TAMI Flashback: Touring Texas

This article is the eighth in a Slackerwood series about the Texas Archive of the Moving Image (TAMI) video library.

Now that summer is here -- actually, I think it arrived in April -- it's time for many of us to head out on America's highways and byways for vacation road trips. In honor of this great tradition, this month I'm featuring TAMI videos you may find helpful if you're planning to visit any of Texas's many vacation destinations.

These videos may be more amusing than helpful, as they were filmed long ago; some of the attractions they feature no doubt are long gone. Then again, if you can't decide on a vacation destination, Texas - the Big State, Mondo Texas and the hundreds of home movies in the TAMI library may help you choose between Galveston (home of a great beach with ukulele players) and Glen Rose (home of the Creationist Evidences Museum).

Texas – the Big State is a 1952 film promoting the many wonders of Texas and the many ways the Santa Fe Railroad serves the Lone Star State. The film sets its Texas-sized tone at the outset, braggartly telling us that "In recent years, Texas has come to be accepted practically as the universal gauge of the ultimate of everything." Well, okay then -- show us why Texas is the ultimate of everything! And show us how the Santa Fe Railroad helps make Texas that way! (Texas - the Big State is a film of many exclamation points.)

What follows may not convince anyone that Texas is the ultimate of everything, but it's a fairly comprehensive 1950s look at many Texas cities and industries. Part tourist guide and part economic development booster, Texas – the Big State features plenty of familiar landmarks, describing every one with fawning admiration. It also takes us to less familiar environs such as Borger and Amarillo, presenting them with no less enthusiasm. (Including Amarillo in a film about "the ultimate of everything" may have been a bit of a stretch.)

Nearly six decades later, Texas – The Big State is hopelessly dated and hokey, from its relentlessly peppy narration and soundtrack to its groaning sexism. (As we tour the Southern Methodist University campus in Dallas, we're told "its coeds are among the most beautiful in the country.") Equally groaning is its mindless summation of Texas government: Apparently, Austin is where "the governing bodies work untiringly for the greater glory of Texas." (Do not get me started.) In typical mid-century form, the film also celebrates various environmentally disastrous industries from Big Oil to Big Agriculture to more Big Oil, not to mention Big Oil.

Petroleum-fueled hokeyness aside, Texas – The Big State has lots of richly colorful visuals and is a fascinating nostalgia trip for any Texan.

View original at Texas Archive of the Moving Image.

A film that could not be more different from Texas – The Big State is Mondo Texas, an irreverent 1991 documentary tour of the Dallas area's lesser attractions. A pilot for a TV series that wasn't picked up (watch and you'll see why), Mondo Texas is a black-and-white 8mm celebration of "the Texas that lurks just beneath the surface."

Mondo Texas is wonderfully weird, showcasing a cornucopia of oddities including alternative barbecue meats (among others, possum and raccoon), an arcade of performing birds and rabbits, and the aforementioned Creationist Evidences Museum, a tiny complex of less-than-scientific exhibits at the entrance to Dinosaur Valley State Park in Glen Rose. (The museum is still open, by the way. God bless Texas.) If these bits of tortured Texana aren't weird enough for you, the show also includes former stripper and gubernatorial candidate Bubbles Cash, Bonnie Parker's grave and a Christ-like guy lugging an enormous cross down the shoulder of I-20. And there is so much more, proving that Austin has no monopoly on weirdness.

Mondo Texas looks awful; complementing the bad lighting, artless camerawork and choppy editing are perhaps the world's lowest-rent titles, which appear to be to be press-on letters on cardboard. It would be a forgettable mess if not for the hilarious narration by musician Country Dick Montana of the Beat Farmers, whose snarky, deadpan, sneeringly elitist descriptions make Mondo Texas a comic gem. The film celebrates the real Texas while also skewering it, showing us the flip side of the Dallas version of Dallas and the Texas myth.

View original at Texas Archive of the Moving Image.

For a more personal take on vacations, the TAMI library also includes hundreds of vacation-themed home movies. These films and videos span more than 50 years, capturing trips throughout Texas and beyond. Much of the content is exactly what you would expect in home movies, and the unedited footage of unidentified people in unidentified places isn't terribly interesting to most viewers. But amid the grainy, jumpy shots of family fun are wonderful glimpses of iconic landmarks and favorite vacation spots as they looked decades ago, all seen through the very personal lenses of handheld 8mm cameras and early camcorders.

To find these wonderfully nostalgic home movies, search on home movies, family, vacation, and other related terms. You may not recognize anyone in these films, but they'll no doubt remind you of long-ago vacations with your own family.