W.F. Strong

101 Essential Texas Books

By W. F. Strong

If I have an addiction, it’s definitely books. I read about two books a week and order two more I’m unlikely to ever get to. But I like them on the shelf as backup the way survivalists hoard food supplies. Admittedly, I’m often short of shelves. When you have more books than shelves, you know you’re overdoing it.

I’m the book equivalent of the cat lady. I take in more books than I should. I recently took a pickup load of recyclable metals to a solid waste depot. As I paid the man I noticed he had 20 books on a little shelf outside his office. I said, “Well, you have plenty to read there when things are slow.” He said, “No, I’m not much of a reader but I can’t stand seeing good books go to the dump so I save ’em. These are rescue books for anyone who wants them.” I rescued 5 of the rescue books. To show the extent of my addiction, I also have a massive stash in the cloud, just in case I need a book when traveling or when stuck at the dentist’s office.

Doing some math I figured that if I live to my allotted average age, I figure I have only 2,000 books left to read in my life. And probably only 1500 because I’ll re-read 500 of my favorites, leaving 1500 new books over the next 20 years – out of billions in the world. A sad fraction. So, I must choose well. To borrow from the old dicho, “Life is too short to read bad books.”

So how does one choose well? First, you have recommendations from friends whose taste you trust. As I am into Texana books, I rely also on sites like Texas Booklover on Facebook for suggestions worth my time. But my favorite of all are books about books. Larry McMurtry has an exquisite book called simply Books. It’s truly spellbinding. A similar sort of work that I want to recommend to you today is 101 Essential Texas Books by Glenn Dromgoole and Carlton Stowers, both authors and experts on Texas literature.

Each book in the 101 is tightly summarized. You’ll find your favorites here for sure: All the Pretty Horses, The Time it Never Rained, Lone Star by Fehrenbach, Michener’s Texas, Friday Night Lights, and Lonesome Dove. But you will also find numerous gems you’ve perhaps never come across.

I like that the collection is in genres. You have first-rate works in history, literature – in this case books about books and writing – fiction, people, place, law and order, sports, food and drink, and books for young readers.

Here’s a few I think are lesser known standouts:

Texas Post Office Murals by Philip Parisi is a full color book of 115 photographs of depression era murals painted in Texas Post Offices across the state. They were painted by famous artists like Tom Lea, Xavier Gonzalez, and Jerry Bywaters and were meant to lift the spirits of people going through hard times.

A History of Texas Music by Gary Hartman. Not limited to Country-Western, Hartman covers “German, Czech, Tejano, Cajun, rock and roll, and rhythm and blues.”

100,000 Hearts: A Surgeon’s Memoir by Denton Cooley. It’s an autobiography by one of the world’s best heart surgeons of all time. And I’m not just saying that because one of those 100,000 hearts still beating is mine.

Under the category of “place” you have Goodbye to a River by John Graves, and A.C. Greene’s A Personal Country, as one would expect. The lesser known standout for me is Great Lonely Places of the Texas Plains by the Texas Poet Walt McDonald and Texas’ genius photographer Wyman Meinzer. It is a stunning book wherein poems illuminate photographs and photographs animate poems.

Rainwater by Sandra Brown. Sandra Brown is best known for her bestsellers in romance and suspense so this work is a departure for her. Set in a small Texas town during the depression, it has been compared to The Grapes of Wrath because it is the story of a tough woman barely surviving while running a boarding house in the dust bowl.

That’s a quick preview. Check out the 101 Essential Texas Books and you’ll be sure to find many you’ll cherish having on your shelves, or if you’re like me, stacked on your desk or on top of the dining room table, piano, refrigerator, night table, etc.

Sam Houston And Me

By W. F. Strong

A couple of weeks ago I got into an argument with my stairs and I lost. The stairs insisted there were 12 steps and I thought 10 would do. I broke my tibia and fibula. The good news is that I ended up at the bottom of the stairs, conveniently located for the EMS to pick me up and rush me into emergency surgery. I’ll be 97 percent good as new in four months.

As I was lying in recovery at the hospital, I realized that my injury was similar to that which Sam Houston suffered at San Jacinto. Same shattered tibia, inches above the ankle. Of course his was penetrated by a musket ball in battle and mine was penetrated by the hubris of thinking I had the agility of a teenager. Still, the result was much the same, and I thought immediately of my advantages over Sam. I had only to lie there wrapped in the loving arms of morphine and watch the Houston Astros (ironically Sam’s namesake team) play the Nationals. That was all I had to worry about. Sam had to push through the pain of his broken leg and open wound because he had a new Republic to create and protect, an undisciplined army to command, a dictator to keep alive at all costs, and political foes to keep an eye on.

Here are three things of interest to know about Sam’s wound:

First, he ignored it. After the battle was over, though he was suffering great pain and his boot was filled with blood, he met with his commanders to make sure they understood that two Mexican armies were still in the neighborhood within striking distance. Vigilance was essential to securing this newly-won independence. Once confident that all was well for the time being, he said, “Gentlemen, I have been shot. I must go tend to this wound.”

The second interesting thing is that there is a famous painting showing Sam Houston talking to Santa Anna, under a tree while reclined on a rug. His lower right leg is bandaged. The painting was titled, “The Surrender of Santa Anna” by William Henry Huddle. It hangs in the Texas State Capitol in Austin. Beautiful work. Many a fine biographer, influenced by that painting, wrote that Sam’s right leg was broken. But his wound was actually to his left leg. That painting had the power of a photograph, I suppose. It’s a trivial difference, but interesting that the perception lasted so long. It was only in 2002 that Richard Rice discovered an 1853 letter that Sam wrote to his wife in which he said that his left leg still troubled him from the “old San Jacinto wound.”

The third interesting thing is that Sam’s wound at San Jacinto got worse, probably infected – though they didn’t yet know about germs. Sam developed a fever and his doctor wanted to send him to New Orleans for expert treatment. David G. Burnet, then Interim President of Texas, didn’t want to grant him leave. He wanted him to stay with the army, but Sam’s doctor and friends convinced Burnet that he was in danger of dying if he didn’t go. So Burnet relented.

Sam was met in New Orleans like an American hero. He fainted on the docks from his fever. They carried him to the hospital on a stretcher. According to biographer James Haley, when his stretcher passed by a beautiful, violet-eyed 17-year-old there on the docks, she reported that she felt the “eerie sensation of destiny sweep through her.” I guess you have to say young Margaret Lea’s intuition was good. Three years later, when she was twenty and Sam was 48, they were married and eventually had eight children. They had their happily ever after, which may have never happened had he not been wounded at San Jacinto. Cupid works in mysterious ways.

I’m sure Sam thought his wound was a stroke of bad luck that came at the worst time. But the Greek idea of the fates makes sense here. Not all bad luck is truly bad. Sometimes bad luck is just a means of moving you to a better road.

Hopefully that is true for me, too. I would not likely have thought to write this if I hadn’t taken an unfortunate tumble down the stairs in my rush to eat golden brown pancakes one perfect Sunday morning. A convalescence is a terrible thing to waste.

10-and-a-Half Frightening Facts About the Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Originally aired: Oct. 31, 2016.

Texas is number one in a great many things: oil, ranching, rodeo, cotton. But you may be surprised to know that we are also number one in horror. That’s right, our very own charming little low-budget film, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, is considered by many critics to be the best (and most horrifying) horror movie ever made.

At the time of its release in 1974, the famous film critic Rex Reed said that it was the most “terrifying” movie he had ever seen. When the celebrated master of horror, Wes Craven, first saw the movie, he wondered “what kind of Mansonite crazoid” could have produced such a thing. Stephen King praised the movie. He said it had achieved “cataclysmic terror.” And my favorite critique comes from Anton Bitel who said that the “very fact that it was banned in England was a tribute to its artistry.”

In honor of Halloween, I thought I would help you appreciate this hallowed film; here are 10-and-a-half things you may not have known about the film.

1. Ed Gein is the name of the real criminally insane killer who inspired the character of Leatherface. He did not wear a leather mask. What he wore was worse: a mask made of human skin.

2. Ed Gein only killed two people, not dozens. Hardly a massacre. He did not use a chainsaw. He used a gun.

3. Gein did his killing in Wisconsin, not Texas. I know, disappointing right? Wisconsin Chainsaw Massacre just doesn’t have the same poetic ring to it.

4. So where did the chainsaw idea come from? Tobe Hooper, the director, said that he was in a Montgomery Ward store a few days before Christmas. The store was annoyingly crowded with aggressive shoppers. As he stood in front of the chainsaws he had a disturbing epiphany. He realized that if he started up one of those chainsaws the sound alone would part that sea of shoppers giving him a quick path to the exit. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how iconic art is born.

5. One last thing about Gein. He inspired not only Leatherface, but he was also the demented muse for Norman Bates in “Psycho” and Buffalo Bill in “Silence of the Lambs”.

6. Perhaps the most horrifying aspect of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”, for the actors at least, was that it was filmed in the middle of the scorching Texas summer. You can see the sweat dripping off, even streaming off, the actors. Hooper said everyone suffered mightily because there was no stopping to wait for cooler weather. And even though
some days were well over 100 degrees, they had to press on to get filming done in a month, come hell or high water – and hell is what they got.

7. In his much-praised book, “Chain Saw Confidential”, Gunnar Hansen, who played the character of Leatherface, said that the name of the depraved family in the first film is Slaughter, not Sawyer. If you look above the Coca-Cola sign at the gas station you will see “W. E. Slaughter BBQ.”

8. Hansen also said that the power of the chainsaw myth they created on film persists with such tenacity in Texas that people would not believe him when he said that no such chainsaw crimes ever happened in the state. People would say something like: “No, they happened. My cousin worked on death row over in Huntsville and saw Leatherface himself get the chair.” But this is understandable because the film falsely marketed itself as “based on a true story.”

9. The film cost less than $300,000 to make, and eventually grossed $30 million in the U.S. The movie had its opening in Austin, appropriately, since its director was a University of Texas professor and documentary cameraman. Though it is hard to believe, he tried to keep the gore and violence of the film to a minimum so he could get a “PG” rating. That didn’t work. He got an “R” rating.

10. Horror and humor are allies. The movie even spawned a hilarious Geico ad that has run the last couple of years – the one where four people are running from a killer and debating where to hide. One suggests they take the running car and another says that’s a horrible idea and suggests that they hide behind the chainsaws. Even Leatherface is astounded by their filmic ignorance.

10.5. The film’s gas station is now a kind of bed and breakfast in Bastrop. It’s called The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s “Last Chance Gas Station”. You can get BBQ and spend the night in a cozy cabin. Chainsaw alarm clocks are certainly available. I understand the BBQ ain’t half bad. At least the owners are not, like those in the film, focused only on serving their fellow man.

W.F. Strong is a Fulbright Scholar and professor of Culture and Communication at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. At Public Radio 88 FM in Harlingen, Texas, he’s the resident expert on Texas literature, Texas legends, Blue Bell ice cream, Whataburger (with cheese) and mesquite smoked brisket.

Wit And Wisdom From T. Boone Pickens

By W.F. Strong

Even before I knew much about T. Boone Pickens, I loved his name. Has there ever been a better name for an oil man than T. Boone Pickens? It’s just right as rain. And the man behind the name was so perfect for it that it disproved Shakespeare’s claim that any other name would work as well. I loved to hear him talk because his Southwestern dialect so perfectly underscored and certified his folk wisdom and humor. He was a chairman of the board with true blue-collar cred. The title of his last book showed he was beautifully grounded in both worlds: “The First Billion is the Hardest.”

Boone, as many called him, was an Oklahoman and a Texan. When asked which he was, he said, “both.” He straddled both states like a giant derrick – raised in both, drilled in both – and both benefited from the hundreds of millions he gave through his philanthropy, from M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, to UT Southwestern Medical Center, and to Oklahoma State University, among others.

Boone Pickens would have certainly died a multi-billionaire had he not given away the majority of his fortune, and he loved giving it away. He said, “Giving away money wasn’t as fun as making it, but it was a close second.”

When he died, he left behind a poignant letter for his social media followers. It contains his humor, his wisdom and inspiring advice for life. I’ll share some of it. He said:

If you are reading this, I have passed on from this world — not as big a deal for you as it was for me.

In my final months, I came to the sad reality that my life really did have a fourth quarter and the clock really would run out on me. I took the time to convey some thoughts that reflect back on my rich and full life.

I was able to amass 1.9 million Linkedin followers. On Twitter, more than 145,000 (thanks, Drake). This is my goodbye to each of you.

You can find more of T. Boone Pickens’ parting words on his web site.

I’ll end with Boone’s most famous bit of advice, not included in his letter:

“Every day you should work eight hours and sleep eight hours. Make sure they’re not the same eight hours.” Now let’s do what Boone would do – get on back to work.

What Elvis Presley Owed West Texas

By W.F. Strong

It is my belief that Texas was largely responsible for launching Elvis Presley’s phenomenal career. Texas, perhaps as much as Tennessee, gave him a vital push onto the national stage and empowered his rise to the eventual undisputed title of “The king of rock and roll.”

Now, I’m not claiming that he became the timeless icon of popular culture that he became, solely because of Texas. Given his super-charged charisma, even if he’d first toured in Northern Siberia, he still would have melted teenage hearts and attracted a massive following. Fame would have found him anyway. But that’s not how it happened. Elvis himself once said, “I owe a lot to Texas; they’re the ones who put me over the top. I’ve covered a lot of territory; mostly in West Texas. That’s where my records are hottest: down in San Angelo, Lubbock, Midland and Amarillo.”

In fact, when Elvis began touring in the mid-1950s, 86 of his first 200 concerts were in Texas. These were not all in the big cities, either. To be sure, he hit Houston and Dallas and San Antonio, but he mostly traveled to smaller towns. He went to Gladewater in East Texas and Sweetwater in West Texas. He played Paris – Texas that is – and out west he played Odessa. Most of his concert dates were in West Texas: El Paso, Lubbock, Amarillo, Alpine, Midland, Abilene, Wichita Falls, Brekenridge, San Angelo, Stephenville and Big Spring. These were not one-time stops either. He played in Midland and Odessa and Lubbock several times in his first years of stardom.

And it was touring in West Texas that introduced Elvis to some of the greatest musicians of his age. Buddy Holly opened for Elvis in Lubbock in 1955. Buddy was a high school senior. Elvis was 20. They bonded in mutual admiration of their outsized talents. Buddy would open for Elvis two more times that year. When Buddy died tragically just four years later, Elvis couldn’t attend his funeral because he was in the Army, stationed in Germany. But he did send a huge wreath of yellow roses in a loving tribute to the great Texan.

Elvis played in Odessa and Midland several times in 1955 and 1956. Once in Midland, at a show featuring Johnny Cash, Elvis and Johnny met a slightly younger, 19-year-old, Roy Orbison and advised him on launching his singing career. Cash was the old man of the group, at 23. Wouldn’t you have loved to have been backstage in Midland seeing those three future legends huddled together? Later in life someone asked Cash why he played a guitar so hard. And he said that he didn’t play all that hard, but Elvis sure did.

One thing that Elvis achieved that neither of the other two did was to create a fanbase of screaming, unruly girls. He sometimes begged them to settle down so people could hear the music.

His biographer, Bobbie Ann Mason, said, “He was brimming with sexual energy and the stage allowed him to give that energy free, exuberant play.”

Yes, the girls adored Elvis, but the boyfriends they climbed over to reach him were not great fans. They did not understand how this man driving a pink Cadillac and wearing the bright colors of a peacock could whip their girlfriends into such a lustful frenzy. To add to the insult, their girlfriends rushed to buy the Elvis lipsticks that were for sale at the concerts; Tender Pink and Cruel Red. Elvis was dismayed that so many of the boys didn’t like him, because he considered himself “just one of the guys.”

After 1956, Elvis moved slowly away from Texas, drifting toward Las Vegas where audiences came to him instead of him driving all night in a pink Cadillac to make his next show. Hollywood, too, came knocking. So he would never again return to Texas with anywhere near the frequency he did in the early years of his growing fame. The year he died, he held his last Texas concerts: one in Abilene and the final one in Austin on March 28, 1977.

Two books that were helpful in researching this story are “Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley” by Peter Guralnick, and “Elvis Presley: A Life (A Penguin Life)” by Bobbie Ann Mason.

The Modern Tall Tales Texans Tell Kids

We Texans have long had a reputation for tall tales, for stretching the truth in entertaining ways. I wondered to what extent this cultural DNA has survived. So I asked this question of Texans on Facebook: What is the most outrageous white lie you ever told your kids? I got several hundred responses and chose these as the best among them.

Cynthia told her kids: “Oh. The smoke detector is a Santa camcorder. How do ya think Santa knows if you are naughty or nice?”

Jim said that his uncle taught them that windmills were cow fans. Kept all those cows cool in the hot months.

Many wrote that they told their kids, “The ice cream truck turned on the music to signal that it was out of ice cream.” This bum steer was so popular as a submission that it no doubt rates as an urban legend for kids.

Tammy said that as she passed the cotton fields on the way to Port Arthur she would say to her northern-raised grandson: “See, we grow our snow here.”

And from Rose we have this: “To get my boys to let me trim their nails we would plant them in the window box and watch them grow.” Rose actually planted one bean for each. Very clever Rose.

Tammy P. said, “I had my kids convinced that I could see through walls because all moms had superpowers.”

Rhonda had a great one that she told her children. “Sorry kids, you can only go to Chuck E. Cheese if you’ve been invited to a birthday party.” Evidently a company rule.

David had his youngest daughter convinced he could see through walls. He told her to run to any part of the house and he’d tell her where she was. Dave just had to listen to her footsteps and never missed. His daughter was blown away by his omnipotence.

Leah told her kids she was a retired ninja. She had an impressive large necklace that looked like an award and so that was her secret ninja badge. Unfortunately her ninja suit was always at the cleaners.

Kris would tell his kids Twilight Zone stories as though they happened to him. It was part of his autobiography.

I love this from Samantha: “When you go through the drive-thru they give you car fries and house fries.” So once the kids had had a few fries, she’d say, “Sorry, that’s all the car fries they gave us. Have to wait now until we get home.”

Glynda said her kid wanted to ride the elephant at the circus and she said, “You need an elephant riding license for that. Unfortunately, we don’t have one.”

And we have this about a fish tank where all the fish died. Kristi recalls, “Well, we were cleaning the tank and its contents, and preparing the water for new fish while we waited for pay day so we could buy more. The kids were disappointed when they came home from school and there were no fish. So I convinced them that we had bought ‘crystal’ fish that are crystal clear. I told them if you watch real close you’ll see the reflection of the lights on their scales occasionally as they swim by. Entertained them for days.”

Karen M. has the tallest tale I think, if not the most devious. She said, “My youngest refused to eat meat (or any protein) as a child. From 3 to about 12, my kids believed I would take them to the doctor for a ‘meat shot’ if their protein wasn’t eaten. I showed them the meat shot injector, my turkey baster.”

So, like I said, I’m glad to see we Texans have not lost our talent for tall tales. Edward “Tex” O’Reilly, creator of Pecos Bill, would be proud of us.

How Ingersoll, Texas Lost Its Name

Go east of Dallas on Interstate 30 until you reach Highway 67 near Mt. Vernon. Take that on east and about 30 minutes before you reach Texarkana, you’ll arrive in a little town of about 1,000 people named Ingersoll. Well, it was called Ingersoll when it was founded around 1875. But the name was unofficially changed to Redwater ten years later and was made official by the Post Office almost a decade after that. How the name came to be changed is a story worth telling.

Let’s begin with the name Ingersoll, or should I say, Robert Green Ingersoll. That’s the man the founders admired and decided to name their new town after. You may have never heard of Robert Green Ingersoll, but that’s only because you didn’t live in the late 1800s in America. Back then Ingersoll was one of the most famous people in the nation. He was friends with Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain and Ulysses S. Grant. He was a giant in the Republican party and any Republican who wanted to succeed at the national level needed and lusted after Ingersoll’s endorsement – and his oratorical talents. Had he wanted to, he would have made a formidable candidate for the Presidency himself, except for the little problem of his nickname: he was known everywhere in America and abroad as “The Great Atheist” or the “Great Agnostic.” There is, of course, a great deal of difference between atheism and agnosticism, but for fundamentalist theists, there is no difference because both groups are destined for eternal damnation. Ironically, it was the concept of Hell that Ingersoll most despised and likened to a vengeful fairy tale. In any case, such a label, whether agnostic or atheist, was considered too great a liability for a politician in that era to overcome. Might be still.

Despite his reputation as a free-thinker and anti-religious zealot, he was well liked. Many religious people truly enjoyed his company and found him warm, engaging, charismatic, eloquent, even brilliant. Ingersoll attacked religious belief, but never the believer. From 1860 to 1899, he was one of the highest paid speakers in America – and mostly he spoke about the dangers of religion, even though he himself had been a Presbyterian minister’s kid. The subjects he spoke about, like “Some Mistakes of Moses” and “The Frightful Dogma of Hell,” were considered blasphemous by many, but he nonetheless packed the halls where he spoke with believers and skeptics alike. He called HIS religion “humanity.” His central doctrine was this: “Happiness is the only good. The time to be happy is now. The place to be happy is here. The way to be happy is to make others so.”

Ingersoll was quite ahead of his time. He was an outspoken abolitionist and for voting rights for blacks and women. He said it was a shame to think that women were always restricted to the shallow wisdom of their husbands.

People used to gather in front of his home in Washington, D.C., to pray for his conversion. One woman visited him in his home often to try to convert him, but she finally, after seeing him accept both the high and mighty and impoverished into his home with equal graciousness, gave up. She apologized and told him, “I do not care what you believe. You are leading more of a Christian life than I ever hope to accomplish.”

But Ingersoll’s fame died with him, in 1899. It seemed he would be confined to the century that had defined him.

So we return now to Texas. How did Ingersoll lose his town? Well, in 1886 a revival meeting was held there and it was a mighty successful one in terms of saving souls. There were 110 people from that region baptized, or – you might say – born again in that week. And given that the town only consisted of about 50 to 60 people then, it suddenly became thoroughly devout and could not suffer the indignities of living under the name of a famous agnostic. So they all agreed to rename the town Redwater, after a new well was found to yield red water.

So that is how Ingersoll, Texas, became Redwater, Texas. And how Robert Green Ingersoll became, as The Washington Post called him in 2012, “the most famous American you never heard of.”

Remembering The Summers Of My Youth

Now that we’re in the dog days of summer, I’ve been thinking about the long summers of my youth. We had longer summers then. It’s not just an idealized memory. Schools would dismiss us in late May and we wouldn’t return until September 2nd or so, generally the day following Labor Day.

What I remember distinctly about those summers of more than 50 years ago, is that I was a free range kid. My mom opened the gate in the morning for me and my brothers and we’d wander out into the great pastures of our neighborhood and entire town – yes, it was a small town – unsupervised. We’d roam all over with all the other kids, also free range, and play games and sometimes watch TV at other kids’ houses until we were chased out by a stern mom who’d tell us to “get- on-outside and play.”

I say we were unsupervised, but not really. The whole town had its arms around us and made sure we behaved, and were safe.

About noon we’d meander back home and have dinner. That is what we called lunch then. The noon meal was dinner. Then we’d have a nap, with cicadas humming loudly, and go back out until supper time, about seven. We’d eat supper quickly so we could get back out to our friends where we’d play until well after dark, enjoying games like “kick-the-can” and “red light.”

The grown-ups were out there with us, sitting in lawn chairs, making homemade ice cream, listening to baseball games on small transistor radios and gazing up into the stars, marveling at the tech-savvy age they lived in, where they could see NASA satellites passing over.

Yes, as kids, we were quite free. I remember one day me and my brothers were on our bikes with backpacks on, ready to head out and my father said, “Where are you boys going?”

We said, “To the lake.”

He said, “To that one five miles east of town?”

“Yes, sir,” we said.

“That one out there on the FM road with all the 18 wheeler traffic?”

“Yes, sir.”

“That one you have to cross the rattlesnake field to get to?”

“Yes, sir,” we admitted.

“All right. Just be back by dark or your momma will worry,” he said.

I like that my Dad would never admit to worrying himself. He just worried about my mom worrying.

He was also big on the idea that boyhood shaped and toughened the man that the boy would become.

Once I asked him for a ride over to my friend Gonzalo’s house.

He said, “It’s only a mile over there. Walk. It’ll do you good.”

I said, “But it’s about 100 degrees right now.”

He said, “Wear a hat.”

Summers sure are different for kids now. The world is no doubt more dangerous now than it was then.

But no matter the reasons I’m grateful for the boyhood I had, rather than these modern ones, with kids so often cooped up inside with high tech games. To be honest, though, I do have a tiny bit of cross-generational tech envy in me. I know that when I was 15 I would have loved to have had an Xbox. Still, I know for sure that I wouldn’t trade my free-range summers for all the terabytes of RAM in the world.

Gunsmoke & Texas

By W. F. Strong

Ever heard of the Gunsmoke Rule?

It was created several years ago by TV ratings guru Bill Gorman. He noticed that sports cable channel shows like ESPN’s “First Take” were being beaten by Gunsmoke reruns. In fact, Newsday found in a sample a few years ago that all but seven of the 276 sports programs on cable television one day were being beaten by Gunsmoke reruns, even though the show went off the air more than 40 years ago. So the message to sports show programmers was, “If you’re not beating Gunsmoke, you’ve got little to crow about.”

And that’s just Gunsmoke reruns.

When Gunsmoke was actually on the air in prime-time during its 20 year run, it was often the number one show on television. It was enormously popular in Texas. As a kid I remember it being the last show I could watch Saturday night before being rushed off to bed. I always felt deeply connected to the culture of the show and I recently learned why.

Not long ago I was I visiting with an old friend and colleague, Dr. Jack Stanley who wrote his dissertation on “Gunsmoke.” We were discussing the show and he said to me, “Did you know that Matt Dillon was a Texan?”

“No,” I said, “I didn’t.”

Dillon is the central character of Gunsmoke — the U.S. Marshal of Dodge City, Kansas. In the series, he often goes to Texas to bring back a bad guy. I didn’t know, though, that Matt Dillon was from Texas.

It’s true. Jack told me that in the last made-for-TV Gunsmoke movie, which aired in 1994, “One Man’s Justice,” it was revealed that Matt was born in San Antonio.

His father was, in fact, a Texas Ranger and was killed in the line of duty. But Matt didn’t move immediately in the direction of becoming a law man. The movie reveals he spent some years in the Texas Panhandle where he sowed his wild oats and crossed paths with outlaws who tried to corrupt him. He resisted and moved on to Kansas where he followed in his father’s footsteps and became a U.S. Marshal, the iron-handed law man of Dodge City.

Another thing you might not know is that, originally, the show was on the radio. It opened with this line from the narrator:

“Around Dodge City and in the territory on West, there’s only one way to handle the killers and spoilers … with a U.S. Marshal and the smell of gunsmoke.”

William Conrad played Matt Dillon on radio, but when the show moved to TV, another Texas favorite, John Wayne, was supposed to play Matt Dillon. He decided against it, though, and convinced James Arness, a man who was often his double in movies, to take the role.

On TV, the show opened in its early seasons with no narration. It showed a quick-draw gunfight between Matt and an outlaw, which Matt won, of course.

There is a close-up of Matt’s post-fight grimace that seems to say, “Business as usual. Bad guys making bad choices.”

Gunsmoke still has enormous viewership, almost half a century since it quit putting out new episodes. It’s on TV-Land these days and based on my own survey of Texans, including my brother Redneck Dave and his crowd of six retirees, it’s on several hours a day in their households. I myself subscribe to the Western Channel just so I can watch Gunsmoke. And now that I know that Matt was a Texan, which I always suspected, I will enjoy all the more.

The Texas Crutch

By W.F. Strong

I like that Texas is so famous for certain things that those things carry the Texas brand all around the world. Like Texas toast, for instance. Or Texas Hold ‘em poker. The Texas two-step. Texas-style brisket. And even within the specialized world of backyard chefs, the brisket has a sub-specialty technique known as the Texas crutch. This technique allegedly originated in Texas, and therefore carries the Texas name throughout the barbecue world.

I’m going to teach you about this technique over the next three minutes. It may come in handy this summer when you are slow-smoking a fine brisket over the required 15 hours and suddenly need to hurry it along without ruining it. This is merely a suggestion. I know all too well that you don’t mess with Texas and you sure as hell don’t mess with a Texan’s brisket. So I go gently forth with this option.

Suppose, for instance, that you have invited people over to the house to eat at 8 p.m. You remember saying, “Y’all come on over for brisket at 8 p.m. and y’all bring the neighbors. Plenty for everybody.” But now it’s 5 p.m., the brisket has stalled and you realize it won’t be ready until probably 10 p.m. or later. Time for the Texas crutch.

The point of the Texas crutch is to speed up the cooking without losing the holy grail of tenderness. So what you do is get some foil or butcher paper and fashion it into a big, sturdy boat that will hold liquid. Put your brisket in the boat and then pour about a half a cup of apple juice into the boat – not over the brisket because it will rinse off the rub. Some people use bourbon or beer or red wine, but apple juice is preferred because of the enzymes that work diligently to tenderize the brisket.

The next step is to cover the brisket completely with foil or butcher paper and put it back to cook. Crank up the heat to about 250 degrees or 275 degrees, and let the apple juice and heat work their dual-action magic until the core of the brisket is 200 degrees, or twice the outdoor temp of the average Texas summer. Then take it off and let it rest an hour. Now you will have splendid, tender, awesome brisket that all those friends and neighbors will rave about and beg for seconds. The only problem is they will want you to do it again next week.

I love knowing about the technique and using it when I must, but I love even more knowing that in the book on brisketology, there is a chapter called “The Texas Crutch.” I enjoy knowing that the Texas name is on things that travel ’round the world, serving as a kind of advertisement for our culture. It’s our one-of-a-kind branding. And that branding is priceless. A manager at H-E-B told me that products sell much better if they have the Texas star or Texas flag or “Made in Texas” on them. And that branding works just as well in the Mexico H-E-Bs as it does here at home. And if we could trademark the Texas name and symbols, license and sell them, I’m sure we could make enough each year to buy a brisket for every family in the state for what I would call National Texas Brisket Day. Might need some beer and ice cream to go with it. Wonder who could help us out with that?

Teddy Roosevelt’s Texas Campaign

By W. F. Strong

The Menger Hotel in San Antonio may boast of hosting more U.S. Presidents than any other hotel in Texas. George H. W. Bush stayed there. Clinton stayed there, as did Reagan. Nixon stayed there. So did Truman and Taft and McKinley. Even Ulysses S. Grant slept there.

The most important name not yet mentioned, and if you know your Texas history you’re already writing a letter to remind me, but don’t hit send just yet because I’m coming to him: Teddy Roosevelt. He rates as the most important of the lot because the others just slept and left. Teddy did far more. He left a bar behind, or at least a bar named for him, and you can still get a drink at the Roosevelt bar to this day, 120 years later.

How did that happen you may wonder? Well, you know all about the USS Maine getting blown up in Havana Harbor in 1898. At the time it was blamed on Spain with battle cries like “Remember the Maine; to hell with Spain.” The loss of some 260 sailors in that blast marked the beginning of the
Spanish American War.

This is where Teddy Roosevelt enters. He was not yet President, but would be in three years. At this time he was 40 and Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He asked for and was given permission to put together a cavalry unit of 1000 men, cowboy soldiers he called them, to help push Spain out of Cuba. He didn’t name them the Rough Riders, though, That was a name their public admirers gave them and they resisted it at first, but finally adopted it themselves.

So where could Teddy recruit 1000 rough riders. Well in Texas of course. So he went to the Menger Hotel, right across from the Alamo, and recruited great horseman from across the Southwest – from Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona. Roosevelt said these were a “splendid set of men . . . tall and sinewy with weather beaten faces, and eyes that looked a man straight in the face without flinching.” He said that in all the world there were no better men for this cavalry than “these grim hunters of the mountains, these wild rough riders of the plains.”

His challenge was to take these fiercely independent men and teach them military discipline. That’s why he had a preference for ex Texas Rangers. He said, “we got our highest average of recruits from Texas because many had served in that famous body of frontier fighters, the Texas Rangers. Of course these rangers needed no teaching. They were already trained to obey and take responsibility. They were splendid horsemen, shots and trackers. They were accustomed to living in the open . . . enduring hardship . . . and encountering all kinds of danger.” Native Americans too, such as the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw and Creeks were also Rough Riders.

He did convert these independent men, with the help of General Wood, into a disciplined cavalry unit within a month. He even got most of the men horses from Texas, some of them unbroken, but that was no problem for these expert horsemen. Roosevelt named his own horse “Texas.”

As Roosevelt was always a showman, he had his commander’s uniform made by Brooks Brothers in New York. He also introduced his men to the blue bandana with white polka dots, which became the distinguishing feature of the Rough Rider’s uniform. To this day, in black and white photographs, the
Rough Riders look impressively stylish in their khaki pants, blue flannel shirts, trademark bandanas, and slouch hats.

The rest of the Rough Riders story is well known, but perhaps erroneously visualized. Most think of it as 1000 horses thundering majestically up San Juan Hill like a scene from War Horse. They did in fact charge up San Juan Hill and route the Spanish forces, but delete the horses from your mind. There were none. They did it on foot and on their bellies. Roosevelt was on horseback part of the time, shouting commands as they fought inch by inch through tropical brush and oppressive heat, dodging torrents of bullets to take the hill, but they did it as infantrymen.

Despite all their cavalry training in San Antonio, they weren’t able to get their horses to Cuba. Why? When they were ready to depart from Tampa to Cuba, the navy didn’t have enough ships for the horses, so they were left behind. Those with military experience will just shake their heads at this nature of monumental snafu.

Nonetheless, the Rough Riders and other U.S. forces pushed the Spanish out of Cuba and liberated the island. Teddy Roosevelt wrote the primary history of the campaign which launched him into national fame and a good way toward the Presidency. The road to the White House, for Teddy, started in Texas at the Menger Hotel, in the shadow of the Alamo.

Remembering ‘Beneficent Genius’ Bill Wittliff

When I hear the great musical theme of Lonesome Dove, I am immediately grateful to Bill Wittliff because I know we wouldn’t have the deeply treasured miniseries if not for him. We would have Larry McMurtry’s novel for sure, but we would not have Wittliff’s equally brilliant adaptation of that masterwork if not for his undeterred resolve to get it done.

Bill Wittliff died on Sunday. I was, like millions of his fans around the world, and especially those in Texas, sad to see his rare intellectual light and his beneficent genius leave us. He was a man who often worked his magic behind the scenes and so many people were touched by his artistic brilliance without knowing it. He wrote the screenplays for much loved movies like Lonesome Dove, Legends of the Fall, The Perfect Storm, Raggedy Man, and for highly Texcentric films like Barborosa and Red-Headed Stranger. Some say Wittliff launched the Austin film industry.

Though Renaissance man is often overgenerous in its use, it fit Wittliff to perfection. He was a novelist, and a screenwriter, a photographer, a publisher and movie producer, a collector, an archivist, a historian and a lifelong professor who generously shared his knowledge of all things all the time. In more than a few instances over the past few years I’d fire off an email to him to ask for his insights on some obscure subject and he’d invariably surprise me with an authoritative answer within five minutes, sometimes less.

Four years ago I interviewed Bill for his new novel The Devil’s Backbone. Naturally we talked a good deal about Lonesome Dove and I want to share some of that interview because it gives us insights into the making of that masterpiece and into the mind and methods of Wittliff as well.
I first asked Bill about how long it took to produce Lonesome Dove and if he knew it would be the huge hit it turned out to be?

“For me Lonesome Dove was a solid two years,” Wittliff said. “It was a year writing the script, and then it was another year from locations and casting and all of that, to actually shooting it and then editing and the scoring – all of it – and distribution. Here’s what I did know. I knew, because I saw the dailies every morning – and I knew, you know, that what was going through the cameras was incredible stuff, incredible performances. What I didn’t know was that the audience would take to it the way they did. That I didn’t know. I knew it was going to be great and I knew it was going to be well really phenomenal. It was just incredible to watch – to sit there every day and watch Duvall and Tommy Lee and all of them deliver those lines. You simply could not be there and not know. But what I didn’t know is that the audience would take to it the way the did.”

One reason for this surprise, Bill told me, is that in 1988 there was only one thing deader than Westerns and that was the miniseries. And, he said, “we were making both.”

I was curious about his method of adapting the novel for television. I asked him how, out of this tumultuous novel of nearly 1,000 pages, he could choose what to include and what to exclude.

“Here’s what I did,” Wittliff said. “At that time I was driving a pickup. Suzanne, my partner, had someone read it on tape. We have a place on South Padre Island. It’s six hours to drive down there. So I would strike out in my pickup, which is to say you were in a closed in space. And start playing that and listening to it. You could see it. In listening to it you would say oh I don’t need that or oh that’s too close to this. Because I was driving I could kind of see a version of the movie unfold as I drove along. In six hours, as it turned out, of listening to Larry’s novel was just about one episode. So I’d drive to South Padre and when I got there I then I would start adapting that six hours, boiled down to two hours. Anyway, that’s how I did it.”

Finally, since McMurtry had written a number of screenplays himself, I asked Bill why Larry hadn’t written it himself.

“When they asked me to do it, I called Larry and I said, ‘Don’t you want to do this,’ and he said, ‘no, I’m cooked,'” Wittliff said. “Larry’s always been smart about movies and his books. I don’t know what Larry had his thumb on when he wrote it, but boy it rang all the bells. And Larry got up from the typewriter and walked off from it at least three times maybe four times. He said ‘well, no, that’s enough,’ but then he always came back. And Lonesome Dove, both Larry’s book and now the miniseries, have absolutely become a part of the American fabric. It’s just astonishing. I’ve got calls from Ireland, Europe and England, caught up in the Lonesome Dove thing as much as Americans and Texans are. It’s just been astonishing.”

You notice there how he shuns credit for his success. He was a selfless man. That is why he created the Wittliff Collections with his wife Sally at Texas State University. There you can find the papers of great Southwestern writers like McCarthy, Dobie, Graves, Cisneros and some of McMurtry’s, which will be his greatest legacy, because it provides a place and resources for young writers, and artists, and filmmakers to come and dream about works they might animate and worlds they might create.

Steve Davis the curator there, said, “Bill embodied the best of Texas — he was incredibly creative and was very generous to others — as seen in this wonderful collection that he founded, which will continue to inspire others for generations to come.”

Finally, it is only fitting that we hear from McMurtry himself. Larry sent this touching note to me just yesterday.

He wrote: “I met Bill years ago when he and his wife asked permission to publish IN A NARROW GRAVE, my first volume of essays under their singular and distinctive Encino Press. It is the most impressive of my more than fifty published volumes. He was an absolute genius photographer, as you can see from his Wittliff Collection photos. Bill skillfully adapted LONESOME DOVE into a beloved miniseries, and I know he will be deeply missed by Texans everywhere.”

Bill lived a beautiful, fun and inspirational life. I believe firmly that in thinking about his life he would agree with Gus McCrae, who said, “It’s been quite a party, ain’t it?”

On Mother’s Day: Remembering Nonnie

On Mother’s Day, I couldn’t help but think of my grandmother, too, because she was also my mother. She was, and this remains true for many kids today, my second mother. She lived with us and was my back-up mom – my safety net of sanity when life got crazy. She was a grand-mother.

Her name was Nonnie, which my mom told me was short of Eunice. Nonnie was my nanny until I reached first grade. To the extent that I have any talent as a writer I attribute to her. She taught me to read and write early. She was a role model as a disciplined writer. When she was 70 she bought a Smith Corona electric typewriter – a beautiful shiny blue work of art with chrome trim. To me, it seemed like a sports car for writing. In six years she wrote four novels at the kitchen table during my nap time. The tap, tap, tap sound of the keys was my lullaby most afternoons.

She wrote under the name Sylvester Wimberley. Sylvester because she guessed a man was more likely to get published than a woman. Wimberley because she so loved that Hill Country town.

I wish I could tell you that Simon & Schuster discovered her and she had a couple of best-sellers, but that was not the case. When she died at age 82, in 1969, we found the four novels – and journals and diaries – in her chest of drawers, neatly stacked in manila envelopes beneath the many tablecloths she had crocheted over the years.

They were all moved up to the attic with many of her memories where they were out of sight, but not fully out of mind. When I was in graduate school ten years later, I went up there and found her manuscripts in an old suitcase behind Christmas decorations. The pages were yellowed and brittle, but still quite readable. Over the next few days I read them all. I had hoped to find an Atwood in the attic, but, truth is, Nonnie was more of a diarist than a novelist; more Aurelius than Atwood. She was, perhaps, like her grandson: good in short bursts, but not as skilled sustaining the long narrative.

One journal entry especially moved me; it focuses entirely on her lifelong relationship with her hair:

From my earliest memories my hair has been a subject of conversation. My father was the first to make me conscious of it. He thought it was beautiful. It was long and straight and heavy with a gold cast to it. My father would not let it be cut. Even as the younger girls were getting theirs cut, my father would not let me cut mine because he liked the length of the braid.

My grandmother was on her deathbed and mother had to take time about with her sisters caring for her. So my father took care of us and he had his say about how I should wear my hair. When I went to school the boys would make fun of it saying it was the color of molasses candy that had been pulled. I am not sure the golden tint was still in it then. The boys delighted in sticking the ends of the braids into their ink wells which earned them my angry retaliation.

When I was twelve I went outside with my grandfather McGee one summer’s day. I went out on the front porch with him just after sunup. He turned to talk to me and he stopped and said, “Eunice, I didn’t know that your hair was such a pretty red.” I laughed and said that it was just the sun shining through it and lighting it up like that. I never forgot that moment. I had had so few compliments in my life and I was to remember that one always. My grandfather would sometimes pass behind me at the supper table and run his rough hand over my hair. He didn’t say anything, but I found it as comforting as a compliment.

Many years later, after I had married, I still kept my hair long and braided. It had become strawberry blonde. I wore it as a braid wrapped around my head. I took the pins [out] of my hair and wrapped the braid around my neck. It was as wide as a collar. Once I was wearing it that way when I went to call on Betty Graham and she asked me where I got a collar that so closely matched my hair. I told her it WAS my hair. She had to take it down to see the length of it and was surprised by its weight, too. I suppose that was the longest, and heaviest, it ever was.

Once when my niece Guy Ann was five years old and she and I were standing out in front of the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio waiting for my husband Fred, a strange woman came up to me and said, “Lady, did you know that your hair and that child’s hair are exactly the same color?” I had not thought about it but when we got home Guy Ann wanted to see for herself. So she pulled my hair down and laid hers over it. Sure enough, you could not tell where mine ended and hers began. As the years went by Guy Ann’s hair got a little darker and mine got ever lighter until it was both blonde and white.

In 1963, when I was in my late 70s, I ran into Sam Black, a man I had not seen for fifty years. He greeted me with these words, “Well, Eunice, you have lost some of the gold in your hair!” Indeed I had.

Now that I am 80 years old, my hair is all white. White like new cotton. And I think it is just lovely.

My grandmother wanted all her life to be published. I am happy to know that, now, by quoting her here, she finally is. Happy Mother’s Day, Grandma.

The Lady In Blue

One of the most important figures in Texas’ religious history never set foot in Texas at all. She never in her life traveled beyond her tiny village in Spain, yet she stirred religious fervor from the Concho River to the headwaters of the Rio Grande.

Our story begins in 1602 when Maria was born in the pueblito de Ágreda. She was a lovely child born to Catholic parents of noble rank. Barely beyond her toddler years, Maria showed an unusual devotion to a life of prayer and piety.

When she was ten, she already wanted to join a convent. When she was 12, her parents finally blessed her wish to join the Discalced Carmelite Nuns of Tarazona. Before that could be arranged, though, Maria’s mother had a vision in which God instructed her to convert their mansion into a convent. She and her daughter would both become nuns. Her father would join a local monastery, following in the footsteps of his sons who were already friars. In four years, this all came to pass.

At 18, Maria took her vows and became Maria de Jesus – Mary of Jesus de Ágreda. The habit of her order was a dark cobalt blue. Now a nun, she spent more time than ever alone in prayer. Maria’s religious devotions intensified. Her sisters worried about her frequent fasting, frail health, and life of extreme deprivation. Yet for her it was a glorious time: she said God had given her a divine gift. It was the gift of bilocation. She could be in two places at once. Through meditation she could appear to God’s children in faraway lands and teach them about Jesus. She said she first appeared to the Jumano tribes of present day Texas in the 1620s. She did this for about ten years, from the time she was 18, to 29. And according to legend, the Jumano Indians of the time confirmed that the Woman in Blue, as they called her, had come among them.

The first proof is offered in the story of 50 Jumano Indians appearing on their own at the San Antonio de la Isleta Mission near present-day Albuquerque, asking the Franciscan priests to teach them about Jesus. When asked how they knew of him, the men said that the Lady in Blue had come to them and taught them the gospel. She had instructed them to go west to find holy men who could teach them more about the faith and baptize them. They, as the legend goes, pointed to a painting of a nun in the mission and said, “She is like her, but younger.”

The priests were stunned because they had no missions or missionaries in that part of what is today West Texas. They certainly knew of no nuns who had attempted missionary work there. How could this be? The head cleric in New Mexico, Esteban de Perea, asked two priests to go home with the Jumanos to verify these claims about the Lady in Blue. They traveled to the region that is today San Angelo and found that many of the Jumano said she had indeed come to them many times over the years. The priests immediately baptized 2,000 Jumanos, they say, because of Maria de Ágredas.

Historians Donald Chipman and Denise Joseph wrote that the Jumanos said Maria came to them “like light at sunset… she was a kind and gentle person who spoke ‘sweet’ words to them that they could understand…”

The respected religious historian Carlos E. Castaneda – not to be confused with the one who wrote about the Teachings of Don Juan – said that Maria preached in Spanish but the Jumanos understood her in their tongue, and when they spoke in their tongue, she understood them in Spanish.

Such claims resulted in the custodian of the Franciscans in New Mexico, Father Alonso de Benavides, traveling all the way to Ágreda in Spain to interview Maria to verify her authenticity. According to him, she told him of things in Texas and about the world of the Jumanos that only one who had been there could have known. Her bilocation claims were considered credible then, and even now, the Vatican seems to agree and is considering her for canonization.

Chapman and Joseph tell us that, according to Jumano legend, “when she last appeared, she blessed [the Jumanos] and slowly went away into the hills. The next morning the area was covered with a blanket of strange flowers that were a deep blue” – blue like her habit. These were, they said, the first bluebonnets. And perhaps the Jumanos found comfort when these flowers returned each year, adorned in their blue habits, assuring them that the Lady in Blue was always with them.

For a more complete history of the Lady in Blue, see “Notable Men and Women of Spanish Texas” by Donald E. Chipman and Harriett Denise Joseph, published by UT-Press, 1999.

What Siri Can’t Tell You

The navigation apps so accessible in our cars and on our phones are to me, magical. Siri, Google Maps and the like save us collectively from hundreds of thousands of lost hours each day by saving us from, well, being lost. Siri also may have saved a few relationships by sparing couples from arguing about whether or not to ask for directions. In simpler times, the all-perceptive woman might say, “Just admit it, David, you’re lost – been lost for an hour. Driving faster won’t get you unlost. Stop, please, ask for directions.” Then the man would say, “Just hold on and let me concentrate, Martha. Two more miles up here and I believe I’ll know where we are.”

Yet for all that Siri offers in real time efficiency and guidance, there are things she can’t do for you. She is not infallible. All of us have had the experience of being told “we have arrived” at our restaurant or hotel only to be welcomed by curious cows staring at us from a vast empty pasture.

The other thing we have lost with these apps is the splendid, colorful conversations we used to have with random strangers we’d ask for directions, such as the gas station attendant, the woman walking her chihuahuas down the street, or the slightly drunk guy mowing his lawn. Siri and company are economical communicators, giving you the minimum information you need for maximum clarity. Most of your random direction givers over-communicate. They give you far more information than you need.

For instance, I once asked a Deputy Sheriff, who happened to be giving me a ticket for alleged speeding, how to get to Highway 71 to Austin. He said, “Oh you don’t want to go to 71 from here. Go back two miles and take that FM road west and it’ll take you to Austin eventually. The best thing is it’ll take you by Peggy’s Cafe – just a ramshackle hut at a wide spot in the road – best peach cobbler you ever had in your life. Bucket list cobbler for sure. Take a bit of the sting out of this here ticket.”

See? Siri doesn’t have that kind of empathy, or, passion for cobbler.

Another example is when years ago, I stopped to ask a farmer on some country road near Abilene how to get to Highway 277 to San Angelo. He said, “Oh, just go down to that green house on the corner there and turn left. Go straight 3 miles, you’ll hit it.” I replied, “That house you just pointed to is actually yellow, not green.” He said, “Yeah, well it was green for 30 years. They painted it recently. We ain’t got used to it, yet. Most of us don’t care for the yellow.”

As I was about to thank him, he leaned his arms on my passenger door and said, “That house there is the Miller house. Three generations of the same family lived there and farmed that acreage. Jimbo and Carolyn after 30 years farming sold out last year, moved to Alpine and opened a bed and breakfast out there. Young couple, McGees I think, bought that house and painted it yellow. Bad decisions all around in my opinion. But not my business. Irregardless, I’ll wager right now that ten years from now that’ll still be known as the Miller house. Well, you best get goin’ ‘fore the sun sets on you.”

You see? Siri can’t give you that kind of local, social history with such authentic flare.

Finally, Siri doesn’t offer you the “gone too far” landmarks. She’ll tell you to turn around for sure, but she won’t say, “If you come to a rise in the road and see a Texas Flag gate on your left, you’ve gone too far.” Or, “If you pass over a creek, you’ve gone too far.” Or, “If the pavement turns to dirt, you’ve gone too far, but don’t try to turn around down there – with all the rain we’ve had you’ll just slide off into the bar ditch and you’ll need a wrecker to pull you out. No, just keep going till you get to the frontage road and circle back and try again.”

Siri doesn’t offer those kinds of extra, nuanced details.

What’s In A Name – The Rio Grande Valley

When some people first arrive in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas they often ask, “Where are the mountains?” It’s natural. Generally a valley is between mountains or at least hills. But the Rio Grande Valley is most accurately a delta region, as level as Lubbock. The highest roadway point is the 80-foot summit of the causeway bridge that goes to South Padre Island.

So how did a delta become the Valley? Marketing. Back in the early 1900s when developers were selling beautiful orchard acreage to northerners in New York and Chicago, they found that naming the area the Rio Grande Valley was a powerful selling strategy. It was also marketed as “the Magic Valley” – and I have no problem with the magic part. After all, there are dozens of varieties of exotic birds and butterflies that migrate through here each year. Some species winter here, too. The vibrantly colored birds and butterflies do make it a magical. And there are the crops, too. Early on, visitors saw that sugar cane and cotton and citrus orchards, irrigated with plentiful Rio Grande water, grew like magic in the Magic Valley.

The strategy worked. Hundreds of thousands of people came to the RGV from northern states last century for the subtropical climate and relaxed living. Some came just for the mild winters they were called “Winter Texans” (and still are). “Winter Texan” was another successful PR term that seemed much more warm and personable than the slightly pejorative, “Snowbird.” From the point of view of a Texan, there could be no greater compliment than to crown visitors a “Texan” for the time they are here.

The Rio Grande Valley is comprised of many small and medium-sized cities. Many have interesting name origins. South Padre Island translates to “Father Island.” It was named for a catholic priest – Padre José Nicolás Ballí. He inherited the island from his grandfather who received it as a land grant from King Charles III of Spain in 1759.

Brownsville could have been called Texasville if the original fort built there had kept its first name, which was Fort Texas. The makeshift fort was quickly constructed in 1846 to lay claim to the Rio Grande as the southern border of Texas. The Mexican army bombarded the fort and Major Jacob Brown, originally of Boston, was killed. He was the first casualty of the Mexican-American war. So the fort was renamed Fort Brown in his honor and the town that grew up around the fort was named Brownsville.

Harlingen was named for the town of Harlingen in the Netherlands. Its founder, Lon C. Hill, thought the town’s river, the Arroyo Colorado, could be a commercial waterway to the sea, and Harlingen a city of canals, similar to its namesake in Holland. It’s pronounced differently. The Harlingen in Holland has a different “g” – Harlingen.

Weslaco is almost an acronym. It was founded by W.E. Stewart, owner of the W.E. Stewart Land Company, which was a real estate development company. So you take Stewart’s initials and the first letters of “land” and “company” and you get “Weslaco.”

Edinburg was named for Edinburgh, Scotland. Well, technically named in honor of John Young, a businessman from Edinburgh, Scotland. Both are university towns, but are spelled differently and pronounced differently, too. The Edinburgh in Scotland has somewhat of a silent g and h at the end. The one in Texas has no ‘h” but does pronounce the “g.” Edinburg. Don’t know the reason for spelling and saying it differently, but this is Texas – it’s what we do. We take the names and make them our own.

The Mystery Of The Osage Murders

One of the best books I’ve read this year is “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI.” I was late to this literary party. This nonfiction work has been a super-bestseller for well over a year now. It has been on the Paperback Nonfiction bestseller list for 49 weeks. Dave Eggers writes in his New York Times Book Review that author “[David] Grann has proved himself a master of spinning delicious, many-layered mysteries that also happen to be true. … It will sear your soul.”

I won’t spoil this book for you by revealing any part of the whodunit. I’m more interested in the who pursued ‘em.

You have three levels of tension here. First, there is the Osage tribe – the richest people per capita on Earth at the time, around 1920. They were the only tribe that owned mineral rights to the worthless land they got from the federal government as their very own reservation in Oklahoma. Why not? It was worthless scrub-brush land that was mostly sandy and rocky with random clumps of grass. When oil was discovered, though, they became, collectively, unfathomably rich. J. Paul Getty, for instance, was in a bidding war Harry Sinclair for Osage oil leases. Soon after the money started piling up, the Osage started dying, mysteriously, and in large numbers.

The second level of tension is that they were being murdered, seemingly randomly. “Serial killer” was not yet a term in the crime lexicon, but as a reader, you arrive at that conclusion quickly. You feel it must be a serial killer. But not one singular method was used. Some Osage were shot, some poisoned, some blown up in their homes with dynamite. Sixty had died by the time that J. Edgar Hoover took the case for the feds. It was up to him to find the killer or killers.

Here’s the third level of tension. Hoover was just acting director of what was called the Bureau of Investigation at the time. He was only 29 years old. The case was a blessing and a curse. If Hoover could solve it he could elevate the this new agency to a formidable and powerful national police bureau. If he failed, he would be pushed out; his career hung in the balance. Hoover was wanting to create an FBI that was modern, full of smart college graduates skilled in the use of the latest scientific techniques like fingerprinting, but the last agents sent to solve the mystery either made no headway, or were themselves killed. To solve this case, Hoover needed to send to Oklahoma the kind of agent he wanted the agency to shed.

Now, at this point you might be saying, as my dear sister-in-law said to me when I told her this story, “Why are you, Mr. Texas, talking about Oklahoma?” I’ll answer you as I did her: “Hold your horses, I’m fixin’ to get there.”

Hoover had to bite the bullet and bring in the cowboys. He sent for Tom White, his bureau chief in Houston, who was an ex-Texas Ranger, to take charge of the case. As Hoover said, “He needed a man who could handle men.”

It wasn’t exactly a “one riot, one ranger” situation, but it had elements of it.

Grann describes him this way: “Tom White was an old-style lawman. He had served in the Texas Rangers near the turn of the century, and he had spent much of his life wandering on horseback across the Southwestern frontier, a Winchester rifle or a pearl-handled six-shooter in hand. He was 6 feet, 4 inches and had the sinewy arms and eerie composure of a gunslinger.

Years later, a bureau agent wrote that he was as “God-fearing as the mighty defenders of the Alamo. He was an impressive sight in his large, suede Stetson. … He commanded the utmost in respect and scared the daylights out of Easterners like me.”

Of course, it was a white Stetson he wore.

Hoover explained to White that he needed him to direct the investigation without a hint of scandal, and as quietly as possible. He told him there could be “no excuse for failure.” Hoover told him to call in as many agents as he needed, and so White called in those men that Hoover considered the cowboys (two were ex-Texas Rangers) – men who were good at “infiltrating wild country, dealing with outlawry, shadowy suspects, going days without sleep, maintaining cover under duress, and handling deadly weapons if necessary.”

So there you go. The plot is set. The characters are in place. A great Texas story awaits, even though it’s set in Oklahoma. If you don’t care to read the book just now, you can wait for the movie, which, rumor has it, will be directed by Martin Scorsese and star Leonardo DiCaprio. De Niro is said to be in talks for a role as well.

I’m W.F. Strong. These are Stories from Texas, by way of Oklahoma. Some of them are true.

The Luckiest Letter in Texas

This is the story of what was luckiest letter ever mailed in Texas. It took about six months to reach its destination, which was Louisiana. But to say it was mailed is a bit of a stretch. It was handed to some people to be given to others and it bounced around a while, sat idle for months at a time and then miraculously moved on. Texas was, at the time, under Spanish rule, but the letter was written in French. It was a Hail Mary mailing. Truly an act of desperation. The fact that it arrived at all was a miracle within a miracle, and it saved the sender’s life.

François Simars de Bellisle was just 24 when he left France to come to America in 1719. He was headed for Louisiana on a small ship. As was often the case in those days, his captain overshot their destination. He missed Louisiana entirely and ended up near present-day Galveston where the ship ran aground off Bolivar Peninsula. But the captain thought they were relatively close to Ship Island near New Orleans, a little error of 300 miles. What Google Earth could have done for these early travelers!

Bellisle and four other French officers took meager supplies — biscuits, guns, minimal ammunition, swords — and went ashore to determine their location and seek help to guide their ship to port. They slept well that first night and when they got up the next morning their ship was gone. They had been abandoned.

They walked east and made it to what was likely the mouth of the Sabine River where they could go no further because of deep mud. They headed back the way they had come. Though they had some success finding oysters and killing small birds — they even killed a deer — they began, one by one, to succumb to starvation. Within two months, Bellisle had buried all of his friends. He was alone and hungry in this new land and, naturally, desperately depressed.

Bellisle believed he was living his last days. He was on the west side of Galveston Bay, out of bullets and reduced to eating boiled grass and worms out of driftwood. Then, one clear morning he saw the first Native Americans he had seen since being stranded. They were Akokisa and his only hope for survival. The Akokisas greeted him by taking all of his goods and stripping him of his clothes, leaving him naked – a state he would remain in for over a year. The only good thing that happened that day is that they fed him. But he was enslaved, ordered about mercilessly, beaten regularly and used as a beast of burden. How ironic that his name Bellisle meant “beautiful island,” but that is not what he found that day.

They took him west with them toward the Brazos River to hunt buffalo. He had to walk, naked and barefoot, carrying their supplies. But he did record later that, despite his wretched condition, he couldn’t help but marvel at the beautiful prairies they passed through for over 150 miles. He wrote, “This is the most beautiful country in the world. The earth is black. Grass grows there to a prodigal height, and in abundance, which is a certain sign that the earth is good.”

Upon returning to the bay, he realized that his situation was dire. He would die if he stayed. So he retrieved one of the few pieces of paper he had in his belongings and wrote a letter. He asked his hosts give it to the white chief they told him was rumored to live to the east.

He had nothing to write with so he carved a crude pen out of wood and made ink out of charcoal and water. He wrote a letter begging for rescue from anyone who would might receive it. A couple of his tribe took the message east but never attempted to find the rumored white chief. They just passed along this strange artifact to other tribes as a curiosity. It went from tribe to tribe, perhaps traded for one thing or another, but all the while moved northeast. Then the miracle occurred. Members of the Hasinai Native Americans, which had close ties to the French, happened to see the letter and knew that it was something the French would like to see. So they took it to the commander of the French garrison at Natchitoches, Louisiana, a week’s journey away. The commander, Louis Juchereau de St. Denis, wrote a letter in return, and ordered the Hasinais to bring the castaway back, whether dead or alive.

When Bellisle’s rescuers reached the Akokisa camp, they gave Bellisle the letter that informed him that the Hasinais would escort him to Natchitoches. His captors didn’t want to let him go, but they feared the Hasinais and so they relented. Bellisle said the final night in camp waiting to leave the next morning was the longest of his life. It still took him months to get to Natchitoches, but at least he was free. He had sent what was the land version of a message in a bottle, and it had caught the best currents and washed up on the perfect shore. His literacy, and luck, saved him.

The source of this story comes mostly from Bellisle’s memoirs, published in part by Henri Folmer in The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Vol. 44, No. 2 (Oct. 1940), pp. 204-231.

Picturing Texas

Over the past decade I’ve seen more breathtakingly beautiful photographs of Texas than I saw in all the decades before, combined. This is thanks to social media where many photographers share their exquisite work online daily. I’ve made it a point to befriend these great visual artists so I can enjoy Texas in all its resplendent glory from mountain to sea, from high plains to the tropics. I will share with you the names of some of my favorites so that you can see Texas through their gifted eyes. Now this is just MY list, work I’ve come to know somewhat at random. Many of your favorites I will no doubt miss, but perhaps you can add mine to your list of favorites, and you can add yours to mine at the end of this commentary.

In no particular order, here we go.

Wyman Meinzer is the official State Photographer of Texas. He was given this honorary title by the 1997 Texas Legislature at the request of Governor George W. Bush. They wanted to recognize his extraordinary body of work that captures the varied landscapes of Texas and the people who work the land. I love his titles: Between Heaven and Texas, Windmill Tales, and Horses to Ride, Cattle to Cut – among the more than 20 books he has published.

They say he has “traveled to every corner of this great state… in search of the first and last rays of sunlight in its magnificent sweep across the Texas landscape.” Find him at www.wymanmeinzer.com

Jeff Lynch left his heart in West Texas. His photographs of the soft cotton clouds floating above the Davis Mountains on a summer’s day, or his pics of the shadows of those clouds roaming across the vast vistas of West Texas, will make you fall in love with that region just as he has.

See his work at Jeff Lynch Photography on Facebook and Instagram.

Carol M. Highsmith is what I call a photographic philanthropist. She has donated her entire body of U.S. photographs (including hundreds of Texas photos) to an online collection viewable anytime for free at the Library of Congress website. You can search her Texas Lyda Hill collection with simple words like “longhorns,” “cowboys,” or “Big Tex.” Her photographs are downloadable and royalty free. She is a visual documentarian. Her Texas work celebrates landscapes, cityscapes, small-town life, and the diverse cultures of the Lone Star State. Here is her web Library of Congress address: https://www.loc.gov/collections/carol-m-highsmith/about-this-collection/

My favorite coastal photographer is John Martell. He says, “Texas is a photographer’s paradise.” Every day, it seems, from his base of operations in Rockport, he posts an awe-inspiring photo of a sunrise or sunset over Aransas bay. He says, “Texas is a rich treasure trove for nature lovers. As a photographer I want to capture the essence of these jewels. That always seems to be about the light, which translates into sunrises and sunsets.”

Find him on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/JohnMartellPhotography/

Tim McKenna is to me the consummate photographer of Big Bend. In fact, he was commissioned to provide all the photos for the 2018 Big Bend National Park calendar. He can make a cactus flower in the desert look as delicate as a Tyler rose. He puts you in the moment of being bathed in the pink hues of an Emory Peak sunrise or enjoying the soft grey light of the desert after a rain – so real, you’d swear you can smell the musky tones of the damp creosote bushes around you. His work assures you that the desert is a place of infinite life. When he was a young man he hunted with a rifle. Now, he hunts with a camera. You can find him here: https://www.facebook.com/tim.mckenna.31

Larry White loves trains and old cars and trucks and hill country wildflowers. His photographs of a freight train rumbling through ancient East Texas forests or old trucks sitting in forgotten fields will stir your heart in new ways. His photograph of white horses grazing silently at sunrise in a field of bluebonnets is one of his best. No one is better at photographing wildflowers than Larry White. I think he was born with a camera in his hand.

You can find his work at https://www.facebook.com/larrywhitephotography/

Also, www.larrywhitephoto.com

If the stately nature of the King of Beasts, or the grace and beauty of tigers peaks your interest, then David Pine’s work will inspire you. His aim is to depict the essence of an animal in a still shot. “Still photography,” he says, “is the art of capturing a fleeting moment that can express the gamut of emotions not otherwise seen. You want to capture the soul of a creature through its eyes.” Many of his photos come from zoos and rescue zoos in Texas.

https://www.facebook.com/DavidPinePhotography

George McLemore is an incredibly artistic photographer of life in Texas (Texana), but most importantly to me – he has been the visual chronicler of my social circles for several decades now. For most of his life, he has preserved on film and online, the social gatherings and special events for all who have been in his orbit, and he has done it mostly for free. Thirty years ago we found his covert clicking unnecessary. But now, for many of us, we realize that we would have no record of that time if it weren’t for him. And we are grateful for the treasures he shares with us often from his labyrinth of negatives and digital files. To all the McLemores of the world, I raise my Shiner Bock to them – those visionary souls who recognized the Kodak moments of our lives that we seemed blind to. www.mclemorephotography.com

Ranch Words In Urban Life

The other day I was trying to pull out on U.S. Route 281, and the traffic was so steady that I had to wait about three minutes for an opening. As I was waiting, my father’s voice came into my head and said, “Somebody left the gate open down there.”

Dad’s been gone 30 years now, but those sorts of metaphors still live in my head, as they do for a lot of us Texans. We may have mostly moved from farms and ranches to cities, but our language is still peppered with these expressions of pastoral life. As T. K. Whipple, the literary historian pointed out, we live in a world our forefathers created, “but within us the wilderness still lingers. What they dreamed, we live, what they lived, we dream.” You cannot have the influences of the frontier or country life disappear in just a generation or two. It hangs on in interesting ways, in our myths and in our language.

One place that we can witness it with some vibrancy is in the farm and ranch expressions or metaphors that survive in our digital age. Here are twelve I’ve rounded up for you.

“I wouldn’t bet the ranch on it.” It’s used to infer the poor likelihood that a given investment or prediction will come true. “Well, yes, Congress might decide to work together for the greater good, but I wouldn’t bet the ranch on it.”

“To mend fences.” It means to make peace. “You might want to mend fences with Jayden. You’re likely to need his friendship one day.”

“Dig in your heels.” When cowboys were branding calves and roped one, they had to pull hard against them and were told to dig in their heels. Now, the phrase is used for any act of taking a tough stance. “We’re diggin’ in our heels on this contract.” Similar to “sticking to our guns.”

“Take the bull by the horns” is a good one. Face your troubles head on. Yet a similar saying warns against careless assertiveness: “Mess with the bull and you get the horns.” That expression was made particularly popular in classic films like The Breakfast Club and Some Kind of Wonderful.

“Don’t have a cow!” Bart Simpson made it world-famous. Of course, he added “man” at the end. It is about anti-empathy. I can’t validate your over-reaction. The earliest known printed use of “don’t have a cow,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was found in the Denton Record-Chronicle in 1959. The phrase appeared in quoting someone who said, “He’d ‘have a cow’ if he knew I watched 77 Sunset Strip.” Proud it showed up first in Texas.

“Till the cows come home.” That means a long time, long time. It’s almost as bad as waiting for “pigs to fly.” “Until the cows come home,” perhaps originated in the Scottish highlands. They let cows out to wander lush pastures in the spring and it would be a long time before they would make their way home. It also refers to cows coming home to be milked in the early morning hours.

“Maverick” is well-known. It is used to brand someone as a non-conformist. It is named after Samuel Maverick, a Texan who allegedly didn’t brand his cattle. That isn’t the entire truth, but that is what many have come to believe, and so that version of the story has stuck.

“All hat and no cattle” is one of my all-time favorites. I used it recently in a conversation with a teenager and he said he had never heard it before and didn’t know what it meant. I explained that it was similar to “all bark and no bite.” He didn’t get that one either. I guess trying to teach ranch metaphors to a teenager is like “herding cats.” In fairness, I didn’t understand his saying that I seemed “salty” either.

“Riding shotgun.” This started as means of naming the guy who rode on the stagecoach next to the driver, generally holding the shotgun to ward off bandits. It’s still being used 150 years later. Even modern teenagers still yell “I got shotgun!” as they run to the truck.

“Hold your horses.” Just wait a minute. Let’s think about this calmly before we jump right in and regret it. “Hold your horses, Jim. I can’t buy your truck until I talk to my wife, first.” I also like that we still measure engine power in “horses” – 400 horsepower.

“I’m on the fence about it.” Taking that new job in the oil patch in Odessa? Not sure. Still on the fence about that.

I guess the most popular metaphor of all from ranch culture is “BS,” meaning “nonsense.” It’s difficult to accurately trace its origins and attempting to do so leads us into a thicket of art form itself.

I used the word recently while giving a talk in the state Capitol building. I was asked afterward if I thought that was an appropriate term to use in such august surroundings. I said, “I imagine the expression has been used more than a few times here in the legislature, and probably, even more often, impressively illustrated.”