10 Lies about Way-Co, Texas

I try to avoid everywhere in Texas, but I especially try to avoid Waco, the small town in the no man's land between Dallas and Austin.  Most people had never heard of it until the 1993 siege of the compound of the Branch Davidians cult, but I heard of it back in 1982, during my horrible year in Hell-fer-Sartain.  Some of the guys I met hinted that there was an even worse place in Texas.

Worse than Hell-fer-Sartain?  That doesn't seem possible. 

But they insisted, a small redneck nightmare called Wacko, overbrimming with kooks, rednecks, Bible-thumpers, and homophobes.  Hell on Earth.  Everything about it was a lie.

Recently a story about "Ex-Gay" billboard springing up all over town, plus the story of the pastor of a homophobic church being caught in a prostitution sting, made me wonder just how awful Waco is. So I did some research, and discovered that my Hell-fer-Sartain friends were right: everything about it is a lie.

1. It's pronounced Way-Co, not Wacko, named after the Wichita tribe (called Hueco in Spanish).

2. Way-Co is not a small town.  The population is over 250,000.  It has one of the highest crime rates in the U.S., a high poverty rate, congestion, urban sprawl, all of the problems of big cities with none of the openness to diversity.

3. The Branch Davidians did not disband after the 1993 siege.  There are several split-off groups still going.

4. There's a Twin Peaks Restaurant, with no connection to the Twin Peaks in the Castro.  It's a straight biker bar. where a 2015 turf war resulted in 9 deaths.

5. There's a Beverly Hills, with no connection to the Beverly Hills in California: a long, thin, depressed area along Waco Creek.

6. Baylor University is a "top Christian University."  "Christian" here means "homophobic," not "following the teachings of Jesus."  It's the alma mater of Jacob Walter Anderson, the frat president who received a $400 fine as punishment for rape. 









7. The Dr. Pepper Museum does have exhibits about the soft drink, but it's mostly a Free Enterprise Institute, devoted to promoting capitalism.

8. The Red Men Museum is not the original inhabitants of the area.  It's devoted to the Improved Order of the Red Men, a fraternal organization that admitted only white people until 1974.  I doubt there are many Native American members.

9. Live Oaks Classical School is actually a Christian school: "For the Glory of God: A Distinctive Christ-Centered Education."  They teach rhetoric, logic, and so on, but no Latin or Greek.

10. University High School does not prepare you for university.  You can learn automotive technology, hospitality and tourism, and criminal justice, and other things

Oh, well, at least there's some beefcake down there in the Heart of Texas.