December 31, 2024 • 49 mins
Texas Standard is celebrating its 10th birthday by looking back on 10 years of covering Texas. One way we’re going to do that is with top 10 lists. We started by counting down our top 10 Stories from Texas from commentator W.F. Strong. The full transcript of this episode of Stories from Texas is available on the […]
The post Do you have a favorite W.F. Strong story? Here are our top 10 appeared first on KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
From history to law, the personal
to the universal, or featuring
the work of one of the most beloved
contributors of our team today
on the Texas Standard.
Texas standard is a production of
KUT Austin. KERA North Texas.
(00:21):
Houston Public Media.
And Texas Public Radio in San
Antonio.
I'm Laura Rice.
And have you guessed yet?
Today is all stories from Texas,
some of them true?
Yup. All this final day of 2024,
we're celebrating the work of Texas
standard commentator W.F.Strong.
We've combed through nearly a decade
of his contributions to the show and
picked out our favorites.
(00:42):
Are yours on the list?
Here are a couple of hints.
Is at least two about family
members. One about a long time Texas
company to have ties to Hollywood
and at least one wouldn't be so
popular with Texas as neighboring
states. A special W.F.
Strong edition of The Standard is
just ahead.
From the Red River to the Rio Grande
and all places in between.
(01:03):
It's the Texas standard for this
final day of 2024.
I'm Laura Rice.
And do you know what's coming up
tomorrow?
Yes, 2025.
But do you know what's special about
2025?
Well, it's our 10th
birthday and we decided
that even though the day isn't
coming up until March, Texas
(01:24):
Standard is going to celebrate
all year long.
We'll be sharing birthday messages
asking you to join in.
We'll be having birthday parties and
special swag.
More details on all of that to
come.
And we'll be looking back on
ten years of covering Texas.
One way we're going to do that is
with top ten lists.
(01:45):
And we're going to start with our
top ten stories from
Texas. From commentator
W.F. Strong, We put this list
together very scientifically
by asking some staffers about their
faves and examining a few web
stats.
We'll start at the bottom and make
our way up. So here it is.
Number ten, a story
about three gifts to one
(02:06):
institution that led to
a fourth gift for all.
In 1926, a bachelor banker
died in Paris, Texas.
A rich bachelor banker that is
in his will.
The banker left 90% of his money to
the University of Texas to buy a
telescope and build
an observatory.
The maker's name was William Johnson
(02:27):
McDonald.
Well, as you might expect, Mr.
MacDonald's relatives didn't like
him leaving all that money for a
telescope.
They believed that anyone who would
do such a thing must be, by
definition, a bit crazy.
So they sued.
Fortunately, Mr. MacDonald had
shared his telescope dream
with, of all people, his
(02:47):
barber.
He said that astronomy was a young
science of great potential if
it had the right funding, and he
hoped that one day a telescope would
be built that would allow
astronomers to see the gold
plated streets of heaven.
He was also well known as an amateur
scientist, so the jury
had little trouble believing that
his wish was the product
(03:08):
of a sane mind.
Upon appeal, his relatives got more
than MacDonald had left them.
But you ended up with about
$800,000, which is still
11 million in today's money.
Once you had the money, they had to
go shopping for a mountain to put
the observatory on.
That must have been fun.
Lucky for you, they were located in
a state that had West Texas in it
(03:30):
with some of the finest stargazing
potential in North America.
They found what they were looking
for out by Fort Davis.
It had no official name, but the
locals called it Flattop Mountain.
President Henri Benedict of
Utah wrote a letter to the owner of
that mountain, Mrs. Violet MacGyver.
He told her of MacDonald's gift
(03:51):
and of the university's great need
for a mountain to put the university
on.
Benedict wrote that her mountain was
ideally suited for such an
observatory that, quote, optical
test already made showed that the
Davis Mountains region was the best
in Texas, perhaps the best in the
United States for astronomical
purposes.
He asked her if she might consider
(04:12):
giving her mountain to science.
I think Violet surprised him when
she did just that.
She wrote back almost immediately
and gave you to the entire top
of the mountain. 200 acres.
She also gave you to the land to
build a road to the summit.
The resulting highway spur A78
is, to this day, the highest
highway in Texas.
(04:32):
YouTube built the observatory named
it for William Johnson McDonald.
The mountain was officially named
Mount Locke after Violet's
grandfather, G.S.
Locke, from whom she had inherited
it.
Violet wrote to UT and said
she was delighted to, quote,
have her grandfather's name
perpetuated in the Davis
Mountains.
(04:52):
She said he would have been pleased
to leave his name among the
mountains, which he had known and
loved so long
as gifts inspired gifts.
Only five months after Violet gave
her mountain to UT, the estate
of longtime Fort Davis, Judge Edwin
H. Fox donated the
adjoining mountain known as Little
Flattop.
The Fox estate donated a total of
(05:14):
200 acres, and that mountain
was formally named Fox Mountain
in his honor.
Three gifts for Texas, an
observatory and two mountains.
These collectively gave us a fourth
gift. One of the world's leading
centers of astronomical research,
in fact.
These gifts gave us the heavens
themselves, as MacDonald
(05:35):
predicted.
I'm strong.
These are stories from Texas.
Some of them are true.
Texans are noted for a certain
personal pride in being, well,
Texan.
It's something we've strong has
often explored in his commentaries,
like this one from 2018.
If you've been in Texas for any
(05:56):
amount of time, you've likely seen
the native Tex.
Sent bumper sticker on more than a
few vehicles, but more
Texan than commentator W.F.
Strong will.
You might want to take that up with
him directly.
About a month ago, my son went off
to college with my jeep and I
needed to get another vehicle.
I had been truck lists for a few
years, a rare condition
(06:17):
in my life, and I decided
I wanted to fix that right away.
For a long time, I had wanted a King
Ranch Edition Ford pickup
with those fine leather seats
carrying the classic brand of the
ranch I hunted on as
a boy.
So now I had the chance.
And the reason to buy one
(06:38):
with two kids in college, It was no
time to splurge on a new one, but I
thought I might find a previously
owned truck that would satisfy
my longing.
Thanks to the wonders of the
Internet, I was able to search
for just what I wanted.
A one owner vehicle in near mint
condition being sold by
an owner who had elaborate
(06:59):
maintenance records and a pristine
Carfax report.
I found what I was looking for in
San Antonio, 300
miles from where I live in the
valley. So I contacted the
owner and we made a gentleman's
agreement as to price over the phone
and I headed up to look at it.
I loved it.
Beautiful truck, dark brown
with tan trim, meticulously
(07:21):
maintained.
I said, Let's do it.
So he pulled out the title to begin
the paperwork, and I was surprised
to see that his name was
William B Travis.
I said, I guess, you know, you're
kind of famous.
He said, Yes, I do have a famous
name and I have the whole name, too.
I'm William Barret Travis,
(07:42):
and I'm also a descendant.
I was astounded by the coincidence.
I thought, here I am,
a specialist in Texas.
Law and legend about to buy
a King Ranch pickup from
a descendant of the commander of the
Alamo.
And he still lives in San Antonio.
How cool is that?
In the favorite word of my teenage
(08:03):
son.
Awesome.
We finished up the paperwork and
payment, and he walked me out
and gave me a detailed tour
of the unique features of the truck
and directions on how to get back to
the expressway to head home.
I could tell he was a little sad to
let go of the pickup.
They'd had many good years together.
(08:23):
I said, I promise I'll take
good care of her.
So I drove my new truck.
New to me. Anyway, back to the
valley.
It was good to be riding high in
the saddle once more.
Driving into a blustery coastal
wind without breaking a sweat.
In fact, I drove my
King Ranch Edition pickup with
its Alamo lineage back
(08:44):
through the actual King Ranch
while eating a water burger and
listening to Willie Nelson's on the
road again.
I just have one thing to say about
Texas Me that
the only thing that would have made
it better is if Southwest Airlines
had done a flyby at 200ft
and given me a wing salute.
I'm strong.
(09:05):
These are stories from Texas.
Some of them are true.
After New Year's.
The next big holiday on the calendar
is Valentine's.
I'll be honest, it's not my
favorite, but love can come
in many forms.
In number eight on our top ten
stories from Texas List.
Commentator W.F. Strong explores
(09:25):
one unexpected way Love
entered his life.
At 60 years of age.
I didn't expect ever to fall in love
again. I thought that sort of
euphoric madness that comes with
infatuation was all in the past
reserved for younger people.
But I was wrong when she
came into my life.
The world stopped and changed
(09:46):
forever.
I first saw and photographed.
Someone showed me pictures, black
and white, grainy photos.
She was interesting, but the
pictures didn't do her justice.
When I met her in person,
I thought she was the most beautiful
creature in the world.
She was seven and a half pounds
and 19in of
(10:06):
perfection.
At 60, she was my
first little girl.
Perhaps not a bona fide miracle,
but for me, she was.
We named her Scarlet and Paloma
Maria after her two grandmothers.
That very night, I began keeping a
journal for her. I wrote.
You were just a day old, though.
You were my only girl.
(10:27):
Which makes you precious beyond
measure.
I will keep this little journal of
our first years together.
I will tell you what amazed
you and what delighted you.
I will do all I can, as will your
mama, to make sure that you
are exposed to all the influences
that will make you an extraordinary
woman.
Three years have passed.
Now.
People have started asking me how
(10:49):
raising a girl, at least for me,
is different from raising boys.
I say don't know much,
but let me tell you what
I didn't know when she came along.
Until I had a girl I didn't know
about. Spontaneous politeness and
gratitude returning from the beach.
She said.
Thank you taking me three to be.
Taken.
Until I had a girl.
(11:10):
I didn't have a child who
thought I had superpowers.
She handed me scissors and a paper
and said, Can you make me a bicycle?
I said, How about
a rectangle?
Until I had a girl, I sang
the lullabies, but she's not pleased
with the way I sing them.
So she often takes over.
Clean, girl.
Clean.
Going to die.
(11:32):
How I wonder.
What you.
Are.
Until I had a girl, I wasn't
awakened this way.
Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday, dear Dad.
Happy birthday to.
You.
I couldn't have been any more moved
if it had actually been my birthday.
Until I had a girl.
I never got my nails painted.
(11:53):
And then I forgot about it.
And later that afternoon, I suddenly
realized that I was likely the only
guy at the gun show with Autumn
missed nails
until I had a girl.
I never had a child so empathetic.
She wants to know how I'm feeling,
if I'm happy or sad, or if anything
hurts, and if I might need
a doctor. And lucky for me, she
(12:14):
happens to be one.
Until I had a girl, I didn't have a
child so self-aware.
I asked her if she was mama's girl
or daddy's girl, and she
said, I'm Scarlett's girl.
You got to love that.
Until I had a girl, I didn't know
that Valentine's Day was so
important.
It's her favorite holiday
(12:35):
along with Christmas, Easter,
Halloween, Thanksgiving and July the
4th.
But truly with her
loving heart. Valentine's was
made for her.
You'll be my Valentine, Dada.
Yes.
Always and forever.
And your mama's too.
After all, she did
give me you.
I'm going to be a strong.
(12:55):
These are stories from Texans.
Some of them are.
Wonderfully true.
We're counting down our top ten
stories from Texas.
All your favorites make the cut.
Stick around.
Support for Texas Standard comes
from the Texas April program, a
(13:15):
tax advantaged savings program
helping eligible Texans with
disabilities save for the future.
Learn more, including how the
program works with certain public
benefits at Texas abel.org.
This is the Texas Standard.
I'm Laura Rice.
Already in the program, we've heard
some stories from Texas that
represent the classic style
(13:36):
of commentator w f strong.
Some stories are about his loved
ones, others about what makes Texas
unique and still others that explore
his own particular sense of history,
like this one that'll have you
looking at things differently on
your next drive around some ranch
land.
Historian J.
Evans. Haley wrote that in its time,
the old lakeside ranch up in the
(13:58):
Texas Panhandle was probably
the largest fenced range in the
world.
He recalled that its barbed wire
enclosed over 3 million acres
of land at the north end alone.
The fence ran for 162
miles.
The unique enclosure helped keep
an enormous cattle herds kept
out rustlers and also gave
rise to the creative use of a new
(14:20):
technology.
The telephone.
I'll come back to the exciting in a
moment, but first, consider the
smattering of reports from that era.
In 1897, the Electrical Review
reported that on a ranch in
California, telephone communication
had been established between the
various camps by means
of barbed wire fences.
(14:41):
The article says that the novel use
of the phone was a great success
and was being used in Texas as
well.
That same year, the New England
Journal of Agriculture was impressed
that two Kansas farmers
living a mile apart had attached
telephone instruments to the barbed
wire fence that connects their
places and established
easy communication
(15:02):
from the Butte Intermountain in
1902. We see this notice.
Fort Benton's latest development is
a barbed wire telephone
communication.
The article points out that people
of the range were not all that happy
with barbed wire, which they thought
was an evil that had arrived with
the railroad.
But they had decided to look at the
practical side of its existence
(15:22):
and use it to create a telephone
exchange that would connect all the
ranches to Fort Benton
on the exit.
Given that the ranch covered over 40
500mi²,
there was interest in creating a
communication system that would be
more efficient than sending out
fast riders to distant camps.
In the early 1900s, Haiti reported
(15:44):
a great many telephones were placed
upon the ranch, where possible.
The top line to the fences was used
as a telephone line.
Though the service was atrocious.
It did allow for quick communication
concerning emergencies such as
a grass fire that required all the
cowboys immediately.
There was even talk among technology
(16:04):
geeks of the era that cowboys
could carry phones wherever they
went and clip on to the fence
to report problems they encountered.
Having said that, the old cowboys no
doubt scoffed at the notion of
carrying phones in their saddlebags
to squawk about every escaped
bull or rattlesnake bite they came
across.
The Cowboys, always ingenious when
(16:24):
it came to invention, perfected
the barbed wire phone systems by
adding insulators.
They'd use old broken whiskey
bottles and soda pop bottles,
particularly the necks of them to
put under the wire, to lift it off
the fence and improve conductivity.
This made the signal go further
and clarified.
The voices that carried
the rudimentary phone systems of the
(16:46):
ranches led to more creative
thinking about rural phone systems
in general.
Dr. Don Anderson, who has his
Ph.D. in electrical engineering from
Stanford and is a technological
historian, told me
that the barbed wire phone systems
led to the and a logical conclusion
that using whatever is already
in place is smart planning.
(17:07):
So when rural Texas
wanted to extend phone service from
town to town, the engineers came
up with the idea that they could use
the existing rural power lines
already installed by the Rural
Electrification Act
and run the phone signal right
through the electric lines just at
a different frequency.
That saved a lot of money and
(17:28):
brought phone service along with
electricity to rural areas.
Still many ranches and like their
barbed wire systems and kept them
even though the voice quality wasn't
nearly as good.
As late as the early 1970s,
a dairy farmer I knew had
a barbed wire phone running from his
house a half a mile to the barn.
He said it was good for talking to
his wife about what time supper
(17:50):
was. But most of all, he said,
it's free.
I don't have to pay my bill anything
for that phone.
And I enjoy thinking that it's a
burr in their saddle.
Dr. Anderson told me that it's quite
fascinating to consider that what
started as a fence system on the
site evolved really
into what is today Excite
Communications, which serves
(18:11):
that region today.
Excite Communications provides
phone service and high speed
Internet to rural communities
in the footprint of the original
ranch and more.
I'm w strong.
These are stories from Texas.
Some of them.
Our true.
And you're listening to The Texas
(18:31):
Standard.
When you're working on a story about
butter, there's little margin
for error, especially when
that butter comes in a package
labeled a Texas tradition since
1909.
What you don't know about this
tradition?
At number six in our top ten list,
commentator w have strong helps
spread this history around.
(18:53):
Texas has a great number of Texas
brands.
Southwest Airlines, Texas
Instruments, Lonestar Beer.
Dell Computer, Imperial Sugar.
The King Ranch.
The King Ranch also helped launch
another old Texas brand
foul furious butter.
It is a little circuitous, but this
is how it all came about.
Richard King's partner, Mifflin
(19:14):
Kennedy, sold 7000 cows
to Ed Lasseter, which he used to
create the dairy that launched fowl
furious butter 35 years
later. The King Ranch bought 108,000
acres from Lasseter, along with a
great number of cattle, to create
the Encino division of the King
Ranch. But that's not the story I'm
here to tell.
The furious butter was first made in
Foul Furious, of course, in 1909.
(19:36):
People have wondered whether the
butter is named for the town or the
town for the butter, but they were
actually both named after Lasseter's
Ranch, which was named for a
grove of trees called La
Mort. They are furious.
Lasseter said that that unique word
for Furious came from the Le Pen
Apache language and loosely
translated meant Land of Hearts
Delight.
(19:57):
The Butter was certainly the town's
best known export in those early
days and likely remain so today.
Even the school mascot, the jerseys
was named after the butter's real
creators.
The Jersey Cows.
Indeed, at one point, five Furious
was home to the largest Jersey
cattle herd in the world.
And so that gave special meaning to
(20:17):
the once popular bumper sticker
there. Watch your step.
You're in Jersey country.
I'm not sure the author of that
intended the double meaning, but it
certainly provided a good deal of
local levity until it was recalled.
For Furious Butter remains a popular
niche brand of butter in Texas.
It is sold at all the major grocery
stores and some smaller ones too.
(20:38):
It has been quite popular in
northern Mexico for generations.
A friend tells me that as a child in
Saltillo, he remembers his mother
bringing back the month.
The kid will say they were furious
as a special treat for the kids.
Any time she traveled to Texas,
a Texas Marine in World War two
recalled that as he was wading
(20:58):
ashore in the battle for Okinawa, a
foul furious butter crate bumped up
against his leg in the surf.
He found it comforting and
assurance from home that all
would be well.
And so it was for
furious butter outgrew, for furious.
It became so popular that
it was eventually bought by the
Dairy Farmers of America.
But rest assured, it is still made
(21:20):
in Texas.
It is made by Keller's creamery in
Winnsboro, Texas, and has
grown at a Texas sized pace
of 40% over the last few years.
That's a lot of biscuits and baked
potatoes, y'all.
When you drive through Fowler
furious today on State Highway 285,
you can still see the vintage
foul furious butter sign on the
(21:40):
side of the old creamery building.
The town newspaper Foul Furious
Facts occupies the building
today.
In the interest of full disclosure
and transparency.
I have to reveal that I am also
an export of how furious.
And even though I know on which side
my bread is buttered, so to speak, I
assure you that it doesn't affect
the veracity of this commentary.
(22:02):
IOW strong.
These are stories from Texas.
Some of them are true.
Our top ten list countdown
continues.
Still ahead on this special edition
of The Texas Standard.
(22:29):
From the Texas newsroom, I'm
Alexandra Hart.
As Texans prepare to ring in the new
Year, the Texas Department of
Transportation is continuing its
drive sober.
No regrets. Holiday Drunk driving
prevention campaign.
Ruby Martinez is Techstars traffic
safety program manager.
If you see that someone at a holiday
gathering has been drinking,
encourage them to find a sober
(22:51):
right or to stay put until they
sober up.
Helping to prevent a potential crash
is worth any temporarily
awkward conversation.
1 in 4 traffic deaths in Texas
were related to drunk driving last
year, and that number increased to
28% over the holidays.
More officers are on alert looking
for drunk drivers on Texas roadways
through New Year's Day.
(23:13):
DPS officers, that issue driver's
licenses are closed until at least
Thursday.
A computer outage forced the offices
to shut down on Monday and the
department is closed today and
tomorrow for the New Year's holiday.
It's unclear if the computer issues
will be resolved by Thursday.
Texas State parks are once again
hosting a series of hikes on New
(23:33):
Year's Day.
Texas Parks and Wildlife
interpretive specialist Ben Horstman
says about 80 parks are having
organized events and there's
something for all skill levels.
Some of them are more in
nature oriented where you'll learn
a lot as you go, some of them are
more exercise related where you're
let's just get the miles in and get
you get that heart
(23:54):
pumping.
You can find a full list of events
on Texas Parks and Wildlife's
website.
A new study from Utah Health San
Antonio showed a smartphone app
helped in reducing the use of
opioids by patients when used along
with their medications.
Elise Marino is the director of
research operations at its Bell
Institute on Substance Use and
Related Disorders and lead author
(24:16):
on the study.
She said patients who used the app
reduced their opioid use by 35%
compared to those who used
medication only.
They were using
less opioids by the time they
were leaving treatment.
And so that that's the length of
stay in treatment is huge because
we know that the longer
patients stay in treatment, the
(24:37):
more.
Successful.
They are in recovery.
The treatment aims to reach patients
anywhere, and those who participate
can track their goals, meet with
providers through telehealth, and
get medication sent directly to
them.
The House Ethics Committee has
dropped its investigation of two
Texas congressman, Republicans.
Wesley Hunt of Houston and Ronny
Jackson of Amarillo were accused of
(24:58):
violating campaign finance laws
for allegedly spending money on
personal use.
The Ethics Committee says both
lawmakers didn't fully comply with
reporting standards, but there is no
evidence money was intentionally
misspent.
I'm Alexandra Hart from the Texas
Newsroom.
You're listening to statewide news
from public radio stations across
Texas.
This coverage is only possible
(25:19):
because of support from listeners
like you.
You can help sustain and grow
Texas news coverage by donating
to your local public radio station
today.
33 minutes past the hour.
Texas Standard Time.
I'm Laura Rice.
We've made it to the midpoint of our
top ten countdown of our favorite
stories from Texas.
It's one way we're kicking off ten
(25:40):
years of the Texas Standard.
Since our show began, the anti
California rhetoric may only
have increased.
But as Texas standard commentator
Jeff Strong points out, some
of the finest Texans we've
ever had have been Californians,
at least on film.
I'm making no effort to be
comprehensive here, but I'd like to
(26:01):
highlight five Californians
who made great Texans
in the movies.
The big daddy of them all was, of
course, John Wayne.
I delved the Alamo film along with
Wayne's celebrated depiction
of Davy Crockett would ever
have been made without his unequaled
Hollywood clout and
his money.
The movie was a financial disaster,
(26:23):
and Wayne lost a disturbing amount
of money on the film.
Stephen Harrigan wrote in 2015 for
Texas Monthly that Wayne's
appeal as a Texan was
that he had this habitual
on screen character meshed
with our fun Texas dream
of ourselves.
In almost every carefully curated
role Wayne played.
(26:44):
He was a big, friendly, open
handed presence, but there
was also a concealed
carry component to his personality.
For all as many films in which he
played Texans, Wayne was made
an honorary Texan by
the Texas legislature in 2015.
Clint Eastwood played a Texas Ranger
in a perfect World.
(27:05):
Eastwood directed the film in which
he pursues escaped convict
Butch Haynes.
Kevin Costner, who kidnaped
a young boy to aid his life on the
run a good deal earlier.
Clint Eastwood played the most
wanted man in Texas
in Outlaw Josey Wales.
Though Wills was not a Texan in the
film, after seeing his family killed
(27:25):
and his fellow Confederate soldiers
massacred by a union
false surrender ambush,
he exacted revenge and headed for
Texas to start anew.
He represented the lethal
self-reliance of the men who
populated Texas in those years.
It was also an extension of the man
with no name persona that
he cultivated in the spaghetti
(27:46):
Westerns, one of which was for
a few dollars more, which took place
in El Paso and the surrounding
region.
Robert Duvall, a Californian
for the first 17 years of his life,
depicted the most memorable Texas
ranger of all when he played the
loveable and lethal captain
Gus McCrae in the 1989
miniseries Lonesome Dove.
(28:06):
He won a Best Actor award
for a TV movie for the role
Duvall animated in McCrae.
The self-reliance, adaptability,
love of justice, loyalty to friends
and fearlessness in battle that all
Texans admire.
When he was dying in Montana,
he made his friend call promise to
bury him in an orchard
(28:26):
near San Antonio.
He knew Karl was like him.
A promise had to be honored
no matter how dangerous the
enterprise.
Robert Duvall was also made an
honorary Texas Ranger along with
Tommy Lee Jones, for his role as
Captain W of Coal.
Tommy Lee Jones, though, is a native
Texan, and it showed wonderfully
in his authentic and coached
(28:47):
accent.
Robert Duvall was also superb in
Tender Mercies for that role.
He traveled thousands of miles
around Texas studying the accents
to get it right in the film, which
served him well in Lonesome Dove and
later in Secondhand Lions.
Kevin Costner, pretty
much a lifelong Californian, played
Texas Ranger Frank Hamer in The
(29:09):
Highwaymen, along with Woody
Harrelson.
In their pursuit of Bonnie and
Clyde.
I personally loved watching Jeff
Bridges role in Hell or High Water.
Jeff plays an aging Texas Ranger,
Marcus Hamilton, one week
from retirement.
He is on the trail of West Texas
bank robbers.
Jeff got help with his Ranger
persona from Pernell McNamara,
(29:29):
the then 70 year old sheriff of
McLennan County.
Though close to retirement, Ranger
Hamilton does not take it easy
or shirk away from his dangerous
task even after retirement.
His good Texas character can't let
go.
The job is not done until
it's done, at least to his
satisfaction.
And if you want the finest example
of an unadulterated West Texas
(29:50):
accent, you'll hear it from the
waitress in the cafe who says so
lyrically, what don't you
want?
That was Margaret Beaumont and she
was from Texas.
Since we have talked about all these
Californians playing Texas Rangers,
it's rather cool, I think, to
recognize that our real life
most famous Texas Ranger of all
time, Jack Coffee Hayes,
(30:12):
left Texas in 1849
and became the first elected
sheriff of San Francisco,
California, in 1850.
We can't make this stuff
up.
I'm w a strong.
These are stories from Texas.
Some of.
(30:35):
Our special stories from Texas.
Edition of Texas Standard continues
right after the break.
With the top four on our list.
Stay with us.
Support for Texas Standard comes
from Texas Oncology.
Right here with cancer care at
more than 280 locations around
(30:56):
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More at Texas Oncology Take
home.
Support for Texas standard comes
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Working to strengthen public
education for all students and
helping Texans understand education
issues. Coming up during the 89th
(31:17):
legislative session at Raise
Your Hand, Texas Talk.
This is the Texas Standard.
I'm Laura Rice.
And today we're counting down our
favorite WFP strong segments.
This next one represents one of his
specialties unique and
(31:39):
underappreciated bits of Texas
history, like how Texas
became nearly 1000mi²
bigger.
You can never underestimate the
value of good friendship forged
early in life.
If not for such a friendship, Texas
would be nearly 1000mi²
smaller.
Before I get to the friendship, come
(31:59):
with me, if you will, up to the
northwest corner of the Panhandle,
where Texas meets Oklahoma
and New Mexico.
The border between Oklahoma
and New Mexico doesn't meet up
exactly with the border between
Texas and New Mexico.
The line makes a jog to the left.
It goes 2.3 miles left
before heading south.
That jog is the result
(32:20):
of a survey error that some
have called the worst survey error
in U.S. history.
But it isn't just a two mile error.
The error gets bigger as it
continues south, 310
miles to the bottom of the Texas
New Mexico corner.
The mistake amounts to a 942
square mile error
a landmass bigger than Houston.
(32:42):
In truth, that land should have gone
to New Mexico.
The border between Texas and New
Mexico territory was
to be exactly along
the 103rd meridian.
When the official survey was
undertaken, almost ten years after
the fact, there was a problem with
water. Indian stars, algebra
and math, which all contributed
to the error.
(33:02):
That ended up a blessing for
Texas.
Naturally, there's quite a good long
story behind the mistake.
But it's far too complex for these
few minutes, so I will give you the
cut to the Chase version.
A man named John H.
Clark was hired to do the survey and
plant the monuments along the 103rd
meridian.
He started from the south and
surveyed northward until he ran
(33:24):
out of access to water.
So he stopped and he said, Well,
I'll just go up to the north end of
Texas and I'll come down.
Clark started again, northwest of
present day Dalhart and headed south
until the Native Americans
frightened him off.
Though he was about 70 miles
from connecting his two
lines, he figured it was
good enough and he turned in his
work.
(33:45):
His two lines would have
never met.
The problem was his northern
starting point was about 2.3
miles west of where it should have
been, and his southern corner
was nearly 3.8 miles
west to where it should have been.
Consequently, that border
slides imperceptibly,
one and a half miles ever so gently
(34:06):
southwest, over a distance
of 310 miles.
You pull up a Google map on your
phone and align the southeastern
corner of New Mexico with
your left, straight edge phone
border.
You will see that the border slants
off to the right of at the top.
That's the error.
It amounts to 603,348
acres.
Well, nobody knew it was wrong.
(34:27):
And so the bad survey, based
on poor calculations,
was certified by the U.S.
in 1891, and it became
the legal boundary.
Well, by the time New Mexico
was about to get statehood with the
enabling act of 1910.
It had become aware of Clark's
error and it slipped into the
statehood law, a clause
(34:49):
saying that the eastern border
would be the true 103rd
meridian.
New Mexico would get its land back.
All was going well, and nobody
was paying attention to the land
grab except for John Farwell,
who was an original investor in the
Excite Ranch.
Those were the same investors who
essentially built our state capitol
in Austin.
(35:10):
Well, he realized that the city
would lose hundreds of thousands of
acres and mineral rights.
If the New Mexico plan went through
as it was, but he couldn't get any
legislators to listen.
And so he did what we all do in
times of trouble, he said.
Who do I know?
Well, it just so happened that he
knew President William Howard Taft.
They had been good friends during
(35:30):
their college years at Yale.
So he went to see his old buddy
Howard, and he explained the
predicament. And Taft immediately
summoned powerful men to his
office and told them that
the Clark border would be the
legal border when New Mexico was
made a state or it wouldn't be made
one. He said that since the boundary
had existed for more than 50 years
(35:51):
and had been certified 20 years
before, it had to be grandfathered
in. Otherwise, people who believe
they were Texans would suddenly be
in New Mexico and litigation over
land titles would never end.
And that is how a survey
error and an old friendship
ended up making Texas almost
1000mi² bigger
than it was supposed to be.
And once again, it's all about
(36:14):
who you know.
I'm w strong.
These are stories from Texas.
Some of them are true.
Some of commentator W.F.
Strong's most endearing stories
from Texas have been personal.
This next one was actually one of
the. First he ever put together for
Texas Standard way back in
May of 2015.
It's not baseball season, but it's
(36:36):
the time of year for reflection.
So W Strong looks back on his
days on the diamond.
Uncle Dale was the first grown up to
come home in the afternoon.
He wasn't our real uncle.
We just called him that.
Back then, it was considered rude
for a child to call an adult only by
their first name.
So we had lots of aunts and uncles.
(36:57):
Uncle Dale got up when it was still
dark and he walked a mile to work
where he put in hard days at
the Halliburton yard.
At 330 in the afternoon, he
would, as the poet Appleman put it,
follow his shadow home to grass.
And there he would sit in his lawn
chair under the gauzy shade
of a mosquito tree and
(37:17):
watch over us as we played baseball
in the street.
It was a colleague who rode hard
in dusty and dry times and
it turned to cake like mud when it
rained.
Home plate and second base were in
the middle of the street.
First base was in the Garcia's yard
and third base was in Uncle Deal's
yard.
Uncle Dale was our umpire.
He would sit there drinking coffee
(37:39):
from a big white mug, smoking
one cigar after another.
We could smell the sweet tobacco
drifting through the infield.
Even now, I can smell it
as it drifts across the years to
where I sit.
Uncle Dale ruled on close calls from
the comfort of his place in the
shade.
That was a foul, he'd say.
Or he would coach two hands
(38:01):
while learning RJ.
He also served as traffic cop.
You boys get out of the road for
that truck runs over you.
I can only remember his getting out
of his chair one time.
We were having our own little
baseball draft the way we always
did.
Hand over. Hand up the bat.
You remember?
Well, Mrs. Anderson came over and
suggested we draw numbers out of a
hat, making one team out
(38:22):
of the evil numbers and the other
out of the odd numbers to spare
the feelings of those often chosen
last.
Uncle Dale would not stand for these
progressive ideas.
He was a purist.
He got up and he waved her off.
He said, If a boy is struggling,
he needs to know it early
so he can do something about it.
One day we came home from school
and we saw Uncle Dale on a huge
(38:44):
Halliburton bulldozer in the brush
down the road.
We went down there to watch him
because, like all boys,
we were fascinated with anything
that could topple trees and reform
the earth.
After about 30 minutes, he shut down
the dozer.
He hopped off and he said,
There's your new baseball field,
boys. You're off the streets.
(39:05):
Well, don't just stand there.
He said, Get your gloves.
Let's break her in.
Never again. Was the crack of a bat
muffled by a car horn
wanting to drive through our
infield.
Uncle Dale's baseball field cost
him a few phone calls and three
hours of his expert labor.
But it gave us and the boys that
followed us years of
(39:26):
immeasurable joy.
It was the greatest gift we ever
got, really.
The gift of a beautiful boyhood
and the lifelong memory of it.
I'm strong.
These are stories from Texas.
Some of them are true.
(39:48):
We've almost made it to the top of
our list of favorite WF.
Strong commentaries.
Still waiting for yours?
There's more just ahead.
Support for Texas Standard comes
from the Texas Tuition Promise fund
for over ten years, helping families
lock in current tuition rates and
required fees at Texas public
(40:08):
colleges and universities, excluding
medical and dental institutions.
Texas Tuition Promise Fund
Account.
(40:28):
This is a special stories from
Texas edition of The Texas Standard.
I'm Laura Rice.
We're counting down our favorite
commentaries from W.F.
Strong. And we've made it to number
two. This one from 2017
was inspired by the attention on
the border and immigration from the
first Trump administration.
This was the situation the new
(40:48):
immigrants to Texas were becoming
quite a problem.
They were coming across the river in
droves.
Some were legal.
Some were undocumented.
Some were living on land they had
illegally acquired, and some were
squatters living on land
that belonged to others.
The legal immigrants were being
followed by family members
who were arriving without proper
(41:09):
papers.
The government was frustrated and
trying desperately to come up with a
solution.
Many were good people, hard workers.
But as a group, they would mostly
keep to themselves.
They wouldn't assimilate.
They wouldn't acculturate.
They refused to learn the language.
Most were of a different religion
from that which was most common in
their new country.
(41:29):
There was talk of posting the
military all along the river.
The borders and immigration laws
needed to be enforced.
The government passed a law
prohibiting all new immigration to
Texas from the neighboring republic.
The military was in fact sent to
ports of entry to turn back those
without proper documents.
And though the trend slowed,
(41:50):
illegal immigration continued
at a worrisome pace.
Sound familiar?
These issues were being discussed
in Texas almost 200
years ago.
The years I'm talking about here
were the 1820s and the early
1830s before
the Battle of the Alamo, before
the Battle of San Jacinto.
(42:12):
The immigrants were not Mexican,
but rather Anglo-Americans
coming in from Louisiana, Arkansas,
Tennessee and other southern states.
The river the immigrants were
crossing was not the Rio Grande,
but the Sabine.
The border between Texas and
Louisiana.
The concerned government was not in
Austin, but in Mexico City.
(42:32):
Texas, of course, belonged to Mexico
at the time.
The military they wanted to put on
the eastern border was the Mexican
army.
The language the immigrants wouldn't
learn was Spanish.
That was part of the deal.
If they got cheap land, they agreed
to become Mexican citizens and learn
Spanish.
Most did not.
The religion that they would not
(42:54):
embrace was Catholicism,
even though that was part of the
deal, too. As Mexican citizens, they
were supposed to become Catholic.
It is surprising to see how trends
in some ways have reversed
themselves over a couple of
centuries.
I'm not interested in getting into
the high weeds of politics here.
I'll leave the cautionary tale to
others, but I do find this
(43:14):
a good illustration of a historical
adage coined by Mark
Twain and affirmed by Winston
Churchill.
History may not repeat
itself, but it does
rhyme.
I'm a strong.
These are stories from Texas.
Some of them are
true.
We've made it to number one.
(43:35):
And to be honest, there was no
competition.
It's been clear since 2015
that commentator W.
F. strong hit on something special
when he put together this story
from Texas.
This story consistently shows
up as one of the most popular
on our website, despite its
age.
It was first done to celebrate
(43:55):
30 years since Augustus
McRae and Woodrow Call
sprung from the mind of author Larry
McMurtry and two words
of warning. There may be a little
grown up language here.
And if you've been under a rock
and Ogallala for the last four
decades, there might be a spoiler
or two.
Since I am, like many Texans, an
amateur expert on Lonesome Dove.
(44:17):
People often ask me when
I figure the most love quotes from
the mini series.
Now, if I were wise, I would just
say any of 100 quotes could be
someone's number one and leave it at
that.
But I have never let lack of wisdom
stop me. I cannot resist the
challenge of making a list.
I do have data on my side based on
feedback from a popular Facebook
page devoted to Lonesome Dove.
(44:38):
I have 12, which we will do
Letterman style.
Number 12 comes at the end
of the mini series.
Woodrow has just buried Gus
and puts up the grave marker made
from the famous Hat Creek cattle
company sign.
Woodrow says, I guess
this will teach me to be more.
Careful about what I promise.
In the future.
(45:00):
Number 11 is Gus McCrae.
101 When the boys
seem a little shocked by his, shall
we say, manly appetites.
He says.
What's good for me, necessarily good
for the weak man.
Number ten occurs right after Gus
has cut the cards with Laurie, and
she accuses him of cheating.
He says.
Well, I wouldn't say I did.
(45:20):
I wouldn't say I did.
But I will say there's a man who
wouldn't cheat for a Polk.
Don't want one bad enough.
Come on.
Darling.
Nine Not long before
Gus goes guns blazing
into blue ducks camp to save Laurie.
He says.
I don't know if it the wrath of the
Lord, but Stand on
comes on down.
Number eight is said the following
(45:40):
morning. Gus finds July
Johnson bearing his son
and Jenny and Roscoe.
Gus says.
Yesterday gone.
We can't get it back.
Number seven comes when Gus gets
exasperated with Woodrow because
Woodrow to Gus, his way of thinking
is just being dead.
God, Woodrow, you just don't ever
(46:00):
get the point.
It ain't Diane I'm talking about.
It's living.
The sixth most popular quote
punctuates the scene when Jake's
spoon must be hanged along
with the murdering horse thieves he
is thrown in with.
Jake pleads his case, but Gus has
little sympathy.
He says how it works.
Jake, you ride with an outlaw, you
die within a mile.
(46:21):
Number five occurs in a San Antonio
bar scene that has several great
lines together.
So I decided to count them as one
quote, the bartender upon
insulting Gus and call gets
his nose broken when Gus slams
his face into the Oak bar,
Gus explains.
Besides, a whiskey, I think will
require a little respect.
(46:41):
If you care to turn around,
you can see how we look.
Who's younger.
And the people around here wanted to
make of senators.
And the thing we didn't put up with
then was doubling service.
And as you can see, we still don't
put up with it.
As they rode away, Woodrow tells
Gus he's lucky he didn't get thrown
in jail.
And Gus is.
Very much of a crime.
(47:03):
Black And certainly bartender.
Number four is a touching line
uttered by Gus as he lay dying.
He says to.
Woodrow, It's been quite a bar.
Number three is a tie so close
I couldn't separate them.
The first comes at the first of the
movie Back and Lonesome Dove.
When Ball infers that Gus
(47:23):
may be too old for romance
anymore. And Gus sets him straight.
He says they.
All are the violent sweet of the
music.
Following. Soon after that scene
comes Call's advice to Newt.
All hands in his first pistol.
And he says, here.
Better to have had it
not made it.
Then it is needed.
Correct?
(47:43):
Number two, Gus lays out
a prescription for Lori's future
happiness.
She is obsessed with going to San
Francisco, and he wants her to
understand that that dream
is likely a misguided one.
You see life in San Francisco still
just.
And number one, though, Gus gets
a great number of the best lines
Woodrow gets, without question, the
most powerful, most quoted line of
(48:05):
all in the entire mini series.
After Carl beat the Army
Scout to a pulp.
He says.
I hate road behavior and man.
I won't tolerate it.
There you go. That's the top 12
according to the data.
Now, when you write to me to tell me
that the list is wrong or that I
left out this or that, I ask only
that you remember.
(48:25):
Captain calls admonition,
no rude behavior.
I'm strong.
These are stories from Texas.
Some of them are true.
WF Strong is a professor of culture
and communication at the University
of Texas, Rio Grande Valley, and
he's been a beloved contributor
to the Texas Standard Team for
nearly all of our ten years.
(48:48):
We're celebrating our 10th birthday
for the entire year of 2025,
and we kicked it off just a smidge
early with our top ten
stories from Texas.
You can learn more and celebrate
with us at Texas.
Standard.org/birthday.
I'm Laura Rice and on behalf of
the entire Texas standard team,
(49:08):
we wish you a happy 2025.
Philanthropic support for Texas.
Casey and Scott are here, the
Winkler Family Foundation.
Lynn Dobson and Greg Wooldridge,
Adrian Killen and the George
Huntington family.
From history to law, the personal
to the universal, or featuring
the work of one of the most beloved
contributors of our team today
on the Texas Standard.
Texas standard is a production of
KUT Austin. KERA North Texas.
(00:21):
Houston Public Media.
And Texas Public Radio in San
Antonio.
I'm Laura Rice.
And have you guessed yet?
Today is all stories from Texas,
some of them true?
Yup. All this final day of 2024,
we're celebrating the work of Texas
standard commentator W.F.Strong.
We've combed through nearly a decade
of his contributions to the show and
picked out our favorites.
(00:42):
Are yours on the list?
Here are a couple of hints.
Is at least two about family
members. One about a long time Texas
company to have ties to Hollywood
and at least one wouldn't be so
popular with Texas as neighboring
states. A special W.F.
Strong edition of The Standard is
just ahead.
From the Red River to the Rio Grande
and all places in between.
(01:03):
It's the Texas standard for this
final day of 2024.
I'm Laura Rice.
And do you know what's coming up
tomorrow?
Yes, 2025.
But do you know what's special about
2025?
Well, it's our 10th
birthday and we decided
that even though the day isn't
coming up until March, Texas
(01:24):
Standard is going to celebrate
all year long.
We'll be sharing birthday messages
asking you to join in.
We'll be having birthday parties and
special swag.
More details on all of that to
come.
And we'll be looking back on
ten years of covering Texas.
One way we're going to do that is
with top ten lists.
(01:45):
And we're going to start with our
top ten stories from
Texas. From commentator
W.F. Strong, We put this list
together very scientifically
by asking some staffers about their
faves and examining a few web
stats.
We'll start at the bottom and make
our way up. So here it is.
Number ten, a story
about three gifts to one
(02:06):
institution that led to
a fourth gift for all.
In 1926, a bachelor banker
died in Paris, Texas.
A rich bachelor banker that is
in his will.
The banker left 90% of his money to
the University of Texas to buy a
telescope and build
an observatory.
The maker's name was William Johnson
(02:27):
McDonald.
Well, as you might expect, Mr.
MacDonald's relatives didn't like
him leaving all that money for a
telescope.
They believed that anyone who would
do such a thing must be, by
definition, a bit crazy.
So they sued.
Fortunately, Mr. MacDonald had
shared his telescope dream
with, of all people, his
(02:47):
barber.
He said that astronomy was a young
science of great potential if
it had the right funding, and he
hoped that one day a telescope would
be built that would allow
astronomers to see the gold
plated streets of heaven.
He was also well known as an amateur
scientist, so the jury
had little trouble believing that
his wish was the product
(03:08):
of a sane mind.
Upon appeal, his relatives got more
than MacDonald had left them.
But you ended up with about
$800,000, which is still
11 million in today's money.
Once you had the money, they had to
go shopping for a mountain to put
the observatory on.
That must have been fun.
Lucky for you, they were located in
a state that had West Texas in it
(03:30):
with some of the finest stargazing
potential in North America.
They found what they were looking
for out by Fort Davis.
It had no official name, but the
locals called it Flattop Mountain.
President Henri Benedict of
Utah wrote a letter to the owner of
that mountain, Mrs. Violet MacGyver.
He told her of MacDonald's gift
(03:51):
and of the university's great need
for a mountain to put the university
on.
Benedict wrote that her mountain was
ideally suited for such an
observatory that, quote, optical
test already made showed that the
Davis Mountains region was the best
in Texas, perhaps the best in the
United States for astronomical
purposes.
He asked her if she might consider
(04:12):
giving her mountain to science.
I think Violet surprised him when
she did just that.
She wrote back almost immediately
and gave you to the entire top
of the mountain. 200 acres.
She also gave you to the land to
build a road to the summit.
The resulting highway spur A78
is, to this day, the highest
highway in Texas.
(04:32):
YouTube built the observatory named
it for William Johnson McDonald.
The mountain was officially named
Mount Locke after Violet's
grandfather, G.S.
Locke, from whom she had inherited
it.
Violet wrote to UT and said
she was delighted to, quote,
have her grandfather's name
perpetuated in the Davis
Mountains.
(04:52):
She said he would have been pleased
to leave his name among the
mountains, which he had known and
loved so long
as gifts inspired gifts.
Only five months after Violet gave
her mountain to UT, the estate
of longtime Fort Davis, Judge Edwin
H. Fox donated the
adjoining mountain known as Little
Flattop.
The Fox estate donated a total of
(05:14):
200 acres, and that mountain
was formally named Fox Mountain
in his honor.
Three gifts for Texas, an
observatory and two mountains.
These collectively gave us a fourth
gift. One of the world's leading
centers of astronomical research,
in fact.
These gifts gave us the heavens
themselves, as MacDonald
(05:35):
predicted.
I'm strong.
These are stories from Texas.
Some of them are true.
Texans are noted for a certain
personal pride in being, well,
Texan.
It's something we've strong has
often explored in his commentaries,
like this one from 2018.
If you've been in Texas for any
(05:56):
amount of time, you've likely seen
the native Tex.
Sent bumper sticker on more than a
few vehicles, but more
Texan than commentator W.F.
Strong will.
You might want to take that up with
him directly.
About a month ago, my son went off
to college with my jeep and I
needed to get another vehicle.
I had been truck lists for a few
years, a rare condition
(06:17):
in my life, and I decided
I wanted to fix that right away.
For a long time, I had wanted a King
Ranch Edition Ford pickup
with those fine leather seats
carrying the classic brand of the
ranch I hunted on as
a boy.
So now I had the chance.
And the reason to buy one
(06:38):
with two kids in college, It was no
time to splurge on a new one, but I
thought I might find a previously
owned truck that would satisfy
my longing.
Thanks to the wonders of the
Internet, I was able to search
for just what I wanted.
A one owner vehicle in near mint
condition being sold by
an owner who had elaborate
(06:59):
maintenance records and a pristine
Carfax report.
I found what I was looking for in
San Antonio, 300
miles from where I live in the
valley. So I contacted the
owner and we made a gentleman's
agreement as to price over the phone
and I headed up to look at it.
I loved it.
Beautiful truck, dark brown
with tan trim, meticulously
(07:21):
maintained.
I said, Let's do it.
So he pulled out the title to begin
the paperwork, and I was surprised
to see that his name was
William B Travis.
I said, I guess, you know, you're
kind of famous.
He said, Yes, I do have a famous
name and I have the whole name, too.
I'm William Barret Travis,
(07:42):
and I'm also a descendant.
I was astounded by the coincidence.
I thought, here I am,
a specialist in Texas.
Law and legend about to buy
a King Ranch pickup from
a descendant of the commander of the
Alamo.
And he still lives in San Antonio.
How cool is that?
In the favorite word of my teenage
(08:03):
son.
Awesome.
We finished up the paperwork and
payment, and he walked me out
and gave me a detailed tour
of the unique features of the truck
and directions on how to get back to
the expressway to head home.
I could tell he was a little sad to
let go of the pickup.
They'd had many good years together.
(08:23):
I said, I promise I'll take
good care of her.
So I drove my new truck.
New to me. Anyway, back to the
valley.
It was good to be riding high in
the saddle once more.
Driving into a blustery coastal
wind without breaking a sweat.
In fact, I drove my
King Ranch Edition pickup with
its Alamo lineage back
(08:44):
through the actual King Ranch
while eating a water burger and
listening to Willie Nelson's on the
road again.
I just have one thing to say about
Texas Me that
the only thing that would have made
it better is if Southwest Airlines
had done a flyby at 200ft
and given me a wing salute.
I'm strong.
(09:05):
These are stories from Texas.
Some of them are true.
After New Year's.
The next big holiday on the calendar
is Valentine's.
I'll be honest, it's not my
favorite, but love can come
in many forms.
In number eight on our top ten
stories from Texas List.
Commentator W.F. Strong explores
(09:25):
one unexpected way Love
entered his life.
At 60 years of age.
I didn't expect ever to fall in love
again. I thought that sort of
euphoric madness that comes with
infatuation was all in the past
reserved for younger people.
But I was wrong when she
came into my life.
The world stopped and changed
(09:46):
forever.
I first saw and photographed.
Someone showed me pictures, black
and white, grainy photos.
She was interesting, but the
pictures didn't do her justice.
When I met her in person,
I thought she was the most beautiful
creature in the world.
She was seven and a half pounds
and 19in of
(10:06):
perfection.
At 60, she was my
first little girl.
Perhaps not a bona fide miracle,
but for me, she was.
We named her Scarlet and Paloma
Maria after her two grandmothers.
That very night, I began keeping a
journal for her. I wrote.
You were just a day old, though.
You were my only girl.
(10:27):
Which makes you precious beyond
measure.
I will keep this little journal of
our first years together.
I will tell you what amazed
you and what delighted you.
I will do all I can, as will your
mama, to make sure that you
are exposed to all the influences
that will make you an extraordinary
woman.
Three years have passed.
Now.
People have started asking me how
(10:49):
raising a girl, at least for me,
is different from raising boys.
I say don't know much,
but let me tell you what
I didn't know when she came along.
Until I had a girl I didn't know
about. Spontaneous politeness and
gratitude returning from the beach.
She said.
Thank you taking me three to be.
Taken.
Until I had a girl.
(11:10):
I didn't have a child who
thought I had superpowers.
She handed me scissors and a paper
and said, Can you make me a bicycle?
I said, How about
a rectangle?
Until I had a girl, I sang
the lullabies, but she's not pleased
with the way I sing them.
So she often takes over.
Clean, girl.
Clean.
Going to die.
(11:32):
How I wonder.
What you.
Are.
Until I had a girl, I wasn't
awakened this way.
Happy birthday to you.
Happy birthday, dear Dad.
Happy birthday to.
You.
I couldn't have been any more moved
if it had actually been my birthday.
Until I had a girl.
I never got my nails painted.
(11:53):
And then I forgot about it.
And later that afternoon, I suddenly
realized that I was likely the only
guy at the gun show with Autumn
missed nails
until I had a girl.
I never had a child so empathetic.
She wants to know how I'm feeling,
if I'm happy or sad, or if anything
hurts, and if I might need
a doctor. And lucky for me, she
(12:14):
happens to be one.
Until I had a girl, I didn't have a
child so self-aware.
I asked her if she was mama's girl
or daddy's girl, and she
said, I'm Scarlett's girl.
You got to love that.
Until I had a girl, I didn't know
that Valentine's Day was so
important.
It's her favorite holiday
(12:35):
along with Christmas, Easter,
Halloween, Thanksgiving and July the
4th.
But truly with her
loving heart. Valentine's was
made for her.
You'll be my Valentine, Dada.
Yes.
Always and forever.
And your mama's too.
After all, she did
give me you.
I'm going to be a strong.
(12:55):
These are stories from Texans.
Some of them are.
Wonderfully true.
We're counting down our top ten
stories from Texas.
All your favorites make the cut.
Stick around.
Support for Texas Standard comes
from the Texas April program, a
(13:15):
tax advantaged savings program
helping eligible Texans with
disabilities save for the future.
Learn more, including how the
program works with certain public
benefits at Texas abel.org.
This is the Texas Standard.
I'm Laura Rice.
Already in the program, we've heard
some stories from Texas that
represent the classic style
(13:36):
of commentator w f strong.
Some stories are about his loved
ones, others about what makes Texas
unique and still others that explore
his own particular sense of history,
like this one that'll have you
looking at things differently on
your next drive around some ranch
land.
Historian J.
Evans. Haley wrote that in its time,
the old lakeside ranch up in the
(13:58):
Texas Panhandle was probably
the largest fenced range in the
world.
He recalled that its barbed wire
enclosed over 3 million acres
of land at the north end alone.
The fence ran for 162
miles.
The unique enclosure helped keep
an enormous cattle herds kept
out rustlers and also gave
rise to the creative use of a new
(14:20):
technology.
The telephone.
I'll come back to the exciting in a
moment, but first, consider the
smattering of reports from that era.
In 1897, the Electrical Review
reported that on a ranch in
California, telephone communication
had been established between the
various camps by means
of barbed wire fences.
(14:41):
The article says that the novel use
of the phone was a great success
and was being used in Texas as
well.
That same year, the New England
Journal of Agriculture was impressed
that two Kansas farmers
living a mile apart had attached
telephone instruments to the barbed
wire fence that connects their
places and established
easy communication
(15:02):
from the Butte Intermountain in
1902. We see this notice.
Fort Benton's latest development is
a barbed wire telephone
communication.
The article points out that people
of the range were not all that happy
with barbed wire, which they thought
was an evil that had arrived with
the railroad.
But they had decided to look at the
practical side of its existence
(15:22):
and use it to create a telephone
exchange that would connect all the
ranches to Fort Benton
on the exit.
Given that the ranch covered over 40
500mi²,
there was interest in creating a
communication system that would be
more efficient than sending out
fast riders to distant camps.
In the early 1900s, Haiti reported
(15:44):
a great many telephones were placed
upon the ranch, where possible.
The top line to the fences was used
as a telephone line.
Though the service was atrocious.
It did allow for quick communication
concerning emergencies such as
a grass fire that required all the
cowboys immediately.
There was even talk among technology
(16:04):
geeks of the era that cowboys
could carry phones wherever they
went and clip on to the fence
to report problems they encountered.
Having said that, the old cowboys no
doubt scoffed at the notion of
carrying phones in their saddlebags
to squawk about every escaped
bull or rattlesnake bite they came
across.
The Cowboys, always ingenious when
(16:24):
it came to invention, perfected
the barbed wire phone systems by
adding insulators.
They'd use old broken whiskey
bottles and soda pop bottles,
particularly the necks of them to
put under the wire, to lift it off
the fence and improve conductivity.
This made the signal go further
and clarified.
The voices that carried
the rudimentary phone systems of the
(16:46):
ranches led to more creative
thinking about rural phone systems
in general.
Dr. Don Anderson, who has his
Ph.D. in electrical engineering from
Stanford and is a technological
historian, told me
that the barbed wire phone systems
led to the and a logical conclusion
that using whatever is already
in place is smart planning.
(17:07):
So when rural Texas
wanted to extend phone service from
town to town, the engineers came
up with the idea that they could use
the existing rural power lines
already installed by the Rural
Electrification Act
and run the phone signal right
through the electric lines just at
a different frequency.
That saved a lot of money and
(17:28):
brought phone service along with
electricity to rural areas.
Still many ranches and like their
barbed wire systems and kept them
even though the voice quality wasn't
nearly as good.
As late as the early 1970s,
a dairy farmer I knew had
a barbed wire phone running from his
house a half a mile to the barn.
He said it was good for talking to
his wife about what time supper
(17:50):
was. But most of all, he said,
it's free.
I don't have to pay my bill anything
for that phone.
And I enjoy thinking that it's a
burr in their saddle.
Dr. Anderson told me that it's quite
fascinating to consider that what
started as a fence system on the
site evolved really
into what is today Excite
Communications, which serves
(18:11):
that region today.
Excite Communications provides
phone service and high speed
Internet to rural communities
in the footprint of the original
ranch and more.
I'm w strong.
These are stories from Texas.
Some of them.
Our true.
And you're listening to The Texas
(18:31):
Standard.
When you're working on a story about
butter, there's little margin
for error, especially when
that butter comes in a package
labeled a Texas tradition since
1909.
What you don't know about this
tradition?
At number six in our top ten list,
commentator w have strong helps
spread this history around.
(18:53):
Texas has a great number of Texas
brands.
Southwest Airlines, Texas
Instruments, Lonestar Beer.
Dell Computer, Imperial Sugar.
The King Ranch.
The King Ranch also helped launch
another old Texas brand
foul furious butter.
It is a little circuitous, but this
is how it all came about.
Richard King's partner, Mifflin
(19:14):
Kennedy, sold 7000 cows
to Ed Lasseter, which he used to
create the dairy that launched fowl
furious butter 35 years
later. The King Ranch bought 108,000
acres from Lasseter, along with a
great number of cattle, to create
the Encino division of the King
Ranch. But that's not the story I'm
here to tell.
The furious butter was first made in
Foul Furious, of course, in 1909.
(19:36):
People have wondered whether the
butter is named for the town or the
town for the butter, but they were
actually both named after Lasseter's
Ranch, which was named for a
grove of trees called La
Mort. They are furious.
Lasseter said that that unique word
for Furious came from the Le Pen
Apache language and loosely
translated meant Land of Hearts
Delight.
(19:57):
The Butter was certainly the town's
best known export in those early
days and likely remain so today.
Even the school mascot, the jerseys
was named after the butter's real
creators.
The Jersey Cows.
Indeed, at one point, five Furious
was home to the largest Jersey
cattle herd in the world.
And so that gave special meaning to
(20:17):
the once popular bumper sticker
there. Watch your step.
You're in Jersey country.
I'm not sure the author of that
intended the double meaning, but it
certainly provided a good deal of
local levity until it was recalled.
For Furious Butter remains a popular
niche brand of butter in Texas.
It is sold at all the major grocery
stores and some smaller ones too.
(20:38):
It has been quite popular in
northern Mexico for generations.
A friend tells me that as a child in
Saltillo, he remembers his mother
bringing back the month.
The kid will say they were furious
as a special treat for the kids.
Any time she traveled to Texas,
a Texas Marine in World War two
recalled that as he was wading
(20:58):
ashore in the battle for Okinawa, a
foul furious butter crate bumped up
against his leg in the surf.
He found it comforting and
assurance from home that all
would be well.
And so it was for
furious butter outgrew, for furious.
It became so popular that
it was eventually bought by the
Dairy Farmers of America.
But rest assured, it is still made
(21:20):
in Texas.
It is made by Keller's creamery in
Winnsboro, Texas, and has
grown at a Texas sized pace
of 40% over the last few years.
That's a lot of biscuits and baked
potatoes, y'all.
When you drive through Fowler
furious today on State Highway 285,
you can still see the vintage
foul furious butter sign on the
(21:40):
side of the old creamery building.
The town newspaper Foul Furious
Facts occupies the building
today.
In the interest of full disclosure
and transparency.
I have to reveal that I am also
an export of how furious.
And even though I know on which side
my bread is buttered, so to speak, I
assure you that it doesn't affect
the veracity of this commentary.
(22:02):
IOW strong.
These are stories from Texas.
Some of them are true.
Our top ten list countdown
continues.
Still ahead on this special edition
of The Texas Standard.
(22:29):
From the Texas newsroom, I'm
Alexandra Hart.
As Texans prepare to ring in the new
Year, the Texas Department of
Transportation is continuing its
drive sober.
No regrets. Holiday Drunk driving
prevention campaign.
Ruby Martinez is Techstars traffic
safety program manager.
If you see that someone at a holiday
gathering has been drinking,
encourage them to find a sober
(22:51):
right or to stay put until they
sober up.
Helping to prevent a potential crash
is worth any temporarily
awkward conversation.
1 in 4 traffic deaths in Texas
were related to drunk driving last
year, and that number increased to
28% over the holidays.
More officers are on alert looking
for drunk drivers on Texas roadways
through New Year's Day.
(23:13):
DPS officers, that issue driver's
licenses are closed until at least
Thursday.
A computer outage forced the offices
to shut down on Monday and the
department is closed today and
tomorrow for the New Year's holiday.
It's unclear if the computer issues
will be resolved by Thursday.
Texas State parks are once again
hosting a series of hikes on New
(23:33):
Year's Day.
Texas Parks and Wildlife
interpretive specialist Ben Horstman
says about 80 parks are having
organized events and there's
something for all skill levels.
Some of them are more in
nature oriented where you'll learn
a lot as you go, some of them are
more exercise related where you're
let's just get the miles in and get
you get that heart
(23:54):
pumping.
You can find a full list of events
on Texas Parks and Wildlife's
website.
A new study from Utah Health San
Antonio showed a smartphone app
helped in reducing the use of
opioids by patients when used along
with their medications.
Elise Marino is the director of
research operations at its Bell
Institute on Substance Use and
Related Disorders and lead author
(24:16):
on the study.
She said patients who used the app
reduced their opioid use by 35%
compared to those who used
medication only.
They were using
less opioids by the time they
were leaving treatment.
And so that that's the length of
stay in treatment is huge because
we know that the longer
patients stay in treatment, the
(24:37):
more.
Successful.
They are in recovery.
The treatment aims to reach patients
anywhere, and those who participate
can track their goals, meet with
providers through telehealth, and
get medication sent directly to
them.
The House Ethics Committee has
dropped its investigation of two
Texas congressman, Republicans.
Wesley Hunt of Houston and Ronny
Jackson of Amarillo were accused of
(24:58):
violating campaign finance laws
for allegedly spending money on
personal use.
The Ethics Committee says both
lawmakers didn't fully comply with
reporting standards, but there is no
evidence money was intentionally
misspent.
I'm Alexandra Hart from the Texas
Newsroom.
You're listening to statewide news
from public radio stations across
Texas.
This coverage is only possible
(25:19):
because of support from listeners
like you.
You can help sustain and grow
Texas news coverage by donating
to your local public radio station
today.
33 minutes past the hour.
Texas Standard Time.
I'm Laura Rice.
We've made it to the midpoint of our
top ten countdown of our favorite
stories from Texas.
It's one way we're kicking off ten
(25:40):
years of the Texas Standard.
Since our show began, the anti
California rhetoric may only
have increased.
But as Texas standard commentator
Jeff Strong points out, some
of the finest Texans we've
ever had have been Californians,
at least on film.
I'm making no effort to be
comprehensive here, but I'd like to
(26:01):
highlight five Californians
who made great Texans
in the movies.
The big daddy of them all was, of
course, John Wayne.
I delved the Alamo film along with
Wayne's celebrated depiction
of Davy Crockett would ever
have been made without his unequaled
Hollywood clout and
his money.
The movie was a financial disaster,
(26:23):
and Wayne lost a disturbing amount
of money on the film.
Stephen Harrigan wrote in 2015 for
Texas Monthly that Wayne's
appeal as a Texan was
that he had this habitual
on screen character meshed
with our fun Texas dream
of ourselves.
In almost every carefully curated
role Wayne played.
(26:44):
He was a big, friendly, open
handed presence, but there
was also a concealed
carry component to his personality.
For all as many films in which he
played Texans, Wayne was made
an honorary Texan by
the Texas legislature in 2015.
Clint Eastwood played a Texas Ranger
in a perfect World.
(27:05):
Eastwood directed the film in which
he pursues escaped convict
Butch Haynes.
Kevin Costner, who kidnaped
a young boy to aid his life on the
run a good deal earlier.
Clint Eastwood played the most
wanted man in Texas
in Outlaw Josey Wales.
Though Wills was not a Texan in the
film, after seeing his family killed
(27:25):
and his fellow Confederate soldiers
massacred by a union
false surrender ambush,
he exacted revenge and headed for
Texas to start anew.
He represented the lethal
self-reliance of the men who
populated Texas in those years.
It was also an extension of the man
with no name persona that
he cultivated in the spaghetti
(27:46):
Westerns, one of which was for
a few dollars more, which took place
in El Paso and the surrounding
region.
Robert Duvall, a Californian
for the first 17 years of his life,
depicted the most memorable Texas
ranger of all when he played the
loveable and lethal captain
Gus McCrae in the 1989
miniseries Lonesome Dove.
(28:06):
He won a Best Actor award
for a TV movie for the role
Duvall animated in McCrae.
The self-reliance, adaptability,
love of justice, loyalty to friends
and fearlessness in battle that all
Texans admire.
When he was dying in Montana,
he made his friend call promise to
bury him in an orchard
(28:26):
near San Antonio.
He knew Karl was like him.
A promise had to be honored
no matter how dangerous the
enterprise.
Robert Duvall was also made an
honorary Texas Ranger along with
Tommy Lee Jones, for his role as
Captain W of Coal.
Tommy Lee Jones, though, is a native
Texan, and it showed wonderfully
in his authentic and coached
(28:47):
accent.
Robert Duvall was also superb in
Tender Mercies for that role.
He traveled thousands of miles
around Texas studying the accents
to get it right in the film, which
served him well in Lonesome Dove and
later in Secondhand Lions.
Kevin Costner, pretty
much a lifelong Californian, played
Texas Ranger Frank Hamer in The
(29:09):
Highwaymen, along with Woody
Harrelson.
In their pursuit of Bonnie and
Clyde.
I personally loved watching Jeff
Bridges role in Hell or High Water.
Jeff plays an aging Texas Ranger,
Marcus Hamilton, one week
from retirement.
He is on the trail of West Texas
bank robbers.
Jeff got help with his Ranger
persona from Pernell McNamara,
(29:29):
the then 70 year old sheriff of
McLennan County.
Though close to retirement, Ranger
Hamilton does not take it easy
or shirk away from his dangerous
task even after retirement.
His good Texas character can't let
go.
The job is not done until
it's done, at least to his
satisfaction.
And if you want the finest example
of an unadulterated West Texas
(29:50):
accent, you'll hear it from the
waitress in the cafe who says so
lyrically, what don't you
want?
That was Margaret Beaumont and she
was from Texas.
Since we have talked about all these
Californians playing Texas Rangers,
it's rather cool, I think, to
recognize that our real life
most famous Texas Ranger of all
time, Jack Coffee Hayes,
(30:12):
left Texas in 1849
and became the first elected
sheriff of San Francisco,
California, in 1850.
We can't make this stuff
up.
I'm w a strong.
These are stories from Texas.
Some of.
(30:35):
Our special stories from Texas.
Edition of Texas Standard continues
right after the break.
With the top four on our list.
Stay with us.
Support for Texas Standard comes
from Texas Oncology.
Right here with cancer care at
more than 280 locations around
(30:56):
Texas, allowing patients to remain
close to family, friends and
caregivers while they fight against
cancer.
More at Texas Oncology Take
home.
Support for Texas standard comes
from Raise your Hand Texas.
Working to strengthen public
education for all students and
helping Texans understand education
issues. Coming up during the 89th
(31:17):
legislative session at Raise
Your Hand, Texas Talk.
This is the Texas Standard.
I'm Laura Rice.
And today we're counting down our
favorite WFP strong segments.
This next one represents one of his
specialties unique and
(31:39):
underappreciated bits of Texas
history, like how Texas
became nearly 1000mi²
bigger.
You can never underestimate the
value of good friendship forged
early in life.
If not for such a friendship, Texas
would be nearly 1000mi²
smaller.
Before I get to the friendship, come
(31:59):
with me, if you will, up to the
northwest corner of the Panhandle,
where Texas meets Oklahoma
and New Mexico.
The border between Oklahoma
and New Mexico doesn't meet up
exactly with the border between
Texas and New Mexico.
The line makes a jog to the left.
It goes 2.3 miles left
before heading south.
That jog is the result
(32:20):
of a survey error that some
have called the worst survey error
in U.S. history.
But it isn't just a two mile error.
The error gets bigger as it
continues south, 310
miles to the bottom of the Texas
New Mexico corner.
The mistake amounts to a 942
square mile error
a landmass bigger than Houston.
(32:42):
In truth, that land should have gone
to New Mexico.
The border between Texas and New
Mexico territory was
to be exactly along
the 103rd meridian.
When the official survey was
undertaken, almost ten years after
the fact, there was a problem with
water. Indian stars, algebra
and math, which all contributed
to the error.
(33:02):
That ended up a blessing for
Texas.
Naturally, there's quite a good long
story behind the mistake.
But it's far too complex for these
few minutes, so I will give you the
cut to the Chase version.
A man named John H.
Clark was hired to do the survey and
plant the monuments along the 103rd
meridian.
He started from the south and
surveyed northward until he ran
(33:24):
out of access to water.
So he stopped and he said, Well,
I'll just go up to the north end of
Texas and I'll come down.
Clark started again, northwest of
present day Dalhart and headed south
until the Native Americans
frightened him off.
Though he was about 70 miles
from connecting his two
lines, he figured it was
good enough and he turned in his
work.
(33:45):
His two lines would have
never met.
The problem was his northern
starting point was about 2.3
miles west of where it should have
been, and his southern corner
was nearly 3.8 miles
west to where it should have been.
Consequently, that border
slides imperceptibly,
one and a half miles ever so gently
(34:06):
southwest, over a distance
of 310 miles.
You pull up a Google map on your
phone and align the southeastern
corner of New Mexico with
your left, straight edge phone
border.
You will see that the border slants
off to the right of at the top.
That's the error.
It amounts to 603,348
acres.
Well, nobody knew it was wrong.
(34:27):
And so the bad survey, based
on poor calculations,
was certified by the U.S.
in 1891, and it became
the legal boundary.
Well, by the time New Mexico
was about to get statehood with the
enabling act of 1910.
It had become aware of Clark's
error and it slipped into the
statehood law, a clause
(34:49):
saying that the eastern border
would be the true 103rd
meridian.
New Mexico would get its land back.
All was going well, and nobody
was paying attention to the land
grab except for John Farwell,
who was an original investor in the
Excite Ranch.
Those were the same investors who
essentially built our state capitol
in Austin.
(35:10):
Well, he realized that the city
would lose hundreds of thousands of
acres and mineral rights.
If the New Mexico plan went through
as it was, but he couldn't get any
legislators to listen.
And so he did what we all do in
times of trouble, he said.
Who do I know?
Well, it just so happened that he
knew President William Howard Taft.
They had been good friends during
(35:30):
their college years at Yale.
So he went to see his old buddy
Howard, and he explained the
predicament. And Taft immediately
summoned powerful men to his
office and told them that
the Clark border would be the
legal border when New Mexico was
made a state or it wouldn't be made
one. He said that since the boundary
had existed for more than 50 years
(35:51):
and had been certified 20 years
before, it had to be grandfathered
in. Otherwise, people who believe
they were Texans would suddenly be
in New Mexico and litigation over
land titles would never end.
And that is how a survey
error and an old friendship
ended up making Texas almost
1000mi² bigger
than it was supposed to be.
And once again, it's all about
(36:14):
who you know.
I'm w strong.
These are stories from Texas.
Some of them are true.
Some of commentator W.F.
Strong's most endearing stories
from Texas have been personal.
This next one was actually one of
the. First he ever put together for
Texas Standard way back in
May of 2015.
It's not baseball season, but it's
(36:36):
the time of year for reflection.
So W Strong looks back on his
days on the diamond.
Uncle Dale was the first grown up to
come home in the afternoon.
He wasn't our real uncle.
We just called him that.
Back then, it was considered rude
for a child to call an adult only by
their first name.
So we had lots of aunts and uncles.
(36:57):
Uncle Dale got up when it was still
dark and he walked a mile to work
where he put in hard days at
the Halliburton yard.
At 330 in the afternoon, he
would, as the poet Appleman put it,
follow his shadow home to grass.
And there he would sit in his lawn
chair under the gauzy shade
of a mosquito tree and
(37:17):
watch over us as we played baseball
in the street.
It was a colleague who rode hard
in dusty and dry times and
it turned to cake like mud when it
rained.
Home plate and second base were in
the middle of the street.
First base was in the Garcia's yard
and third base was in Uncle Deal's
yard.
Uncle Dale was our umpire.
He would sit there drinking coffee
(37:39):
from a big white mug, smoking
one cigar after another.
We could smell the sweet tobacco
drifting through the infield.
Even now, I can smell it
as it drifts across the years to
where I sit.
Uncle Dale ruled on close calls from
the comfort of his place in the
shade.
That was a foul, he'd say.
Or he would coach two hands
(38:01):
while learning RJ.
He also served as traffic cop.
You boys get out of the road for
that truck runs over you.
I can only remember his getting out
of his chair one time.
We were having our own little
baseball draft the way we always
did.
Hand over. Hand up the bat.
You remember?
Well, Mrs. Anderson came over and
suggested we draw numbers out of a
hat, making one team out
(38:22):
of the evil numbers and the other
out of the odd numbers to spare
the feelings of those often chosen
last.
Uncle Dale would not stand for these
progressive ideas.
He was a purist.
He got up and he waved her off.
He said, If a boy is struggling,
he needs to know it early
so he can do something about it.
One day we came home from school
and we saw Uncle Dale on a huge
(38:44):
Halliburton bulldozer in the brush
down the road.
We went down there to watch him
because, like all boys,
we were fascinated with anything
that could topple trees and reform
the earth.
After about 30 minutes, he shut down
the dozer.
He hopped off and he said,
There's your new baseball field,
boys. You're off the streets.
(39:05):
Well, don't just stand there.
He said, Get your gloves.
Let's break her in.
Never again. Was the crack of a bat
muffled by a car horn
wanting to drive through our
infield.
Uncle Dale's baseball field cost
him a few phone calls and three
hours of his expert labor.
But it gave us and the boys that
followed us years of
(39:26):
immeasurable joy.
It was the greatest gift we ever
got, really.
The gift of a beautiful boyhood
and the lifelong memory of it.
I'm strong.
These are stories from Texas.
Some of them are true.
(39:48):
We've almost made it to the top of
our list of favorite WF.
Strong commentaries.
Still waiting for yours?
There's more just ahead.
Support for Texas Standard comes
from the Texas Tuition Promise fund
for over ten years, helping families
lock in current tuition rates and
required fees at Texas public
(40:08):
colleges and universities, excluding
medical and dental institutions.
Texas Tuition Promise Fund
Account.
(40:28):
This is a special stories from
Texas edition of The Texas Standard.
I'm Laura Rice.
We're counting down our favorite
commentaries from W.F.
Strong. And we've made it to number
two. This one from 2017
was inspired by the attention on
the border and immigration from the
first Trump administration.
This was the situation the new
(40:48):
immigrants to Texas were becoming
quite a problem.
They were coming across the river in
droves.
Some were legal.
Some were undocumented.
Some were living on land they had
illegally acquired, and some were
squatters living on land
that belonged to others.
The legal immigrants were being
followed by family members
who were arriving without proper
(41:09):
papers.
The government was frustrated and
trying desperately to come up with a
solution.
Many were good people, hard workers.
But as a group, they would mostly
keep to themselves.
They wouldn't assimilate.
They wouldn't acculturate.
They refused to learn the language.
Most were of a different religion
from that which was most common in
their new country.
(41:29):
There was talk of posting the
military all along the river.
The borders and immigration laws
needed to be enforced.
The government passed a law
prohibiting all new immigration to
Texas from the neighboring republic.
The military was in fact sent to
ports of entry to turn back those
without proper documents.
And though the trend slowed,
(41:50):
illegal immigration continued
at a worrisome pace.
Sound familiar?
These issues were being discussed
in Texas almost 200
years ago.
The years I'm talking about here
were the 1820s and the early
1830s before
the Battle of the Alamo, before
the Battle of San Jacinto.
(42:12):
The immigrants were not Mexican,
but rather Anglo-Americans
coming in from Louisiana, Arkansas,
Tennessee and other southern states.
The river the immigrants were
crossing was not the Rio Grande,
but the Sabine.
The border between Texas and
Louisiana.
The concerned government was not in
Austin, but in Mexico City.
(42:32):
Texas, of course, belonged to Mexico
at the time.
The military they wanted to put on
the eastern border was the Mexican
army.
The language the immigrants wouldn't
learn was Spanish.
That was part of the deal.
If they got cheap land, they agreed
to become Mexican citizens and learn
Spanish.
Most did not.
The religion that they would not
(42:54):
embrace was Catholicism,
even though that was part of the
deal, too. As Mexican citizens, they
were supposed to become Catholic.
It is surprising to see how trends
in some ways have reversed
themselves over a couple of
centuries.
I'm not interested in getting into
the high weeds of politics here.
I'll leave the cautionary tale to
others, but I do find this
(43:14):
a good illustration of a historical
adage coined by Mark
Twain and affirmed by Winston
Churchill.
History may not repeat
itself, but it does
rhyme.
I'm a strong.
These are stories from Texas.
Some of them are
true.
We've made it to number one.
(43:35):
And to be honest, there was no
competition.
It's been clear since 2015
that commentator W.
F. strong hit on something special
when he put together this story
from Texas.
This story consistently shows
up as one of the most popular
on our website, despite its
age.
It was first done to celebrate
(43:55):
30 years since Augustus
McRae and Woodrow Call
sprung from the mind of author Larry
McMurtry and two words
of warning. There may be a little
grown up language here.
And if you've been under a rock
and Ogallala for the last four
decades, there might be a spoiler
or two.
Since I am, like many Texans, an
amateur expert on Lonesome Dove.
(44:17):
People often ask me when
I figure the most love quotes from
the mini series.
Now, if I were wise, I would just
say any of 100 quotes could be
someone's number one and leave it at
that.
But I have never let lack of wisdom
stop me. I cannot resist the
challenge of making a list.
I do have data on my side based on
feedback from a popular Facebook
page devoted to Lonesome Dove.
(44:38):
I have 12, which we will do
Letterman style.
Number 12 comes at the end
of the mini series.
Woodrow has just buried Gus
and puts up the grave marker made
from the famous Hat Creek cattle
company sign.
Woodrow says, I guess
this will teach me to be more.
Careful about what I promise.
In the future.
(45:00):
Number 11 is Gus McCrae.
101 When the boys
seem a little shocked by his, shall
we say, manly appetites.
He says.
What's good for me, necessarily good
for the weak man.
Number ten occurs right after Gus
has cut the cards with Laurie, and
she accuses him of cheating.
He says.
Well, I wouldn't say I did.
(45:20):
I wouldn't say I did.
But I will say there's a man who
wouldn't cheat for a Polk.
Don't want one bad enough.
Come on.
Darling.
Nine Not long before
Gus goes guns blazing
into blue ducks camp to save Laurie.
He says.
I don't know if it the wrath of the
Lord, but Stand on
comes on down.
Number eight is said the following
(45:40):
morning. Gus finds July
Johnson bearing his son
and Jenny and Roscoe.
Gus says.
Yesterday gone.
We can't get it back.
Number seven comes when Gus gets
exasperated with Woodrow because
Woodrow to Gus, his way of thinking
is just being dead.
God, Woodrow, you just don't ever
(46:00):
get the point.
It ain't Diane I'm talking about.
It's living.
The sixth most popular quote
punctuates the scene when Jake's
spoon must be hanged along
with the murdering horse thieves he
is thrown in with.
Jake pleads his case, but Gus has
little sympathy.
He says how it works.
Jake, you ride with an outlaw, you
die within a mile.
(46:21):
Number five occurs in a San Antonio
bar scene that has several great
lines together.
So I decided to count them as one
quote, the bartender upon
insulting Gus and call gets
his nose broken when Gus slams
his face into the Oak bar,
Gus explains.
Besides, a whiskey, I think will
require a little respect.
(46:41):
If you care to turn around,
you can see how we look.
Who's younger.
And the people around here wanted to
make of senators.
And the thing we didn't put up with
then was doubling service.
And as you can see, we still don't
put up with it.
As they rode away, Woodrow tells
Gus he's lucky he didn't get thrown
in jail.
And Gus is.
Very much of a crime.
(47:03):
Black And certainly bartender.
Number four is a touching line
uttered by Gus as he lay dying.
He says to.
Woodrow, It's been quite a bar.
Number three is a tie so close
I couldn't separate them.
The first comes at the first of the
movie Back and Lonesome Dove.
When Ball infers that Gus
(47:23):
may be too old for romance
anymore. And Gus sets him straight.
He says they.
All are the violent sweet of the
music.
Following. Soon after that scene
comes Call's advice to Newt.
All hands in his first pistol.
And he says, here.
Better to have had it
not made it.
Then it is needed.
Correct?
(47:43):
Number two, Gus lays out
a prescription for Lori's future
happiness.
She is obsessed with going to San
Francisco, and he wants her to
understand that that dream
is likely a misguided one.
You see life in San Francisco still
just.
And number one, though, Gus gets
a great number of the best lines
Woodrow gets, without question, the
most powerful, most quoted line of
(48:05):
all in the entire mini series.
After Carl beat the Army
Scout to a pulp.
He says.
I hate road behavior and man.
I won't tolerate it.
There you go. That's the top 12
according to the data.
Now, when you write to me to tell me
that the list is wrong or that I
left out this or that, I ask only
that you remember.
(48:25):
Captain calls admonition,
no rude behavior.
I'm strong.
These are stories from Texas.
Some of them are true.
WF Strong is a professor of culture
and communication at the University
of Texas, Rio Grande Valley, and
he's been a beloved contributor
to the Texas Standard Team for
nearly all of our ten years.
(48:48):
We're celebrating our 10th birthday
for the entire year of 2025,
and we kicked it off just a smidge
early with our top ten
stories from Texas.
You can learn more and celebrate
with us at Texas.
Standard.org/birthday.
I'm Laura Rice and on behalf of
the entire Texas standard team,
(49:08):
we wish you a happy 2025.
Philanthropic support for Texas.
Casey and Scott are here, the
Winkler Family Foundation.
Lynn Dobson and Greg Wooldridge,
Adrian Killen and the George
Huntington family.
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