The former Texas land commissioner looked askance at the stemless wineglass filled with iced tea.

“Do you have a larger glass?” Jerry Patterson asked our waiter at a suspiciously modern Tex-Mex place. “Iced tea usually comes in a larger glass.”

“We don’t have a larger glass, but I could keep refilling this one,” said the waiter, who seemed ambivalent about the generosity that the gigantic, translucent tumblers common in Tex-Mex restaurants represent.

I didn’t like how my first meal with Patterson was starting off. I was there to make amends, and now my lunch companion was in a standoff with a waiter over liquid volume.

We had planned to publish a story written by Patterson, a Vietnam veteran and state senator. (He was the subject of an entertaining 2008 Texas Monthly profile that b

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