To understand Texas, especially Texas politicians, there are 10 things you should know about Texans. These 10 facts will explain a lot.

1. Many of the people who moved to what is now Texas in the  1820s and 1830s were illegal aliens from the United States who sneaked into what was then the northernmost state of Mexico. That includes some of my ancestors.

2. Texas was originally much bigger. Right after the Texas Revolution (1836) it included parts of several other future states and extended all the way up to Idaho. Texans have never forgotten!

3. For 9 years Texans had our own independent country, the Republic of Texas. One of the first things they did was expel the Indians. How mean was that?!

4. The Republic of Texas legally reserved the right to secede when it joined the United States in 1845. Our, uh, esteemed (or steamed?) governor apparently remembers that—if nothing else. He does not seem to remember how badly things turned out when we last tested that theory in 1861. (Hint: Civil War. Confederacy. ‘nough said.)

5. People like guns here—even non-Texans who just live here. I mean, people really, really like guns here. So be real careful who you get mad at you.

6. Hunting is sort of a sacrament—right after football and pickup trucks. A lot of people just plain like to kill things. They consider hunting and killing things a God-given right.

7. Right up through the Viet Nam war, Texas had contributed the most soldiers to every single U.S. war since the Texas Revolution. We might still hold that record; I just haven’t checked lately.

8. Texans love to drive—fast—and consider it a God-given right to do so, like…well, like hunting and like carrying a gun.

9. We love our state, consider it unique, and take great pride in being Texans. “Don’t mess with Texas!” Yes, that phrase was coined to stop littering, but it stuck around because it expressed something primal about us.

10. There are a lot of smart people, a lot of dumb people, a lot of mean people, and a lot of crazy people in Texas. Unfortunately some of the folks in charge fall into all four groups. Doesn’t that just explain a whole lot about certain political events in recent years? Yeah, I thought so, too.

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What do you call it when everyone cooks something and brings it a gathering to share? When I was a child that was called a “covered dish” dinner—or lunch or supper. We used to have those at church a lot, as I recall.

Covered Dish Meals

They were called covered-dish meals because naturally whatever you cooked had to be covered so that you could transport it. Women collected cooking and serving dishes and utensils just so they could contribute nicely to covered dish meals. They also collected and refined special recipes.

People loved those dinners, where all the cooks brought their specialty dishes. Certain dishes were so popular that you had to get in line early, or there would not be any left for you. Running out, of course, was a great compliment to the cook.

Potluck Meals

On the other hand, if you were at somebody’s house and stayed till kind of near lunch or supper time, you were likely to be invited to “take pot luck.” That meant to share in just whatever the family was having anyway, no matter how scrappy.

In the South, including East Texas, a potluck invitation was tendered sort of apologetically. Because Texas hospitality requires cooking and serving the guest’s favorite dishes and/or the hostess’s most renowned specialties—and with a potluck dinner there was not time to do that.

So sometimes you got a splendid meal, maybe a pot of stew or some wonderful cold fried chicken or roast beef sandwiches. Other times, you got hastily scrambled eggs, toast, and dabs of reheated vegetables. Good luck or bad luck, it was just whatever was in the pot (so to speak).

Collaborative Meals Today

So how is it that people started referring to covered dish meals as potlucks? All I can figure is that they did not realize that the best covered-dish meals were organized. One or two people volunteered to coordinate, and everyone else signed up in advance to bring veggies, entrees, desserts, bread, or chips and dips. There was no worry that there would be mostly salads and no entrees, because someone coordinated that.

So I guess if people just showed up with whatever they felt like, with no coordination, it could feel sort of like pot luck…maybe. But that’s no excuse.

We need to bring back the good old Texas term “covered dish dinner” (or lunch). And while we’re at it, folks, use a sign-up sheet to make sure we aren’t all trying to make a meal on just bread and chips. Don’t you think?

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Texas population map. Image via Wikipedia

As a Texan with roots in East Texas, I am well aware that many Texas expressions originate in other parts of the South. Some of our sayings are used elsewhere in America, too.

Some of those sayings we use the same way. Others we have our own slightly different meaning for.

For example, awhile back I wrote about getting the hell out of Dodge, which is generally used (in other places) to mean quickly leaving a place where you are unwelcome or that you find very unpleasant. Around Houston, at least, we use it to mean getting away on a vacation or even just getting out of the office for awhile.

Recently I wrote about an old Texas expression my grandmother used to use that I had not heard in a long time, “butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.” I was not sure whether it was a general  Southern expression, and I didn’t bother to look it up, but I wondered.

So I was startled to see that good old Texas expression in a brand new novel I read recently. It was not used quite right—which may have been caused by editing by some Yankee editor—but there it was, big as Dallas.

Uh-oh! Maybe it was a general term that everyone knew about? So I looked in the back of the book and read the author’s bio. Sure enough, the author is a Texan.

Whew, what a relief! Talk like a Texan is still all Texas, all the time.

Image via Wikipedia

“Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth,” is one of those old-fashioned Texas expressions that is hard to define for people today, because the context has changed so much. It is still a useful expression, though, and an interesting one, so I will try.

Before the word cool came to mean hip, or up to date, or whatever, it was used in a couple of different ways in social situations. Cool could mean standoffish and unwelcoming, as in “Expecting a warm welcome, the visitors were greeted coolly.” (Think of “lukewarm enthusiasm” or worse.)

Or cool could mean calm, unfazed, not angry. For example, “While Bubba was red-faced, screaming and yelling and stomping his boots on the porch, Lila remained cool and just stared at him.”

The opposite of cool in the first sense is warm, as in receiving a warm hug. In the second sense of the word cool, the opposite is hot, like Bubba who is clearly burned up about something. Obviously butter would melt pretty fast in his mouth!

So if Lila replies to Bubba in that cool, calm manner, showing no evidence of anger or upset, anyone watching might say, “She answered him so sweetly, butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.”

What makes this expression a little hard to explain is that there is another factor involved. When my grandmother used this expression, it was generally not a compliment.

That is to say, maybe Lila had done something awful, and here she was acting so cool and innocent, as if the resulting uproar had nothing to do with her. Imagine if your sister took your car without permission, wrecked it, and then sailed into your house, acting completely innocent, as if nothing had happened—even though she knew you had every right to be mad.

Or maybe Lila had said something that sounded sweet and innocent (so cool that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth) that she knew was guaranteed to send Bubba into an apoplectic fit. You see sometimes there is an element of nerve and gall about the manner described by “butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth.”

Frankly I am not sure I ever heard that expression used to describe a man. That’s not because men do not exhibit the same kind of behavior. It’s probably because this expression dates from a time when sexism was socially approved and encouraged.

So I hope that explains it. Just in case you run into a situation where it fits.

And I know eventually you will, wherever you are.

Image by telwink via Flickr

Texans and others sometimes forget how much the way we talk is shaped by our rural roots. To hear us talk, you might sometimes get the impression that most of us live on ranches or farms, but that is no longer true.

The truth is lots of us live in cities and always have: Houston (fourth largest in the nation), the Dallas-Ft. Worth metro area, Austin, San Antonio, El Paso. Many of us, even in small towns, live in apartments. And for whatever reason, sometimes we need to find a new one.

Knowing how we Texans love our cars, and seeing how many, many apartment complexes there are lining the main streets in our urban areas, you might think that finding a new place to live would be easy: Just drive into a likely looking apartment complex and sign up.

But, of course, it is seldom that easy. Maybe you have moved to a new town to take a new job, or to start college or graduate school. For whatever reason, you may not have time to drive around till you find the right place. So, you can always use an apartment locator.

Usually using an apartment locator is just a pleasant experience that saves you lots of time, gasoline, and boredom. Sometimes, though, the apartment locator is a colorful character who talks Texan.

The first time I ever used an apartment locator, I was right out of college. My old college suitemate wanted to share an apartment to save money. Neither of us lived in Houston yet, so she found us an apartment locator to save time.

As style-conscious young women, we naturally wanted to live in a cool-looking complex with all the bells and whistles (or clubs, swimming pools, tennis courts, and beautifully wooded grounds, but our budget was pretty limited. The locator helped us focus on finding a good apartment in a good location. And he contributed a colorful expression that I never forgot.

“You don’t live in Trees,” was his way of saying that the landscaping, private club, and other amenities were not as important as the quality of the apartment itself. It was a colorful Texas-style reminder to focus on what is important instead of getting carried away with superficial glamour.

“You don’t live in trees,” was great advice then, and it still is.

So whenever you are in danger of losing focus on what is important and being overly swayed by superficial features of apartments, cars, jobs—or anything—just remember, “You don’t live in trees.” And besides giving you a smile, it may help you focus on what is important.

It works for me. And now, I hope it works for you.

Image via Wikipedia The area shown in red is East Texas.

I’m fixin’ to tell you a little Texas secret: I was brought up not saying “fixin’ to.” My maternal grandfather came from a family of “preachers and teachers.” He brought my mother up to speak properly, grammatically and correctly. He was very strict.

We did not say “fixin’ to” at my house. In fact, I did not even have a Texas accent until I was 10 and decided to talk like my friends at school. Sad but true.

So when I went up to East Texas to go to college, it was a full four years before I found myself, one fine May day, telling someone I was “fixin’ to go class.” As we used to say in those days, I about swallowed my teeth.

In case you are unfamiliar with the phrase, “fixing to,” pronounced “fixin’ to,” is kind of interesting. It means “getting ready to” or “about to” do something.

I wonder if it is possibly a parallel usage to the Spanish “acaba de” which means exactly the same thing. At least that may be why the use of “fixin’ to” lingers here in Texas. It just sounds right to lots of Texans.

I’m not sure about anywhere else, though. But I’m fixin’ to find out.

Image via Wikipedia

Hosting and hostessing in Texas is a big, big thing. As the host or hostess you are completely responsible for the welfare and happiness of your guests for the duration. You do not leave people stranded even if it is a public meeting and you have the flu.

So the other night a sick friend asked me to lead a meeting for him. It is a regular meeting of a group of usually about 10 or 15 like-minded people at a nearby restaurant. It is mostly social, and I always go anyway.

I have hosted that meeting for him several times before, and it was no big deal. But this time it was different. It was a Stella Dallas party!

What’s that, you ask? Well, I’m fixin’ to tell you.

My paternal grandmother, Nana, and her sisters were addicted to soap operas. Apparently they started listening when the soaps first came on the radio, whenever that was.

To overhear a phone conversation between any two of those sisters, you would think they were talking about people they knew. “That Lisa! She is terrible! She does not deserve Bob.”

But no, they were not gossips; they were soap fans. And they all three lived in the same tiny Texas town, so they could indulge in soap character discussions without running up the phone bill.

By the time I came along the soaps were on TV, so if one of the sisters was forced to run an errand during an important episode, she would call another sister afterward to find out what happened. Because, after all, you could not follow TV soaps on the car radio.

Friday was the big day on the soaps. Everyone knew that the soaps just lallygagged all week, and the really good stuff always happened on Fridays. On Fridays the sisters would coordinate their schedules to make sure at least one of them would be home to report to the others.

So soaps were a big, big deal in my family, and at least one of them contributed to this Texas family’s lingo. It seems that way back in the 1930s or 1940s, on one of those old radio soap operas, there was a character named Stella Dallas.

According to Nana, the Stella Dallas character was very wealthy but did not have any friends. Stella had somehow come into a lot of money but did not fit in with the other rich people in town.

So when Stella Dallas gave a huge, lavish, expensive party and invited all the important people in town, no one came. No one at all.

Ever since then, if anyone ever gives a party and no one shows up, that’s what my family calls “a Stella Dallas party.”

Whatever you may call it, a Stella Dallas party is the absolute nightmare horror of any real Texas hostess. And wherever you are, here’s hoping that you never have one.

In my case, I decided that the no-show meeting was actually my friend’s Stella Dallas party, because nobody knew that I would be leading the meeting. That was never announced, thank goodness. (Now that’s just between you and me.)

Whew! That means my reputation as a Texas hostess is still unsullied. What a relief!

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Even though your eyes adjust as the light declines during twilight, there comes a point when you just cannot see anymore. That’s what we Texans call dark-thirty.

Texans who work from can till cain’t and Texans who love outdoor activities know about dark-thirty. Sometimes we are glad, and sometimes we are sad when dark-thirty comes along.

“How late did y’all play last night?”

“It was about dark-thirty when we finally stopped. Travis liked to never let us quit. Man, I was hungry! It was way past time to go back to the house.”

Blowin’ and goin’ is an old-fashioned East Texas expression. I wasn’t sure people still used that fine old Texas phrase till Sunday, when two middle-aged couples sitting behind me at the ballet were talking about their various pleasure trips:

“Speaking of shopping, on our trips to Europe we’re always just blowin’ and goin’. We never have time for buying trinkets to bring home,” said a man.

“Well, we were blowin’ and goin’ on this trip, for sure,” said the woman from the other couple.

In Texas English, blowin’ and goin’ means dashing around, all busy busy busy, almost without stopping to take a breath.

Strange as it seems, to say that someone has been just blowin’ and goin’ is generally considered a compliment. The implication is that they have been working hard and getting a lot done—even if what they achieved, as in this case, was apparently just having a really good time.

Some of us Texans like to sleep late. Sometimes it just seems to be a necessity, depending on what you’ve been up to the night before.

But we don’t always get to. So sometimes, if you hang around and listen, you might hear a statement something like this:

“Hell, yes, I enjoyed the party! We stayed almost till dawn. But then Travis dragged me out of bed at the crack of noon to go look at a deer lease. I thought I was gonna die and hoped it’d be soon.”

Clearly that was a really good party. And obviously the speaker had just a little bit too much fun. Hence the apparent hangover.

Maybe Travis was the designated driver the night before, but I doubt it. I imagine that Travis is one of those relentlessly cheerful morning people (the kind who never seem to be phased by any activity the night before).

Or else he is a really practiced partier (if you know what I mean) and also one of those dedicated hunters who never let anything interfere with getting their deer. 

Well, more power to him, but some of us need our sleep.