Category Archives: Texana

Just because

Posted on March 28, 2008 | Comments Off on Just because

Just because Anna Nicole was a beaut. Nevermind the trainwreck at the end. She was the pride of Mexia.

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Posted in Texana

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Drawing the black bean

Posted on March 26, 2008 | Comments Off on Drawing the black bean

A lot of people in Texas use this expression: "I/he/she drew the black bean," and some of them even know what it refers to. But I bet there’s more than a few–even some natives–who don’t.

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The last cascarone

Posted on March 26, 2008 | Comments Off on The last cascarone

Mr. B. was livid. He saw fresh, red and blue eggshell on the patio this morning and he was just positive that somebody had crushed the last cascarones before he could get to them. He only got to do ONE, he insisted. Probably two, I muttered, having noted Easter morning that only two were missing from the carton. Okay, he said, two. And smiled. Now he remembered. What he was looking at was the aftermath of the cascarone battle he’d had with his buddy Cyrus Sunday afternoon. A bit behind in my housekeeping, as usual.

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Posted in Mr. Boy, Rancho Roly Poly, Texana

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Honky tonk

Posted on March 24, 2008 | Comments Off on Honky tonk

Boy, talk about a confused and strained derivation for a phrase: Honky tonk sure has one. Does it come from the sound of honking geese misleading a bunch of entertainment-seeking cowboys, Ernest A. Tonk’s upright grand pianos, or a slur for whites taken from bohunk or hunky? As for the latter, I am willing to concede Juke joint, or Juke, to Southern black culture, but not Honky tonk, or Tonk, which seems to have originated among whites in Texas and Oklahoma. Once upon a time, neither a juke or a tonk was considered very reputable, but in recent decades both have become so romanticized as to be reliably commercial.

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Posted in Texana

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The Geezinslaws

Posted on March 23, 2008 | Comments Off on The Geezinslaws

I have it on good authority that the Geezinslaws started their set Saturday night at the Broken Spoke honky tonk with the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. Now I know that country music artists, with the exception, perhaps, of the Dixie Chicks, tend to be very patriotic. But this is the first time I have heard of one bringing out a flag and conducting a roomful of dancers in saying the pledge–before getting to numbers with lyrics such as "I gave her my ring, she gave me the finger." My source, who is from Fort Worth, was there after attending a crawfish boil. She said she was shocked, not by the lyrics, nor the pledge, but because the band didn’t have a fiddle. Fact that it was the night before Easter, when the crowd could be expected to be small, might have had something to do with it. But she said that if a band showed up at a Fort Worth tonk without a fiddle player, they’d have to go get one in a hurry.

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Posted in Texana

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Horned frogs folly

Posted on March 21, 2008 | Comments Off on Horned frogs folly

Texas Christian University in Fort Worth apparently thinks anti-American, anti-Jew, anti-white Black Liberation Theology is mighty cool. Why, their Brite Divinity School (related to the Disciples of Christ) plans to honor racist demogogue Jeremiah Wright, Barry’s paranoid pastor and windbag mentor, who says in multiple videos so far available here (who knows for how long) that the government invented AIDS to kill blacks (nevermind that it got all those white gays first), 9/11 was "the chickens coming home to roost" and we should all sing "God damn America, that’s in the Bible." Anticipating a little controversy (gee, you think?) Brite has reaffirmed its decision and moved the March 29 shindig off-campus. I always thought the TCU Horned Frogs were kind of goofy. Now I know they’re actually insane.

Via JammieWearingFool 

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Posted in Texana

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New Texas History Movies

Posted on March 19, 2008 | Comments Off on New Texas History Movies

Browsing through Texana author Mike Cox’s very occasional book review blog (as in about one entry a year) I ran across his review of the new, updated Texas History Movies comic book. He liked it, and us being former newspaper colleagues, that was good enough for me. I’ve ordered a copy from Amazon for myself and Mr. B. The original was produced in the 1920s by my great grandfather’s old outfit, the Magnolia Petroleum Co. (he was an original investor) but all these years later it was deemed too racist for reissue. But it’s hard to keep a good book down. So The Texas State Historical Association teamed up with the late author/illustrator Jack Jackson to produce an updated version that, presumably, won’t offend anybody. Mike, who read a reissued edition of the original as a schoolboy in 1959, says the new one, published in 2007, still makes the history of early Texas an exciting kid’s read. I’m looking forward to it.

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Posted in Library, Texana

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