As for whether the Big Rich were simply reflecting their cultural attitudes or trying to shape them, I’d say that launching a new political party to elect a president — or sway an entire presidential campaign with the influence of such a party — goes a long way toward shaping things, especially when your national convention, covered by the media, opens with speakers standing beneath the Confederate battle flag, opposing a federal anti-lynching law as an “infamous tyranny” and denouncing FDR as an outright Communist who slept with blacks.

To that end, we can add their attempts to shape or even create the media — from individual radio programs, think tanks and syndicated columnists to an entire radio network (in his book, Burrough describes this as an early effort to develop something akin to FOX News). There was also their enthusiastic backing of anti-Communist media blacklists.

One could say that many of these efforts represent the Big Rich simply trying to get their voices heard — at a time when American culture was much more centralized and filled primarily with Eastern- seaboard attitudes. But far too often, the Texas oil wealthy felt that getting their voices heard entailed silencing others — either through segregation, blacklisting and virulent anti-Semitism (one published a book in support of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and regularly referred to the New Deal as the ‘Jew Deal’).

And they didn’t have to be like this. As Wiliam McKenzie noted in his Sunday column, Sid Richardson didn’t care who was in power, what their politics were. Of course, he befriended them out of sheer, pragmatic self-interest, but as McKenzie notes, that has to be better, more open-minded than angry, ideological purges.

What McKenzie said he liked most about Burrough’s book was that ‘he tries to get past the knee-jerk animosity many modern folks have toward the [oil] industry.’ True. Burrough paints these Texans as boyish, lively, energetic, adaptive, often brilliant, particularly when it comes to transforming their hardscrabble environment into a financial center. But what irked me about the Points’ coverage was that it seemed to tilt far too much the other way — conveniently (or skittishly) overlooking how, for decade after decade, these men gave that “knee-jerk animosity” plenty of good, ugly reasons to jerk.

The thinking small I reference for instance is Dallas’ total ignorance of the Forest in general …and if they’ve ‘heard of it’ acting as if it’s on the outter most island off Guam. What potential for that projected park and features this wonderful land offers us that I enjoy, as I said, daily.

Per the horrible things done in the name of racist indifference, that is hardly who I refer to but your refresher course is well taken. We still have low life entitled sorts afoot but what saddens me is the suspicion that we have lost our larger than life visionaries. This city has become a city that is full of people who only know what they know about where they live, and trip over their own myths in the process of daring beyond their immediate comfort zones. I know because I write about Dallas a lot and the emails I get would take your breath…as if I am Marco Polo rather than a guy who simply uses the city in all its parts rather than limiting my options/opportunities.

Only the other night I had a very charming a literate fellow discussing crime, asking me about my part of the city , unaware that his very expensive part of this city (which I know well and enjoy) had a higher violent crime rate than the much maligned Pleasant Grove which is immediately south of me. When I mentioned that….backed up with no few stats based on an op-ed I had written (about the amazing and noble Deputy Police Chief of the Southeast Division, Patricia Paulhill…)and in-depth research involved, he left in a huff. Never let the truth get in the way of an ingrained perception aka sterotypical jingoism.

I’ll be the first to concede that DART, whatever its weaknesses, presents a very strong case in favor of thinking big. So, too, with the DFW airport, although a huge opportunity was lost with its pedestrian architecture and sprawling layout.

But I would add this major reservation about Dallas’ nostalgia for its age of big men with big ideas: A lot of times their plans got implemented because they didn’t have to listen to the concerns of the “little people” in the way. The levees didn’t have to extend to the black neighborhoods in Cadillac Heights. We built the West Dallas projects on polluted soil. Some of the apartment owners in the way of the Bush library had to go to court to get their side heard. And so on.

We get frustrated nowadays because every project seems to inspire objections, roadblocks, nitpicking hearings, special interests with their pet councilmember asking inconvenient questions, etc. “Thinking small,” in other words. But it’s in the best interests of a democracy to thrash these things out in public. Too often, the appealing alternative is having another Robert Moses bulldoze through neighborhoods for a cross-town expressway. I was here for much of the start of DART, and if it’s testament to the transforming power of big ideas, it’s also a testament to years of argument and controversy leading to a collective act of will on the part of a city to go forward. Ditto the wonderful decision in Fort Worth to move I-30 south several blocks and re-integrate a large piece of downtown.

I guess my point if I have one is…that Dallas thinking big is what brought me back here in the late 70s after living hither and yon, including abroad. As painful as it is for me to think, I believe the thinking small began after a lot of people who moved here showed no genuine sense of how ridiculously impossible the Texan dreams can be and how real they can become.

When my Dad’s family moved to (then) Mexico in the late 1700s near Austin, old family letters showed how stupid it was said to move to ‘a place even God had never seen.’ My mother’s side of the family came later in the earliest 1800s…. Growing up I never heard the word ‘practical’ applied to Texans’ dreams. Today, even before the economic downturns, it was all I heard and hear today regarding the city’s potential. Most of the people I meet still a decade later have no idea even HAS a forest. It’s insane for me to be explaining constantly that yes, there are 14 miles of kiosk-ed nature trails within a mile of my home and at most only 2 miles south of Lakewood, 3-4 miles say from where I grew up off what became known as Knox-Henderson.

On the other hand, I heard all my life growing up about plans to hopefully make the Trinity River usable for transport to Houston. This was lampooned despite it having been a river widely used for transport in the 1800s and beyond. But the time had come and gone when that reality could be worth the risk. But meanwhile, that state-of-the-art airport larger than Manhattan island literally put Dallas on the map. And DART rapid rail is going to give Dallas a leg up while Austin and even Houston, etc. go begging in this century, having yet to even begin.

If a massive city waits too long to look into the future, they become a victim of change where they might have capitalized upon it. Meaning—A town that thinks small stays marginal. And it’s amazing to me how many people today….in Dallas…. see being ‘practical’ as the wise reality check to be cashed. I miss Texans who never thought that way. I was raised by people that thought larger than life was the right proportion.