The Girls of Texas

Althogh stripped by Alaska of its title as the Union's largest state, Texas has clung tenaciously to its image as the land of wide-open spaces, whose inhabitants still do things with a bravura flair for "larger-than-lifesmanship." Once a wild, bottomless reservoir of untapped resources and unlimited financial possibilities, the Lone-Star State continues to attract an abundant supply of enterprising young men and women in search of new frontiers and fortunes. To the scientist, it's the burgeoning headquarters of NASA and America's space-age industry. To the investor, it's the traditional stamping ground of the nation's great livestock herds and the repository of its greatest oil reserves. To the politician and an endless stream of attendant lobbyists and journalists, it's the home of L. B. J. and the heartland of a new breed of statesmen and administrators. And happily for male travelers who venture within that state's far-flung borders, it's the mailing address of that tall, tantalizing, sun-kissed, openhearted species of American femininity: the Texas girl.

The visiting man about Dallas and Houston, observing those cosmopolitan locales' myriad feminine attractions leggily striding down the cities' main drags, might easily imagine he was merely observing a replay of New York's femme- filled Fifth Avenue. But any illusions about his surroundings will disappear when he gets close enough to overhear their languid drawl. The state's two major metropolises, career centers for throngs of talented Texas misses, provide the enterprising out-of-stater with his pick of high-fashion mannequins, aspiring actresses, in-residence (text continued on page 182)Girls of Texas(continued from paze 117) coeds, airline hostesses—and just unplain girls—plus a long and lovely line of local debutantes and jet setters.

The modern Lone-Star lass carries herself with an air of feminine grace and pride, wearing only enough make-up to highlight her natural outdoor-girl appeal. Whether she's garbed in the latest Balenciaga from the haute couture salons of Dallas' pace-setting emporium, Neiman-Marcus, or in simple Western togs à la Levi Strauss, she comports herself with a casual unconcern often lacking in her self-consciously fashion-following New York and Hollywood counterparts. She is poised but carefree, outgoing and neighborly without being aggressive. Best of all, she is totally feminine and ever mindful of the Texas belle's ante-bellum tradition of making each beau feel that he alone is the object of her affection.

Wherever you encounter her, the Texas girl will in all probability be a home-grown beauty, since most single long-horn lasses prefer to play the waiting game in their native habitat. Despite their common statehood, Texas girls boast ancestral backgrounds as diverse as the vast terrain that surrounds them. Some are the descendants of Texas freedom fighters who died at the Alamo, while others are the olive-skinned heiresses of wealthy Mexican patrones who owned the land centuries before statehood. Perhaps your favorite will be a comely cowgirl whose forebears drove cattle herds north to the first Chicago and Kansas City railheads; or she may be the attractive offspring of a European family that migrated to the American Southwest after World War Two. It really doesn't matter if her precursors came to this promised land of plenty in covered wagons, made their turn-of-the-century fortunes wildcatting in the east-Texas oil fields or arrived in post-War profusion to invest their life savings in newly formed electronics firms and other experimental industries. Whatever the antecedents of the particular Texas darling you've corralled, you'll soon discover why that proud state is proudest of its natural feminine resources.

Making up the majority of those resources are a host of middle-class misses: hard-working, home-bred and happy to make your acquaintance. Their prototype is not especially culture-conscious, though she occasionally takes in a Western art exhibit at a city museum or attends a summer outdoor concert. She's as naturally fun-loving and expansive as her state. Her interests range from the impending fate of the Houston Astros and Dallas Cowboys to the outcome of last weekend's sports-car races at Odessa-Midland and the coming fare at the local movie theaters. You'll find her in appealing abundance in every small town and major city across the state: working in the sophisticated shops and white-collar offices of Dallas and Houston; programing a computer at Nassau Bay's NASA Manned Spacecraft Center; taking dictation from her cattle-baron boss in Abilene or San Antonio; or taking your reservation at one of Corpus Christi's year-round resort hotels. And she is, with few exceptions, engagingly accessible. Ask her out for dinner and a subsequent tour of the night-life scene; and if you're a suitably entertaining host, you should wind up well on your way to the friendliest of relationships. If you're not a teetotaler, it would be wise to treat your Texas girl to an early evening, since the state liquor laws prohibit the sale of booze after midnight (one A.M. on Saturdays). In addition, should your taste run to anything stronger than beer or wine—the only elixirs purchasable at a public bistro or restaurant—you'd best take along a bottle of your own (setups are available) or arrange for your friendly hotel manager to set you up with a temporary membership in some of the less private "private" clubs, where whiskey is allowed.

There is also a sizable cosmopolitan contingent of longhorn lasses who've come to such boom towns as Dallas, Houston and (in the case of a select group interested in state government) Austin in search of a career. Unlike the typical Texas working girl, this enterprising beauty generally eschews the prospect of an early career in matrimony and chooses her Lone-Star locale with a view toward traveling onward and upward. Definitely slated for a fast climb, in fact, are the hundreds of would-be airline stewardesses who make their home in Dallas during their preflight training courses at Braniff's and American's national headquarters—and who help make up that city's attractive four-to-one female majority among unmarrieds. In addition, Dallas provides a compelling magnet for career-bent beauties in fashion—with nationally prominent Neiman-Marcus leading the pack of local emporiums and womens-wear wholesalers; in merchandising—with the Southwest's most influential furniture, apparel and trade marts situated here; in public relations—a fast-growing field for Big-D distaff execs by dint of the city's position as a state banking and finance center; and in modeling—with such stores as Neiman-Marcus and Titche-Coettinger grabbing off the lioness' share of aspiring young mannequins.

During her off-hours, the hard-working Dallas doll likes to play hard, too, and finding her is made simple by the fact that she and her career-minded cousins usually live in a group of recently constructed apartment complexes that stretch from one end of the city to the other. Sporting names such as The Quarters, The Four Seasons, Plantation House, Fleetwood Oaks and The Americana, this series of cities within a city supplies most of the town's action after dark. Each apartment complex boasts its own private night club—with jazz combos at The Quarters' Cajun Club and Plantation House's Slave Quarters attracting more than their fair share of unescorted beauties on week nights. In addition, each complex provides its tenants with a swimming pool—or pools—gymnasium, tennis court and, in a few instances, a choice of either cold champagne or beer piped directly into his or her bedroom. Needless to say, since the miss has everything she needs right at home, home—meaning hers—is the place to go. And most of Dallas' eligible men are positively altruistic about sharing the wealth of womankind. With poolside parties till dawn and hardly a sliding-glass balcony door locked before bedtime, even the heartiest of Texas men concede that the invariable four-to-one female majority puts the supply far in excess of the demand.

If you manage to talk your favorite Dallas career girl into one of her rare evenings on the town, she'll probably prefer the Continental cuisine at The Beefeater Inn, Old Warsaw or Dominique, or perhaps some exotic Middle Eastern fare at La Tunisia before go-going it up at The Cellar in nearby Fort Worth. It's been bruited about that The Cellar's midnight closing notice does not mean "positively."

On nights when you're on your own in the Dallas—Fort Worth twin-city area, you'll want to pay a visit to the latter's Party Line and the Tracer Club—a popular pair of meeting places for unescorted local lovelies on the town, where table-to-table phone privileges invite the possibility of a good connection.

With both a similar good-next-door-neighbor policy and a busier bistro circuit to brighten up her leisure time, the Houston career girl is a date of different—but equally delightful—dimensions. A confirmed night owl who spends her working day at just about anything from reporting for the Houston Chronicle to girl-Fridaying for a busy oil tycoon, to running a cybernetics section at nearby NASA headquarters, to ministering to the medical needs of patients at Houston's huge medical center, to acting in the Alley Theater's nightly dramas in the round or the Houston Theater Center's repertory productions, the Houston distaffer is equally at home on the town or partying at her poolside pad. If you're meeting her for cocktails, she'll be ready as soon as her workday ends, whereupon you'll probably lift your glasses between dances at the posh Petroleum Club atop the 44-story Humble Building, tallest skyscraper west of the Mississippi, or the red-velvety Carriage Room in the Hotel Sheraton-Lincoln. At dinnertime, she may suggest the Gallic delights dished out at Maxim's, the family-style spreads served up at the Green Parrot, the Cantonese cuisine at the Poly-Asian East (and West) or a simple feast of three-inch-thick cuts of prime rib and imported draught beers at the Red Lion Inn or the Rib Room in the Hotel America. Then it's onward: possibly to a Houston Symphony Orchestra concert at the Texas culture capital's new Hall for the Performing Arts; or, more likely, on a club-hopping cruise across town, which should include the go-go floorshow at The French Quarter, the Bat Cave or the Gaslight Club, where your cosmopolitan cutup will want to match frugs with the full-time female staff of leotarded disco instructors. After midnight, of course, it's up to you and yours to make your own music.

Whether your Texas travels lead you through the Panhandle or cast you ashore along the Gulf Coast, you will never be far from a plentiful source of campus-based coed companions. While night life in such smaller cities as Lubbock (Texas Tech) and Waco (Baylor University) is understandably limited, there is a constant flow of sorority parties to brighten weekend evenings—and with any decent luck, an acquaintance struck up in an off-campus snack-shop could launch you into the partying mainstream.

The twin Texas cities of Dallas and Fort Worth host their respective legions of urban-based undergraduate beauties from the teeming campuses of Southern Methodist and Texas Christian universities—plus a migratory weekend contingent of misses who drive down in droves from their respective academic groves at North Texas State and Texas State College for Women in nearby Denton. Unlike their small-town sisters, these city-dwelling coeds often spend their free afternoons frequenting the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts and Fort Worth's Casa Mañana theater. And quite often it's only a short jump from discussing the merits of Matisse and Moliére with an attractive aesthete to dwelling on more corporeal matters. Even during the summer, there's never a shortage of co-educational companionship in the Dallas—Fort Worth area, since the warm-weather schedule of local outdoor expositions, rodeos and concerts attracts a steady swarm of vacationing coeds seeking between-semesters entertainment and/or employment. No matter what the season, however, your campus queen for the evening will expect much more in the way of postprandial entertainment than her country cousin. So plan to follow up a dinner for two at one of Dallas' finer steak houses—such as Arthur's or the Chateaubriand—with a trip to the town's top Dixieland jazz emporium, The Levee, and a frantic frug or two on the packed dance floor of the Disc-à-GoGo. When the midnight curfew finally calls a halt to your nocturnal meanderings, you can either repair to the Pago Pago for a refreshing round of "after-hours" thirst quenchers with your student princess or suggest the privacy of your own Dallas digs as a suitable spot for further educational exchanges.

Farther south, Houston and Austin boast their own outstanding student bodies. The University of Houston coed will prefer to make a night of it with an after-dinner visit to The Bird—a regular stamping ground for undergraduate folkniks—leading up to a late-hour rendezvous at the Act III, where political and social satire is uppermost on the agenda. If you're truly bent on crashing Houston's higher academic circles, moreover, you won't want to miss meeting some of the bookish beauties who succeed in making the intellectual grade at Rice University—one of the nation's best-ranked brain factories. One may have trouble tearing a fetching Rice coed away from her books, but no such obstacles are encountered among the thousands of fun-loving University of Texas females in Austin.

And Texas wouldn't be Texas without her cowgirls. At home anywhere on the open range—from El Paso to Abilene to San Antonio—these modern-day Annie Oakleys seldom stray beyond the boundaries of west-Texas cattle country. Short of saddling up in hopes of a chance meeting somewhere out on the prairie, the Texas visitor's only opportunity of rounding up a date with one of these broncobusting belles is to be on hand when she happens to canter into a nearby city. Summertime sets the stage for a mass arrival of reining Texas beauties in and around El paso, where many find gainful employment for the season by augmenting the temporary personnel rosters of nearby dude ranches along the Mexican and New Mexico borders. Outside of an inspiring aerial view of the town by cable car, however, your means of entertaining one of these enchanting equestriennes will be severely limited by the fact that—like all of its border-town counterparts—El Paso leaves most of the action after dark in the hands of café owners across the Rio Grande in Juárez, where many a Mexican bandido uses a cash register instead of a gun.

A more consistent cowgirl population is found in San Antonio, where every week night a fun-loving troop of ten-gallon-topped rangerettes head for their favorite country-and-western haunt. The tourist who cottons to this musical idiom will spend his best listening hours in such establishments as the Texas Star Inn, Castle Hills, the Hi-Ho and suburban Hecotees. At chowtime, try to hitch up at Christie's for one of their famous seafood spreads; or if your palate delights in more highly seasoned dishes, make reservations well in advance for a table at La Fonda, where Texans all agree the Mexican fare is the finest. In the long run, the pleasure of your cowgirl's company and the colorful sights of this not-so-little Spanish town should make it unnecessary for you to go galloping off in search of more-glamorous pastures.

At the opposite end of the social spectrum from the roughriding Texas beauty is the society girl. With more millionaires per square mile than any other state in the Union, the current flock of thoroughbred Texas fillies is large enough to satisfy any young man's predilections for well-bred womanhood. In Houston alone—the state's largest metropolis and the nation's seventh largest—one out of every 300 citizens can claim a seven-figure bank account, and most have at least one daughter who will someday share it. Always ready to compete with their big-sister city's landed gentry, moreover, Dallas blue bloods boast the longest social season in the United States. In all, the Texas traveler will find the terrain well stocked with attractive aristocrats, nouveau and otherwise, who are well worth the time and trouble it will take to wangle a proper introduction.

Dallas and Houston supply the state's social register with most of its female membership. In Big D, the upper-class damsel spends most of her daylight hours basking at poolside or decorating the links of the Dallas and Brook Hollow golf clubs. Unlike most private clubs in Texas, where the average tourist can usually avail himself of a temporary membership with little more than a business card and a five-dollar tip, these lush retreats of the local loaded pay strict attention to who enters their portals. Likewise, at the other end of the twin-city turnpikes, the upper-strata Fort Worth filly's attendance at such daytime haunts as the Shady Oaks, Colonial and Ridglea country clubs makes her equally inaccessible sans invitation. Without one, your best chance of meeting these sweet young things will arrive with the Texas sunset and the attendant mass exodus from the country-club sancta for a night on the town.

First stop on the Dallas jet setter's typical evening schedule might be dinner at the ultra-U Cipango Club, where, until a recent police crackdown, Continental cuisine could be followed by an upstairs round of chemin de fer. Then, it's off to an early curtain at the Dallas Theater Center, where avant-garde drama blends with the building's avant-garde Frank Lloyd Wright design. Later, her nibs will probably opt for a whirl around the ballroom-sized floor of The Music Box—where the best and the last of the big bands appear on their Southwestern swings—or a nightcap at the intime 21 Club.

Houston's moneyed misses, on the other hand, tend to be more liberal about mixing with the masses; and except for their occasional retirement behind the restricted bastions of such spas as the Lakeside and River Oaks country clubs, these lasses can be found in attractive abundance at any of the city's more popular watering holes. Many weekday evenings, for example, the thing to do is join the teeming crowd of die-hard fans at Houston's glass-enclosed Astrodome. Since its erection, the Astrodome has become a full-fledged competitor for the local night-life trade—as well as for that of nearby Galveston. With opulently decorated dining rooms and adjacent bars at every upper-floor level, plus a nineinning weather-free National League tiff for entertainment, the Astrodome has drained off much of the business from local nighteries whose midnight curfew comes perilously hard on the heels of many a night game's last out. When the Astros are away, the well-bred miss still wants to play, however, and her favorite habitats include the Shamrock Hotel's swank International Club; the Tidelands, with big-name entertainment as the lure; the Cork Club, where the petroleum world's elite meet; and the Warwick Roof, not recommended for those whose vertigo will surely be showing during the multistory ride up the side of the Hotel Warwick in a glass-enclosed elevator.

On summer weekends, Houston's haut monde heads for the action along the Gulf, where an armada of bikinied blue bloods sets up its beach umbrellas on the sunnier strands of Galveston Island. Since practically all the clubs and restaurants in this coastal clime are open to the public, there's no problem as to where to squire one of these island-based belles after sundown. You can sup on seafood at Gâido's before wending your way back to the Beachcomber Club for an after-dark go at the latest in go-go steps. In mid-November, when the weather around Houston turns slightly chilly, the jet set migrates farther down the Gulf Coast to Corpus Christi and nearby Padre Island.

The Texan's answer to Fort Lauderdale, Corpus Christi is an annual jumping-off spot for most Lone-Star misses who follow the sun. The resort hotels along the beach barely have time to weather the wealthy set's winter invasion before the town's springtime siege by thousands of between-semester coeds and unattached surferettes begins. The Polynesian cuisine at Lahala House or a fresh lobster spécialité at Ship Ahoy should put your lady of the evening in the mellowest of moods; after which you can either watusi with your glamorous gremmie at the Mustang and Surf clubs or enjoy a quiet conversation over cocktails at Harold's, where rumor has it that a fast game of chance or two is an occasional added attraction in the club's back room. And when closing time finally comes, there's nothing like a late-night walk along the palm-lined shore to put things in their proper romantic perspective.

Heading home from your Lone-Star holiday, it won't matter where those pretty eyes of Texas met yours. Whether they belonged to a bikinied beauty on the beach at Corpus Christi or a sultry rose at fiesta time in San Antone or an attractive apartment dweller at poolside in Big D, they'll have been in such profusion that Texas will seem bigger—and better—than ever.