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The Weird Connection Between Tony Romo and Tony Roma’s

When Tony Romo joined the Dallas Cowboys back in 2003, some people confused his name with that of Tony Roma’s, the restaurant chain. They thought maybe Tony Romo was related to the Tony Roma family, perhaps heir to the baby back ribs fortune, even though there was an important one letter of difference at the end of the names. Everybody knows by now that there is no relationship between Tony Romo and Tony Roma’s, but there is quite a deep connection between the Dallas Cowboys and Tony Roma’s that few people know about.

Back in 1976, the Dallas Cowboys played the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl X in Miami, a game the Cowboys lost by four points. After the game, Clint Murchison, Jr., owner and founder of the Dallas Cowboys, went to dine at the only Tony Roma’s restaurant in existence at the time. It was in North Miami. He was so impressed with the ribs and the cole slaw, that in legendary Texas style, he said to himself, “I like this restaurant. I think I’ll buy it and move it to Texas.”

These quick draw decisions were not unusual for Murchison. He was once forced to spend a good deal of time with bankers in New York City and soon found himself frustrated that he couldn’t get a decent bowl of chili or good smoked brisket. So, he did the only rational thing a rich Texan could do. He opened his own restaurant there in Manhattan. He called it The Dallas Cowboy. It served classic Texas chili and smoked brisket. Problem solved.

Back to Tony Roma’s. Clint Murchison couldn’t buy the original Tony Roma’s because Tony wouldn’t sell it. But Clint did buy the franchise rights. Within just a few years, there were Tony Roma’s in Manhattan (giving Murchison a second place to get food he liked when he was stranded in New York), Hollywood, Dallas – and the headquarters soon moved to Dallas (well, Plano to be exact) where it remained until just last year.

It could be said that Clint Murchison, Jr. started two great franchises in his life – the Dallas Cowboys and Tony Roma’s. The Dallas Cowboys are today the most valuable team in the NFL. In fact, at $4 billion, Forbes says the Cowboys are the most valuable sports franchise in the world. Worth more than New England or Green Bay. Worth more than the New York Yankees. Worth more even than Manchester United or Real Madrid.

Jerry Jones must be given his due for creating a good deal of that value, but Murchison did build the Cowboys into a marquee name in the NFL before he sold the team. As for Tony Roma’s, it is privately owned so I don’t know its value, but I do know the restaurants have gross sales of over $300 million a year. That’s a lot of ribs, y’all. And now they’ve added lamb ribs to their newest menu.

Just as the Cowboys are known worldwide, Tony Roma’s is, too; 150 restaurants in 30 countries on six continents. You can eat at Tony Roma’s in Madrid, in Tokyo, in Bangkok, Lima, Dubai, Kuala Lumpur, where there are eight to choose from, or at locations right here in Texas. Yes, Clint Murchison, Jr. gave us the sacred tradition of watching the gladiators of the gridiron on Sunday afternoons and he gave us the food to watch ‘em with, too. Now, that’s a mighty fine accomplishment. A mighty fine man.

Tony Romo may have no official relationship with Tony Roma’s. But I think he should buy a franchise so we can say I’m going to Tony Romo’s Tony Roma’s. That would be hard to say three times real fast, which I’m sure you’re gonna try as soon as you’re done reading, which is now.

What It Means to Be a Texas Gentleman

One of my favorite, but now largely unknown speakers in American history was Robert Green Ingersoll. Redwater, Texas was originally named Ingersoll – after him. He was a philosopher and a popular intellectual, the most sought after orator of his time. He left us many fine proverbs. One of my favorites is this:

“The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.”

Being graceful in victory is easy, but in defeat, to be dignified and composed and still hopeful for a better day, requires deep character.

As the country prepares to make the transition from one president to another, I’m reminded of an example of this kind of rare decency in defeat. It comes from George H. W. Bush. In 1992, he had just lost a bruising presidential campaign to a much younger, far less experienced Bill Clinton. It must have been excruciatingly painful for Mr. Bush. After all, it was said that he had the longest resume in the Western World. How could he lose to someone who was, at least on paper, less qualified for the job? But he accepted his defeat with grace.

As these fine Texans, George and Barbara, were moving out of the White House and the Clintons were soon to move in, George left a letter for Bill on the Oval Office desk. It has received a good deal of attention online over the past months, but it is a remarkable testimony to good character and it certainly deserves a re-reading. The letter is dated January 20, 1993. It says:

Dear Bill,

When I walked into this office just now I felt the same sense of wonder and respect that I felt four years ago. I know you will feel that, too.

I wish you great happiness here. I never felt the loneliness some Presidents have described.

There will be very tough times, made even more difficult by criticism you may not think is fair. I’m not a very good one to give advice; but just don’t let the critics discourage you or push you off course.

You will be our President when you read this note. I wish you well. I wish your family well.

Your success now is our country’s success. I am rooting hard for you.

Good Luck – George

Texans have long valued a true southern gentleman. If anyone ever needs a clear definition of what that means, have them read this letter from George H. W. Bush to Bill Clinton.

The Story Behind Texas’ Favorite Butter

Texas has a great number of Texas brands:

Southwest Airlines.
Texas Instruments.
Lone Star Beer.
Dell Computer.
Imperial Sugar.
The King Ranch.

Now, The King Ranch is a brand that came, quite literally, from a brand. King Ranch even has its own brand of Ford Pickup.

The King Ranch also helped launch another old Texas brand, Falfurrias Butter.

It is a little circuitous, but this is how it all came about. Richard King’s partner, Mifflin Kenedy, sold 7,000 cows to Ed Lasater, who then created the dairy that launched Falfurrias butter. Thirty-five years later, the King Ranch bought Lasater’s land, along with many head of cattle, to create the Encino division of the King Ranch.

But that’s not the story I’m here to tell. I’m here to talk about a great old brand of Texas butter.

Falfurrias butter was first made in Falfurrias, of course, in 1909. People have wondered whether the butter is named for the town or the town for the butter, but they were actually both named after Lasater’s ranch, which was named for a grove of trees called La Mota de Falfurrias. Lasater said that that unique word, Falfurrias, came from the Lipan Apache language and, loosely translated, means “Land of Heart’s Delight.”

The butter was certainly the town’s best known export in those early days, and likely remains so today. Even the school mascot, the Jerseys, was named after the butter’s real creators – the Jersey cows. At one point Falfurrias was home to the largest Jersey cattle herd in the world.

And so that gave special meaning to the once popular bumper sticker there: “Watch Your Step – You’re in Jersey Country.” I’m not sure the author of that intended the double meaning, but it certainly provided a good deal of local levity until it was recalled.

Falfurrias butter remains a popular niche brand of butter. In Texas, it’s sold at all the major grocery stores, and some smaller ones, too. It has been quite popular in northern Mexico for generations.

A friend tells me that as a child in Saltillo he remembers his mother bringing back the mantequilla dulce de Falfurrias as a special treat for the kids anytime she traveled to Texas.

A Texas Marine in WWII recalled that as he was wading ashore in the battle for Okinawa, a Falfurrias Butter crate bumped up against his leg in the surf. He found it comforting, an assurance from home that all would be well. And so it was.

Falfurrias Butter outgrew Falfurrias. It became so popular that it was eventually bought by the Dairy Farmers of America, but rest assured it is still made in Texas.

It is made by Keller’s Creamery in Winnsboro, Texas, and has grown at a Texas-sized pace of 40 percent over the last few years. That’s a lot of biscuits and baked potatoes, y’all.

When you drive through Falfurrias today, on state Highway 285, you can still see the vintage Falfurrias Butter sign on the side of the old Creamery Building. The town newspaper, Falfurrias Facts, occupies the building today.

In the interest of full disclosure ethical transparency, I have to reveal that I am also an export of Falfurrias, and even though I know on which side my bread is buttered, so to speak, I assure you that it does not affect the veracity of this commentary.

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 originally aired on June 15, 2016.

Jack Sorenson’s Paintings Capture the Simple Joy of Christmas

This is the story of a boy who loved Christmas so much that he grew up to make it more magical for the rest of us. That is, if you have ever had the good fortune to see his paintings – and if you haven’t, I’m here to make sure your luck changes. The artist’s name is Jack Sorenson. He grew up on the edge of Palo Duro canyon, a place so rare in its quality of light that Jack’s unique talents must have been uniquely nurtured.

Jack started drawing and sketching before he remembers doing it. His mother told him that when he was three, he would put the dog on the couch to draw him and then get terribly frustrated when his canine model would not hold a pose. By the time he reached first grade, he was so proficient at drawing anything he saw that his teacher called his mother to tell her she thought he was a prodigy. His mom had never heard the word and at first thought he must have been misbehaving. Once she understood, though, she said, “Oh, yes, he can draw anything.”

I talked to Jack for about 30 minutes a couple of weeks ago. He and I are a lot alike. We are both life-long Texans. We both live on the Texas border – he in Amarillo and me in Brownsville. We are both slow talkers because of our Texas drawls. Took us 30 minutes to have a 15-minute conversation. But when it comes to art we are on different planets. When he was being called a prodigy, my first-grade teacher was looking at a free-hand eagle I had drawn and said that it was not a bad likeness of a chihuahua. So that finished my art career right then. That eagle would never fly.

Jack, now age 62, says, “I’ve always been able to draw, sketch and paint anything I put my mind to. I didn’t just discover it one day. I’ve always had it. God blessed me with a gift and I try to honor that gift as best I can, in every painting.”

He started out sketching cowboys around his father’s western town, Six Gun City, on the rim of Palo Duro Canyon. But he soon found that cowboys didn’t much care for portraits of themselves, or even of their girlfriends. However, he learned that if he could capture the personality or beauty and power of their horses, they would always buy that portrait. So he drew pictures of horses and sold perhaps hundreds of them at $40 a piece.

This also taught him how to draw a horse with great accuracy and authenticity, which became one of his most praised attributes. Many say no one can paint a horse like Sorenson. No one alive, anyway. Jack’s father said first there was Frederic Remington, then there was Charles Russell, then Jack Sorenson.

Have you ever noticed that if a photograph is exceptional people say it looks like a painting and if a painting is exceptional they say it looks like a photograph? Some of Jack’s paintings look very much like photographs. I asked him if he ever painted from a photograph and he says, “No. A photograph will lie to you.”

He says that if you try to paint a horse from a photograph, your dimensions will be wrong. The head will be too big for the body, for instance. “A camera [as a means of painting], can’t get the truth of a horse, but a painting [live or from experienced memory] can,” he says.

“Each painting is a story in still form,” Jack says. Each canvas tells a story, a simple story. It is true. I enjoy reading the stories in his paintings. One shows a cowboy bathing in a river and he looks alarmed as he sees his horse, recently spooked, running off with the cowboy’s clothes flapping beneath the saddle. Tough to be stranded naked on the frontier like that. At least he had his hat and his boots.

One of Jack’s Christmas paintings tells of a cowboy arriving home late, Christmas Eve perhaps. His daughter, about 6 years old, is running through the snow to greet her daddy. Behind her is a modest frame home warmed by a good fire. Behind her daddy’s back is a brown-haired doll that looks a good deal like his daughter. She’s gonna be so happy in just a minute.

Trying to Talk Texan? Let Your Words Lean Into Each Other

A nice lady wrote to me not long ago and said that she was happy to have a son with a good, solid, two-syllable Texas name. “His name is ‘Ben,’”she wrote.

I loved that. We do that, don’t we? Well, many of us do, anyway. There are 30 million Texans so there are many dialects out there. But in the traditional or classic Texas dialect, we tend to convert one-syllable words to two-syllable words. Ben becomes “Bey-uhn.” Jet becomes “Jay-ut.” Mess is “May-us.” This is what I call the Texas Diphthong.

In the traditional or classic Texas dialect, we have a tendency to stretch our vowels and put a lilt into them:

Dress becomes “Dray-us”
Grass becomes “Grah-us”
Dance is “Day-unce”

We do it with the first syllable of many two-syllable words, too. Tasty becomes “Tay-uh-stee.” Or we can do it on the last syllable of a two-syllable word. Denise becomes “De-nay-us.”

And believe it or not, some of us are so talented we can create triphthongs out of a one-syllable word. We can squeeze three into one. Ham becomes “Ha-uh-um.” This talent has been particularly mastered by televangelists who really like to elongate those vowels with words like hell – which becomes “hay-uhl-ah.” Sounds more frightening that way. When they say it like that it doesn’t differ from the hail that falls from the sky – so I’m not sure whether they are talking about fire or ice.

And that is something typical of us Texans. We make no distinction between some sounds that people up north make a big distinction between. We make no distinction between the pen that we write with and the flag pin we wear on our lapels. Up north they say Bic pen and flag pin. Pen and pin. We say Bic pen and flag pin the same way. Perfect rhyme. Up North they say beer and bear differently. Some Texans make no distinction between the bear they run from and the beverage they drink to celebrate getting away.

I got many of these examples from my friend, Dr. Lars Hinrichs, who is a professor of linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin; he’s a word doctor. For years he has been studying Texas English and he told me that Texans also reverse this diphthong process. We will sometimes convert what would be a diphthong into a monophthong. For instance, how do you say these words: nice, white and rice? If you say them like this – nice, white, rice, then you have a strong Texas accent, and also a southern one. Not much difference between the two, Hinrichs says, except for some differences in speech rhythm and some local expressions. For instance, he says, only in Texas can you feel “as sore as boiled owl,” or refer to a skunk as a “polecat.”

Hinrichs has been studying the Texas dialect for a long time. And he tells me that in the I-35 corridor we are seeing a leveling of the accent. This means that all the newcomers mingling their accents with ours is causing phonetic hybrids to emerge. So the classic Texas dialect, in the corridor, is not quite as strong as it was 20 years ago. It is evolving. East Texas and West Texas is leveling at a glacial pace compared to the corridor. Also, y’all will be happy to know that “y’all,” Hinrichs says, is not receding. It is perhaps proliferating because it is so grammatically efficient. All y’all newcomers are pickin’ it up. Some linguists say that even the Californians and the New Yorkers have started to use it.

Hollywood has had its struggles with the Texas accent, often hiring dialog coaches for authenticity. When Michael Caine came to Texas to film “Secondhand Lions”, he was struggling with the Texas accent and he said his dialog coach taught him that Texans let their words lean up against each other. He said that he realized that the British English is clipped, crisp and precise. Texas English is relaxed and each word leans into the other and just keeps things goin’ along smoothly. He learned to spread out his vowels and let his consonants lean up against each other. That’s it. That’s the secret. I won’t say he mastered it, but I will say “Secondhand Lions” was fine Texas film.

So the Texas accent is in no danger of dyin’ out. But I do think we should make an effort to keep it from becoming endangered. Wouldn’t want to have to start a Foundation for the Endangered Texas Accent, or FETA. So we can prevent that by all y’all makin’ sure you use “y’all” a dozen times a day and always be fixin’ to do somethin’. Get relaxed with your language. Let your words lean up against each other. And make sure you use your Texas diphthong every chance you “gee-ut.”

The Queen of King Ranch

When Richard King, the founder of the King Ranch, was on his deathbed, he told his wife, Henrietta Chamberlain King “Don’t let any of that land get away from you.” At the time of his death in 1885, King’s famous ranch consisted of about half a million acres. He had amassed this land on the advice of Robert E. Lee, who told him that he should buy all the land in the wild horse desert that he could get hold of, and never sell it. Richard King followed this principle faithfully his entire life.

His wife Henrietta did not let him down. She ruled this ranch kingdom for about 10 years longer – in total – than her husband did, more than doubling the size of the ranch in her time.

But it wasn’t easy. She had to break her husband’s golden rule soon after he died. Henrietta King not only inherited half a million acres, but also half a million dollars of debt. She had to sell some of the land to bring the King Ranch back to life. Under Henrietta King’s firm but fair hand – and with the expert help of her son-in-law, Robert Kleberg – the ranch was soon growing again; and then flourishing. By the turn of the century, the King Ranch was trying new techniques in irrigation, range grasses and cattle breeding. By the 1920s they’d created their signature breed: Santa Gertrudis cattle.

Henrietta met Richard King when she was just 18 years old, in Brownsville. She was the quiet daughter of a Presbyterian minister and King was a hard-drinking, rough-around-the-edges, riverboat captain. Sounds like a country-western song. When they married, Henrietta said about her honeymoon: “I doubt it falls to the lot of any a bride to have had so happy a honeymoon … we roamed the broad prairies of the ranch. When I grew tired, my husband would spread a Mexican blanket for me and I would take my siesta under the shade of a mesquite tree.”

This rough-hewn honeymoon she so praised showed that she was made of the right stuff to help build a ranch out of inhospitable land and a brutal climate. Indeed, she was so tough, it’s said that when bandits wanted to attack the ranch house, they waited for Mr. King to be around because he could be bargained with.

Henrietta faithfully reigned over the ranch for 70 years. But her influence extended well beyond the King Ranch boundaries.

It has been said that the work of a philanthropist is like that of an old person who plants trees. They plant even though they know they will never live to stand in their shade. And so it goes that the institutions Henrietta King started are far more important today than they were in her time.

She donated land that would become Texas A&M University in Kingsville. She constructed the city’s public high school. She donated land and money to build Spohn Hospital, which is today Corpus Christi’s largest, most advanced hospital.

Mark Twain once said that you can tell the importance of a person by the size and nature of their funeral. When Henrietta King died at the age of 92, 200 vaqueros on horseback escorted her funeral carriage to the cemetery. Some of them had ridden two days across the ranch to get there in time. These men were known as Kinenos, the King’s men.

At her grave, the 200 vaqueros, one by one, circled her casket as it was lowered, and they tipped their hats in reverence for the great lady, “La Reina” – the queen of the King Ranch. Then they galloped on back to their duties on the ranch, which now consisted of 1.2 million acres.

Dr Pepper: The Story of Texas’ Favorite Soft Drink

My favorite snack as a teenager was a Dr Pepper with salty peanuts. You remember: you pour the peanuts into the Dr Pepper and let them float around and season the drink. Didn’t get much better than that.

Dr Pepper is the oldest soft drink in America. Older than Coca-Cola, in fact, by a full year. It was created in 1885 by a pharmacist, Charles Alderton, in Waco, Texas. And its original name was Waco – it was served there at the soda fountain in the drugstore. The drink was an instant hit; customers would sit down on one of those old spinning stools and say, “Shoot me a Waco.”

As its popularity exploded, the makers couldn’t keep up supplying the syrup to all the other drug stores that wanted it, so a company was formed, and a new name created.

The name Dr Pepper was suggested by Wade Morrison, the owner of the drugstore. The story goes that Morrison supposedly named it after his would-be father-in-law back in Virginia, a man he wanted to impress because he was in love with his daughter.

Morrison never did get the girl, but I bet the old man Pepper regretted that rejection when Dr Pepper became a national sensation and made the not-good-enough Morrison quite rich. Maybe the saddest person in this whole affair was Charles Alderton – the pharmacist who created Dr Pepper. He simply gave away the recipe because he was more interested in medicine than marketing.

Dr Pepper’s formula is held in two separate bank vaults in Dallas. Each vault has half of the formula and no one person knows the entire secret. Coca-Cola has similar safeguards.

Contrary to soda pop mythology, Dr Pepper is not made of prune juice, nor does it have any part prune juice in it. It is made of a blend of fruit extracts. But the blend of flavors results in a uniqueness that makes many people swear that Diet Dr Pepper is the most undiety tasting soft drink in existence. And let’s not forget Dublin Dr Pepper, now sadly out of production, but once regarded as the finest Pepper of all, thanks to Imperial pure cane sugar.

Dr Pepper Poker – a version of poker where tens, twos, and fours are wild – takes its concept from the numbers 10, 2, and 4 that used to be on every Dr Pepper bottle. The label encouraged you to have three Dr Peppers a day at 10, 2, and 4 to keep you, well… peppy.

A poker purist will not play Dr Pepper. But I like it. It is the only time I have had four a kind, legitimately.

Sure, Texas Is Big – But It Used to Be Even Bigger

Texans have a kind of proverb that goes like this:

“Driving across Texas isn’t a trip; it’s a damn career.”

Texas is big, no doubt about that. But it used to be a lot bigger – about a fourth bigger. When Texas joined the United States in 1845, Texas’ borders (and shape) were quite different.

The northern boundary of Texas in those days stretched all the way up into what is today southern Wyoming. It´s true. In those days, the northernmost town in Texas was not Dalhart, it was Rawlins. You think it’s a long way from Brownsville to Dalhart now – at 860 miles – try 1,400 miles to Rawlins. In 1845 a trip like that would have been measured in seasons, not days. We’ll leave in early spring and get there before winter sets in.

Texas used to have a panhandle for the panhandle. It stretched north of the present day border and passed through prime Colorado Rockies real estate (including Vail) into Wyoming. They called that the stovepipe because that is what it looked like – a long skinny stovepipe, snaking northward. You can still find vestiges of Texas up there in that part of Wyoming. For instance, there is a creek up there named Texas Creek.

Texas used to include what is today the panhandle of Oklahoma. That territory is comprised of three counties. One of them is still named Texas County. So some Oklahomans still live in Texas. Well, Texas County, anyway.

The southwestern tip of Kansas was claimed by Texas. Dodge City was in Texas. Glad to know that. “Gunsmoke” always seemed like a Texas series. We know that Marshal Matt Dillon was born in San Antonio. His father was a Texas Ranger. It’s all coming together.

New Mexico used to be about half its current size because Santa Fe and Taos and all the eastern part of the state was Texas. Texas was so big in 1845 that if you had put a hinge on the northernmost part and flipped it northward, Brownsville would have been in Northern Canada next to Hudson Bay. Don’t think those Brownsvillians would have liked trading the tropics for the tundra, but that would be the result.

If you had flipped Texas southward, the people of Rawlins would have been in Peru. The East-West boundaries would have been about the same as they are today. Still, flip Texas eastward and you will have the El Pasoans trading their margaritas for mint juleps in Georgia. Flip it westward and the Beaumantians will be hanging ten with California surfer dudes.

So what happened to all our land? The U.S. government bought it in 1850. For $10 million they bought our claims to our Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas, and Oklahoma – it came to 6.7 cents an acre. Seems like we sold out cheap, but we desperately needed the money then. And remember that $10 million in 1850 is $300 million in today’s dollars, which is almost enough to buy a nice vacation home in Vail.

But, as I said, we really needed the money. We had a state to build and the only true assets we had in those days were land – and a tough, hardened people made of unbreakable spirits. So we sold the land and paid off debts and got a much more appealing shape to the state, a shape that fits nicely on t-shirts.

So even though we sold off our lands, we are nonetheless no slouch of a state, especially when we drive it. We still measure distance in time. We still feel like we are crossing an enormous frontier when driving I-10 through West Texas or I-69 to the southern border. And this old Texas saying is still valid:

“The sun has riz; the sun has set; and here I is in Texas yet.”

The Real Texan Who Inspired Captain Woodrow F. Call

In the mini-series Lonesome Dove, Charles Goodnight was immortalized loosely as Captain Woodrow F. Call, played by Tommy Lee Jones. In truth, Charles Goodnight in real life was even more fascinating than the fictional Woodrow Call.

Goodnight, who is the most famous rancher in Texas history, and the most ubiquitous Texan of his time, became a Texas Ranger at the age of 21. They recruited him because he was already locally famous in North Texas as a skilled Indian scout and tracker. The year was 1857 and the Texas Rangers and the U.S. Army were the front line of defense against Native American raids into Central Texas.

Goodnight tells of how the Texas Rangers one day got an inexperienced commander from back East. This commander had never fought Native Americans. He had never been out on the great plains. Yet he was all puffed up with self-importance and wanted to charge out and take on some Comanches. So he ordered the Rangers westward and after a couple of days, he spotted his first Indians on a distant hill.

Excited, he called Goodnight over and asked him, “What kind of Indians are those?” Goodnight paused and said, “Antelope.” The rookie Commander thought Goodnight was lying to him and ordered the Rangers to charge the group. Goodnight said, “We charged, laughing all the way, and successfully routed those antelope without losing a man.”

Goodnight was always fascinated by the shields the Native Americans carried to stop arrows and bullets. He had always heard that the shields had reams of paper stuffed inside to make them bullet resistant.

One day he shot at an Indian retreating into the brush. His target escaped but dropped his shield. Goodnight took it back to the camp and pried open the buffalo skin cover and wood frame and was shocked to discover an entire book inside. The book was The History of the Roman Empire. It solved the mystery as to why raiding Comanche so often took Bibles. They wanted the paper to bulletproof their shields, or, more accurately, to make them bullet-resistant. (They should have looked for Moby Dick. I always found that novel impenetrable. Don’t know what it would do against bullets, but it makes a hell of a door stopper.)

Charles Goodnight was indeed a genuine Texas Ranger, but he was also a genuine business entrepreneur. Had he lived a century later he might well have been someone like Michael Dell or Mark Cuban.

His biographer, J. Evetts Haley, said that Goodnight and his partner Oliver Loving were the first to drive cattle from Texas to Colorado. But before he started on this venture, everyone told Goodnight it couldn’t be done. They told him he couldn’t get cattle across the desert-like conditions of West Texas. They told him he would be brutally killed by Apache or Comanches, staked out naked on an ant bed to wait for vultures to pick his bones.

They told him that even if he did make it, the cattle would be mere skeletons by then and he’d have nothing to sell. Like all trailblazers, he simply ignored the naysayers. He ignored those who were always around to predict failure.

He proved them wrong and got rich doing so. He was only 30 years old at the time. Many Texans followed his lead and the trail became famous as the Goodnight-Loving Trail. Loving, by the way, was loosely depicted as Gus McCrae in Lonesome Dove.

Though Goodnight eventually owned the biggest ranch in Texas, well over a million acres, when he was in his 90s, J. Evetts Haley, Goodnight’s foremost biographer, reported that he had this to say about his tumultuous life:

“All in all, my years on the cattle trail were the happiest I have lived. There were many hardships and dangers, of course, that called on all a man had of endurance and bravery; but when all went well there was no other life so pleasant. Most of the time we were solitary adventurers in a great land as fresh and new as a spring morning, and we were free and full of the zest of those who dared.”

Homesick for Texas: Songs & Tributes to the Lone Star State

To my mind, the signature song about longing for Texas is this one:

I wanna go home with the Armadillo;
Good country music from Amarillo and Abilene;
The friendliest people and the prettiest women you’ve ever seen.

That’s “London Homesick Blues” sung by Jerry Jeff Walker and written by Gary P. Nunn.

But there are dozens of songs that make Texpatriates (Texans forced to live outside of Texas a
while) a little misty eyed. Like “Amarillo By Morning” by George Strait:

Amarillo by morning, up from San Antone.
Everything that I’ve got is just what I’ve got on.
When that sun is high in that Texas sky
I’ll be bucking it to county fair.
Amarillo by morning, Amarillo I’ll be there.

And what Texan isn’t moved by these immortal words?

Let’s go to Luckenbach Texas
With Waylon and Willie and the boys

The theme of Texas homesickness is a common theme in our music, our folklore, and our literature.

Did you ever hear the story about the Montana cowboy who died and went to heaven? St. Peter was giving him a tour when the Montanan looked up to see a bunch of cowboys in jail, struggling to get out. The Montanan said to St. Peter: “I’m a little surprised to see a jail in heaven!”

St. Peter said, “Oh that’s not a jail. That’s the Texas Detention Center.”

Montanan said, “Oh I understand. I did some drovin’ with those ole boys. When they get to a new town they can do some damage.”

“That’s not the problem,” said St. Peter. “The problem is they get so homesick they keep tryin’ to sneak out the Pearly Gates to go back to Texas. So we have to keep ‘em locked up a while till they learn to like it here.”

We find the theme in Larry McMurtry’s work, too. In his little masterpiece of a novel, “All My Friends Are Going To Be Strangers,” the central character, Danny Deck, is leaving Texas for the first time in his life. He is driving just west of El Paso and about to cross the border when he says:

“It was strange, leaving Texas… It was all behind me, north to south, not lying there exactly, but more like looming there over the car… some genie, some god, towering over the road. I really felt it… I had left without asking permission or earning my freedom. Texas let me go, ominously quiet. It hadn’t gone away. It was there behind me.”

When he returned to Texas after several months, Danny realized what many a traveler has realized – that there is no place like home. He says:

“It was the sky that was Texas, the sky that welcomed me back… The sky was what I had been missing, and seeing it again in its morning brightness made me realize suddenly why I hadn’t been myself for many months. It had such depth and such spaciousness and such incredible compass, it took so much in and circled one with such a tremendous generous space that it was impossible not to feel more intensely with it above you.”

Reminds me of what my brother Redneck Dave once told me. He said, “I reckon everybody everywhere misses their home, but if there was a way to measure the mightiness of missin’, I’d betcha big that Texans would come out pretty much on top.”

I can’t argue with that.

The Texan Origins of the Word Maverick

This is a biography of a word. It is about a word that was essentially born in Texas, grew up to achieve success here, and eventually became famous the world over. It has now gone well beyond its modest roots as a simple noun and transformed itself into impressive, symbolic fame as a metaphor.

The word is maverick. Maverick got its start in San Antonio, Texas, more than 150 years ago. In the world of words, it is a star: James Garner played Maverick in the TV western of the same name in the ’50s and ’60s, Tom Cruise was Maverick in Top Gun, Senator John McCain’s nickname is Maverick, and in Texas have the world champion Dallas Mavericks basketball team. The word means one who shuns custom, the lone wolf, one who blazes their own trail and is willing to go against the crowd, an independent thinker.

Those are the more symbolic meanings of maverick, but most people know that the word’s original meaning referred to unbranded cattle. Any cow that was unbranded was a maverick. But what fewer people know is that the original herd of unbranded cattle that launched the expression was owned by a man named Samuel Maverick. Those unbranded cows were Maverick’s cows. That is how the term came about. Ironic that his failure to brand his cattle branded his name in perpetuity.

Some say that this was his clever means of claiming all unbranded cattle as his own.

“There’s another unbranded calf. That’s mine.” Not true.

The fact of the matter is that Sam was not all that interested in ranching. He was a land baron, a real estate investor. He was more interested in acquiring land than actively farming or ranching it. He at one time owned so much land in Texas that he ranked up there with Richard King and Charles Goodnight. There is even a county named for him – Maverick County. Eagle Pass is the county seat.

I think it is a shame that Samuel Maverick became famous for his unbranded cattle because there are dozens of far more impressive ways that he demonstrated his maverick nature. He was a rare and unsung hero of the Texas revolution. In so being, he often lived up, quite impressively, to what his name would come to mean.

As a rich lawyer in South Carolina (with a degree from Yale), everybody in the Maverick clan expected young Samuel would take over one of his father’s many businesses. But he didn’t. He shocked them all when he chose a different path. He said that he was going to Texas to seek his fortune.

He arrived in San Antonio in 1835 as the winds of war were blowing. No one was buying land then because no one was sure they could hold it. Sam bucked that trend. He jumped in quickly and bought huge tracts of land around San Antonio and further east on along the Brazos. He seemed to believe in the old folk wisdom that you should buy land when no one wants it and sell it when everyone does.

He quickly became a trusted and admired man in San Antonio and joined the Alamo militia.

In fact, he would have died at the Alamo had he not been selected by his fellow volunteers to sign the Texas Declaration of Independence as their representative. So he was a maverick on March 2, 1836, when he risked his life, along with 59 others Texans, by the act of signing what Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna considered a treasonous document.

After independence was won, Samuel Maverick served as mayor of San Antonio, again putting a target on his back as a leading citizen of a rebellious city. Santa Anna had not given up on getting Texas back and so kept a list of those who were his enemies.

Six years after Independence, Santa Anna struck again. He sent General Adrian Woll to rattle his sabre in San Antonio and kill all those who took up arms against him. Maverick organized a resistance on the roof of the Maverick building. It was comprised of 53 men. Though they killed 14 and wounded 27 in the initial skirmish, they were soon surrounded by 900 Mexican troops and were forced to surrender.

Fortunately for Maverick and his friends, Woll did not carry out orders to execute them, probably because they were more valuable alive. Woll instead took many of these prominent Texans as prisoners and marched them back 1,000 brutal miles to Perote prison. One of them died along the way. Even today, at the Witte Museum, you can the water gourd that sustained Sam during that tumultuous march across Texas and Mexico.

Sam and friends were put into dark cells, chained together, and subjected to forced labor. Sam, as the representative of his men, asked for better conditions and was put into solitary confinement just for asking.

After a couple of months, Sam was told that Santa Anna would offer him his freedom in exchange for signing a document saying that Texas had been illegally seized and should be returned to Mexico. Lesser men might have taken the deal. But Maverick refused. He wrote, “I cannot bring myself to think that it would be in the best interest of Texas to reunite with Mexico. This being my settled opinion, I cannot sacrifice the interest of my country even to obtain my liberty, still less can I say so when such is not my opinion, for I regard a lie as a crime and one which I cannot commit. I must, therefore, make up my mind to wear my chains, galling as they are.”

While Sam was in the dungeon, unbeknownst to him, San Antonians elected him as their Congressional Representative in the Republic of Texas.

His release was finally negotiated by General Waddy Thompson, a family friend who was also trusted by Santa Anna. He did not have to sign anything. But Sam refused to leave without his San Antonio friends. He waited for them to be freed, too, which happened within a few days. Then they all traveled back to San Antonio together.

When Sam left the prison, he took with him the chains that had bound him all those long months as a lifelong reminder of the incalculable value of freedom.

Special thanks to Mary Fisher of San Antonio.

Texas Demonyms: Dallasites, Victorians, and Everything In-Between

A demonym describes the inhabitants of a place. With so many cities and counties in Texas, it’s hard to keep track of who is what from where. Word scholar W.F. Strong has a helpful list to keep you on track.

For places ending in “s”, add “-ites”

Dallas – Dallasites
Dumas – Dumasites

For places ending in “on,” add “-ian”

Houston – Houstonians
Denton – Dentonians
Sinton – Sintonians

For places ending in “o,” add “-an”

El Paso – El Pasoans
San Angelo – San Angeloans
Amarillo – Amarilloans

For places ending in “i,” add “-an”

Corpus Christi – Corpus Christians
Bucareli – Bucarelians
Miami – Miamians

For places ending in “y,” drop the “y” and add “-ian” or “-an”

Bay City – Bay Citians
Wimberley – Wimberleans
Albany – Albanians

For places ending in consonant or silent “e,” add “-er” or “-ite”

Edinburg – Edinburgers
Rosenberg – Rosenbergers
Fredericksburg – Fredericksburgers
Alpine – Alpine or Alpinites
Commerce – Commerceites or Commercians
Comfort – Comforters

For places ending in “polis,” change “polis” to “-politans”

Montopolis – Montopolitans

For places ending in “a,” add “ns”

Odessa – Odessans
Riviera – Rivierans
Victoria – Victorians

A few unusual demonyms to keep in mind:

Alice – Alicians
Naples – Neoplitans
Liverpool – Liverpudlians
Oxford – Oxonians
Leander – Leanderthals
Martin – Martinites or Martians
Palestine – Palestinians
Marfa – Marfans or Marfalites
Moscow – Muscovites
London – Londoners
Refugio – Refurians
Falfurrias – Falfurrians or Falfurrianos
Mission – Missionaries or Missionites
Paris – Parisians
San Antonio – San Antonians

The Life of Tom Landry, the Man in the Hat

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.”

Words, They are a Changin’

Slang is the working class of words. Carl Sandburg said “slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.”

But slang is always changing. For an older guy like me, It’s hard to keep up with.

Did you know that “on fleek,” “squad,” and “lit” are on their way out? Neither did I. Those words are going out before I knew they were in. Hell, I just learned “hipster” a few months ago, which likely proves I’m not one. It also shows I’m late to learn new slang. No surprises there. By the time I catch up with a new movement, it has generally moved on.

Millennials, by contrast, change slang faster than Taylor Swift changes boyfriends.

One trend that I have noticed lately is how many words or expressions common 20 years ago have either disappeared altogether or reversed meanings.

“Parking” is a case in point. Twenty years ago parking was the term for finding a quiet spot on a country road and enjoying some intimate time with your date.

That meaning is gone. If you bring up that term in front of today’s college students, they will say, “I know. The parking problem on campus is terrible.” If you explain what it used to mean they will say, “Oh, you mean Netflix and chill!”

“Shade” is something I’ve always tried to sit in. Now, evidently, it is something you can throw.

“Sick” is the new cool. “Sick” used to mean ill, but now it means that something is hip: “That is a sick tune you’re playin’.” Wicked is also strangely good. “Leah, you’re sick and wicked.” That’s a compliment!

“Savage” used to be a word no one wanted to be associated with. Now it works as praise. “That motorcyle jump was savage, dude.” Or you can use it as a verb, “You savaged that Snickers bar.”

“Dope?” used to be an idiot – as in “He’s a dope.” Now, it is something or someone who is super cool, as in “that’s so dope” or “nobody’s dope as me.” There are even caps that sport the word DOPE right up front. A few decades ago that would have been a punishment.

“Howdy” has largely been replaced, at least among some millennials by “‘Sup,” a contraction of “What’s up?” But I’m sure there’s still a few young “howdiers” out there.

“Awesome” has changed in the sense that it used to be a powerful word, a word that could bench press 500 pounds. It was reserved for Godly things, for divine things. You would use it for a crimson sunset over El Capitan in West Texas. But now this sublime word is used promiscuously – as in “those are awesome tacos” or “You’ll be here in ten minutes? Awesome.” Inflation has set in. “Awesome” has lost its awesomeness. The same is true for “amazing.”

We have some nonverbal reversals, too. Wearing your cap backwards or sideways used to be considered nerdy. Wearing it cocked to the side once made you seem like a clown. Today, wearing it that way can be “dope.” But only in youth culture. If I were to do it, I would look like an old clown. Best for me to stick to Stetsons.

Used to be that wearing your shirt tail out was slovenly. Now, it is stylish. Wearing your shirt tucked in is considered nerdy. Out is in and in is out. Unless you are talking about Western fashion where the tucked tradition mostly prevails.

One word that seems to have weathered the decades without changing is “cool.” “Cool” was cool in the sixties and it is still cool today. And not only is it cross-generational, it is cross-cultural, too. “Cool” is cool in the African-American world. It’s cool in the hispanic world and it’s cool in white culture. It’s cool in rap and it’s cool in country. It’s transcontinental as well. People around the world who don’t speak English seem to know at least two words: “okay” and “cool.” “Cool” is singularly diverse with diverse acceptance. And that’s awesome.

A younger, perpetually cooler friend heard me making these observations and he said to me, “Don’t be throwin’ shade on our slang. You just need to get woke, dude.”

That’s probably true. Workin’ on it.

‘Til next time, YOLO y’all.

Oscar Wilde’s Tour of Texas Gives Us Life

Oscar Wilde said, “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about.” He would be pleased to know that we’re going to talk a good deal about him in the next few minutes.

Few people know that this great playwright, Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde, the author of “A Picture of Dorian Grey” and “The Importance of Being Earnest”, lectured in Texas in 1882. He was just 27 years old.

He liked reciting his entire name like that to show off his Irish heritage. He said he had been shedding names since he was a boy and hoped one day to be known simply as Wilde.

At 27, he was already enormously famous in Europe as a writer, theater critic, an architectural historian, a Classicist, and the leader of the Aesthetic Movement. He was known for dressing opulently in purples and brocades, often with an eccentric sunflower in his lapel. So there was great curiosity about what would happen when this Irish Dandy, as he was known, lectured in the macho world of Texas cowboys.

When he had passed through customs in New York City, he famously said, “I have nothing to declare but my genius.” So, many Texans, being Texcentric as we are, wondered what the genius would think about our state. Well, for the most part, he liked Texas.

As he took the train to Galveston, through East Texas and Houston, he was fascinated by all the alligators lying lazily on the muddy banks of the bayous.

His first lecture was in Galveston, which was the largest city in Texas at the time. Oscar loved it there. He said, “Galveston, set like a jewel in a crystal sea, was beautiful. Its fine beach, it’s shady avenues of oleander, and its delightful sea breezes were something to be enjoyed.”

He said, “The people of Galveston were wonderful to me. They made me an honorary Colonel in the Texas Rangers. So I wrote immediately to all my friends and told them that they should henceforth address me as Colonel Wilde.”

From Galveston, he traveled to San Antonio by train, in what he regarded as the monstrous Texas heat. Incidentally, he said that traveling by train, whizzing by everything at 40 miles an hour, was no proper way to see new country. The proper way to see new country was on a horse.

In San Antonio, Wilde stayed at the Menger Hotel, which of course still exists today. And even in 1882, the Menger was known for luxury. And so was Wilde. He often said, “Let me be surrounded by luxury, I can do without necessities!”

He toured the famous missions in San Antonio. He said, “The San Jose Mission was the finest example of beautiful architecture I came across in all of the Americas.”

He was quite moved by “those old Spanish churches with their picturesque remains of tower and dome, and their handsome carved stonework, standing in the…sunshine of the Texas prairie.”

As for the Alamo, though, he described the “noble” structure’s condition as “monstrous.” He thought it a shame that Texas had allowed this most “sacred of shrines to fall into such Philistine conditions.” The Alamo had been, in those days, used as an Army depot.

He lectured in San Antonio on architecture and interior design. He loved the local use of the natural wood and stone that was so available in the hill country, but warned about the overuse of horrid wallpaper. He believed that a child raised in the ambiance of such wallpaper could later use it as a “defense for a life of crime.”

Wilde was asked in Louisiana how his lecture in San Antonio had gone and he said that the women had loved it, but the men, not so much. Indeed, the men were quite a distraction, he said, “walking in and out with their squeaky boots and clangy spurs. The men were going out for beer, you see. Evidently,” he said, “men in Texas cannot survive more than an hour between beers.”

If he were to return today, 135 years later, he would likely find us about the same.

‘You May All Go to Hell’ And 9 More Great Texas Quotes

1. “You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas.” Davy Crockett said this angrily after losing his Tennessee bid for the U.S. Congress.

I think he really said, “Y’all can go to hell,” but grammatical purity likely corrupted the original transcription.

2. Mary Lasswell, who grew up in Brownsville and wrote the famous book “I’ll Take Texas” said:

“I am forced to conclude that God made Texas on his day off, for pure entertainment, just to prove that all that diversity could be crammed into one section of earth by a really top hand.”

3. “If a man’s from Texas, he’ll tell you. If not, why embarrass him by asking.” John Gunther is credited with this. Many people think Gunther was a big gruff Texas oil man. He wasn’t. He was a famous journalist who published the quote in his incredible, best-selling book “Inside U.S.A.”

4. Speaking to the size of Texas, Wallace O. Chariton, said:

“In the covered wagon days, if a baby was born in Texarkana while the family was crossing into the Lone Star State, by the time they reached El Paso, the baby would be in the third grade.”

Please don’t do the math on this and write to tell me that at ten miles a day this would only take three months. We don’t need math purists debating Texas hyperbole.

5. Conrad Hilton bought his very first hotel in Cisco, and so really launched his empire in Texas. He said:

“There’s a vastness here and I believe that the people who are born here breathe that vastness into their soul. They dream big dreams and think big thoughts, because there is nothing to hem them in.”

6. Where does this attitude come from? Larry McMurtry thinks it comes from the influence of the old Texas frontier. McMurtry said:

“What my whole body of work says… is that Texans spent so long getting past the frontier experience because that experience is so overwhelmingly powerful. Imagine yourself as a small hopeful immigrant family, alone on the Staked Plains, with the Comanche and the Kiowa still on the loose. The power of such experience will not sift out of the descendants of that venturer in one generation and produce Middletown. Elements of that primal venturing will surely inform several generations.”

In more accessible language, McMurtry also famously said: “Only a rank degenerate would drive 1,500 miles across Texas without eating a chicken fried steak.”

7. James Michener, who wrote the 1985 blockbuster, TEXAS, explained the state as follows:

“What you Northerners never appreciate… is that Texas is so big that you can live your life within its limits and never give a damn about what anyone in Boston or San Francisco thinks… A writer can build a perfectly satisfactory reputation in Texas and he doesn’t give a damn about what critics in Kalamazoo think. His universe is big enough to gratify any ambition. Same with businessmen. Same with newspapers. Same with everything.”

8. George W. Bush reflected poignantly about his years in West Texas:

“Those were comfortable, carefree years. The word I’d use now is idyllic. On Friday nights, we cheered on the Bulldogs of Midland High. On Sunday mornings, we went to church. Nobody locked their doors. Years later, when I would speak about the American Dream, it was Midland I had in mind.”

9. Here’s perhaps my favorite quote of all. It is by John Steinbeck, from his memoir “Travels With Charley: In Search of America.”

“I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion. And this is true to the extent that people either passionately love Texas or passionately hate it and, as in other religions, few people dare to inspect it for fear of losing their bearings in mystery or paradox. But I think there will be little quarrel with my feeling that Texas is one thing. For all its enormous range of space, climate, and physical appearance, and for all the internal squabbles, contentions, and strivings, Texas has a tight cohesiveness perhaps stronger than any other section of America. Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study and the passionate possession of all Texans.”

10, And we must hear from Molly Ivins, too: “I think provincialism is an endemic characteristic with mankind. I think everyone everywhere is provincial. But it is particularly striking with Texans, and we tend to be very Tex-centric.”

It is the summative meaning of all these quotes that gives power to our most popular modern slogan: “Don’t Mess with Texas.”

The Mysterious Texan and the Ranchers’ Convention

The story goes that there was a convention of landowners – mega farmers and big ranchers – up in Denver. There were four men sittin’ around in the bar there in the fancy resort, enjoying happy hour. Three of them were swappin’ stories about their farms and ranches and generally braggin’ about their land holdings. A fourth man, a Texan, was off to the side a bit. You knew he was from Texas because of the Lone Star hatband on his Stetson. He was not much involved in the conversation, just readin’ the paper and half-listenin’ to the others.

One of the talkers said, “I have about 8,122 acres of land along the Western Slopes of the Rockies here in Colorado. Have over 1,000 horses, I bet, if I could ever manage to count ‘em all. Probably the highest ranch in the Western U.S. – we call it El Cielo Ranch because it’s so close to Heaven.”

Next man said, “Sounds real nice. I have kind of the opposite. I own El Diablo Farms in Southern California’s Imperial Valley. Always hotter then the Devil down there. But we have over 9,500 irrigated acres. It is a desert, but just add water and watch the miracles happen. We grow produce faster than you can harvest it. Like a license to print money!” he said, laughing loudly.

Third guy said, “I don’t have nearly that much land. I have about 6,000 acres in the fertile Willamette Valley. Have the largest dairy operation in Oregon. Over 3,000 registered Holstein cows. Scottish Dairies it’s called. Supply milk to half of Portland. Only problem is the Willamette River runs right down the middle of my farms and makes navigating my own property difficult. It’s a beautiful problem to have, though.”

The Texan was still sittin’ quietly and then one of ‘em says, “Hey, Tex, how about you? How much land do you have?”

He said, “Well, down in Texas it’s considered unseemly to ask a man how much land he owns or how many head of cattle he runs. We talk about land in terms of sections, not acres, but, since you gentlemen revealed your cards, I guess I can oblige your curiosity. I suppose, all told,” he said, looking up at the ceiling, as though mentally counting, “I have 200 acres.”

The three men burst out laughing. The Californian said, “200 acres! What the hell you doin’ here at this gathering of big ranchers and farmers? What do you call your little ranchito, Tex?”

And the guys laughed some more.

“Well,” drawled the Texan, “I don’t have a name for it myself, but people all round Texas like to call it – Downtown Dallas.”

Things got mighty quiet. You could hear minds bein’ blown. You could hear jaws droppin’ – hittin’ the metaphorical floor.

The Texan drank the last bit of his Shiner Bock, got up and said, “Any you boys want to sell your land, let me know. I’ll dip into my petty cash account and buy you out.”

With that he tipped his Stetson politely and said, “Y’all have a nice evenin’, now.”

Three Secrets of Life From My 101-Year-Old Mother

My mom lived to be 101 and five months. She said once you reached 99, you started counting your age like a newborn – in months: 99 and six months, 99 and nine months. She used to advise that if you wanted to live to be a hundred, you should live to be 99 and then be very, very careful.

Mary B. Strong, whose name doubled as her motto, was a tough, no-nonsense woman. A Daughter of the American Revolution, survivor of the Great Depression; an honest as the day is long woman of the Texas soil. She had what John Wayne called True Grit. I think anyone who lives so long, one in about 40,000, must have True Grit.

So what was the secret to her longevity?

She was always willing to try new things – never one to say, “I’m too old for that.” She bought her first computer when she was 88, was on the Internet writing emails at 92 and had 115 Facebook friends when she died. She refused to let technology leave her behind. Even when her hands were gnarled by arthritis and she could no longer type, she would dictate her emails to those who would type for her. Just a few days before she passed, she was admiring my iPhone, saying, “Oh, I’m gonna buy one of those for myself.”

She didn’t care about the phone, really. She saw the potential for a thousand pictures of grandkids conveniently carried in her purse.

A second secret was that she never stopped moving. She mowed her own lawn ’til she was 85 and never stopped gardening. When she was 99, I asked her what she would do if she could be 18 for a day, and she said, “Oh, I would RUN. I would get out on that Galveston beach and just run until I ran out of island.”

She continued to do her own dishes and laundry right up to her last days. She went to church three times a week, never allowing most illness to keep her away. She’d say, “ I won’t feel any worse at church, and I might feel better.”

She was courageous. For her 101st birthday, she was asking me to take her for a ride on my motorcycle. I told her I‘d have to strap her down with bungee cords and she said that would be fine. Always ready for the next adventure.

Third was her diet. She ate pretty much what she pleased. Eggs and bacon, BBQ, cheeseburgers, Mexican food, a Coca-Cola every mid-morning – and a bowl of ice cream before bed. Her only compromise was in portions – always small. And no alcohol at all.

She had great pride. Her measure of people was in whether or not they took pride in what they did and how they lived. Sometimes her standards were unfair, like the time she visited Arizona and complained about the shabby lawns out there. I reminded her that it was a desert and she said, “But if they had pride, they’d have nice yards.”

That was her central value, I suppose: Pride. She always said to me, “I don’t care much what you do in life, just make sure you live a life you can be proud of.” And if she didn’t personally like something, like the new truck I’d bought, she’d say, “Well, it’s not my kinda truck, but I’m proud of it for ya.”

And that pride she looked for her in others was evident in her. For her 101st birthday, I took her to the hair salon, a place she called the beauty parlor. On the way home I told her how lovely she looked. She leaned over my way as if she was sharing a secret. She said, “You know, a lot of people think I look only about 90.”

Give your Mom a big bear hug for Mother’s Day. And say the four words she cherishes most: “I love you, Mom.”

The Airline That Started With A Cocktail Napkin

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.

Listen: 12 More Words Texans Mispronounce

There are three kinds of Texans: those with an accent, those without an accent, and those who don’t think they have an accent, but do.

About a year ago, I made a list of the 12 most commonly mispronounced words in Texas. Well, they weren’t absolutely unique to Texas – some were Southernisms, but they were certainly common in Texas. I have now added to that list. I’m calling this commentary, “Mispronouncing in Texas 2.0.” As I did last time, let me assure you, this is all in fun. I’m not claiming that all us Texans talk this way. Some of us do and some of us don’t. It’s just fun to look at our own idiosyncrasies sometimes. If we can’t laugh at ourselves, we miss half the humor in the world. So here we go.

Purty for pretty: even used oxymoronically, as in “She’s purty ugly.” Sorry to tell you but that old truck of yours is lookin’ purty ugly.

Thang for thing: everything is ever-e-thang. Hand me that thang over there. Even my brother Redneck Dave puts it in a lullaby. “Hush little baby don’t say a thang, Papa’s gonna buy you a diamond rang.” Like they say, must be a Texas thang.

Tiajuana: “Went down to Tiajuana for my nieces wedding, came back with the Tiajuana Two Step.” It’s actually just Tijuana. Tijuana. No extra “a”. When you say Tia-juana you are saying Aunt Juana.

Terlingua has similar issue: it’s not Teralingua, Texas. Just Terlingua. Means three languages.

Valentimes for Valentines: I’ve heard this more than frequently around Valentines Day, especially from younger people. Gonna get my girlfriend some flowers for Valentimes. I guess they connect it to that time of year when love is in the air.

Volumptuous for voluptuous: “She’s hot. She’s Volumptuous.” Probably not. Now if she’s voluptuous, probably so.

Irregardless for regardless: irregardless is not a mispronunciation. It is just not a word. And what is more, irregardless is not a word regardless of how forcefully you say it.

Silicone Valley for Silicon Valley: really different places. Silicon Valley is where they design computers and cell phones and such. Silicone Valley would be where movies of the adult variety are from.

Expresso: it is Espresso. No X. You might take the expressway to get an espresso, but no “X” is needed for the beverage.

Calvary for Cavalry: when people need help they send for the Cavalry, not the Calvary. Calvary is the name of the hill where Jesus was crucified and likely the source of the confusion.

Salmon for Salmon: the “l” in salmon is silent. So don’t ask for smoked saLmon. Smoked salmon will do. However, if you order in Spanish, or Italian, you can use the “l” and all is well.

That’s my latest list of mispronunciations, but don’t think I’m being unduly critical. As soon as I’m off the radio I’m likely to slip back into some of these comfortable long vowels and lazy consonants myself, except for irregardless because my mama worked that one out of me when I was about ten.