Texas Standard » Stories from Texas

What’s the best Whataburger you ever had? That’s a question a friend of mine likes to ask everybody. Seems a strange question, but in Texas it isn’t. When he first asked me I told him I could not tell him about the best Whataburger I ever had until I first told him about the time I most wanted one. Many years ago I took a job in Africa for the period of a year. While there, I just couldn’t…

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Anytime I hear someone say something like this: “Y’all ‘bout fixin’ to head out?” I think it’s highly likely that they are from Texas. You have y’all and fixin’ to in the same sentence and a couple of contractions. We do love our contractions, which, if you don’t recall from your halcyon days of grammar school, are words squeezed together to make shorter ones, with apostrophes standing in for what’…

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Uncle Dale was the first grownup to come home in the afternoon. He wasn’t our real Uncle – we just called him that. Back then, it was considered rude for a child to call an adult only by their first name, so we had lots of aunts and uncles. Uncle Dale got up when it was still dark and walked a mile to work, where he put in hard days at the Halliburton yard. At 3:30 in the afternoon, he would…

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Every destructive hurricane is remembered in a unique way. Katrina is largely remembered for levees breaking and the paralyzing chaos that followed. The Galveston Hurricane of 1900, whose anniversary is in two days, is remembered for a horrific number – 6-thousand. 6-thousand people perished. It was the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history. I believe that Hurricane Harvey will be remembered…

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By W. F. Strong I’ve spent a good deal of time over the last couple of years contemplating all things Texas inside of Texas. So I thought I would take a look at Texas OUTSIDE of Texas. There is a lot out there. First, I suspect you’ve heard that in Norway the word “Texas” means something like “crazy.” More like wild and crazy. Let me use it in a sentence as the Norwegians would: “That party…

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The first person to waltz across Texas – okay, waltz is the wrong word (just tipping my hat to Ernest Tubb there). The first European to walk across Texas was Cabeza de Vaca. And he did it barefoot and mostly naked. Why? We shall see. His full name was Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. Bet they just called him “Al.” “Alvar” means “guardian.” Turns out that he tried to be just that for the indigenous…

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There are thousands of songs about Texas. For example, all the way over in England, Duran-Duran – the British new wave pop group, dropped a top 20 (#14) song called “Rio” back in ’82. And you have “All My Ex’s Live In Texas” and “The Yellow Rose of Texas” and “The Road Goes on Forever,” as does the list. Pat Green sang in “Songs about Texas” – “there’s a song in every town…

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As told by W. F. Strong This story comes under the heading of a Texas classic. It is folklore. I don’t know for sure that its origin is in Texas, but from the oldest versions I know of, going back 30 plus years, they have Texas linguistic markers. So I believe there’s a good chance that the story originated here. In any case the story has migrated around the world. I’ve heard Australian…

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The most expensive property currently on the market in Texas is a 2300 acre estate in Lago Vista. It is near Austin, on Lake Travis, going for a mere 68 million. Only 30 thousand an acre. Get out your checkbooks. That’s quite a contrast compared to the deals the first Texans were getting on real estate. Stephen F. Austin charged 12 and a half cents an acre for a league of land…

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Larry McMurtry is, by many standards, Texas’ best writer. He wrote “Horseman, Pass By” to wide acclaim when he was just 25, which became the movie “HUD,” starring Paul Newman. When he was thirty, he published “The Last Picture Show,” which won him even greater critical praise and the movie that followed launched Cybil Shepard’s career. “Terms of Endearment” is another of his great novels.

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