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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 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.

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.

Dogs are a big thing in Texas, especially in the country, where everybody tends to have at least one dog as a watchdog. And often there are two or three, because some are hunting dogs.

The first dog I ever had was a solid brown medium-size mutt with a black stripe down his back. I named him Tippy.

The name came from the first puppy I picked from his litter, a light brown and white spotted puppy with a white tip on his tail. The first Tippy got run over by a car before he was old enough to leave his mother, so Daddy picked another pup, but we still called him Tippy.

Tippy must have had a wide variety of ancestors. His mother appeared to be all or mostly leopard, a breed of hunting dog with gray fur and pale blue eyes. Sort of rare. 

None of the puppies looked like her, though, and none of them looked like any other particular breed. Daddy used to say that Tippy was “leopard and Heinz” (after the food brand Heinz, which used to claim to have “57 varieties”).

Tippy was a bold little pup. He did not like the boys who put the groceries in the car at the grocery store—or much of anyone else besides our family. When he grew up, he was a great watch dog.

Meanwhile, though, when he was little, he needed training. Although I was encouraged to play with him, Daddy had a saying that I used to hear a lot. “Don’t tease ‘im, you’ll make ‘im mean.”

Funny how these things stick with you. I use that expression now for dealing with certain people and organizations that you just can’t tease, or kid around with, or argue with. 

You have to be very careful with some people and groups about what you say and do—or they can turn on you like a snake. And they may have the power to make your life miserable in some way. They may be touchy relatives, or government bureaucrats, or….you fill in the blanks. I know you know what I mean.

But now maybe when you are dealing with one of these hard-to-deal-with types, you will remember what my Daddy used to say about raising puppies. It’s good advice, and nobody else will know why you’re smiling. It’ll be just between us, OK?

So whenever you are engaged in delicate negotiations with a person or group who seem like kind of an unpredictable force of nature, remember what Daddy used to say.

“Don’t tease ‘em, you’ll make ‘em mean.” And you’ll do just fine.

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.

Houstonians act like they are made of sugar.

In case you haven’t noticed by now, Texans do tend to talk in metaphors. We love our colorful expressions.

When I was a little girl, if my grandmother and I were caught out somewhere without an umbrella, and I hesitated to run through the rain to get to the car, for example, she would say, “You’re not made out of sugar. You won’t melt.”

Or more often, just “Come on, you’re not made of sugar.” 

Years ago, I can remember going to a (well-attended) ballet class in the evening on the day that a hurricane had passed through town. We didn’t let the weather slow us down much in those days.

Nowadays, maybe because of three major hurricanes and a couple of other floods in the last ten years, attendance drops way off at evening events if it rains just a little bit. So now you see why I say Houstonians act like they are made of sugar.

You probably never heard of the fig orchards of Galveston County. That’s because the Great Fig Bubble burst 100 years ago.

You see, people from up North, in places like New York, were persuaded to buy land down on the Gulf Coast of Texas back in the late 1800s to plant fig orchards and make their fortunes. (I guess figs were in big demand back then.) Figs do grow very well here.

Fashion changed, I guess. Apparently those Yankees lost interest in figs. Eventually much of that land was abandoned without even planting any fig trees.

Naturally the land got scarfed up by the locals. In Texas if you fence a piece of land and use it for 10 years, and nobody protests, you can claim it.

I learned all of this from Nana, my paternal grandmother, who inherited an old 1880s hotel with a little fig orchard, and then went on to plant more. 

Nana’s family already lived in Galveston County during the craze. They always did grow figs and preserve them in Mason jars to eat all year. My mama still does. 

Before I go, here’s another weird little factoid. In the Bible it says that a tax collector named Zacharias climbed up in a sycamore tree to get a glimpse of Jesus. As a kid, I pictured him climbing one of the tall, big-leafed shade trees called sycamores that surrounded my grandparents’ yard.

But Nana, a long-time Sunday school teacher, explained that there is actually a type of fig tree called a sycamore fig. That is most likely what Zacharias climbed.

So who cares? Well, I did.

Knowing that made it more bearable to be the one who had to climb those nasty little fig trees during the harvest season in June (hot, sticky) to pick the figs that the grownups could not reach from the ground.

You see, the juice from bruised fig leaves and stems makes some people’s skin itch, and I don’t even like figs. But, you know, it seemed kind of cool to be climbing a tree that was mentioned in the Bible.

It’s all in how you look at it, I guess. Like so many other things.

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.