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Growing up in Texas, WF Strong found that whistling played a important role in his life. But there are many ways to whistle. He explores a few of them.
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.
WF Strong [00:00:00] As a boy growing up in Texas, I found that whistling played an important role in my life. My father would whistle for us to come in at night. This could be with thumb and forefinger against the tongue or forefingers if he needed serious amplification. All of us whistled for the dogs to come in, still do, something like this. I love the movie, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, for the whistling, so hauntingly included by Ennio Morricone. Mm-hmm. The Andy Griffith Show also inspired me with its whistling theme song. Even now, I want to join in, and I’m sure some of you did. My neighbor, when I was a kid, used to whistle Christmas tunes as he put up Christmas decorations outside. Jingle Bells was one of his favorites. Seems strange to me, given that we only got snow about once every 30 years in South Texas, but he was a good whistler. Cowboys whistled herd cattle and communicate with each other. Whistles can be heard at a far greater distance than speech. It’s efficient, and your whistle is always with you. Whistling has vocabulary. This whistle is universally known. It’s now called a woof whistle, and in France you can be fined 700 euros for woof whistling in public. Here’s a whistle that can be used for being shocked at a high price, or even as a compliment for a brilliant idea. There are many interesting expressions about whistling. Ever heard of whistling past the graveyard? When you do that, you’re showing that you don’t have a care in the world about the dangers you’re ignoring. I like popular songs with whistling, like Sitting on the Dock of the Bay. How about patients? Guns and roses? or even this one featured in Kill Bill, but from the film Twisted Nerve. There are many great ones, but the whistling that seems always to be on a ready loop in the back of my mind comes from the spaghetti westerns, like this one from A Fistful of Dollars. I’m W.F. 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.
