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It’s been a bit of a tradition over the years for commentator WF Strong to offer up a story of thanks each holiday season — for what he calls a great gift to Texas.
Often, the honor has gone to someone long gone. But this year, he’s thanking someone still very much with us — and hopefully with many decades still ahead.
Check out Traces of Texas
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The full transcript of this episode of Stories from Texas is available on the KUT & KUTX Studio website. The transcript is also available as subtitles or captions on some podcast apps.
Every holiday season, I have enjoyed thanking someone, often, someone long gone for a great gift to Texas. This time, I’d like to thank a man who is still with us with hopefully many decades ahead of him still for his extraordinary gift to all Texans. His name is Jack Nik, and he is the much loved curator, turn editor of the Traces of Texas Facebook page that has accrued more than a million followers.
Since 2010, Texas has always been more than a place. It’s a memory, a voice, a photograph tucked into a drawer, a story shared across a kitchen table over coffee and donuts and ulce. For well over a decade now, traces of Texas has been quietly and sometimes via surprising virality, reminding us of that truth.
When Jack Nik began posting on social media back in 2010, there was no master plan to reach more than a million people. There was simply an instinct sharpened by experience that Texans liked. Talking about Texas, that instinct turned out to be exactly right. By late 2012, something clicked not because of flashy trends in algorithms, but because Jack leaned into history, real history.
And let it speak for itself. His breakthrough moment was publishing a black and white photo of the original Whataburger. Which went viral. The photographs became the heartbeat. Black and white images carried with them a gravity that modern photos often lack. These weren’t stylized shots posed to impress.
They were working photographs, family photographs, photos of musicians before fame. Pilots before legends, farmers before nostalgia. Soften the edges of real life. This was Texas Unfiltered. What’s remarkable is not just where the photos came from, though Texans are blessed with extraordinary archives like the portal to Texas history, UT Arlington’s special Collections Archive, the Briscoe Center and others, which Jack Peruses for occasional gold.
But what matters most is what happens after they’re posted the comment sections become a living classroom, a town square, a reunion hall. Jack says that he has been regularly amazed by what Texans collectively know. Someone posted once a photograph taken at Dyes Air Force Base in the 1950s, and suddenly readers identified the exact model of the cash register, which had a standard cigarette rack on top, the type of flight suit the pilots were wearing, even the materials that would later replace them.
Jack said that you put all these people together and you realize Texas has an astonishing depth of collective knowledge and a generosity and passion for sharing it. The generosity mirrors Jack’s own. Gratitude underpins traces of Texas, like cultural bedrock. Every contributor is thanked. Every artifact is treated as something precious.
Jack once shared that if someone takes time from their one granted life to send in a photo or a story, the least you can do is acknowledge it. And thank them. Most sincerely, that attitude may be the secret ingredient. Jack told me that he learned that lesson from Willie Nelson who said the more he tried to give away even more was returned back to him.
Then there are the people, the centenarians. War veterans, farmers, river guides, storytellers like Mel Dart, who flew 35 missions over Europe and World War II and said that he was not scared because he was too dumb to be scared. Or Dorothy Macquarie born on a farm near Thorndale, Texas. Jacked, walked the property with her when she was 99 and she showed him a still producing old well said.
She had pumped a Cajillion gallons out of that thing during her lifetime. Jack also remembers Tony Drury of Terlingua, who somehow manages to be a river guide, a plumber, volunteer, fireman, musician, photographer, and caretaker. Of a critically endangered native grass. Tony is Texas personified. Sometimes Traces of Texas does something even more miraculous.
It reconnects people long lost relatives. Recognize family names under a photograph and reunite. Once after the devastating 2013 explosion in West Texas, a family photo album was found several blocks away and returned to its owners after being posted on traces of Texas, hoping the right eyes might see it.
They did. Most followers live here, but not all. Some are far from home text Patriots, I call them offshore in the North Sea or living in Kenya or Rhode Island. And they write to say that traces of Texas keeps them emotionally connected to the place they still consider home. That matters. In 2021, the Texas legislature passed a resolution honoring Jack for making a significant contribution to the preservation of the history and heritage of the state of Texas.
In the end, traces of Texas isn’t about nostalgia, it’s about continuity. It’s a reminder that Texas is made of people past and present, and that our stories and photographs are worth preserving sharing. Honoring Traces of Texas is our shared digital archives freely provided for us. All that is a wonderful gift and Texas is better for it.
I’m WF Strong. These are stories from Texas. Some of them are true.
This transcript was transcribed by AI, and lightly edited by a human. Accuracy may vary. This text may be revised in the future.
