Perhaps you noticed that pop-country singer-songwriter Mac Davis died. His claims to fame were writing several hit tunes for Elvis Presley and a couple of other big-name artists, recording a handful of his own successful numbers and doing a bit of acting. My metaphysical connection is to his 1974 ditty “(Lubbock) Texas in My Rearview Mirror.”

Each summer of my college days, I had bivouacked in Lubbock, spending just enough time there to absorb some Hub City flavor beyond its wider recognition as hometown of Buddy Holly and site of Texas Tech University.

Residents are called Lubbockites, whose hair (the saying goes) is styled by the wind that howls across the West Texas High Plains. Often carrying a great abundance of sand. Lubbock is so flat it is said you can stand on a penny and see Dallas—350 miles to the East. The informal longitude/latitude coordinate for Lubbock is “smack in the middle of nowhere.”

Maybe that’s why I recall hearing, on occasion, the sort of stir-crazy declaration by some locals that “Happiness is Lubbock in my rearview mirror.” And that was before I’d heard the Mac Davis song.

But I hardly found existence there in my early 20s to be unbearable or oppressive. I ate (too) often at the Whataburger. Took a summer job working in the sports department at the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal—a magnificent if unlikely name for a newspaper in a location that has no familiarity with either snow or mountains. Experienced the counterintuitive Lubbock status as a “dry” city—no alcohol sold in restaurants—but with a string of package beer stores along the “strip” just on the edge of the city limits. (And you could bring your beer in a paper bag into the restaurants!)

The citizenry was overwhelmingly friendly, always a “howdy” from acquaintances and strangers alike. For fun, there were fierce games of handball in 100-degree heat with my brother’s Tech fraternity brother, Chris Hernandez, before adjourning to the local Dairy Queen for an icy lemonade. (And occasionally a drive to the strip.)

Anyway, there was then in Lubbock—and surely still is, as in virtually every burg—an inclination among the young and restless to crave brighter lights and greener pastures. Think of the early scene in “Midnight Cowboy,” when Joe Buck was a dishwasher in a similarly dusty West Texas settlement, yearning to escape to New York City. “What I got to stay around here for? I got places to go.”

That theme, similar to the one in the Beatles’ “She’s Leaving Home,” is what the Mac Davis song is about….

I was just 15 and out of control/lost to James Dean and rock and roll/I knew down deep in my country soul/that I had to get away.

Later verse…

So I lit out one night in June/stoned on the glow of the Texas moon/Humming on old Buddy Holly tune called “Peggy Sue.”

With my favorite jeans and cheap guitar/I ran off chasing a distant star/if Buddy Holly could make it that far/I figured I could too.

With the sum-it-up chorus…

I thought happiness was Lubbock Texas in my rearview mirror/My mama kept calling me home but I just did not want to hear her.

During my brief encampments there, city boosters had issued a bumper sticker that proclaimed “Lucky me. I live in Lubbock.” Which, naturally, was altered by some of the town’s wiseacres to “Lucky me. I’m leaving Lubbock.”

Considering the source, the sentiment reminded of the truism that nobody but you is allowed to criticize your mother. Or, as 1950s novelist Nelson Algren (“Walk on the Wild Side;” “Man with the Golden Arm”) put it, “Before you earn the right to rap any sort of joint you have to love it a little while.”

Among municipalities of more than 100,000 citizens, Lubbock is said to be the second most conservative city in the United States, so it’s possible I never was destined to settle there. But Avalanche-Journal sports editor Burle Pettit was an invaluable mentor whose advice I still cite to my journalism students, the friends I made there were special, and sometimes I catch myself humming an old Buddy Holly tune.

I submit that Davis’ “Texas in My Rearview Mirror,” beyond reviving for me some nice memories, is a perspicacious piece of work, with the revelatory conclusion of appreciating home, with Lubbock growing “nearer and dearer….”

And when I die/you can bury men in Lubbock Texas/In my jeans.