I spent one summer in Abilene, Texas between my junior and senior years of college. Each day I worked at a bakery from 5 am to noon. After work I would run the perimeter of campus in the midday sun, fall asleep on my living room floor for an hour or two and then attend rehearsals for The Tempest until 11 pm. On the Fourth of July I took my truck out on the Loop to fill up with gas, and at a convenience store I came across the local crowd preparing for the community fireworks display.
Never before had I seen such a rich and varied display of mullets, and I had lived almost my entire life in rural Texas. Long singular streams, practically rat-tails. Short explosive curls. Demure waves appearing from beneath the backwards-turned baseball cap. Men and women. In all the hues that one can buy in a box at the grocery store. It's not my intention to label all West Texans as the mullet-sporting type, but, on this day at the early evening hour, they were out in force buying 12-packs and bags of ice for their coolers and Smarties for their little ones. Perhaps mullet wearers acutely feel the call of fireworks and tailgating. Perhaps the extended locks of hair act as highly-evolved antennae for patriotism. Of such things, I do not have knowledge. I am not an initiate. In grad school I did try to simultaneously sport a fauxhawk and faux mullet (fauxlet). But both were half-hearted attempts, even by faux standards.
