A Tale of Two Texans

The World of A TunA ChrisTmAs A Tale of Two Texans

by Nick Hone

texan artist, raCe riCketts. Texas holds a complicated place in the cultural consciousness of the United States. It has a centuries-long history of Anglo-American and Spanish violence against Indigenous groups and African Americans, and remains to this day a bastion of conservative policies. But it also has some of the richest Hispanic cultural traditions in the nation, in everything from architecture to food to the very language Texans use daily. While it may be easy to reduce Texas to a twodimensional state of the conservative cowboys satirized in A Tuna Christmas, it is reductive and irresponsible to erase the contributions of generations of Hispanic, Black, and Inidgenous Texans to the culture of the Lone Star State. Education Apprentice Nick Hone spoke to Race Ricketts, an actor, musician, and native Texan, about what small-town life in Texas means to him and how that reflects on A Tuna Christmas.

Nick Hone (NH): You grew up in and are from a small town in Texas. Can you tell me a little about your hometown?

Race Ricketts (RR): Yes. So I am from a place called Olney, Texas. It is maybe 45 minutes south of the Red River, the Texas-Oklahoma border. Three hours east of Lubbock and two hours west of Dallas-Fort Worth. So it's very much in the middle of nowhere. The closest Walmart, Whataburger, anything you need to have any kind of fun is about 30 minutes away. And it's always been about 3000 people give or take. And it's a big farming-slash-industrial town. There's two kinds of manufacturing plants here as well as 40 miles in any direction surrounded by wheat fields. So that’s the area, geographic, demographic situation of where I'm from in Texas.

NH: Gotcha. And what was it like to grow up in such a small town?

RR: It's easy. It's very simple, slow. I think there's goods and bads to that, but it's just a place [where] time just seems to move a bit slower, in more ways than one. Real time moves maybe just a hair slower than big metropolitan areas. But also things don't quite hit here as quick as other areas. Big cities might be in 2022, whereas Olney might still have just hit the year 2000 in terms of technology and things like that. But yeah, time is just kind of slower and things are just a bit simpler here.

NH: How important is identity to a small town?

RR: There is a strong shared identity as “Texans." I think Texans love to be from Texas. I think that's kind of a cornerstone that's always gonna be there. But I think at the same time, at least in my town, and this can probably be said for most rural towns, if you're from here, more than likely you have generations going back that are also from here. My mother was born here, grew up here. My grandmother moved here when she was young. So there's three, almost four generations that have been centered and lived in this town. And that can be said for many other families as well. Farther back to the town's origins, if you ask some people. I think also there's just this sense of community, a neighborly aspect of small-town living that you don't quite see as fleshed out in many other places.

NH: So they rely on each other in Olney?

RR: Absolutely. I know my next-door neighbor here. She is, I wanna say, in her mid-sixties. But she's a widow. She doesn't really have any other family. But whenever I'm out of town or my brother's out of town or something like that, she's always got an eye on the house or she'll, like, give us a text or a call if mail gets dropped off or packages get dropped off. And it's kind of the same thing for us if we're here and she's not. We kind of look out for each other.

NH: I was wondering if you could speak to any experiences with the sort of regressive ideology or bigotry growing up in a small town like we see in A Tuna Christmas

RR: Boy, that's a big old hunka steak of a question. There can be some dangerous and very unhealthy views of people of color. And I'm not saying that where I'm from is just this hotbed of racism and bigotry, but it's definitely there. I've seen it in the schools. I've seen it just about the town, but with that, people who espouse these views are not looked upon kindly by the community.

There's definitely a true sense of what's right and what's wrong. And I think small towns are no longer just encased inside this cultural ideological bubble anymore. The box in our pockets that can give us any piece of information out there has given us a window into other people's lives, other cultures, other ideas and ways of thinking like we've never had before. And now we choose to take those things and learn from them, or you can reject them with that bubble thinking. With our younger generation especially, people are becoming more and more accepting.

NH: What would you think Portland audiences would benefit knowing about life in Texas in general regarding diversity and regarding small-town life in itself?

RR: I was fortunate enough, even in a small school, to grow up with friends that did not all look the same. The majority of the town was White people, I would say. But if I'm just looking at the high school, it was about a 60-

The World of A TunA ChrisTmAs 40 split between White kids and students of Mexican descent. I kind of had this idea from a young age that these are just my friends. They may just look a little different than me, but they're just my friends.

I know every Christmas with my friend Bradley, his mother would always make tamales and he'd bring this big Excel sheet and he would take orders from people. And so every year around Christmastime, everyone would bring a $10 bill to school with them and give Bradley their money. And then sure enough, two weeks later, right before Christmas break, he'd show up with an Igloo cooler full of people's tamale orders and we'd all just put 'em in our backpacks. And that was a great thing. ’Cause, you know, the White kids, we didn't know how to make tamales. That's just one example that I think some of us probably took for granted and didn't realize just how lucky we were to be surrounded by cultures different from our own, but also [to be] so close to those friends, growing up.

I think it's very easy for audiences outside of the south and outside of places like Texas to view us as unintelligent, uncultured, hateful people. That's a very easy thing to do, but I don't think you'll gain as much from your audience [if you go for a] cheap laugh. But, if we as theater artists are all about wanting to present truth, even in very comical, almost borderline farcical situations, you still have to have a truth there.

NH: As a theater maker and a Texan, do you think that A Tuna Christmas’s satire still holds value in 2022? Why or why not?

RR: I think so, because those people do still exist. I don't think the authors’ intent was to put those jokes in for the sake of putting the jokes in because they thought they were funny. I think these were actual people that they knew that said these things at one point or another. I think you can almost present it as a test to your audience. It's gonna be interesting to see how they take those jokes.

It's kind of a balancing act. I've been to productions of this show where some people are wildly raging with laughter, and then

The World of A TunA ChrisTmAs there's others along with myself that kind of hear those [jokes] and are uncomfortable, you don't quite know how to field those. But the older I am now, I understand why they're there.

There are people that still say those things.

And I can imagine it might be hard for actors to be super comfortable saying those jokes, but I do think it's important to understand that they might not be just the face value, there's probably some deeper diving to be done on them.

NH: Are there any local legends for your area or any specific folklore that you think audiences would find interesting or fun?

RR: I've got a song about it: the Pringle Rothell Christmas tree that used to exist. This giant yucca plant sat outside on one of the back roads that all the teenagers would drive to, do back roading and [they] would have alcohol on them. I feel like I should preface, I don't condone underage drinking, but they would take all those empty cans and bottles and stick 'em on the yucca plant and make it look like a Christmas tree, if you will, with ornaments all over it. So that was a fun thing. This time of year they're probably getting ready to take like these solar battery–powered Christmas lights and they'll string it around it this time of year, but no one ever knows who does it. It’s a fun little quirky thing, and I think that's real sweet.

a CaCuts wraPPed in CHristmas ligHts.