Books/movies that give a flavor of life in small town Texas c. 1970

December 26, 2018 2:43 PM

Boy is that overly specific. Anyway, just what it says on the tin. I'm looking for whatever kind of media that give some idea what it was like to live in a small town in Texas (or, you know, Oklahoma or thereabouts) in maybe 1960-1975. (Post The Last Picture Show, which I do adore in both of its formats.) Any suggestions?
posted by Smearcase to Society & Culture (18 answers total)

Hmmm. Probably not what you're looking for, but the monstrously large biography of LBJ by Robert Caro supposedly talks about this (and about LBJ's wife's life back on the homestead, while LBJ was becoming a politician). I haven't personally read the book, but I "read" On Power, an essay that Caro wrote for Audible.com (Audible Originals are short, podcast-like pieces of original content). If I remember right, Caro talked about his experience packing up everything in the 70's and dragging his wife to Texas so as to immerse himself in the LBJ research and to get a better sense of LBJ's roots. It talked a bunch about the culture they experienced as New Yorkers who hadn't lived in Texas before.
posted by twoplussix at 2:55 PM on December 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

dazed and confused gets at certain aspects of this remarkably well
posted by lescour at 3:28 PM on December 26, 2018 [6 favorites]

Maybe a little later than 1960-1975, but certainly giving the flavor of small towns in Texas, is
Sordid Lives. It’s over the top, cheaply made and hysterically funny. The tuna casserole scene is definitely of the period.
posted by Sunday Morning at 4:02 PM on December 26, 2018

This is a memoir about growing up in small town Texas in the 1960s.
posted by pinochiette at 4:10 PM on December 26, 2018

The movie True Stories.
posted by easy, lucky, free at 4:28 PM on December 26, 2018 [4 favorites]

Came to suggest True Stories.
posted by MexicanYenta at 4:48 PM on December 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

The 1985 early Kevin Costner film Fandango is set in 1971 rural Texas, and is a road-trip movie, so you see a lot of towns.

I have read the Caro LBJ volume, and it does have a lot of material you would find useful. It has a lot of material, period.
posted by seasparrow at 4:58 PM on December 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

Tender Mercies.
posted by spitbull at 5:26 PM on December 26, 2018 [4 favorites]

And the fiction of Larry McMurtry.
posted by spitbull at 5:27 PM on December 26, 2018 [2 favorites]

East Texas: Tales from Behind the Pine Curtain is a graphic novel by Michael Dougan about growing up in the 60s-70s.
posted by moonmilk at 6:04 PM on December 26, 2018 [2 favorites]

Best answer: I am halfway through reading it now, and Presidio by Randy Kennedy is set in small town Texas in that period (with flashbacks to the 1950s and 1960s).
posted by Dip Flash at 6:13 PM on December 26, 2018 [1 favorite]

Mary Karr -- especially The Liars Club
posted by nantucket at 7:08 PM on December 26, 2018 [2 favorites]

Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
posted by heatvision at 2:50 AM on December 27, 2018 [1 favorite]

Nanci Griffith (link to best of playlist) has lots of songs that to me evoke visions of small town Texas in that era.
posted by vespabelle at 5:52 AM on December 27, 2018

the music of Townes Van Zandt
The movie Hud
the move Giant
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 7:00 AM on December 27, 2018

The books of S.E. Hinton (and their adaptations)?
posted by Guy Smiley at 11:16 AM on December 27, 2018 [2 favorites]

Where The Red Fern Grows and similar?
posted by mrbill at 11:53 AM on December 27, 2018

Tulsa by Larry Clark.
posted by Brain Sturgeon at 8:36 PM on December 27, 2018