Amarillo, Texas is a place with an awful lot of character, inducing a constant supply of pride among the locals, and a sense of quiet pleasure for visitors. It’s too big to be a small town, and still doesn’t quite seem like a city, but it’s in-betweenness gives it a charm that is pure Texas. It’s still the wild west out here, or wild enough that there are traces of a ranching past that don’t seem exotic enough to place them in a museum. There’s an old-fashioned sensibility, one that couples tradition with common sense, but there’s no careless disregard for innovation either.
When new inventions come along that are useful to the people, Amarillo is happy to adopt them. But common sense will still take precedence over anything new and shiny that might happen along. This is exemplified in one of its most famous residents. A few years back, Oprah made a comment about cattle ranchers and mad cow disease, and although the link was already in the public’s minds, there being a very common thread here and that thread is the bovine creature, it was deemed damaging to the beef industry. They were suffering a horrible time of it, of that there can be no doubt, but that didn’t come from any great revelation from the great talk show host.
However, it was necessary to get some kind of legal help, and she even relocated here for a year. Maybe some folks remember, and maybe some folks have forgotten, but she hired a lawyer to help in a fair jury selection, such was the gravity of the situation, which was being misread in a hundred directions, and that laywer’s name was Phil McGraw . His own brand of horse sense appealed to Oprah, who always had a good eye for these things, and it turned out to be an extraordinary bout of foresight on her part, because this was none other than Amarillo’s own Dr. Phil. An event that would surely attract visitors to the fine hotels Amarillo has to offer. That’s good sense.
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