Kent Boswell: Blame it all on our (Texas) roots

Ben Barnes introduced me to politics. He shook my shy teenage hand as he wished success for his alma mater in their football endeavors on a late Friday evening in the mid-'60s. The De Leon Bearcats lost the playoff game that night, but Barnes didn’t lose, not only in his political successes, but with his influence on me and many others in our community. The young speaker of the house invited the Bearcat Band to lead his inaugural parade. The lady who led the parade, I would marry. A lifelong friend would be a page boy in the upcoming session.

Fifty plus years later, I attended a friend’s funeral; he was of Barnes blood and laid to rest among many of the Barnes family. It was a gray December day and the pecan orchard just south of the cemetery shared the mood. Rooted deep down were these beautiful, yet leafless trees. Down the road is the origin of the Barnes family in Comanche County. More than a dozen Barnes children were born to this little community, witnesses to the same of so many Texas families …heartaches of drought, pains of disease, and the return of a son in a box via train from Korea. A grandson would contract polio and yet another grandson would be elected a state representative, later as the speaker of the house and lieutenant governor of Texas. Ben Barnes’ roots were as deep as the mighty pecans and the Barnes family still remains attached to this soil. I thought of the native Texans who have represented us since the mid-'60s and after Ben Barnes: Bill Hobby, Houston, Rice; Bob Bullock, Hillsboro, Texas Tech and Baylor; Rick Perry, Haskell, Texas A&M; Bill Ratliff, Sonora, University of Texas; David Dewurst, Houston, University of Arizona (Basketball scholarship); Most all of these Texans served in the US military. Dan Patrick born in Baltimore, Md., as Dannie Scott Goeb. He has a BA from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. And, along with a name change, he “reinvented” himself from being a sports and radio broadcaster. After a painful (for his creditors) bankruptcy, he became a “conservative commentator” in his new hometown of Houston, where voter apathy and tea party fervor was at its tempest.