Talk Like a Texan

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Texans don’t like to be bossed around. (Truth is, we all really want to be the boss.)

Texans generally put up with their employers (and the police), but anybody else had better go easy. They’d better not micromanage. They’d better not nag. And they had better not be too officious.

If they try it, they are likely to hear this fine old Texas expression: “Who died and left you in charge?”

Occasionally that is said in a humorous way, but there is always a little bit of seriousness in it. As my Irish grandmother used to say, “Many a truth is told in jest.” Well, that’s also true in Texas.

Sometimes you just have to make a bold statement to make someone get your point. Of course, if you’re a Texan, you just like to be colorful and emphatic anyway.

“You don’t have a dog in this fight” is a way of telling someone to back off, because the situation is not their concern. It’s also a way of warning someone that they shouldn’t interfere in someone else’s business, lest they get hurt.

So instead of saying, “Butt out” as our Yankee cousins might, we say that dog-fight thing, which is kind of more polite, don’t you think?

The other day my friend Mani was eating chicken-fried steak at lunch and talking about how she was eating chicken so often. It became clear that after living in Texas for 12 years, she still did not know what chicken-fried steak really is (besides the Texas equivalent of the food of the gods).

Those who are not Native Texans often have a hard time grasping the concept that there is no chicken in chicken-fried steak. It is simply thin, tenderized (pounded) steak that has been fried Southern style as if it were chicken. It is best eaten with real (never instant!) mashed potatoes, cream gravy, and black-eyed peas.

True Texas chicken-fried steak has black pepper and various secret spices (depending on the cook) in the batter to make it a heavenly eating experience. Just as the best Texas cooks have secret recipes for fried chicken, they are not going to tell you exactly how they work their magic to create chicken-fried steak.

The best chicken-fried steak restaurants become legends. For example, there was one in Tomball that people would make the pilgrimage to from Houston (or the Compaq campus) for years and years. I don’t know if it’s still there or not, and I can’t think of the name.

As far as I know, the current reigning chicken-fried steak (CFS) champion in the Houston area is Wuensche Bros. in Old Town Spring. A young Aggie ex (Texas A&M graduate) and CFS addict that I referred to Wuensche Bros pronounced their CFS to be the best he had ever had. Apparently he had made it his hobby to try out all the most highly recommended CFS joints between Houston, Austin, and surroundings. He was in heaven at Wuensche Bros.

For those who are not in the know about the current best CFS joint in their area, or who can’t make it to Wuensche Bros. for some reason, there is (just for you) a chain of restaurants that specializes in that fine old Texas delicacy. It’s called The Black-eyed Pea. (Remember my telling you that the classic CFS meal includes black-eyed peas?) Their other food is good, too.

In Texas, at least, you can generally find one of the Black-eyed Pea restaurants in your area. Outside of Texas, you may be out of luck, but ask around anyway. Maybe there is a good CFS joint in your area.

If not, I hope you do get to taste some real, honest-to-Texas chicken-fried steak with all the trimmings sometime. Just be sure that when you ask around, you ask a true, dyed-in-the-wool Texan (or a diligent student of Texas culture) to make sure you are getting the real thing.

Well, time for lunch. I’ll talk atcha later.

Not everyone is fortunate enough to be born a Texan. Some people go to a lot of trouble to become naturalized Texans, though. Hence this column.

So how do you tell if you’ve made it? Here are some of the criteria.

You might be a Texan if

* You would rather be whipped than give up your pickup truck.

* You have a gun and know how to use it. And nobody’s gonna take it away!

* You know the start and end dates of duck season, dove season, and deer season (hunting, that is).

* You consider driving (fast!) to be a right, not a privilege.

* You know what mineral rights are and would never buy land without them. (Oil royalties! Yeehaw!)

* You can ride a horse western style, and you don’t even remember learning how.

* You know where Big Thicket, Palo Duro, Pecos, the Valley, the Island, and Hippie Hollow are.

* You are addicted to Dr Pepper.

* You know what “Remember Goliad!” means.

* You keep a loaded shotgun in your closet to shoot rattlesnakes and water moccasins in your backyard.

* You can name the five biggest rivers in Texas off the top of your head.

* You often use the following words or phrases: andale, que pasa? (or que paso’?), cerveza, chalupa, tostada, cabrito, quinceanaria. (Points are subtracted, however, if you don’t say ‘em right.)

* You know where the Marfa Lights are (and what they are).

* You drink Shiner Bock longnecks.

* You would much rather live in Austin if you could find a decent job there.

* You know where the Guadalupe Mountains, the Llano Estacado, the Golden Triangle, George West, Nacogdoches, Possum Kingdom, and the King Ranch are.

* You know who The Raven was—and what all he did.

If you are still studying to be a naturalized Texan, consider that a pop quiz. Checking the answers is your homework.

The rest of y’all, just stay tuned. Eventually you’ll probably find all the answers here… Eventually. Maybe.

Meanwhile, be sweet!

Crooked as a barrel of snakes is pretty self-explanatory, I guess, but it’s a colorful Texas expression, for sure. My friend Janet, who grew up in the Carolinas, is just tickled by it. She says it’s her favorite Texanism.

Janet works for a major airline, dealing with people from all over the world every day by phone. She loves to lay on a Texas accent very thick sometimes just for fun, and apparently her customers like it, too.

You can fill in your own definition as to who is as crooked as a barrel of snakes. Certain merchants, certain politicians…or maybe your ex.

Up in Central Texas, as soon as you start to get into rolling hills, you start to see dirt tanks. I’ve seen them in other parts of Texas, too, but apparently the term is not used much outside of Texas.

You may have even seen a dirt tank without knowing it. So I thought I’d explain.

Imagine that you have a lot of rainwater running off a big hillside and flowing away. If you could catch that rainwater, you would have plenty of water for your livestock to drink—without having to drill a well or provide power for a pump.

So you get a bulldozer and scoop out a bunch of dirt from the side of the hill, and you push all that dirt up into a ridge or levee around the outside of the hollowed out place. That keeps the rainwater that runs down the hill from draining away. Pretty soon you have a very nice pond on the side of the hill.

The cows, horses, and other animals can just walk up and drink on the upper slope of the tank. So everybody’s happy.

Because the pond is just something you built into the side of the hill with dirt to hold water for livestock, we call it a dirt tank (like stock tank, which is a metal container for watering livestock).

Please note that in some places the soil is so porous that you need to add a layer of clay to the inside of the dirt tank before it rains, or the water will just seep right back into the ground.

Anyway, I just thought you ought to know about dirt tanks—in case you have a hill and a bulldozer, and want to give it a try.

Well, why not? That’s what a Texan would do.

“Like a duck on a junebug” is the earliest Texas expression that I remember learning. As I recall, I was about four years old and wanted to run through the lawn sprinkler.

Maybe it was a little cold, or it was right before dinner. I know we were outside, and it involved my trying to turn on a water faucet.

I remember Daddy stopping me from turning on the water, saying “If I let you do that, your mama would be on us like a duck on a junebug!”

If you’re ever seen ducks hunting for bugs in the grass, you know they are very fast. I hadn’t at that time (though I have lots of times since), but even at four years old, I knew exactly what he meant.

And now, so do you.

In Texas, having someone stick to you “like white on rice” is not generally considered to be a good thing. It can signify that someone is planning to follow you around till they catch you doing something you shouldn’t—or just to make sure that you follow directions and do some thing that they want you to.

Either way, it’s an unappealing prospect.

If your mama is not from Texas, you may never have heard, “Don’t give me those slanty-eyed looks!”

I believe that outside of Texas giving slanty-eyed looks would be called “looking askance.” That is, giving “a sidelong look with suspicion and distrust.” Add to that “unspoken disapproval, rebellious tendencies, and general grumpiness,” and you have a pretty good description of the tone of a slanty-eyed look.

Now imagine the eyes narrowed in annoyance, glancing up out of the corner of the eye at the person who provoked the look, as the slanty-eyed looker turns away in disgust.

Cats everywhere are masters of the slanty-eyed look. So are thwarted teenagers who disdain to argue with impossibly out-of-date adults.

Uh-huh, you’ve seen those looks. And not just in Texas either.

When we Texans say, “He ripped his britches!” we don’t mean it literally. That old Texas expression means that someone has irreparably damaged his reputation, ruined his good name, or made one mistake too many.

Whatever it was he did was not a forgivable offense. Nothing will ever be the same again.

The Texan who is telling the story may be either mad or glad, depending on the situation. Remember awhile back when I told you about the good ol’ Texas expression just hide and watch?

Well, if you do hide and watch, sometimes you get rewarded by seeing the wrongdoer undone by his own misdeeds.

However, someone is usually mad about whatever it is that happened. And to that person, who may have previously been blind to all the faults of the evildoer, the transgressor has ripped his britches. There’s no going back to the way things were.

On a milder note, “ripped his britches” can just mean that someone has created a royally embarrassing situation for himself or created a scandal that won’t go away. He has shown his true colors (and maybe his underwear), and everybody who matters knows about it.

And some of them are enjoying his big comedown. Or comeuppance. Or whatever you want to call that fall from grace.