Davy Crocket: “Some people were born in Texas. Others came as soon as they could.”
I believe Davy Crockett is still considered a hero in the lone star state. I have friends who live in Texas. I’ll call them María and Mortimer (not their real names). I’ll have to ask them if that’s true.
I met them last summer on a warm August evening at the outdoor bar in the Merendero. Marí and Mort own a home here and come to visit during their summer vacations. Marí is originally from Spain. Mort is from Mexico. Like I said, they live in Texas.
I’ll have to ask them also if they got the idea to move there from Davy Crockett.
There is a song about Davy Crockett from the TV show I used to watch sixty years ago. The song claimed that Davy killed a bear when he was only three years old. I can still hear the melody and lyrics in my head. Funny the things we remember.
My dog tore my teddy bear into shreds when I was three. Would that count? I mean, he was my dog, so an argument could be made that Paddy (my dog) was acting as my agent and I as the principal. Under the law, that would make me responsible for the death of my teddy, wouldn’t it? If you follow my logic, I also killed a bear when I was only three. But so far, nobody has written a song about that…or made a TV show either.
In the time when America was still a frontier (for Europeans), killing a bear probably was good for your reputation. Apparently, it was still considered admirable when Disney launched the television show in 1954, the same year that the United States Supreme Court issued its landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education that eventually led to a lot of desegregation in the south (and in a few places in the north). The decision also eventually resulted in a few other killings falling into disrepute. Lynching comes to mind.
Consequently, my bear killing (1958) probably got in under the wire, that is, while it was still a popular form of entertainment. For one thing, I was never punished for it. Only Paddy had to stay outside. And just for a night. He was a very loyal dog. He never said anything about my part in teddy’s murder.
For my part, in the past, I never bragged about my deed or tried to wrangle it into an advantage of any kind. Today, of course, it might not be looked upon benevolently. But it was modesty that kept me from broadcasting my achievement when I was younger and could have gotten some leverage out of it.
I was right to be modest about it. Indeed, it is cowardly to send a dog to do your dirty work. I am a little ashamed to take any credit at all. I may have the law on my side, but I never even asked Paddy to do it. To the contrary, I cried when I saw what happened to my teddy. I must have cried for at least ten minutes. I don’t remember what I said at the time, but I imagine it was something like “bad dog, bad, bad, bad dog!” My vocabulary was pretty limited when I was three.
So, I can’t claim responsibility for my bear killing. I was at most negligent in my supervision of Paddy. At age three, no one can be held liable for negligence, can they? Well, maybe…in Texas?
Or not. The richest man in the world wants to move to Texas. Actually, he wants to move the domicile of one of his corporations to Texas. Tesla is incorporated in the state of Delaware. Elon Musk has been thinking out loud about moving Tesla to Texas.
If you know anything about corporate law (I know a little about it), Delaware has long been considered the best state in which to incorporate your company. About ninety percent of America’s fortune five-hundred companies are incorporated in Delaware. A lot of less fortunate corporations hail from Delaware as well. For a corporation, a Delaware address is like a Park Avenue address for a celebrity.
Why is that? Not to throw too much shade on Texas, but it has only been very recently that Texas could even consider competing to attract corporations away from Delaware. Texas may be a great place for bear killers to reside, but it takes a different kind of aptitude to hustle a corporation. I won’t go into the details of Delaware’s Chancery Court and its Corporation Code. I will just say that the two together work like a mud wallow for a hog, like slime for mold, like Hell fire for Beelzebub.
So why would Elon want to move Tesla…even to Texas? Last week the Delaware Chancery Court ruled that Tesla’s board of directors stepped over the line when they gave Elon a fifty billion dollar pay package in 2018. I know that sounds like a lot of money, but it was spread out over ten years. Fifty billion was still too much for the Chancery Judge. She ruled that the package was tainted by Elon’s close relationship with members of the Tesla board and that it was de jure unfair to other Tesla shareholders. She ordered Elon to pay it back to Tesla.
Elon is not happy about it. He has already lost nearly that much money by buying Twitter and changing its name to the remarkably innovative name of X. To paraphrase Everett Dirksen, fifty billion here, fifty billion there, pretty soon it adds up.
So, Elon wants to pick up his marbles and move them to Texas. He also has been saying much the same thing about his Tesla manufacturing plant in Alameda County, California. Elon is fed up with California regulations. Texas, reportedly, either does not have regulations or, if it does, does not enforce them.
The only thing Texas seems determined to enforce is who gets to cross its border with Mexico. The way I hear it, Texas does not mind if Texans want to leave for Mexico, it only minds if non-Texans want to come the other way via Mexico. I guess that means that, were Tesla to move into Texas from Delaware, Governor Abbott would not put up concertina wire to keep Elon’s company out…even if part of it comes from California.
I wonder if Texas is really as good as Davy Crockett said it was. I will have to ask Marí and Mort when they come back to Spain. I will make a note to myself to update you with their answer (if they have one and wish to share it) when August 2024 rolls around.