For Some, Happiness Is Lubbock : It May Not Be Easy to Lure Them to Texas Tech, but They Like It Once They Get There

Some cities aspire to be compared to Paris. For others, it is New York, London or Rome. Lubbock wanted to be Peoria.

Six years ago, the Texas panhandle city almost made it. Nearing the end of his first 100 days in office, President George Bush, responding to criticism that his administration started lamely, said, “All the people in Lubbock think things are going just great.”

Seizing the opportunity to become known as Middle America’s hometown, as a similarly anonymous Illinois city had done when the Nixon Administration began gauging the country’s mood by asking, “Will it play in Peoria?,” Lubbock officials paid $6,100 for an advertisement in the Wall Street Journal’s Washington-Baltimore edition.

The headline read: “D.C., Phone Home.”

The campaign was no more successful than Bush’s next one. Lubbock did not become famous outside the state, where it already was known as the home of Buddy Holly and Texas Tech University.

There is little question which distinction Lubbock appreciates more. When an out-of-state reporter asked a few years ago for a ride to the legendary rock star’s grave, the taxi driver asked, “Who’s he?” But Texas Tech is a constant source of pride, never more so than when its football team this year earned a Cotton Bowl berth--against USC--for the first time since 1939.

The fact that the Red Raiders limped to their goal with a 6-5 record, emerging as the disintegrating Southwest Conference’s representative in a mathematical calculation that would have taxed Einstein after a five-way tie for first place, is no more than a footnote on the Plains.

It will play in Lubbock.

The SWC office in Dallas reported a record number of orders on the first day tickets went on sale after the Red Raiders clinched the berth. Texas Tech sold out its 20,000-ticket allotment within 48 hours and was eagerly awaiting USC’s leftovers.

“Judging from ticket sales, everybody in town is going to the game,” said Greg Vaughn, an executive with the Lubbock Chamber of Commerce.

Those who drive the 350 miles to Dallas will have a chance to experience the sentiments of the city’s second-most famous musician, Mac Davis, who wrote a song with the lyrics, “Happiness is Lubbock, Texas in my rearview mirror.”

Despite the lyrics, Davis intended the song as a compliment, which he eventually extends in the third verse or so by proclaiming Lubbock as a pretty decent place to live. About 187,000 people--250,000 in the metropolitan area--apparently agree with him, and the only reason there are not more, Vaughn said, is because there are not enough jobs available for those who want to remain after finishing their stays at Texas Tech, Lubbock Christian University, nearby South Plains College or Reese Air Force Base.

Located on the fertile Caprock Plateau, almost as close to Denver as to Dallas, the region’s economy revolves around agriculture, primarily cotton. In an effort to lure more white-collar jobs, the Chamber of Commerce in recent years has targeted Southern California companies.

“We tell them about our outstanding quality of life, our low cost of living, our strong, stable economy, our excellent infrastructure and our good, steady growth,” Vaughn said. “But most of all, we tell them about the hospitality of the people who live here and our strong sense of community. I hope that doesn’t sound too much like American Gothic.”

But even those who love Lubbock, such as former resident Bob Condron, admit that the city does not make a good first impression. When he was an assistant sports information director at Texas Tech in the late ‘60s, he said the football coaches arranged for recruits from larger cities such as Dallas and Houston to fly in at night so that they would not be shocked by the dull, flat landscape.

From the press box at Texas Tech’s Jones Stadium during those years, the only neon that could be spotted for miles was on the sign outside a gas station advertising “GOOD GULF.” But because some burned-out lights on the sign went unchanged for almost a decade, former University of Texas sports information director Jones Ramsey began referring to the Red Raiders’ home as “GO GUL Stadium,” a name that stuck around the SWC.

“You don’t see many calendars featuring Lubbock scenery,” said Condron, now in media relations for the U.S. Olympic Committee.

If the scenery, or lack of it, does not put off visitors, the weather might. It is often said that the only thing to break the wind on the vast plains between Canada and Mexico is a barbed-wire fence in Lubbock, and outings there are as likely to be threatened by snowstorms as dust storms.

Perhaps that explains Texas Tech’s difficulty in recruiting, and although it has had some outstanding players, such as Donnie Anderson, E.J. Holub, Dave Parks, Billy Joe Tolliver, and Bam Morris, it has had few outstanding teams.

During the SWC’s glory years, the Red Raiders were never as good as Texas and Arkansas and never as bad as Rice and TCU. “We’ve always had a strong hold on the middle,” said Jack Dale, the team’s longtime radio play-by-play announcer.

The 1994 edition, dominated by freshmen and sophomores, did not appear bound for loftier heights, especially after its stallion mascot, Double T, was killed in a bizarre accident during the opening game. Some suspected suicide.

But the Red Raiders rallied, advancing to their first major bowl despite a record that would cause no one in D.C., or hardly anywhere else outside Lubbock, to phone home.