NOT much about Texas is becoming or demure.The coast is muddy and malarial; the west, seen from the air, is an immense brown mat of desert; the centre is scrubland munched by cattle. The state's history is one long tale of men imposing their wills on this landscape; and, much more rarely, of bighaired weather-beaten women imposing their wills on the men.
得克萨斯州根本就没有什么东西可以配的上“优雅”，“得体”这两个词，海岸附近泥泞不堪，瘴气缭绕。从空中俯瞰，其西部是一大片荒芜的沙漠，中部则是适应放牧的灌木从林地。而本州历史更是一个长久以来人类将自身意志凌驾于自然之上的典范，甚至还是更为罕见的留着大背头的粗犷女人们长久凌驾男人之上的历史。
That was always easier said than done. Texan men, like their livestock, cluster companionably in the shade. Oilmen groom the politicians; politicians do their best for the oilmen. Corporations grease the legislators; legislators return the favour. In their dark haunts, principally the clubs and bars of Austin, women for many years were welcome only as a decorative adjunct on the arm of some good ol' boy with a dropping cigar and a bolo tie.
说总是比做悠闲许多，那些德州男人们就犹如牲畜一般，总是一堆堆的闲坐在阴凉下。而那些德州的石油商们栽培政治家，政治家再尽全力为石油商谋取利益；大企业主们贿赂立法者，立法者则投桃报李。德州首府奥斯丁的各个酒吧，俱乐部就是他们这些人最常出没的地方。长久以来，出现在这些地方的女人只能是作为叼着雪茄，带着波洛领带的体面男人们怀里的装饰物。
Ann Richards could do decorative, if required. Her official garb, over 18 years in Texas politics, was a“Dallas”-style creation of big white hair, pearls and sharp-shouldered suits in shocking blue. She could copy the boys if it made them feel good, smoking (she had rolled her own as a girl, out of cedar-bark)
，
shooting, fishing, riding Harleys, telling dirty stories and, until she bravely embraced sobriety in 1980, knocking back martinis with the best of them. But her favourite reaction to the cosy male universe she found herself in was to put on a pink plastic pig-snout, call herself “Harry Porko” and make fun of them. It was strange, she would say, but true, that men were frightened of funny women.
如果有必要，安•理查兹也可以成为她们中的一员。在德州政界从政超过十八年来，她的职场装扮始终是“达拉斯”式的，留着白色蓬松的头发，戴着珍珠项链，并身着湛蓝色的尖肩套服。而如果为了让男人们感觉舒服些，她可以完全照搬他们的做派：吸烟，打猎，钓鱼，骑上哈雷摩托车，或是讲下流笑话等等。八十年代，为了德州那些男人们的健康，她勇敢地提倡限酒。但对于自己所身处的这个慵懒的男性世界，她的回击是拿起一只粉色塑料猪鼻子，称自己为“哈里•波克”，从而取笑他们。她说虽然很奇怪，但千真万确的是，男人们很害怕那些会开玩笑的女人。
Even the Bushes, the premier Republican dynasty of Texas, ran scared of her for a time. Though they posed as Texans, she knew they were Connecticut parvenus who preferred to summer in Maine. They were nothing like herself, a country girl whose parents came from Bugtussle and Hogjaw, who remembered the menfolk playing dominoes on summer nights, and whosevoice made one of her speech writers think of barbed wire and mesquite covering the Waco hills.
就连代表第一任德州共和党王朝的布什父子也曾经十分忌惮她。尽管他们自称德州人，但实际上她知道布什父子是康涅狄格人，并且连渡假都在缅因州。他们根本没有一点地方像自己。作为一名农村女孩，她的父母来自布格塔索及霍格肖，她还记得那里的人们在夏日夜晚乘凉时玩的多米诺游戏。而她的粗犷声音令为她撰发言稿的人想起了覆盖在韦科山上的铁丝网和豆科灌木。
Her best joke, told in that twang at the Democratic National Convention in 1988, commiserated with “Poor George” senior, “born with a silver foot in his mouth”. Mr Bush laughed gamely, sending her asilver-foot pin which she wore whenever he, as president, returned to Texas.(“A woman always wears the jewellery when the man who gave it to her comes to visit.”) But Barbara Bush seethed about “that woman”, and young George plotted, and got, eventual revenge.
她最有趣的事迹是在
1988
年民主党全国会议上，为了嘲弄老布什，她用鼻音说：“哦，可怜的乔治，生下来嘴里就含着银脚丫子”。老布什大度的笑了，并且赠送给她一枚银质的足形胸针。而当老布什就任总统后，回到得克萨斯时，这枚别针跟她形影不离。（女性要带着被赠珠宝，当这名男性来拜访时）但老布什的妻子芭芭拉对她恨的咬牙切齿，最终，小布什设计并成功的对她进行了报复。
By the time he did, ousting her from the governor's mansion in 1994, Mrs Richards had made a fair amount of difference to her state. Over eight years as treasurer she had modernised cash management, shifting it from punch-card computers to electronic transfer, and earning anextra $1.7 billion a year in interest on investments. As governor, from 1990, she tried to clean up and open out the state commissions and agencies, starting proper audits and performance reviews and appointing more women and minorities than all the governors before her put together. And lest this was dismissed astypical woman's stuff, she also oversaw the biggest prison-building programme in American history.
九四年时，小布什成功地将她从州长位置上赶了下来。其实理查兹女士真的令她的家乡有了很大的改变，在她超过八年的财政官员经历中，她革新了财务管理体制，由电脑打卡转为电子转账，并且在投资上每年利息超过十七亿美元。从九零年出任州长开始，她致力于将政府各机构透明化，公开化，开展了合理的审计运动，并且对官员的表现作出评定，以及比所有前任之任命总和都要多地任命女性及少数民族成员。为了避免被人说三道四，她还监督视察了美国历史上规模最大的监狱建设工程。
Some things she never tried to change. What would she do, she was asked once, if the legislature repealed the death penalty? “I would faint,” she replied. Texas schools remained glaringly unequal, despite a court order to share funds more evenly. Oil revenues were stagnant, but Mrs Richards knew better than even to mention a state personal income tax. Though Texas increasingly looked like a broad, bragging California,full of high-tech clusters and with the white Anglo culture besieged by Latinos and Asians, Mrs Richards was well aware of the unchanging lower layers. She lost in 1994, in part, because she opposed allowing Texans to carry concealed weapons. But then, as she said, what woman in Texas could possibly find a handgun among the clutter in her bag?
但有些东西她绝对不会试着改变。曾有一次，她被人问到，如果废止死刑会如何？她回答说：“那我会立刻晕倒。”尽管德州法院命令将经费更加平均化，但实际上德州的学校教育资源仍十分不均衡，石油的年收入也停滞不前，但理查兹从不提要征收州立个人所得税。尽管得克萨斯看起来很美，犹如加州一样，高科技建筑鳞次栉比，拉丁及亚洲文化已经包围了白人的盎格鲁文化，但理查兹女士非常清醒地意识到底层人民的生活没有什么改变。九四年，在反对德州居民携带武器枪支问题上，她部分程度地失败了。但随后，正如她所说，在德州包里带枪的那都是些什么女人？
