Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

By The Erudite Redneck

ARCHER CITY, Texas – Danged if the man hisself – Larry McMurtry (“The Last Picture Show,” “Terms of Endearment,” “Lonesome Dove,” “Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen” and many others) wadn’t in the house when I walked into the Building 1 Annex at Booked Up Inc., McMurtry’s sprawling bookstore(s) here in his hometown.

He was just sittin’ there on a foldin’ table, the kind people unfold for church suppers and other to-do’s, talkin’ to a customer. I’d kind of stumbled in a little bewildered, as usual, since the layout and order of the store is renowned for bein’ laid out and ordered to fit one thing: McMurtry’s own whimsy.

It took a minute for my eyes to adjust from “road” to “read,” but I did notice the somewhat owlish man quietly holdin’ forth a-sittin’ on the foldin’ table and thought, “Holy Archer County pasture sample! That’s Larry McMurtry hisself.”

He is known to be annoyed by particularly effervescent fans. In fact, he has sworn off signin’ his own books or anybody else’s, a fact made clear by notices tacked up here and there in the store(s). And he doedn’t even sell his own books at his own place.

If he wadn’t so famous, I’d say that was a little weird. Him bein’ who he is, he’s a little eccentric.

I am not known for bein’ particularly effervescent about much outside of a NASCAR environment, although I do like McMurtry’s stuff and I obviously am a fan of his bookstore(s). But I aimed to be careful around him anyway. I was gonna just ease around him and try to be invisible and inoffensive.

Wouldn’t’ve been hard since his precise whereabouts were about 10 yards or so from where I was headed second (Texana and Southwest). Where I was headed first I wadn’t sure, since the first thing I wanted to do was peruse, for at least the half-dozenth time, a couple of top shelves loaded with the annual yearbooks of the American Historical Association, most of them just about 100 years old.

Last trip down, I picked up a copy of the yearbook that has U.B. Phillips doctoral dissertation. Any fellow erudite redneck who knows his American historiography, and who has a bit of an antiquarian bibliophilic bent, would be plumb jealous that I own the following:

Phillips, Ulrich Bonnell. “Georgia and State Rights: A Study of the Political History of Georgia from the Revolution to the Civil War, with Particular Regard to Federal Relations. In Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the Year 1901. Vol. 2. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1902: 3-224.

Makes me smile just to know I own that. It’s that kind of find that keeps book lovers like me drivin’ to Archer City to McMurtry’s bookstore(s), which is just this side of Lost West Texas, as the fine Texas Associated Press writer Mike Cochran once famously labeled the nearly empty expanses bracketed by Wichita Falls, Lubbock and Abilene, and up toward Amarillo and down toward Midland.

It’s my favorite part of Texas precisely because the towns, like Archer City, Seymour, Munday, Knox City, Crowell, and a sprinklin’ of others, are just minor outposts of humanity on a big piece of ground under a big sky, both of which take turns bein’ boss. You can’t even drive across the place without feelin’ manhandled somehow.

“Can I help you?”

Do what? Danged if that bespectacled fella on the foldin’ table, his sagacious air helpin’ filter out the dust that dances in the aisles anytime you get a bunch of old books together in one place – danged if he wadn’t talkin’ to me.

Well. If he was gonna go and be that open and civilized and all, I reckoned I’d sorter sidle up and meet him. I told him what I was lookin’ for and he allowed as how all those wonderful 100-or-so-year-old yearbooks I always go directly to were all boxed up, for some reason I can’t recall, but that they would be back on display and buyable by summertime.

Okie doke. Plenty more to pore over in this place. No big deal.

“Are you Mr. McMurtry?” I asked. He allowed as to how he was. “Well, I’m (Erudite Redneck),” I said, as HE stuck out HIS hand, which, havin’ read what I’ve read about his reputation for low-grade cantankerousness, surprised me a little. “I used to work at the paper in Wichita Falls and now I live in Oklahoma City."

“Oh, I don’t live here either. I live in Tucson,” he said, which I thought was a little weird, and a little eccentric, and a little like lots of people who come from around here but live somewhere else now: They seem to always want to make sure you know they don’t live around here anymore. (My own Dr. ER is one of them.)

“You’re not here at the store that often, are you?” I asked, knowin’ that he wadn’t and knowin’ that it was a pretty rare thing to walk into Larry McMurtry’s bookstore(s) and find Larry McMurtry sittin’ on a foldin’ table holdin’ forth with a customer.

He allowed as to how he was not here much, but that he had to be sometimes, to which I observed, “Well, I guess you do have to come in sometimes. It is your store. And it’s great. Glad to meet you.”

I went one way and he went another, and when he turned I saw that on the back of his black jacket it said, all splashy and Hollywood-like, “Cybill,” as in Cybill Shepherd, who broke out by playin’ Jacy Farrow in director Peter Bogdanovich’s 1971 film version of McMurtry’s “The Last Picture Show” and reprised the role of Jacy in 1990’s “Texasville.” (I fell for Cybill as detective Maddie Hayes in the late-’80s series “Moonlighting” with Bruce Willis – and she is still as hot as a firecracker if you ask me.)

Then I went over into the next room of Booked Up Inc.’s Building 1 Annex to privately enjoy the fact that I’d just unexpectedly met the man who has put Archer City, Texas, on the map for book lovers from all over the world, and to look for history books about Indians.

Just skipped where I meant to head to second, and went right to third, bypassin’ the books on Texana and the Southwest for the time being, knowin’ I’d just looked Mr. Texana hisself in the eye and even shook his hand. And that – livin’ somethin’ – is about the only dang thing that beats readin’ about it.

END