Texas Standard » Stories from Texas

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.

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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…

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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.

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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”…

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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”…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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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.

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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…

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