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.

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.

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.

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.

“Getting the Hell out of Dodge” is a saying that has changed meanings over the years. Nowadays it means almost of the opposite of what it started out to mean.

I think it originally came from those old-time westerns where at some point the blandly handsome, poker-faced sheriff orders the bad guy(s) to get out of town before sundown—or else. Or sometimes the big, bad gunslinger warns somebody else to get out of town pronto—or else.

I suspect that the incredible popularity of the long-running TV show Gunsmoke helped turn that metaphorical town into Dodge. Anyway, originally it was about telling someone to get out of town right away if they know what’s good for ‘em.

But somewhere along the way, people here in Texas started using “Get the hell out of Dodge” to indicate that they wanted to leave where they were but were having a hard getting away—like getting out of the office or getting out of town for a trip. It was ironic.

A lot of my friends in Houston use “get out of town” to mean “take a trip.” For example, “I’m trying to get out of town this weekend.”

Others indicate that they are on the verge of finally escaping the office for the day and heading home, or off on a long-awaited vacation, by announcing “I’m about to get the hell out of Dodge.”

Of course, the classic Texas way to say that would be, “I’m fixin’ to get the hell out of Dodge.” But we can’t all be East Texans. It’s a gift.

The saying “That dog won’t hunt” was made famous by the late Gov. Ann Richards. Apparently the expression was considered pretty exotic by some, but it’s just plain obvious if you grew up around bird hunters on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

You see, the season for duck and goose hunting is in the cold, wet part of the winter and waterbirds hang out in marshes. Yes, it does get cold down here, sort of. The wind off the marshes cuts like a knife!

So even with rubber waders on, you really don’t want to go pick up the dead birds yourself. And if you were to step down into a deep place, well, endless misery would ensue if you were way out in the marsh in the cold. You do not want water in your waders!

If you’re any kind of a duck hunter at all, you have—or borrow—a good bird dog to take hunting.

The only problem is that not all dogs can be used for hunting, even among the hunting breeds—especially since many of the great old hunting dog breeds have become popular as pets. Once a dog breed becomes popular, people start breeding them to be calm and lethargic and lie around the house.

People buy what should be high-energy, hyperactive hunting dogs and then want them to not require much exercise, not chew up the furniture, not dig up the backyard, and not tear the shingles off the garage. The problem is that dogs like that tend to be not so much interested in hunting.

Some dogs are gun shy (even with training). Some can’t be cured of the habit of chewing on the birds. Some just don’t have the hunting sense to see the bird fall after a shot is fired, go get the bird, and bring it back to the boat or duck blind. They just want to go home where it’s warm.

So even people who breed hunting dogs to be used as hunting dogs can’t count on all the dogs in each litter to be trainable for hunting. Some dogs just won’t hunt.

Hence the expression, “That dog won’t hunt!” when somebody tries to pass off a statement as fact that clearly is false. It means they aren’t going to get away with it. It’s as obvious and as useless as a Labrador retriever that can’t swim. And that’s pretty doggone bad.

“You’ll have to get happy in the same pants you got mad in,” is an expression from West Texas, specifically from my friend Bob Clark’s mom in Lubbock. Bob’s wife, Lyn, who is from Wyoming and Pennsylvania, just considers it totally weird.

It’s a variety of an expression I grew up hearing from my aunt Angie down in Galveston County. If you told her that someone was mad, she would often say, “Well, if they’re mad, they’ve got the same clothes to get glad in.” I like her version better, of course. It rhymes.

Both versions of this expression mean that the person who is angry will just have to get over it all by themselves. You know how someone just gets in a snit, and it has really nothing to do with anything that you did or said, so you can’t fix it? There’s nothing you can say or do; they just have to get over it, all on their own.

Of course, this Texas expression (in both versions) also can be callous or downright nasty. It can be used by someone who has done something truly horrible to mean, “I don’t care if you are mad. That’s your problem, not mine!”

So it can be used in a healthy way, a passive aggressive way, or even to be downright mean. But then, can’t just about everything?