Mike H,
Just a little bit of trivia, totally meaningless probably, but maybe helpful in some way. Texas is right on the dividing line between the "East" and the "West." This is true geographically and in other ways.
I don't know if they still do so, but the Ft. Worth promoters used to declare that their city was "out where the West begins." And they were correct, the 98th meridian being the official dividing line between East and West. The part of Texas (roughly speaking) east of that line is basically, as you refer to it, "ol' South" (always capitalized by southerners, BTW, who would also capitalize "southerners").
My wife, who was born and spent her first 21 or so years in the Houston area is from "the Old South." I, who was born and spent the first 32 years of my life some 300 or so miles west of Ft. worth, am a "westerner." In fact, I am now 56, and, though I have never lived east of the 98th meridian, I did spend eleven years as a "displaced person" in western Oklahoma. I now live as far west as you can get in Texas without moving into Mexico.
I ask your forgiveness for this indulgence, but actually, there is not one "Texas," but several, it is so vast and varied, both culturally and geographically. The folks in Austin (the legislature, etc.) hardly consider us out here a part of the state because we're so far west and there is so much barrenness between us.
This is such an important point to me because I am a former teacher of Texas history. I can't quite let it go, sorry. It seems that no matter how much there is to unite us, we always can find or manufacture more to divide us.
All of Texas historically has a heritage of keepin and using firearms, sometimes incorrectly and immorally. It is only fairly recently, historically, with urbanization, that the liberal mindset has come to the forefront, as is largely true elsewhere as I see it.
[This message has been edited by Rod WMG (edited September 16, 1999).]