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There’s been a lot of talk lately about artificial intelligence — what it can do and what its limitations are. And if you’ve been keeping tabs on it at all, there’s no doubt that it seems to be getting better — and fast.
Texas Standard commentator WF Strong wanted to find out for himself just how good its become. So he did a little experiment.
Texas Standard has been Tracking Texas Cryptids. Some are known for their distinctive appearance. Others are known for their unique sounds. That was the inspiration for this Typewriter Rodeo poem.
This spooky season, Texas Standard is Tracking Texas Cryptids. The Typewriter Rodeo team is also in on the hunt. The target of this poem is said to live in Kimble County.
All through October, the Texas Standard team is tracking Texas cryptids. As we’ve dug into some of these legends, we’ve noticed a few patterns. First of all, many of the cryptids associated with Texas have roots in Mexico.
And there are also some similarities in the back stories of these creatures or characters. Ayden Castellanos has noticed this especially in the legends involving female haunters. He hosts the “Susto” podcast about latin and hispanic folklore.
“I like to call them ‘the cryptid femmes’ because there are so many entities or creatures or spirits who are women or femmes and I think it’s an interesting trope, I’ll say, because, a lot of them, the commonality is that they are going after cheating men, drunkards, abusive men,” Castellanos said.
The story of La Llorona falls into this category.
(This story first aired in 2018).
Texas has had perhaps more than its share of unusual names of cities and towns. Cut and Shoot – Dime Box – Bug Tussle. But perhaps the strangest was Toadsuck, Texas. You won’t find it on a map today because it eventually became Collinsville in western Grayson County. But for a relatively brief and shining historical period, Toadsuck was a real Texas town. Texas Standard commentator WF Strong has the story of how it got that strange name.
By W.F. Strong
The year was 1919. J. Frank Norfleet, after two years of pursuit, finally slapped the handcuffs on Mr. Stetson in Florida. Stetson – real name: Joe Furey – had swindled Norfleet out of $90,000 in Dallas and Fort Worth two years before. Stetson was shocked to see him and paid him a backhanded compliment. He said, “Well, you old trail hound. I never expected to see you out here. … I thought we left you flat broke in Fort Worth.” Please don’t take me back to Texas, Norfleet … your “damnable hounding” has already cost me “as much money as I have made” off of you.
Stetson’s surprise at having Norfleet slap handcuffs on him is equal to the surprise that most people have when they first hear the incredible story of the old rancher’s dogged and ultimately successful pursuit of his swindlers. I’m not spoiling the story by telling the ending because the joy of this story is in the chase.
Norfleet had no experience in law enforcement, big city life or sophisticated cons. He was a cowboy and a hunter, a man who had always lived on the edge of the Texas frontier. So when he made up us his mind to pursue the band of bunco men who conned him, he used the only tools he had, which were unfathomable patience, cutting for sign, following the trail no matter how faint, employing camouflage in the way of disguises, always being well-armed, and being willing to withstand all nature of hardship to win in the end. Norfleet out-conned the con men. He seemed to be operating under the motto of Texas Ranger Capt. Bill McDonald: “No man in the wrong can stand up against a fellow that’s in the right who just keeps on a-comin’.”
Norfleet was born in Lampasas and grew up on the Texas plains. He was a working cowboy trail herder in his early days and later managed to buy his own ranch out near Plainview. At 54, he had finally accumulated some real wealth. So he went to Dallas and Fort Worth with the intent of selling his ranch to buy a bigger one. It was there that con men ensnared him in their sophisticated plot. It went like this:
Norfleet got into a seemingly casual conversation about mules in the lobby of the St. George Hotel in Dallas. He said that “to one of his upbringing, the most lonesome place in the world is a large city.” So he was happy to find someone of similar tastes and interests. This man, Hamlin, upon hearing Norfleet had a ranch to sell, said he just happened to know someone who might be interested in his land. That interested party, Mr. Spencer, magically appeared and said they would need to go to the Adolphus to see another man. When they sat down in the lobby to wait, Spencer cleverly steered Norfleet so that he’d sit in just the right place to discover a man’s pocket book “lost” in the crevice of the couch. The pocket book had “$240 in cash and a cashable bond for $100,000 dollars.” Mr. Stetson was the name on the Mason’s card inside. Spencer and Norfleet inquired at the desk for a Mr. Stetson, got his room number, and returned the pocket book to him.
Mr. Stetson – AKA Joe Furey – offered them both $100 reward. Norfleet refused. Stetson told him that he was a stockbroker with the Dallas exchange and said, “Would you mind me placing that money on the market and would you accept what money it might earn?” Later that day Stetson gave Norfleet $800 as the amount his $100 earned. And that is how the hook was set. From there, much more money was made and eventually cash guarantees required by the fake exchange. When the con men cleared out on the last round, absconding with all of Norfleet’s money, he was left repeating to himself in a stunned haze, “Forty-five thousand dollars gone; $90,000 in debt; 54 years old.” If it happened today he’d be saying, “Seven-hundred-thousand-dollars gone; $1.5 million in debt; 54 years old.”
Most swindled people keep quiet about it. Some report it to police but just suffer the loss and go about rebuilding their lives. Furey, who conned many an Englishmen said that the British always handled the loss with such poise. But he resented Norfleet for taking it so personally.
So here is where you will want to pick up the book and get on the trail with Norfleet. He logs 30,000 miles pursuing these con men. Its’a great adventure and demonstrates an old cowboy’s enormous creativity and grit. He just wouldn’t quit. You can read his own telling of the story in his fast-moving autobiography, “Norfleet,” published in 1924. Or, you can read a more modern version historically contextualized by Amy Reading in “The Mark Inside.” Whichever you choose, cinch up your saddles nice and snug. It’s gonna be a wild ride.
by W. F. Strong (adapted from folklore)
I think we’re in need of humor more now than ever before. So I thought I’d share with you this bit of classic Texas folklore. You may well have heard it before and, if you have, I’m sure you won’t mind hearing it again. If you haven’t heard it, well, you’ll have the pleasure of hearing it for the first time. Nothing better than novel humor, providing it’s well told. I’ll do my best.
A Texas Cowboy who had just recently moved to Montana walked into a bar up there and ordered three mugs of draft beer.
He took a seat in the back of the room by himself and commenced to drinking all three beers by taking a sip out of each one in a consistent sequence so that he finished them all at the same time.
Then he walked back up to the bar and asked the barkeep for three more.
Well, the bartender, wanting to be helpful, said, “You know, partner, a mug of beer can go a bit flat fairly soon after it’s drawn. You can buy ‘em three at time, if you like, but I can bring ‘em out to you one at a time to keep ‘em cold, fresh and crisp.”
The Texan replied, “Well, you see, I do it this way because I have two brothers. We were always close until a few months ago when we all, sadly, had to leave Texas for a while because of job transfers. One went to Georgia, the other to, sorry to say, New York. We agreed to always drink as I’m doing now to honor our good times together until we can all get back to Texas. So, I’m drinking one beer for me and two for my brothers.”
The barkeep was touched by the man’s custom and pushed three mugs of beer to him, and said, “This round’s on me.”
The Texan took a liking to the place. Felt like home. He came in there all the time afterwards and always followed his three beer tradition. The regulars became aware of it after a while and admired his unique commemoration. Sometimes bar patrons would even hoist a beer up in his direction and offer a toast. “To the brothers!” they’d say.
One day, the Texan came in and ordered two beers, sat down and began drinking them in turn. Everybody noticed and the bar got quiet, unusually silent.
The bartender felt he should say something so he walked over to the cowboy’s table and said quite sincerely, “I’m sorry about the loss of your brother, truly sorry.”
The cowboy looked confused a minute and then figured out what the bartender was thinking. He laughed and said, “Oh, no, no. Nobody died or nothin’. It’s just, you see, me and my wife joined a really strict church last week and I had to swear off drinkin’.”
Then it was the bartender’s turn to look confused.
The Texan explained, “Well, that didn’t affect my brothers none.”
One of the most important figures in Texas’ religious history never set foot in Texas at all. She never in her life traveled beyond her tiny village in Spain, yet she stirred religious fervor from the Concho River to the headwaters of the Rio Grande.
Our story begins in 1602 when Maria was born in the pueblito de Ágreda. She was a lovely child born to Catholic parents of noble rank. Barely beyond her toddler years, Maria showed an unusual devotion to a life of prayer and piety.
When she was ten, she already wanted to join a convent. When she was 12, her parents finally blessed her wish to join the Discalced Carmelite Nuns of Tarazona. Before that could be arranged, though, Maria’s mother had a vision in which God instructed her to convert their mansion into a convent. She and her daughter would both become nuns. Her father would join a local monastery, following in the footsteps of his sons who were already friars. In four years, this all came to pass.
At 18, Maria took her vows and became Maria de Jesus – Mary of Jesus de Ágreda. The habit of her order was a dark cobalt blue. Now a nun, she spent more time than ever alone in prayer. Maria’s religious devotions intensified. Her sisters worried about her frequent fasting, frail health, and life of extreme deprivation. Yet for her it was a glorious time: she said God had given her a divine gift. It was the gift of bilocation. She could be in two places at once. Through meditation she could appear to God’s children in faraway lands and teach them about Jesus. She said she first appeared to the Jumano tribes of present day Texas in the 1620s. She did this for about ten years, from the time she was 18, to 29. And according to legend, the Jumano Indians of the time confirmed that the Woman in Blue, as they called her, had come among them.
The first proof is offered in the story of 50 Jumano Indians appearing on their own at the San Antonio de la Isleta Mission near present-day Albuquerque, asking the Franciscan priests to teach them about Jesus. When asked how they knew of him, the men said that the Lady in Blue had come to them and taught them the gospel. She had instructed them to go west to find holy men who could teach them more about the faith and baptize them. They, as the legend goes, pointed to a painting of a nun in the mission and said, “She is like her, but younger.”
The priests were stunned because they had no missions or missionaries in that part of what is today West Texas. They certainly knew of no nuns who had attempted missionary work there. How could this be? The head cleric in New Mexico, Esteban de Perea, asked two priests to go home with the Jumanos to verify these claims about the Lady in Blue. They traveled to the region that is today San Angelo and found that many of the Jumano said she had indeed come to them many times over the years. The priests immediately baptized 2,000 Jumanos, they say, because of Maria de Ágredas.
Historians Donald Chipman and Denise Joseph wrote that the Jumanos said Maria came to them “like light at sunset… she was a kind and gentle person who spoke ‘sweet’ words to them that they could understand…”
The respected religious historian Carlos E. Castaneda – not to be confused with the one who wrote about the Teachings of Don Juan – said that Maria preached in Spanish but the Jumanos understood her in their tongue, and when they spoke in their tongue, she understood them in Spanish.
Such claims resulted in the custodian of the Franciscans in New Mexico, Father Alonso de Benavides, traveling all the way to Ágreda in Spain to interview Maria to verify her authenticity. According to him, she told him of things in Texas and about the world of the Jumanos that only one who had been there could have known. Her bilocation claims were considered credible then, and even now, the Vatican seems to agree and is considering her for canonization.
Chapman and Joseph tell us that, according to Jumano legend, “when she last appeared, she blessed [the Jumanos] and slowly went away into the hills. The next morning the area was covered with a blanket of strange flowers that were a deep blue” – blue like her habit. These were, they said, the first bluebonnets. And perhaps the Jumanos found comfort when these flowers returned each year, adorned in their blue habits, assuring them that the Lady in Blue was always with them.
For a more complete history of the Lady in Blue, see “Notable Men and Women of Spanish Texas” by Donald E. Chipman and Harriett Denise Joseph, published by UT-Press, 1999.
Tom Landry and Charles Schulz died on the same day: Feb. 12, 2000. Mike Thompson, the Detroit Free Press cartoonist honored them both with a cartoon showing them entering the pearly gates together. Schulz was depicted as Charlie Brown and Landry had his arm around him. Landry said, “Now a few pointers on kicking a football…”
For Coach Landry, at least, I can’t imagine a finer eulogy.
I mourned Landry’s passing, of course, along with millions of other Landry fans. A day that was almost as tough, though, was the day Landry was fired, in 1989. That day, too, hit me like a death in the family. Landry had been our coach since many of us were children. And when he was fired, we were 40. He had been our father on the field. He raised us within the game, teaching us to be gracious in victory and dignified in defeat. And with one stroke of Jerry Jones’ pen, he was gone. Devastating.
Landry was known as the man in the hat. He was the stoic leader on the Dallas Cowboys sidelines, always impeccably dressed and sporting his fedora. Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said, “If there were a Mount Rushmore for the NFL, the profile of Tom Landry would have to be there, wearing his trademark hat.”
While coaching, Landry was so focused he rarely smiled. He was often called “unemotional.” But I can think of words that would be more fitting: a man of character, honor, integrity, and faith. He was pure class, on and off the field. He was ethos personified.
In his 29 years as Dallas’ head coach, Landry led the Cowboys to more playoff seasons, by far, than they have had since. And here is another statistic hard to fathom: the Cowboys still have not played as many games without Landry as they played with him.
Under Landry, the Cowboys won 13 Divisional titles and played in five Super Bowls, winning two. They enjoyed 20 consecutive winning seasons, a record no NFL coach has ever come close to matching.
As glorious as those years were, none equalled Landry’s finest season in football. He played for the New York Giants professionally, and was all-pro one year, but that was not his finest season, either. He played football on scholarship for the University of Texas, but after only one semester, his career there was put on hold by World War II. He volunteered to join the Army Air Corps and flew 30 missions over Germany, crash landing once in Belgium. Though the wings were shaved off, he and all his men walked away without serious injury. Not bad for a 20-year-old.
One could consider his WWII service, in a Churchillian sense, his finest season, but as we are talking football, we have to go back further.
To get to his best season ever, we have to go all the way back to his high school years in Mission, Texas, way down in the Rio Grande Valley.
It was Landry’s senior year, 1941. He played both sides of the ball. He played quarterback and defensive back. Landry led the Mission Eagles to a perfect 12-0 season. They went all the way to the regional championship, which was as far as they could go that year (there was no state championship in those days).
The Mission Eagles won every game they played, holding every team scoreless, except for one. In 12 games they gave up only one score. Donna High School managed to squeeze out one touchdown against them.
Many years later, in his autobiography, Landry wrote, “That autumn of glory, shared with my boyhood friends… remains perhaps my most meaningful season in my fifty years of football. The game was never more fun, the victories never sweeter, the achievement never more satisfying.”
Landry’s near flawless season, and his impressive professional life thereafter, was honored in 1975 when the Mission School District named their football stadium the Tom Landry Stadium. And when he died in 2000, I-30 between Dallas and Fort Worth was named the Tom Landry Highway.
To me, one of the trivial truths about Landry that speaks to his greatness, is that his Cowboys never gave him a Gatorade bath, never dumped the ice bucket down his back.
After his coaching days were over, he developed a sterling reputation as an inspirational speaker. He always advised young players to keep their lives ordered in this simple way: faith, family, and football. He was also fond of saying, ¨As of today, you have 100 percent of your life left.¨
He took his own words to heart. After he was fired, while the rest of us were using our energy being mad about the disrespectful way our icon was sacked, Landry was already moving on with his life.
He didn’t waste time being angry or bitter. With characteristic optimism, he saw the silver lining. He said, “As a boy growing up in Mission, Texas, I always dreamed of being a cowboy. For 29 wonderful years, I was one.”
W.F. Strong is a Fulbright Scholar and professor of Culture and Communication at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. At Public Radio 88 FM in Harlingen, Texas, he’s the resident expert on Texas literature, Texas legends, Blue Bell ice cream, Whataburger (with cheese) and mesquite smoked brisket.
This story starts off like many good stories do: two men walked into a bar. Now, we have to expand it a little, two men walked into a bar in San Antonio fifty years ago. Okay, it was actually a restaurant & bar. They ordered drinks, and perhaps hors d’oeuvres. One grabbed a cocktail napkin, took out his pen, and said to the other, “Here’s the plan.”
He then drew a simple triangle on the napkin. At the apex of the triangle he wrote Dallas. The bottom left he labeled San Antonio. On the bottom right he wrote Houston. He said, “There – that’s the business plan. Fly between these cities several times a day, every day.” And that is the story of how Southwest Airlines began, on a simple napkin in a bar in San Antonio.
The two men were Rollin King and Herb Kelleher. Rollin was a pilot and a businessman and Herb was a lawyer. Rollin would become a managing director of the company and Herb would become its chairman. There is a plaque at the Southwest Airlines headquarters that enshrines a version of the original napkin with this exchange:
“Herb, let’s start an airline.”
“Rollin, you’re crazy. Let’s do it!”
There are many things that Southwest became famous for. First, its LUV nickname, which is still the company’s stock market trading symbol. It introduced hostesses, as they called their flight attendants then, in hot pants and white go-go boots. They were competing in the sexy skies where Braniff stewardesses wore Pucci chic – uniforms by Italian designer Emilio Pucci – and Continental advertised, in a not-so-subtle double entendre, that they “moved their tails for you.” Southwest hostesses cooed in their ads, “There’s someone else up there who loves you.”
But beyond the sizzle, there was genuine business genius in Southwest efficiencies: peanut fares and the ten-minute turnaround, which had never been achieved before. To date, Southwest has flown over 23 million flights without one fatality. Now that’s a safety record.
Perhaps the coolest story in Southwest Airlines’ history, and relatively unknown, was the fare war they fought with now defunct Braniff Airlines in 1972. Braniff went head-to-head with Southwest on the Houston-Dallas route, offering $13 dollar fares as a means of “breaking” Southwest, which didn’t have deep pockets. Southwest responded with a $13 dollar fare or a $26 dollar fare that included a free bottle of Chivas, Crown Royal or Smirnoff.
According to airline lore, for the two months before Braniff surrendered, Southwest was Texas’ biggest distributor of premium liquor.
Not long before he died, Rollin King confessed that the napkin story wasn’t entirely true, but he said that it was a “hell of a good story.” It was sad to hear that, but too late: the myth had become more powerful than the reality. An old saying in journalism is that when the legend becomes fact, print the legend. This is what I prefer to do. After all, it is hard to imagine that a concept so perfectly observant of Occam’s Razor – the simplest solution is usually the best – would not have, at some point, been sketched out on a napkin, a legal pad, or the collected dust on the hood of Cadillac.
W.F. Strong is a Fulbright Scholar and professor of Culture and Communication at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. At Public Radio 88 FM in Harlingen, Texas, he’s the resident expert on Texas literature, Texas legends, Blue Bell ice cream, Whataburger (with cheese) and mesquite smoked brisket.
James Dean – in the movie “Giant” – tells Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor that he has struck oil. And not only that, it’s payback time.
James Dean was playing Jett Rink, a hard drinkin’, brawlin’, tough-talkin’ uncultured Texas wildcatter who struck it rich. But everybody in Texas knew that he was really playing Glen McCarthy, a Houston wildcatter, who struck it rich – cover of TIME rich. The fictional Jett Rink spent millions of dollars building the Emperador, the biggest hotel in Texas. The real life McCarthy did the same. But he called it, The Shamrock Hotel.
The Shamrock, nicknamed the Houston Riviera, was the grandest hotel in Texas when it was built, the largest outside of New York or L.A. It was 20 stories tall counting the two-story emerald SHAMROCK HOTEL sign on top. It cost $22 million in ’47. Today it would be $250 million. It had the biggest swimming pool on the planet, so large that people water-skied in it. It had 1,100 rooms, all air-conditioned, each with a TV and radio.
In 1949, McCarthy wanted to have a grand opening for his monolithic hotel. He wanted Hollywood stars. He was told that the only way Hollywood would come was if there was a movie opening to attend. But no big studio would launch a film in Texas. So he decided to fund his own Hollywood movie. In this way, he had the movie debut and hotel grand opening at the same time. And Hollywood came. Howard Hughes even gave him a good deal on one of his planes so he could fly stars to Houston. McCarthy chartered a Santa Fe party train that brought in hundreds of stars for the St. Patrick’s Day opening.
The evening was regarded as the most prestigious event in Houston social history. And it likely remains so. Everyone who was anyone was there. Ginger Rogers was there. So was Errol Flynn. It was broadcast live on national radio by NBC and hosted by the WWII pin-up Dorothy Lamour.
Frank Lloyd Wright wasn’t impressed with the Shamrock’s 63 shades of Irish green. He was called it “architectural venereal disease.” But many loved the Shamrock for its sheer size and art deco style, the Emerald Nightclub where Sinatra sang, The Cork Club up top overlooking Houston, and the hotel’s grand devotion to the Irish theme.
It was sold to Conrad Hilton in 1955 and was known as the Shamrock Hilton until it was demolished in 1987. Today Texas A&M Health Sciences Center sits on the site. I think McCarthy would like that. He was, after all, an Aggie.