Cotulla Cowboys

I began my teaching career in deep South Texas, in a place called Cotulla. One thing I learned right away about Cotulla was that it was the same school district where Lyndon Baines Johnson taught as a young man. It was the site, at the Welhausen migrant school where LBJ taught, that the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1965 was signed. I later learned that LBJ had referred to Cotulla in his autobiography as the “donkey-hole” of Texas. Of course, he used the biblical word for donkey. He must of loved that town in much the same way as I did. Cotulla made the nightly news often enough that my relatives in Iowa all discovered where it was. It made the news as part of the weather report… hottest place in the nation. I guess we averaged about 107 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. Hot, hotter, and hottest… I made friends with the mayor of Cotulla, William L. Cotulla whose family had founded the place two generations before. I taught there long enough to become the middle school English department head. I had three whole people in my department. I regularly went to the Wild Hog Cook-off and LaSalle County Fair. It was the kind of place where you have to be a cowboy. And I was. It was the high school team name after all. So there you have it… love it and hate it both… the reason I am a cowboy.