Stories from Texas

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December 29, 2021

How Ranchers Used Barbed Wire To Make Phone Calls

By: W.F. Strong

These days, if you’re out working on a ranch and you need some backup, you just pick up your cell phone. If you’re in a remote area of Texas with bad service — you might also have a walkie talkie handy. But not so long ago, the options were a little less sophisticated. Still, you might be surprised that there were phones around. Texas Standard commentator W.F. Strong has the story.


Episodes

January 29, 2025

John Steinbeck (and Charley) on Texas

Steinbeck’s comments about Texas and Texans go well beyond his “Texas is a state of mind” quote. Texas Standard commentator W.F. Strong explores.

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December 31, 2024

Do you have a favorite W.F. Strong story? Here are our top 10

Texas Standard is celebrating its 10th birthday by looking back on 10 years of covering Texas. One way we’re going to do that is with top 10 lists. We started by counting down our top 10 Stories from Texas from commentator W.F. Strong.

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December 19, 2024

Fronters and backers

Some of the most frustrating hours of our lives might be spent in a vehicle. After some hard times on the road, nothing can feel better than the perfect parking spot at the place you need to be. But how will you pull in? Texas Standard commentator WF Strong has some thoughts.

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December 4, 2024

A tale of a stolen town

On the western side of the Panhandle, right on the Texas/New Mexico border are two towns that were established just a few years apart in the late 1800s. They were separated by a line as thin as a goal line. They both still exist today — with populations of less than 1,500 each. But Texas […]

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November 20, 2024

How some donated land became a bounty for a small town’s students

Texas Standard commentator WF Strong says the Gruver Farm Scholarship Foundation has already made a multi-generational impact.

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November 7, 2024

Could Napoleon have ruled over Texas?

A strongman politician is something we’ve heard a lot about recently. This Stories From Texas is about a strongman from history and a plan to set him up anew in Texas. Texas Standard Commentator W.F. Strong dug up this story — one that you probably didn’t hear about in Texas history, for one, because it […]

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October 23, 2024

A second siege of the Alamo

Even though the words “Remember the Alamo” are available on t-shirts, bumper-stickers, and kitchen kitsch, the Alamo wasn’t always remembered with the reverence it is today. For a long time, the Alamo was used mostly as a warehouse. Even the church, which people rather universally think of as the Alamo, was used as an army […]

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October 10, 2024

My brush with fate or serendipity

Sometimes things happen in the world that just seem too coincidental to be coincidental. We have lots of words to describe these moments — luck, serendipity, maybe fate or destiny, perhaps a miracle? Texas Standard Commentator WF Strong remembers one of these moments he just can’t explain.

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