Popular Culture Review Vol. 19, No. 2, Summer 2008 | Page 98

94 Popular Culture Review institution, an insurance company, uses the images for regional flavor.5 This moral discomfort with the oilman and the machinery around him is, of course, native to Texas itself, as the classic 1950s movie Giant, and the 1960s movie Hud, based on Texan Larry McMurtry’s 1961 novel, Horseman Pass By, demonstrate. San Angelo is far more comfortable and emotionally attached to its “Texas Hill Country” identification, as well as to its Southwestern identity. Competing icon for icon with Southwestem/Texas desert mountain imagery in the city’s popular culture is the imagery of the “Hill Country”—the spring-fed creeks, scenic rivers, weathered stone houses, limestone, cedar, metal windmills, and abundant evergreen oaks. That the Concho River happens to have mussels in it that produce pink and purplish pearls facilitates our deep attachment to the river culture of the Texas Hill Country as well.6 San Angelo’s landscape is not as rolling (the geographical term is “dissected”) as it becomes just 20 miles southeast of the city in southern Tom Green County, but clearly the people of San Angelo are happy to be as close in distance and thus in spirit to the Texas Hill Country as we are. The Hill Country has a special home-like quality in Texas popular culture, as David Syring’s 2000 cultural study of the region elaborates: The Hill Country is where most Texans would choose to live if they could pick anywhere in the state. If you come from East Texas .. . you love the feeling of space and openness the region gives.. . . When you approach the area from the west, the small, well-kept towns remind you civilization does exist in Texas, and the startling sight of spring-fed streams and rivers soaks into you like a cold drink for your parched West Texas soul.7 Thus, it is not surprising that the Texas Hill Country’s landscape and cattle ranching ideal are found everywhere in advertisements and other logos, and that Hill Country images seem to be particularly central in apartment complexes’ signage and advertisements.8 The shared ethnic background of the white population here is an important connector of the city and the Texas Hill Country region—the same mix of Southerners with mainly English, Irish, and Scottish ancestry from the mountain regions of the South (generally Tennessee, Arkansas, and Missouri) as well as mid-19th century German and Czech immigrants originally settled both San Angelo and the Texas Hill Country. As Fredericksburg, the best known of the German-American settlements in the Hill Country, still celebrates its Oktoberfest in honor of its ethnic heritage, San Angelo and neighboring towns stage annual Czech heritage celebrations. Moreover, one of the main attractions of the city’s historic downtown area is Eggemeyer’s General Store, with its