I travel the entire state, including the backroads, in connection with my work. There is little doubt that Anglo and African American Texas is solidly Southern in its culture. West Texas certainly has landscapes and habits that seem curious to those of us from the east of Interstate 35, but I find that the essential manners and mores of that region have little in common with western states such as Arizona or Colorado. East of Interstate 35 and north of San Antonio is where the vast population of the state is located. That regions accents, manners, race relations, food, dress, religion, history and folkways bind us solidly with our cousins to the east. South Texas is another matter. The population down there is majority hispanic and the question for the future will be how the immigrants down there assimilate with the rest of us and how much of their culture we adopt. For better or worse.