Texas Standard » Stories From Texas

My favorite snack as a teenager was a Dr Pepper with salty peanuts. You remember: you pour the peanuts into the Dr Pepper and let them float around and season the drink. Didn’t get much better than that. Dr Pepper is the oldest soft drink in America. Older than Coca-Cola, in fact, by a full […] The post Dr Pepper: The Story of Texas’ Favorite Soft Drink appeared first on KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts.

Texans have a kind of proverb that goes like this: “Driving across Texas isn’t a trip; it’s a damn career.” Texas is big, no doubt about that. But it used to be a lot bigger – about a fourth bigger. When Texas joined the United States in 1845, Texas’ borders (and shape) were quite different. […] The post Sure, Texas Is Big – But It Used to Be Even Bigger appeared first on KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts.

In the mini-series Lonesome Dove, Charles Goodnight was immortalized loosely as Captain Woodrow F. Call, played by Tommy Lee Jones. In truth, Charles Goodnight in real life was even more fascinating than the fictional Woodrow Call. Goodnight, who is the most famous rancher in Texas history, and the most ubiquitous Texan of his time, became […] The post The Real Texan Who Inspired Captain Woodrow F. Call appeared first on KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts.

To my mind, the signature song about longing for Texas is this one: I wanna go home with the Armadillo; Good country music from Amarillo and Abilene; The friendliest people and the prettiest women you’ve ever seen. That’s “London Homesick Blues” sung by Jerry Jeff Walker and written by Gary P. Nunn. But there are […] The post Homesick for Texas: Songs & Tributes to the Lone Star State appeared first on KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts.

This is a biography of a word. It is about a word that was essentially born in Texas, grew up to achieve success here, and eventually became famous the world over. It has now gone well beyond its modest roots as a simple noun and transformed itself into impressive, symbolic fame as a metaphor. The […] The post The Texan Origins of the Word Maverick appeared first on KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts.

A demonym describes the inhabitants of a place. With so many cities and counties in Texas, it’s hard to keep track of who is what from where. Word scholar W.F. Strong has a helpful list to keep you on track. For places ending in “s”, add “-ites” Dallas – Dallasites Dumas – Dumasites For places […] The post Texas Demonyms: Dallasites, Victorians, and Everything In-Between appeared first on KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts.

Tom Landry and Charles Schulz died on the same day: Feb. 12, 2000. Mike Thompson, the Detroit Free Press cartoonist honored them both with a cartoon showing them entering the pearly gates together. Schulz was depicted as Charlie Brown and Landry had his arm around him. Landry said, “Now a few pointers on kicking a […] The post The Life of Tom Landry, the Man in the Hat appeared first on KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts.

Slang is the working class of words. Carl Sandburg said “slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.” But slang is always changing. For an older guy like me, It’s hard to keep up with. Did you know that “on fleek,” “squad,” and “lit” are on […] The post Words, They are a Changin’ appeared first on KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts.

Oscar Wilde said, “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about.” He would be pleased to know that we’re going to talk a good deal about him in the next few minutes. Few people know that this great playwright, Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills […] The post Oscar Wilde’s Tour of Texas Gives Us Life appeared first on KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts.

1. “You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas.” Davy Crockett said this angrily after losing his Tennessee bid for the U.S. Congress. I think he really said, “Y’all can go to hell,” but grammatical purity likely corrupted the original transcription. 2. Mary Lasswell, who grew up in Brownsville and wrote […] The post ‘You May All Go to Hell’ And 9 More Great Texas Quotes appeared first on KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts.

The story goes that there was a convention of landowners – mega farmers and big ranchers – up in Denver. There were four men sittin’ around in the bar there in the fancy resort, enjoying happy hour. Three of them were swappin’ stories about their farms and ranches and generally braggin’ about their land holdings. […] The post The Mysterious Texan and the Ranchers’ Convention appeared first on KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts.

My mom lived to be 101 and five months. She said once you reached 99, you started counting your age like a newborn – in months: 99 and six months, 99 and nine months. She used to advise that if you wanted to live to be a hundred, you should live to be 99 and […] The post Three Secrets of Life From My 101-Year-Old Mother appeared first on KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts.

This story starts off like many good stories do: two men walked into a bar. Now, we have to expand it a little, two men walked into a bar in San Antonio fifty years ago. Okay, it was actually a restaurant & bar. They ordered drinks, and perhaps hors d’oeuvres. One grabbed a cocktail napkin, […] The post The Airline That Started With A Cocktail Napkin appeared first on KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts.

There are three kinds of Texans: those with an accent, those without an accent, and those who don’t think they have an accent, but do. About a year ago, I made a list of the 12 most commonly mispronounced words in Texas. Well, they weren’t absolutely unique to Texas – some were Southernisms, but they […] The post Listen: 12 More Words Texans Mispronounce appeared first on KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts.

To paraphrase Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now, “I love the sound of a diesel engine in the morning.” Could be a pickup, or a tractor, or an 18 wheeler. But I love the sound, because it sounds like adventure. It is the sound that says we’re off on a road trip, or going fishing, hunting, […] The post In the Land of Pickups, Texas is King appeared first on KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts.

There are three classic Texas ad campaigns that would be shortlisted in the Texas Advertising Hall of Fame, if we had such a thing. They are: Blue Bell Ice Cream’s “We eat all we can and we sell the rest,” “Don’t mess with Texas” – arguably the most brilliant public service campaign ever created, and […] The post I’m Mad, Too, Eddie! appeared first on KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts.

A New Yorker told me that he never uses the words Texas and poetry in the same sentence. He thinks Texas poetry is an oxymoron because he doesn’t see how such a refined art form could be produced in a macho culture. But he is wrong. Cowboys and vaqueros were reciting poetry in the warm […] The post Think There’s No Poetry In Texas? Think Again appeared first on KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts.

Texas has 600 Dairy Queens. About 20 percent of all Dairy Queens in the U.S. are in Texas. That’s a lot of Belt-Busters, y’all. The oldest Dairy Queen in Texas is in Henderson. It opened in 1950. Texas Monthly reported in 1979 that McDonald’s couldn’t get a foothold in small town Texas because DQ’s were […] The post Before We Had Social Media, We Had Dairy Queen appeared first on KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts.

The great Texas meteorologist Isaac Klein reportedly said back in the ’30s that Texas is a land of eternal drought, interrupted occasionally by biblical floods. Here is the way one writer describe one of these twenty-year droughts: “It crept up out of Mexico touching first along the brackish Pecos River, and spreading then in all […] The post The Time It Never Rained appeared first on KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts.

This story comes under the heading of “folklore,” a story that rises up out of the people and migrates and mutates. There is a New York version, a Jewish version, an Italian version, a Southern version and a Texas version, where I believe it originated, but that is likely because I am a Texan. It […] The post The Texas Rancher and the New York Banker appeared first on KUT & KUTX Studios -- Podcasts.