comfortable and they make my enemies think twice before they assume that the cowboy boots and the southern drawl means I’m the same kind of piece of shit that they are. 

So there I was, sitting in the Austin airport with my cowboy boots kicked up on a suitcase full of tortillas and pearl snap shirts, talking on the phone with my spouse when Texas Governor Greg Abbott came rolling by, flanked by two off duty state troopers and a uniformed Austin Police officer. He made eye contact with me and smiled. I looked him dead in the eyes and said into the phone, “Holy shit baby, that fucking prick Greg Abbott just walked right past me!” loud enough that the lady sitting four seats down from me heard it. 

It wasn’t much for political protest, but hell, I’m no anarchist. I’m a Louisiana kid turned old man. I used to be a cop. Austin is visibly at war with the state of Texas right now. You can see it and feel it when you walk around town. I figure Greg Abbott gets called a fucking prick a hundred times a day by any number of stereotypical Austin weirdos, but I had the slightest hope that hearing it from a big ole redneck like me, with a pearl snap shirt, cowboy boots, and a thick southern accent might sting. Hell I was proud of myself. Not many folks get to cuss at two reviled Texas Governor’s in one lifetime. (Buy me a beer and I’ll tell you about the time I met George W. Bush while high.) I even shot my friends a text to brag. 

Then that Austin cop walked back over. 

At first I thought he’d come to hassle me. Hell, I knida hoped he’d come to hassle me. I hoped Abbott had been pissed enough to send a goon over to roust me, but the guy just smiled as casual and confident as you please, like we were buddies, and said “That was awesome right? Getting to see our governor?” 

Threw me for a loop to be honest. I’d expected an ass chewing, and instead I got a pleasant smile. I managed to croak out, “Nah fuck that guy” but by then the officer was gone, walking back to whatever overpaid extra-job he was working. 

Years of untreated trauma, Trump, Covid, and Massachusetts all tried to kill me earlier this year. In desperation I found myself sitting in a Veteran’s Affairs affiliated “Vet Center” in Brockton, Massachusetts on a cold and rainy February afternoon, the kind of Massachusetts day that makes suck starting a shotgun feel appealing. It was too cold for pearl snaps. I was wearing cowboy boots, blue jeans, a flannel shirt, and a wool LL Bean ball cap. The shrink was a born and raised Masshole, lives in the same town I do. I explained to her how I was home sick. I explained to her how folks in Massachusetts heard my accent and assumed I was a racist. I looked her dead in the eyes and I told her, “When folks here hear my accent they’ll run across the street to tell me their favorite racist conspiracy theory and that’s not ME.” 

She scribbled a few notes, looked at me, and smiled. 

“I don’t often talk politics.” She said, “But I’m voting for Trump. People just don’t know what’s really going on.” 

I got up, said “This isn’t going to work for me,” threw away the forms I’d been given and left. It took me twenty minutes to start the truck. I drove home and fell asleep on the couch for two days. 

The more I thought about it the more I realized that shrink didn’t listen to the words I said. She looked at my history, southern, veteran, ex-cop. She looked at those cowboy boots and blue jeans. She took it all in and decided what she wanted to hear, and that’s what she heard. 

As that Austin to Boston flight lifted off it struck me that Greg Abbott and his goon squad had done the exact same thing. They looked at my cowboy boots and pearl snaps, they listened to my thick southern drawl, and they heard exactly what they wanted to hear. I said, “Holy shit baby that fucking prick Greg Abbott just walked by me” but in the end the man heard what he wanted to hear. He looked at the cowboy boots and pearl snaps and saw an excited fan bragging about being in his holy presence.

 In the end, Greg Abbott and that fucking Masshole Shrink were exactly the same. 

I don’t know what the point of writing this out is. Partially I’m just trying to feel better. It hurts coming back to Massachusetts because I don’t want to be here, but people like fucking Greg Abbott and Fucking Jeff Landry and Tate Reeves and everyone of their voters have made it where I can probably never go home. How do I move my child from the best school systems in the country to Texas, much less Louisiana or Mississippi? How do I move my spouse from a union job? All because I’m struggling? 

Maybe I’m trying to say something about biases. Or maybe there’s something to say about effective political activism. It’s obvious I suck at it. I’ve spent seventy-two hours now mulling it over and the only conclusion I’ve come to is I don’t care if they don’t want to hear me. I can only be what I am and what others see or hear is on them. I’m still gonna be out here in cowboy boots and pearl snaps. I’m still gonna listen to Waylon Jennings just a tad too loud with the windows down on a sunny day. I’m still gonna take my kid fishing. I’m still gonna go duck hunting with my buddies. I’m still gonna be overly opinionated about country music. I’m still gonna love my trans friends and try to be a better man and teach my kid that the racist bigoted bullshit I learned as a child ain’t right. I may have failed with that Masshole shrink and I may have failed with Greg Abbott but I have put more than a few motherfuckers in their place when they saw my Tecovas and assumed that meant I’d put up with their racist bullshit. I’ll do it again too. 

I may even start wearing a Stetson, because fuck em.

Just for fun, here’s a Drive by Truckers tune.  Drive-By Truckers – Kinky Hypocrite (opbmusic)