Essays From West of 98: Confessions of a Shameless Booster
Reckoning with the "booster" moniker and its vital importance today
📷: R.L. Penick, early Stamford mayor and often called the “Father of Stamford,” rides out of Stamford City Hall’s fire station in a magnificent early scene of local boosterism
I haven’t always called myself a shameless small town booster. In fact, until recently, this is a moniker that I likely would have rejected.
Now, before you do a double take and begin to reconsider my entire persona, let me explain. I’ve been passionate about my community as long as I have known what a “community” was. I have spouted the local facts and revered the local history and culture since I was an annoying child (and some might say the only difference has been replacing “child” with “adult”). I am not sure my family has gotten over the fact that, when I was a youth, I vetoed the possibility of a particularly unique July 4th family vacation because it would have conflicted with the Texas Cowboy Reunion.1
And yet, for most of my life, the word “booster” had something of an unsavory mental association for small towns. I think of an early scene in the movie “Tombstone,” when Wyatt Earp has recently re-connected with Doc Holliday in the Arizona boomtown.2 They encounter pretentious Sheriff John Behan who dismisses Tombstone’s frontier nature, confidently announcing “no, the die’s cast, we’re growing, be as big as San Francisco in a few years. And just as sophisticated.” His prediction was…exaggerated.
I also think that, perhaps, the frontier booster as a pejorative goes back to the Zanesville Syndicate. “Friday Night Lights” is likely the most famous book ever written about West Texas. It spawned a successful film3 and later a fictionalized version of the story as a television series that was acclaimed by many (including me).4 The book, set around the 1988 Odessa Permian football team, opens with the history of Odessa, Texas itself.
Author H.G. Bissinger memorably wrote about the group of investors from Zanesville, Ohio who purchased 14,000 acres of West Texas and decided to promote it as a utopia: “[w]hat Odessa lacked, and one look informed the most charitable eye that it lacked a fantastic amount, the speculators from Ohio would make up for on the strength of their own imagination…[t]he Zanesville syndicate looked at all the best attributes of the country and decided to attribute them to Odessa whether they were there or not.”
A few hardy and/or desperate settlers allowed themselves to be hoodwinked accordingly and the Zanesville Syndicate’s boosterism created a city that would struggle through the early 20th century until the discovery of oil changed the fortunes of Odessa and much of West Texas. The truth is that the “Swenson Avenue Addition” pamphlet from early Stamford (discussed in my last missive) contains much boosterism that would rival John Behan and the Zanesville Syndicate. Stamford is fast putting on City airs! There has never been a business failure! The climate is most ideal!
It’s a fine line between boosterism and outright fantasy. Fantasy deceives and harms real people trying to make a new life for themselves (see the “rain follows the plow” fallacy of Great Plains settlement). The fantasy also undersells the wonderful things that a community DOES have to offer and many of our communities have so much to offer the modern-day settler. New developments all across America are pitching quality of life, quiet streets, “small town feel,” low cost of living, and a dozen other buzz words that are the default setting in a rural community. The 21st century boosters of suburbia are trying to sell a new version of something that we have in spades.
If we aren’t the boosters that our communities need, then who will do it? No one. There’s no state, federal, or non-governmental agency raring to tell everyone to move to rural places. In fact, they’re doing the opposite for a variety of reasons. If we rely on them, we’ll definitely be disappointed.
No, we are the boosters that we are looking for and we should be proud to adopt the moniker. We can take it back from the unsavory connotations of the past. We ought to be proud to pitch our community and its wares in an honest and enthusiastic manner, because in a world filled with angst, uncertainty, and restlessness, we’ve got a lot of good things to offer.
James Decker is the Mayor of Stamford, Texas and the creator of the West of 98 website and the Rural Church and State and West of 98 podcasts. Contact James and subscribe to these essays at westof98.substack.com and subscribe to him wherever podcasts are found.
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There was also the time in college where I used the “Create-A-Team” function in “NCAA Football” on XBox to kick Baylor out of the Big 12 in favor of the Stamford Bulldogs. Of course they won the conference on my watch. Good thing no one is reading the footnotes full of embarrassing admissions…right?
I’m a stickler for historical accuracy (just read the next footnote), but the superior accuracy of competing film “Wyatt Earp” cannot overcome the sheer entertainment value and brilliant casting of “Tombstone.” It stands as one of the most rewatchable films ever made, in the non-”Road House”/”Smokey and the Bandit” division.
The film certainly holds up better than I thought it did on the initial release, when I spent much of my time in the theater pointing out inaccuracies with the real 1988 storyline, until a friend reminded me that it was a movie, not a documentary. But I digress.
“Friday Night Lights” gets many things wrong in its depiction of a football-crazed small town and yet, it is an extraordinary series. The use of “Devil Town” as the soundtrack for the state championship parade was worthy of an Emmy in itself.
A great post! I have not heard of a "booster" before. Thanks for the informative and engaging post. Keep up the Good Work!
“ The climate is most ideal!” This had me laughing out loud. I suppose if you consider the occasional tornado, wind (that isn’t a tornado) that will blow a car off the road, hail the size of golfballs and 115 in the shade ideal then West Texas is the place for you! I will say even with all those things I still consider it home (Abilene), even though I haven’t lived there in 30+ years.