Talk Like a Texan

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Once upon a time there were two good old Gulf Coast girls. One was from Bay City; the other was from Texas City. They were roommates and sorority sisters in college.

A few years later one married a man from Oklahoma. The other married a Houstonian. The husbands liked each other, too, and life was good.

Then a hurricane was predicted. It was aimed right at Houston.

No problem. The Gulf Coast girls came from families that had weathered generations of hurricanes, going back a hundred years. They knew exactly what to do.

The night before the hurricane, after filling ice chests with ice, filling every possible container with water, from soup pots to bathtubs, and gathering hurricane supplies such as candles, flashlights and batteries, tape and builder’s plastic, and lots and lots of Doritos and bean dip, the Gulf Coast girls were cooking.

You see, if the electricity is cut off, you want to have all the perishable foods cooked up and stored in your ice chests so you have something to eat while you wait for the power to be restored (besides the Doritos and bean dip). And that can take days.

It’s a good plan, and it has worked for generations of women on the Texas Gulf Coast ever since…well, ever since there were refrigerators and TV weathermen.

Of course, all that preparation just drove the husbands crazy. The husband from Oklahoma had never been through a hurricane and had no idea why Bay City girl was making such a big deal about it.

The Texas husband was a city boy who had never experienced the deprivations of a real hurricane. He had been through one as a teenager and thought it was no big deal. He was a neat-freak who couldn’t see any reason to have ice chests filling the kitchen and pots, jugs, and bottles of water just everywhere!

So by midnight, both husbands were fit to be tied. The Gulf Coast girl from Texas City just ignored her know-it-all Houstonian. But the Bay City girl finally could not take the Okie’s carping anymore. Long about midnight, she gave it all up.

“Fine. Fine. Fine!” she exclaimed, took off her apron, and put the cooked food in the fridge. “You’ll see!”

Well, as it turned out, it was kind of a puny hurricane. Texas City girl and her Houstonian husband sat in their sunroom and watched the storm while sipping cocktails with a California friend who had driven through the storm to visit because he was lonely. The lights were out for about two hours that afternoon—not long enough to really miss the A/C.

Afterward, Texas City girl had all those zillions of pots of water to pour out, dry off, and put away. And Mr. Houston was pretty smug.

But Bay City girl and the Okie were not so lucky. In their part of town, just a few miles away, and in much of the rest of the city, the power was out for about 10 days. And they could have really used some of that lovely food she was trying to cook up before the storm took out the electricity.

We know all this because the Gulf Coast girls compared notes a couple of weeks after the storm was over.

What we don’t know is what Mr. Oklahoma said the next time Bay City girl started preparing for a hurricane. Not much, I’ll betcha.

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?

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!

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.

“Bless your heart” is a very versatile Southern expression. Here in Texas it can be as straightforward as your grandma saying, “Well, bless your heart, Sugar! Of course you can have more cake!”

It can also be a sort of polite insult, laced with pity. “Well, bless his heart, he never did have any sense.”

It can express sincere gratitude for someone’s unexpected thoughtfulness. “Well, bless you heart!”

Or it can imply that that someone is hopelessly naive but at least means well. “Bless your heart, I wish it was that easy.”

All in all, you can’t always be quite sure what the speaker is implying (which is one reason why “Bless your heart!” is used).

But one thing you can be sure of is that when someone says “Bless your heart,” they are not looking for a fight. And that’s a blessing, right there.

To talk like a Texan, you have to talk football. In fact, if you’re in Texas between August and the Superbowl, you pretty much have to.

Didn’t anyone tell you that in Texas football is almost everybody’s second religion? If you live in a small, rural town, everybody knows your car, where you live, and what church you go to (or if you don’t). If you don’t show up for church, people know you weren’t there. And someone probably saw your car, so they probably know where you were.

Well, the local Friday night high school football game is almost the same. What’s the matter with you, don’t you support The Team? So where were you? (Hint: Better have a pretty good excuse.)

And if you have kids, for a few years you probably also have to take them to the junior high and/or junior varsity games on Thursday nights during the season. Either to play or to see their friends. It’s almost a required course.

In the cities it’s a little different. The high school games are required only if you have to take your kids. The schools are large, and nobody looks for your car.

But in town, if you go to someone’s house on a weekend, there’s college football to watch (and endlessly discuss) on Saturday afternoon and professional games on Sunday. There are parties for playoffs and bowl games. And a big party for the Superbowl. “Hey, any more Shiner Bock in there? We’re out of guacamole, too.”

And then there’s Monday night football for the real diehards. (Don’t let on if you’re sick of football by then.)

Meanwhile at the office and everywhere else, there’s likely to be way too much talk about football. So be forewarned: You’d better know a touchback from a fullback if you want to fit in.

Recently, in a post called All Hat and No Cattle, I wrote about the tackiness of so-called country-western singers wearing cowboy hats indoors (and the silly-looking style of un-Texan-like hats that they wear). I was telling you that real Texas men do not wear their hats in the house (that’s “indoors” if you’re from someplace else).

Well, over the weekend I was flipping channels on the TV, when I happened to see Willie Nelson and the boys performing on a stage…indoors…and they had hats on! You could have knocked me over with a feather.

And, of course, I was crushed.

I’ve seen Willie perform lots of times on TV, indoors and out, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen him wear a hat. Except maybe at his famous Fourth of July picnic in the broiling sun, he always wore a bandana tied around his head like a sweatband.

But now…well, all I can say is it was a sad day for Texas manners when Willie and the boys decided to start wearing their hats in the house. Things will never be the same.

I mean, it’s not like Willie and the boys ever have to worry about being mistaken for Bostonians, like some of those would-be cowboys who look like they’re wearing their daddies’ hats. It’s not like Willie Nelson needs a hat to be a country singer.

He’s Willie Nelson, The Red-Headed Stranger, for heaven’s sake! He does not need to wear a cowboy hat at all when he performs—much less in the house!

But he was wearin’ it, bigger’n Dallas. And I’ll bet it wasn’t the first time, either.

And that’s how Willie Nelson broke my heart.

“I hope you’re happy!” That’s one of those versatile Texas sayings that can express either deep disapproval or the opposite. Either way, it is ironic.

“I hope you’re happy!” is the sort of thing your Texas mother might say when you have willfully ignored her careful social instructions, done things your own way, and royally botched things. It means, “Now look what you’ve done!”

And because it is that kind of expression, it is also used as another one of those backhanded Texas compliments that means, “Now you’ve really started something.”

Here’s an example. A few years ago I happened across some great mechanical pencils with lead that had three colors, arranged like a pie chart of green, blue and red. You could literally write a rainbow, and because the colors were transparent, you could layer them and actually do full-color drawings with just one ordinary-looking mechanical pencil.

Naturally I told all my arty friends about them. I bought tons of them, in fact, and gave pencils away at meetings.

The result was that everyone else got addicted, too. Not only did they love those pencils, but when they got home, they had to fight their children for them. One woman had to ransom hers back from her kids and their friends by promising to buy each and every one of them a pack of their own if she could just have hers back now, please.

The problem was that the rest of the world had not discovered those pencils in great numbers, so the pencils were being discontinued. My friends were spending hours, driving for miles and miles, running all over Houston, Conroe, and parts of East Texas, seeking out the few remaining packages in various stores.

For weeks, I kept getting email message and postings on our Yahoo group, saying “I hope you’re happy! I drove 50 miles today, rounding up 5 packages of those pencils!”

And you know what? I was.

“You’re telling Noah about the flood,” is an old East Texas expression. It means “You’re trying to tell me about something I know even better than you do.” It’s not rude. It’s sympathetic. It is still a bit of one-upmanship, though—which Texans can hardly ever resist.

From what I’ve observed, being a Texan but not rich myself, a heavy Texas accent is sort of a badge of class among well-to-do Texans. It says, “I’m rich enough and well-connected enough that I can talk any way I please, and I choose to talk like a Texan.”

You see, ordinary middle-class folks in the corporate world generally try to drop their Texas accents in order to be perceived as well educated and smart. Research has shown that people from elsewhere equate Southern accents with stupidity. (Their mistake.)

However, there’s another use for a strong Texas accent: it puts people off guard. In business deals that can be a real advantage. The Texan accent fools people into thinking they’re dealing with a dummy, and the Texan takes advantage of that and laughs all the way to the bank. Sometimes it even works on other Texans.

Here’s an example. A man I know who was a perfect examplar of Texas charm himself was sent to West Texas as a consultant to help get an air quality permit to operate a concrete company. His client had sold the concrete plant to a local rancher, and the deal hinged on the permit.

So the consultant called in some favors and got them a meeting with the head of the Texas agency that gave out the permits. When they got there, the official was courteous but firm. They would have to turn in their application like everyone else and wait for weeks. No exceptions. Of course, to be polite in Texas fashion, that took a long time to say.

While this explanation was being offered, the rancher was doodling on a piece of paper. Just as it concluded, he said, “You seem like a smart young fella. Would you mind giving me your opinion on this?”

As he spoke, the rancher walked around behind the huge desk and put his paper down in front of the startled bureaucrat. “Now see,” he said, “the name of the company is Kline County Concrete. And the logo is KCC. Now it would be really nice to keep that same logo. Save a lot of time and money, you know. This is kind of sentimental, but my wife’s name is Kathryn, so I was thinking it would be nice to name it after her, and call it Kathryn Coates Concrete, and then we could keep the same logo, and we wouldn’t have to repaint any trucks or signs, and….” blah, blah blah…all in a wonderful West Texas accent. “So, tell me, son, what do you think?”

During all this, the bureaucrat went into a sort of trance, his eyes sort of unfocused, and his expression was bemused. The paper that the rancher had put in front of him was the application. He signed it right then and there.

Among rich politicians, of course, a strong Texas accent is intended to say, “I’m really just one of y’all. I don’t represent ruthless corporate entities like Enron at all. I’m really just a simple country boy.” Yeah, right.

But even Texans still fall for it almost every time.

P.S. The names in this story were changed to protect actual identities—and because I can’t remember the rancher’s actual name.