In Alaska, there is a popular bumper sticker that says: "Pissing Off Texans Since 1959." (Annoying Texans since 1959.)
This jab, of course, refers to the fact that when Alaska became a state, Texas immediately dropped to second place in the contest for the largest state.
Texans liked to point out that if we melted all the ice and snow up there, Texas would still be bigger.
We are certainly larger in terms of population—forty times larger. But from a woman's perspective, Alaska has an attractive male-to-female ratio: 6 to 4, as some say. A female friend from Texas who lived there for a while told me that "odds are good but the goods are odd." (The chances are good, but the merchandise is strange.) But I have to be careful here.
Alaskans also like to provoke Texas by saying: "Don't get us mad or we'll split in two and make you the third-largest state." (Don't make us angry, or we'll split in two and make you the third-largest state.)
There is no doubt that Alaska is geographically more than twice the size of Texas, but we still claim bragging rights in many respects.
After all, Texas reigned as the largest state in the Union for a full 104 years. Alaska still has a long way to go before it takes that title from us—about another 50 years.
Second point. You know that famous oil pipeline they have up there. Guess who built it. Texans. And Okies (residents of Oklahoma), too. There are no exact figures, but we have evidence in Alaskan folklore. An Alaskan saying from the time the pipeline was being built went like this: "Happiness is 10,000 Okies pickin' up a Texan under each arm and headin' south." (Happiness is 10,000 Okies each picking up a Texan under each arm and heading south.) I don't know why they would have such an attitude. We were only making them rich.
Third point. Despite Alaska's fame for oil, Texas is still a much larger producer of oil and gas and has far greater reserves. Texas remains No. 1 in oil production in the United States, and if it were independent, it would be the sixth-largest oil-producing country in the world. They don't call us the Saudi Arabia of Texas for nothing. We have three times as much oil as Alaska and ten times as much natural gas.
One last point, and a crushing fact at that: Alaska would not be a state if Texas had not made it one. It's true. Alaska's application for statehood dragged on for years during the 1940s and 1950s. The proposal went nowhere until Texans Lyndon Johnson, one of the most powerful members of the U.S. Senate, and Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the House of Representatives, threw their weight behind it. That was the turning point. Once those two supported it, Alaska was quickly on its way to statehood. You could say that Texas was big enough to let Alaska be bigger.
The rivalry between Texas and Alaska is mostly just a mock feud. We are deeply connected. Heck, you can choose from 40 flights a day from Houston to Anchorage. There is probably no better friendship between states than ours, because we are kindred states—we both have a history of frontiers, oil booms and busts, and are made up of fiercely independent people who insist on shaping their own destiny. But if global warming continues, perhaps one day we will see whether Alaska, beneath all that ice and snow, really is bigger than Texas.
