I stared blankly back at him, this being the most interaction I’d had in a restaurant in probably decades. Also because, even when I pry my mind open as far as it will go, an encyclopedic knowledge of Russian royalty is just not what I was expecting out of a Wichita Falls Taco Bell cashier. (The stereotypes! Not even I escape their snare.)

I was going around town—in this supposedly most Republican congressional district in America—to interview random people in an attempt to gauge the actual Republican-ness of their attitudes. At first, they seemed to fall in line with my expectations. Several women I approached in a Starbucks told me they didn’t consider themselves to be feminists, saying the word implies that men can’t do things for women, or that men and women shouldn’t be equal. Outside, I asked one late-thirties woman about transgender people, and she said she hadn’t met many, but that it’s important to look out for the safety of people using bathrooms.

But I was surprised when a twenty-five-year-old young woman with freckles and braids told me she considers herself feminist, knows all about the #MeToo movement, and thinks getting rid of gender-specific bathrooms would be the best way to go. And I was similarly taken aback when, at a mall, a twenty-seven-year-old man with a scraggly beard told me that he was a strong feminist, but also that people should go to the restroom of the gender they’re born into, because it “keeps it less confusing.”

Wichita Falls has a couple of yoga studios, and I visited one of them, a large, modern space in a strip mall. Carson, the peppy young studio director who has lived here her whole life, told me she thinks Wichita Falls is the perfect-sized city, because it’s just big enough to have a yoga community, but small enough so that you don’t have to “worry about traffic.” Still, it’s the Bible Belt, so some people are concerned that yoga will clash with their existing beliefs. When she hears this, Carson assures them, “Yoga is not a religion, it’s a way to connect you to a higher power.”

In other words, yes, a lot of people here hew to traditional, conservative values. But not everyone. And as Beverly would find, they are also open-minded.

Ultimately, Beverly decided not to pursue a job in a more liberal state. She felt her students needed her, and that if she moved to, say, San Francisco, she’d be preaching to the wokeness choir.