Episodes
February 16, 2023
Love, of course, can come in many forms. Texas Standard commentator WF Strong has found a lot of love in his life, including in his two teenage boys. He recalls a certain newer relationship that he says came as a bit of a surprise. This story first aired in 2018.
Listen
February 1, 2023
Tom Hoskins and his Thousand Points of Light
It could be said that Texas is a state of natural philosophers. Many people have maxims or aphorisms at the ready for every situation. Tom Hoskins was one such person. He made it his late-in-life mission to record all of the adages he came across in a collection he called “Hoskilonians: A Thousand Points of […]
Listen
January 18, 2023
We Might Oughtta Praise Texas Grammar
Those who didn’t grow up in Texas can have a lot of trouble with the way many Texans pronounce many place names. Think Gruene or Refugio. But commentator WF Strong noticed sumpin’ else — some Texans use words you pert near won’t hear in other parts of the country.
Listen
January 4, 2023
The Port Mansfield Cut and the treasure discovered there
Running from Corpus Christi to near Brownsville, Padre Island is the longest barrier island in the world. Up until the late 1950s, you could drive the entire 113 miles of the island if you had a vehicle with decent four-wheel drive. That option was blocked in 1957 when the Port Mansfield Cut was dredged. The […]
Listen
January 2, 2023
Jesse H. Jones was a model philanthropist
Over 30% of annual nonprofit giving happens in the last month of the year. In Texas, philanthropists Jesse H. Jones and his wife, Mary Gibbs Jones, have been very generous. Texas Standard commentator WF Strong has more on the gifts bestowed by the couple on the Lone Star State.
Listen
November 24, 2022
‘Three red marbles’ is a story fit for Thanksgiving
Many Texas Standard listeners are thankful for the “Stories from Texas” brought to us by our regular commentator WF Strong. Today’s story is a little different — he explains why.
Listen
October 26, 2022
A 500-year-old Mexican legend is still freshly scaring kids — especially in the border regions. The story about a crying woman called La Llorona no doubt arrived in what is now Texas with the earliest Mexican settlers. Ever since, this ghostly figure has haunted our rivers, lakes and streams. There are dozens of versions of […]
Listen
October 12, 2022
Texas Standard commentator W.F. Strong explores Texas for us — often through history and lore. But he also picks up new stories from Texas. And, occasionally, he recommends one.
Listen
On these warm summer nights, I see them often as I drive home on FM 803. They sometimes stop, frozen for a few seconds, their eyes reflecting my headlights in an eerie red – and then they dash off into giant clumps of prickly pear, where predators can’t follow.
The Spaniards named them armadillos – “the little armored ones.” It was a term of affection and all who have lived in this land called Texas ever since have been fond of them. To me, they are the small animal version of an armored-up Humvee. And they are truly armored. A man in east Texas shot one with a .38 caliber pistol and the bullet ricocheted off the armadillo’s thick plating and hit the man in the face. He recovered. The armadillo could not be found.
They are impressive survivors. In fact, in the land before Texas, four million years ago, their distant relatives roamed the earth. The original armadillos, called glyptodons, reached a weight of two tons, about the size of a white rhino. Plus, they had club-like spiky tails. If they were running around Texas today, we wouldn’t have roadkill, we’d have car kill. We’d call them armadigantes – armored giants. We’d need thick steel fences for them, probably electrified like those in the original Jurassic Park movie. Not sure you’d want to go home with the armadillo in such circumstances.
Speaking of Jurassic Park, scientists, perhaps inspired by a scene from that film, compared the fossil remains of ancient glyptodons, to our modern armadillos. In 2016, two geneticists analyzed the ancient DNA of a glyptodon, comparing it with that of modern armadillos and found evidence that they are directly related. Why the original was so large or why its descendants became miniaturized is an unsolved mystery.
In Texas, the nine-banded armadillo is the most common, and down in South America they have what we now call “giant armadillos.” But they’re only six feet long if you include the tail, and weigh 70 pounds. Still, if I saw one of those around here, I think I would go the other way.
At the other end of the scale is the fairy armadillo, also from South America. It is only about four inches long and pink. You could hold it in the palm of your hand. Though our Texas armadillo can’t roll into a perfect ball, like the Brazilian three-banded one, it does have this special ability: the females give birth to four identical quadruplets every time, producing as many as 16 pups in a lifetime. Bet they’re glad they don’t have to send them all to college.
The Texas armadillo – the nine-banded one – has certainly worked its way into iconic status here. There are armadillo t-shirts, tattoos galore, armadillo lamps (no armadillos hurt in the making of the lamps), armadillo campers and trailers and armadillo restaurants that don’t serve armadillo. However, during the Great Depression, an era many blamed on President Herbert Hoover, food was scarce, and many people in Texas hunted and ate armadillos, calling them “poor man’s pork” or “Hoover hogs.” Later on, people blamed leprosy in Texas on armadillo meat.
No doubt, the best-known armadillo business, open from 1970-1980, was the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin. The nightclub was named after the armadillo in order to commemorate the fact that it was located in the old National Guard Armory. Though long out of business, the Armadillo World Headquarters helped lay the foundation for the world-class live music scene that thrives in Austin today.
To properly honor all the positive influences of the armadillo’s mystique in Texas, the 1995 legislature declared the nine-banded armadillo the official State Small Mammal of Texas. The law reads in part:
WHEREAS: …The armadillo, is a hardy, pioneering creature that chose to begin migrating here at about the time that Texas became a state; and
WHEREAS: The armadillo possesses many remarkable and unique traits, some of which parallel the attributes that distinguish a true Texan, such as a deep respect and need for the land, the ability to change and adapt, and a fierce undying love for freedom; and;
WHEREAS: [The armadillo is] a proud and indomitable as the state from which it hails.
RESOLVED: That the 74th Legislature of the State of Texas hereby . . . designate(s) the armadillo as the official Small State Mammal of Texas.
The Texas Longhorn was made the Official Large State Mammal in the same legislation.
And then we also have the unofficial honoring of the little armored ones in a famous song written by Gary P. Nunn. So the Armadillo is distinguished by legislation, protected by law, and immortalized in song. Is Texas a great country or what?