I was watching King of the Hill on FX, and it was the episode where Hank and Bobby go to Wichita Falls, Texas, to see the Dallas Cowboys training camp. They stopped at a propane station, and the people there were all “Texas sucks! Oklahoma is better!” This got Hank sort of bitter at Oklahoma and North Texas. This raised a question for me: What exactly is the difference between Texas and Oklahoma, or, for that matter, North and South Texas. Not to be insulting, but I cannot tell the difference, unless I see the state line. Fight my ignorance!
The Texas/Oklahoma thing is simple and definitional. Texas is Texas, lots of Texans live there, and there are great Texas things wherever you look. That automatically makes it better than Oklahoma (or just about any other state or country for that matter). Simple huh? Seriously, Texans really love their state in general and miss no opportunity to revel in their Texasness. I grew up with a Texan mother and she never did grow out of it even after being gone over 30 years. Oklahoma gets special attention from Texans because it is next door and they have a tremendous college football rivalry.
Texas is huge so it is hard to generalize the different regions. Houston is the largest city and it is deeply embedded in the oil industry, Austin is for hippies, South Texas is Mexican, and Dallas and Fort Worth have their own rivalry despite being the same city for all intents and purposes. West Texas is flat and almost completely devoid of population in large areas.
Texans, both North and South, wear deodorant and speak in complete sentences. They also by and large won’t let farm animals into the house.
Deodorant? I thought it was just those nancy boys from the north-eastern states that wore deodorant?
But I just interpret the Texas-Oklahoma thing as ther natural rivalry of two states that every one else finds hard to distinguish, like the rivalry between Ohio and Michigan. (And at least in that case there was at one stage a border dispute between the states to explain, in part, the rivalry – and of course, Ohio lost, because it got Toledo).
Really? This is the first I’ve heard of “every one else” finding it hard to distinguish between Texas and Oklahoma.
Being a native New Yorker who has never been to either state, albeit a well educated one, I have to say that I have NEVER found it hard to distinguish between the two. Mainly because I know where Texas is and have both informed knowledge and uniformed, culturally prejudicial opinions about Texas, and have met people from Texas and know people who have moved to Texas, but very little informed knowledge and no opinion at all about Oklahoma, nor ever met anyone from, currently at or going to Oklahoma.
Let’s see: I know they’re “The Sooner State” because apparently they’re proud of how many people illegally staked out claims ahead of the starting gun when the territory was opened for settlement after dispossessing the Native Americans. And there’s a panhandle in the shape of their state, and its capital is actually Oklahoma City, the only “state named city” that actually is the state’s capital (where New York City, Kansas City, Jersey City, etc. are all not). Oh, and I know that song about Oklahoma, O-K, where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain, because of the Broadway musical.
That’s about it. I wouldn’t even have been certain that Oklahoma abutted Texas without first looking at a map.
There’s a community of about 10,000 Delaware Indians in northeastern Oklahoma near Bartlesville. Their ancestors originally lived around New York City. Most of the Indian tribes in Oklahoma were driven there from somewhere else. As a resident of one of the states that dealt with its “Indian problem” by herding them off to Oklahoma, you might not want to be too quick to point fingers.
Oklahoma is where all the Indians from back east were put. Oklahoma means “Land of the Red Man”. But when the entire continent got filled in, it was decided not to ‘break up the set’ so to speak.
Oklahoma, now is much more cultured as it’s state song is written by Rogers and Hammerstein. Texas’ state song is someting about drinking and cow tipping.
A California native, I had the privilege of living in OK for a year courtesy of the USAF. I also got to visit some of the rural areas of TX abutting OK.
As to geography and actual culture, there’s not a hair’s breadth of difference.
As to attitude though …
OK people define themselves as the better not-Texas, while privately admitting that they have nothing but utter mediocrity to recommend them.
TX people define OK people as simply the closest butt of jokes. Which masks their own utter nothingness with a thick coating of bravado. Unlike the Okies, they’re not even self-aware enough to know it’s bravado, not reality.
For robardin’s benefit, it’s not unlike the relationship between NYC & NJ.
At least that was my take on it while observing it from the lofty perch of a True Californian. (Why, oh Why did we not erect the Easterner-proof fence back in 1915? Queen Califia I weep for thee.)
Must…not…bitch…anymore…about…Texas…Must…not…bitch…anymore…about…Texas…
As a native Oklahoman who lived ten years in Texas, I have to say this is pretty accurate.
Oklahomans tend to have a fairly solid grasp of where they fit into the grand scheme of things. Texans … well … .
Oklahoma City has a place called “Enterprise Square,” which is a multi-media homage to capitalism, and has the largest cash register in the world. Texas doesn’t have that.
from the movie Geronimo: An American Legend
In the theater where I saw the movie, that line got cheers and applause from the entire audience. (Except for one Texan, way back in the back row.)
Texans tend to be very proud of Texas, and they give the impression of looking down their noses at anyone who is not a Texan.
People from Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Mexico respond by looking down their noses at Texans.
Isn’t a lot of the state rivalry due to the University of Texas and the University of Oklahoma being arch rivals? Or did the states hate each other before football?
I have a pal from Houston who calls people from Dallas “damn yankees” but I think that’s just a joke.
I would not be too sure of that.
I grew up in northern New Mexico, and we didn’t have a lot of use for either Texans or Okies. The saying was that the wind always blew from the west to east because Texas sucked. As for Oklahoma, I still recall a sports column that said that OU football was the only reason there were people between Texas and Kansas. Both of them claimed to live in “God’s Country”, and the general consensus in NW New Mexico was that it was God’s Country because he couldn’t give it away to anyone else. It always seemed to me that Oklahoma was Texas without the big cities and the previously mentioned Texas attitude.
I’d sit back and wait for New Mexico jokes from TX and OK natives, but I don’t think they ever think much about NM except as something in the way between them and Colorado. 
Texas’s state song is about resisting tyranny. Oklahoma’s state song makes sure to spell the state’s name out slowly for state residents.
Isn’t God’s Country actually British Columbia? 
From this discontented transplant’s perspective the rural areas are mostly the same, but the urban/suburban cultures are quite different.
Historically:
Bear in mind that the state of Oklahoma turned 100 this past year and mass settlement by non-Native Americans began in the late 1800’s. Before that, the population was almost entirely Native Americans, some (the Osage I think) had lived there for a long time but the vast majority had recently
(early 1800’s) been thrown out from their homes in the East by our government. The tidal wave of settlers more or less obliterated the native people’s cultures leaving a nearly blank slate on which a fairly monolithic, agrarian, 20th century American culture would be written. Texas, on the other hand, is a diverse melange of different cultural influences which vary significantly across the state resulting from a much slower and multi-source population densification. The last big cultural wipe out and reset was when the Spanish conquered in (I think) the 1500’s. I don’t agree in any way with military conquest and cultural destruction, but it is part of the history. So, Texas’ unique culture has had about 300 years longer to develop, much of it outside the Union.
Culturally:
Oklahomans are (by and large) more likely to be described as: fearful of new things, religious, willing to settle for substandard situations/things, provincial, less culturally/ethnically diverse, and fascinated by tragedy. Texans are (by and large) more likely to be described as: proud, forthright, larger-than-life (often detrimentally so for all 3).
Local corruption is widespread in both states, but state-level corruption is more common in OK. The roads (and infrastructure in general) are of far worse quality in OK. It is very difficult to find good food in OK, fairly easy in TX. The OK economy is strongly tied to the boom and bust cycle of the energy (primarily natural gas) industry, in many ways they are still recovering from the bust and bank collapse of the early 1980’s. The TX economy is more diverse giving it more insulation from business shocks, although energy (primarily oil) is the biggest component. Cultural activities (middle- to high-brow) are easier to find in TX.
Metaphorically:
Texas is that friend of yours who comes from humble, rough, maybe even questionable beginings; but who has worked hard, used his natural talents, had more than a little good luck and now he’s living the good life. His idea of the good life is probably not much like yours (it involves more country music, red meat, and nasty domestic beer, for instance) but he seems to enjoy it. He’s loud, arrogant, and completely over the top in every respect, but you can’t help admiring his gumption and he throws killer barbecues.
Oklahoma is that guy’s loser brother. He can’t get his act together, is full of excuses, and lets every little thing turn into a setback.
National Analogues:
Texas is China, Oklahoma is Russia. Neither is really great, but both are coming out of rotten historical periods, but more things are going right in Texas and more people in Texas are getting a piece of the pie, and if you had to visit one, you’d have more fun there.
I did use to say while living IN Texas that as much as I hated Texas, I would slit my wrists if I had to live in Oklahoma.