KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts

KUT and KUTX news and music podcasts for Austin, Texas and beyond

search

    

        

            

                hide podcast list
                show podcast list

October 20, 2021

Peregrine Falcons

Stories from Texas

By: W.F. Strong

This is the time of year that Peregrine falcons make their incredible journey from Greenland to Argentina and Chile, a distance of over eight thousand miles. One of the most popular migration stopovers for Peregrines is Padre Island. There, they rest and eat for a few days. Texas Standard commentator WF Strong says it’s like a Buc-ee’s for birds – and then some.

October 6, 2021

The Young Lieutenant Who Crossed the Wild Horse Desert

Stories from Texas

By: W.F. Strong

American history sometimes snuggles up close with what might be better termed American mythology. Take that story about a young George Washington chopping down a cherry tree.

But other bits of history based quite a bit more in fact are less well known — though just as extraordinary.

Texas Standard commentator WF Strong offers up one such story.

September 22, 2021

Texas And The Art Of Understatement

Stories from Texas

By: W.F. Strong

Yes, everything may be bigger in Texas. And Texans are used to being pegged as exaggerators — the tellers of tall tales like Pecos Bill who roped tornadoes and shot stars from the sky. But Texas Standard commentator W.F. Strong says a characteristic of Texas conversation that doesn’t get nearly the attention it deserves is the frequent use of understatement.

September 8, 2021

Words That Migrated

Stories from Texas

By: W.F. Strong

I showed a friend of mine a picture of me sitting at the edge of a thin ridge jutting out, about 300 feet above the Pecos River. He said, “I can’t look at that, it gives me the willies.”

Oh, yes, the willies, goosebumps and shiverings triggered by our phobias.  As an amateur linguist, I’m always wondering where certain expressions come from. How did the words end up as common words in English? The willies, for instance, has a fascinating derivation. Frontiersmen, you see, used to wear wool undergarments, but as they were made of wool, they often got itchy causing “the woolies,” which evolved into “the willies,” and was then used to name all circumstances of discomfort that make your flesh crawl.

I love words that have interesting origins like that. There are many words we use daily that we might believe are native to English or even Texas, but are foreign.  Here’s a few that fit the bill.

Honcho. Seems like a word of that would have come from the old West. “Who’s the head honcho around here?” It’s actually Japanese. It means, as you know, “boss” or “group leader.” It was brought back by U.S. soldiers who served in Japan after WWII.

Savvy is another word that migrated here. Again, it sounds like, and was, a word used in Western movies. “That boy’s got a lot of savvy about horses.” It comes from the Portuguese verb saber. Sabe – to know. Within a trade language it became sabi, with an ‘i” and in that pidgin language, traveled to the Caribbean where sabi became savvy.

Ever been stuck in the boonies? I hear that word often. A text comes in – “I’m stuck out here in the boonies – truck won’t start. Can you come get me?”  The boonies is derived from bundók, a Tagalog expression  U.S. soldiers brought back from the Philippine-American War in 1899.  It means: in the remote areas of the interior, in the mountains.  Similarly, there’s a common expression in Spanish I often hear in Texas:  “en el monte,” meaning remote areas that are unpopulated and perhaps backward.

Metroplex is both Greek and Latin. The metro is derived from the Greek Metropolis (mother city), which gives birth to smaller towns and cities. Plex is Latin to weave. And so it means that the mother cities of Fort Worth and Dallas have weaved an enormous network of interconnected cities and towns and suburbs.

A few more for you. Ketchup is, one would think, American as apple pie. But it is Chinese. Lemon is Arabic. Wanderlust is German. And we get a lot of good slang terms from Yiddish. Your IT specialist often explains the trouble you were having with your computer as “a glitch.” That’s Yiddish. So is schmooze. And so it klutz.

You might think that the word chocolate, a virtually vital condiment here in America, would have its roots in English, or in a European language, but no, it comes from the native American language found in Mexico, Nahuatl. It’s xocolatl in its original form. It migrated to Spanish as chocolate.  And we Anglicize it as chocolate.

Last, we come to words so common, especially in Texas, that we forget they’re Spanish.  Rodeo, patio, corral and desperado, which evolved from desesperado. Actually, if not for Spanish words that have become staples in English, we couldn’t eat our favorite meals:  avocado, guacamole, chili, chili pepper, and tomato. But sometimes we don’t bother to use a translation or even use the cognate pronunciation. We just say, “Otra cerveza por favor, amigo.”

Hungry? Let’s go to lunch.

August 12, 2021

The Texas Olympics

Stories from Texas

By: W.F. Strong

The Olympics — as we were all just reminded — are a fantastic display of athleticism of all sorts. For many of us, watching the games is a reminder of just how we could never do that thing that we’re watching other people do.

But watching got commentator W-F Strong thinking there’s quite a lot Texans seem to be pretty good at. And he thinks maybe there should be a competition that would be open to all while taking advantage of our state’s unique geography.

July 14, 2021

Miles And Miles Of Texas

Stories from Texas

By: W.F. Strong

One way I know a book is special is if I keep thinking about it years after I first read it. Miles and Miles of Texas, 100 years of the Texas Highway Department, by Carol Dawson and Roger Allen Polson, is such a book. I first read it several years ago, and even recommended it on air back then, but ever so briefly. I was unable to do it justice in the ten seconds I had to devote to it that day. So, let me give it the time it deserves right now. 

One reason I have a particular fondness for the book is because my father drove me and my brothers all over Texas when we were kids and bragged about our great road system. This book makes my father’s case, and also, quite honestly, lays out just how early Texas political corruption (can you say Ferguson?) raided the highway funds and delayed the quality work that eventually became routine, thanks to meticulously ethical overseers who finally took charge.

This book is about how the Texas highway system got built, the story of how the state, as the authors say, “got the farmer out of the mud.” Farm to Market roads and Ranch to Market roads, FM and RM, were pioneered in Texas. The wildflowers being seeded along the highways was started long before Lady Bird Johnson took on the promotion of the practice as her special project, and enhanced it. That story is here. 

Miles and Miles of Texas points out that “throughout recorded history, roads have provided opportunities for criminals.” Bonnie and Clyde used the good roads for fast getaways. Serial killers stalked the interstates. Smugglers of all kinds took advantage of the anonymity offered by crowded, fast-moving expressway traffic. 

Roads do not always mean universal progress. Roads connect, but they also divide and circumvent. They unite some and isolate others. Eminent domain is often invoked for the public good, but it’s generally the poor that pay the biggest price for the “public good.”

What I most love about the book is that it is overflowing with marvelous anecdotes that are sometimes shocking, sometimes inspiring and sometimes just hilarious. One I found particularly amusing was how inmates working road construction during WWII got tired of people doing drive-bys with their kids just to gawk at them in their prison stripes. The inmates would pick the scariest looking among them and chain him to a tree with a forty-foot chain. Then, when cars would come by, he’d run after them until the chain grew taught and then he’d strain at the end like a zombie. The car would speed off with the kids staring out the back window, wide-eyed in horror. I imagine those petrified kids kept their parents up late into the night. Some poetic justice in that perhaps.   

Another aspect of the book that is noteworthy is the photographs. They were chosen in close cooperation with the Texas Highway Department, which has phenomenal archives. The book contains dozens of these rare photographs of Texas roads and bridges in all phases of construction. The photographs were often taken by engineers and others uniquely involved in the building of roads so you feel privileged to see perspectives few have seen. This is a book that truly animates history because of the unique relationships between the photos and those who took them. Impressive, intricate research went into compiling this book.  

I enjoy it as an extraordinary read, cover to cover, and as a coffee-table book to be perused at leisure. 

Compared to other states, we have some impressive achievements in our road system. We have, as mentioned, the pioneering of FM roads, the landscaping of the highways for beauty and safety, the invention of the Texas turnaround (where you don’t have to go through the light to reverse direction on a freeway), and truly exceptional, even beautiful, roadside rest areas. 

Miles and Miles of Texas is an entertaining collection of Texana. It’s worth a look.

June 30, 2021

Long Before Elon Musk, A Different Man Had A Plan To Develop Boca Chica

Stories from Texas

By: W.F. Strong

One hundred years ago, Col. Sam Robertson stood on the same Boca Chica Beach in South Texas that Elon Musk owns today and dreamed a different dream. Instead of Musk’s spaceport, Robertson dreamed of seaports and an oceanside highway.  

Robertson owned 800 acres at Boca Chica, about 20 miles northeast of Brownsville and it was likely some of the same thousand acres now managed by Musk’s companies. Back then, Robertson built the railroad that connected the Rio Grande Valley to the wider world. He had founded the town of San Benito, serving as sheriff and helping to run the Ku Klux Klan out of the region.  

He had repurposed the old channels known as resacas to irrigate the lower valley. In 1926, he gathered RGV leaders in Brownsville’s El Jardin Hotel to make his pitch for an oceanside highway that would run from Boca Chica all the way up Padre Island to Corpus Christi. It would become, in his words, “the most beautiful 150 miles of highway in the world.”  

Robertson laid out his vision before the Rio Grande Valley Commercial Club. “I have traveled somewhat extensively in this world,” he said, “and have never seen any scenery wilder or more beautiful than this stretch of beach.”

Robertson was not only an entrepreneur; he was a decorated soldier and noted engineer. In 1915, he served as a scout for General Jack Pershing in the pursuit of Pancho Villa in Mexico. During World War I, he served in Europe as a commander of the 22nd Engineers, building railroads and bridges for Allied troops in France. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for bravery under fire. 

The business leaders of the Valley trusted his vision because they believed his claims. He wasn’t pitching a blacktop road. 

“The beach is as smooth as a billiard table,” Robertson said. “No road can be constructed by man as good for autoing as the beach, and the Gulf of Mexico maintains it.” All you would need is maintenance crews to move driftwood out of the way, he said, telling those assembled that he had explored the beach from Corpus Christi to the mouth of the Rio Grande River and that a highway was quite possible and would bring in enormous numbers of tourists. Just “throw across” some bay bridges at either end, he suggested, and you’d be open for business.  

Such a development would be good for the Rio Grande Valley, too, he argued. With good roads to Boca Chica Beach, Valleyites could have a Sunday lunch at home, then drive to the beach for a Sunday afternoon swim at the beach and still be home by 10 p.m. 

Robertson’s oceanside highway was never developed. But looking at South Padre and North Padre today, just north of Boca Chica with their causeway bridges, carefully maintained beaches, opulent hotels and verdant landscaping, you can see that his dream for the island has been partially realized. 

Robertson opened his Del Mar Resort on Boca Chica Beach in 1931, but the resort was virtually wiped out by a hurricane two years later. He rebuilt within six months and constructed an asphalt road from Brownsville to Boca Chica Beach because his personal mantra was: “Civilization follows transportation.” 

Musk would like that, too.

June 16, 2021

There’s Something About A Person Named Tex

Stories from Texas

By: W.F. Strong

Tex is an incredibly popular nickname. It is so fitting for some… that it pushes their given first name entirely out of use. I thought it would be interesting to look at a few famous folks known mostly as just Tex.

Tex Ritter is probably the most famous person named Tex. I doubt more than one in hundred Texans could tell you that Tex Ritter’s first name was Woodward. Full name: Woodward Maurice Ritter. More people likely know that he was the father of actor John Ritter of “Three’s Company” fame.

The elder Ritter was an incredibly popular recording artist, television and movie star from the 1930s to the 1960s. Here’s his most famous song: “You Two-Timed Me One Time Too Often.”

 

Everyone knows that you’re untrue,

Honey you and me are through,

You two timed me one time too often,

I’m so tired of your abuse,

Guess I’d better turn you loose,

You two timed me one time too often.

 

Then there’s another famous recording star, Tex Williams But he wasn’t really from Texas.  He was born Sollie Paul Williams, in Ramsey, Illinois.  He just got the Tex nickname because early in his career he played Western Swing in California, a musical genre that had a lot of Texas fans there at the time, and so he was given the nickname to connect him to his audience, and it stuck. His most famous song was “Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette),” which you may remember from the 2006 film: “Thank You for Smoking.”

 

Smoke smoke smoke that cigarette

Puff puff puff

And if you smoke yourself to death

Tell St Peter at the Golden Gate

That you hate to make him wait

But you just gotta have another cigarette

 

Tex Brashear, born in Kerrville, Texas, is a voice actor, narrator and movie trailer announcer with a deep bass voice. You’ve probably never seen him, but you’ve likely heard him. Known as the man of a thousand voices, he’s  won 102 Addy awards. Here’s a promo he recorded for NBC for Lethal Weapon:

https://soundcloud.com/tex-brashear  (first one, NBC – 33-40?)

According to the babynamescience website, Tex is a unique modern baby name for boys. Only 1 in 335-thousand babies were given that name in recent years.  And it’s even rarer for girls, which brings us to our last entry here – a famous woman who was nicknamed – not Tex, but Texas.  Texas Guinan.  She was a well-known actress and vaudeville singer, comedian, and speakeasy performer during prohibition.

The life story she told about herself was that she was named Texas the day she was born in Waco in 1884. Not true. She was named Mary –  not Texas – but she built her entire show-business persona around the Texas claim, and it served her well.

She left us some memorable quotes. As hostess of speakeasies for the rich and famous she would often welcome customers from her place on stage, with this line: “Hello suckers! Come on in and leave your wallet on the bar.”  And her most famous line: “A politician is a fellow who will lay down your life for his country.”

There are hundreds more. There’s Tex Schramm, the first President of the Dallas Cowboys. Randall “Tex” Cobb, the Bridge City-born boxer, actor.  Tex Avery, the cartoonist and Warner Brothers animator who was born in Taylor. It’s a long list. Younger generations are picking it up, too. We have Tex Sands, the outube star.  And the youngest, on-the-way-to-fame-“Tex”,  is voice actor Tex Hammond, 14, known for the two animated series, The Loud House and Vampirina.

I say name your babies Tex, boys or girls. It’s a rare given name and seems to lead to great things.

×