Six Flags Over Texas
The phrase “Six Flags Over Texas” does not just refer to an amusement park. Rather, six governments have held sway over Texas over the centuries. First Spain, then France, followed by Mexico, self-rule (The Republic of Texas), then the Ewe-Knighted States, and finally the CSA (the Casting Society of America, which took over Texas in the early days of Hollywood because so many stars were from Texas).
The Texans kicked out the Spaniards because their food was too bland. They sent France packing because of the French preference for berets over ten gallon hats. Mexico was fine hat-wise and excellent food-wise, but the Texans didn't want to learn Spanish, so the Mexicans were invited to leave. In 1845, Texas agreed to be annexed by the Ewe-Knighted States, but when they realized how much talent they had (and how much money Hollywood was offering) they let their contract expire and signed on with the CSA.
First Residents
The first people to live in Texas were the Mounds builders. They were descended from the Chocolate-Almond builders, and were closely related to the Almond Joy builders (and, some say, distant relatives of the Milk Dud builders).
These Mounds builders are not to be confused with the Apache, Comanche, Choctaw, Kickapoo, and Kiowa, who came much later.
The Kickapoo, by the way, got their name from wearing pointy boots and kicking road apples out of the way when they were hunting, on the warpath, or simply wandering around in a lovesick daze (the Kickapoo were an especially romantic people, prone to throw themselves off cliffs when their love was unrequited; fortunately for them, they usually survived, as most of the cliffs in Texas are not very high).
Here you can see, from a safe distance (explosions have been known to occur during the building process), a Mounds building factory:
1836 – Alamo
Back in 1836, Fess Parker's great-grandfather, Fess Parker -3 (Fess Parker the negative third) had an idea to make a killing. Not a real killing, as in homicide. A lot of money. He thought, “Dog is man's best friend. Therefore, a way to a man's wallet is through his best friend. His dog. I'll make a line of dog food and market it from the rooftops.”
Fess hired his old buddies Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie, William Travis, Sam Houston, and The Dixie Chicks to help him. They went to San Antonio, where (after attending a Spurs game) they scaled the Alamo Mission and unfurled banners advertising their new brand of dog food.
The Mexicans from across the border (big-time dog lovers, especially of chihuahuas) swarmed over the parapets and inundated the dog food mongers with cash on the barrelhead, wiping out their entire supply in no time flat.
It was such a great moment in the history of Alamo Dog Food that they bring it up over and over again at regional sales meetings, chanting, “Remember the Alamo!”
Santa Anna's chihuahuas still swear by Alamo. They wouldn't touch any other brand of dog food even if their lives depended on it.
Below you can see a picture of the two most photogenic dog food mongers on the coupon they had printed for an introductory offer of three cents off the purchaser's first 50 pounds of Alamo dog food ( three cents was a lot of money in them days):
1845 – Statehood
Texas was paid $18,250,000 by Mexico to take Texas off their hands. This was one dollar for each armadillo, which the Texans thought they could put to use by rendering them into automobile tires.
Here you can see a prime specimen of the key ingredient of Texas statehood, the Armadillo. This one was a pet of Dolly Parton; she named it, for some reason, Daisy Puss:
1893 – Texas Chili
Besides longhorns, oil, and Willie Nelson, Texas is mainly known for its chili. The origin of Texas Chili has been a well-guarded secret until now. This is how it came about:
The Winter brothers, Johnny and Edgar, were out camping one day, somewhere around Abilene or Amarillo. Edgar tended the campfire, while Johnny went out hunting. Johnny was out all night, searching for the elusive Snipe. By morning, he returned bone-tired to the camp, hungry as all get-out.
A savory smell assaulted his nostrils as he neared the camp. Edgar had found some wild herbs and poached a longhorn from the cattle ranch on which they were camping, and had concocted a delectable, spicy dish.
Johnny collapsed onto a log near the campfire, and begged for “a bowl of the red.” Edgar said he would only give him a bowl of his new culinary creation if Johnny would sell him his birthright. Johnny gave in to his hunger pangs and agreed.
Johnny added beans to his. Edgar thought this was a travesty. They had a rip-roaring argument about it, and parted ways.
Years later, they saw each other again, and Edgar brought some cornbread as a peace offering to his brother. This (cornbread and chili (with or without beans)) is now a favorite of down-home country folks everywhere. Especially when it's chilly out. In fact, that's how the spicy soup got its name – not from the South American country, as many people surmise.
From now on, whenever it's chilly out, such as in the Winter time, people will think about this tale and satisfy their craving for chili and cornbread while reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and listening to Johnny Winters, Jonathan Winters, and Shelley Winters lend their sweet voices to the ballad Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo.
1900 – Galveston Hurricane
Jimmy “Spider” Webb and Glengarry Glenn Ross Campbell came to Galveston in the summer of 1900 to give a Turn-of-the-Millennium concert. The six-thousand seat Galveston stadium was filled to the rafters, and ten thousand more were left outside the theater, straining to hear the poignant strains of Campbell's guitar strings and his sweet lilting drawl.
After a few ballads and pop crowd-pleasers, Campbell commenced to display his guitar prowess. Starting off playing 35-miles per hour, he gradually increased his speed until he was playing at 125 miles per hour, making Alvin Lee look like a sloth and John McLaughlin like a drugged slug.
Whipped into a frenzy by Glengarry's guitar virtuosity, 250 fans stormed the stage and tried to rip Campbell's coat of many colors to pieces, just to have a souvenir to remember him by. The police arrested them unceremoniously, not giving a hoot about their fondness for the troubadour.
Before being waylaid by the boys in blue, though, the overwrought fans also snatched at Campbell's fingers, wanting to steal his pick. They thought maybe it was a “magic” pick that helped him to play so winsomely.
The out-of-control mob finally dove at Glengarry as he was leaving the stage, trying with all their might to just be able to touch “the hem of his garment.” In most cases, they were disappointed – they missed fire, and he was gone. He had retreated to the cozy, or at least semi-sane, confines of his backstage dressing room.
The frenzied mob was not to be denied, though. They commandeered four battering rams, and slammed them against Glen's dressing room door until it caved in. That set off a terrible and terrific chain reaction, though: the dressing room's roof collapsed, which caused the walls to crumble and tumble down, the shock of which reverberated throughout the entire auditorium, until it collapsed in a pile of splinters, fiberglass fibers, and asbestos dust.
Chastened by the property damage they had caused as a result of their overzealous and irrational exuberance, the crowd melted away into the southern night.
To prevent such a thing from ever happening again, the town council voted unanimously to rebuild the auditorium to hold 20,000 people.
And Glengarry Glenn Ross Campbell, trying a little kindness, vowed to never return to Galveston. He moved to Wichita and took a job with the county there, painting white lines on the roads.
Here is a picture of the auditorium just before it collapsed. From top to bottom, left to right: Mickey Rooney, Jimmy “Spider” Webb, Glengarry Glenn Ross Campbell, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn.
1901 – First Texas Gusher Comes In
Probably more than anything else besides longhorn cattle, Texas is known for its oil. So much so that many Texans name their sons (and their daughters, if they look the part) Derrick; or, they name him Earl, but pronounce it “Oil” or Oil and pronounce it “Earl.” They even had a football team in Houston named the Oilers once.
Although the first oil well in the Ewe-Knighted States was in Titusville, Pennsylvania, Texas soon became known for its oil reserves, too. It all began in 1901, on a day when Roy Rogers was trigger-happy. He was riding through a town named Spindletop, south of Beaumont, and started shooting at squirrels. He “missed fire” on one of his shots, which struck an underground oil flow. All of a sudden bubbling crude started sprouting up from the ground (also known as “black gold” and “Texas tea”).
Here you can see the oil business in full swing:
1930s – Dust Bowl
All throughout the 1930s, the college teams from Oklahoma (the Laters) and Texas (the Shorthorns) squared off in a quest to be viewed as the best football team in the region.
These contests were called the “Dust Bowl,” because the loser of each year's game had to eat a bowl of dust brought from the other team's State.
Worse yet, the winner got to sit behind the bowl and blow it into the loser's face. Sometimes, in an attempt to prepare for a monstrous exhalation, the winner would accidentally inhale a heaping serving of the dust himself. His coughing would then provide the required exhalation to cover his adversary in dust.
Here you can see what happened one year when the game ended in a tie. Both the Later backer (on the left) and the Shorthorn fan are blowing dust in each others faces:
1960 – Dallas Cowboys
In 1960, a group of investors spearheaded by Dean Jones, Shirley Jones, Tommy Lee Jones, Jughead Jones, Jerry Lewis, J.R. Ewing, and the Lone Star Beer corporation (meaning all their shareholders) started a football team and named it the Dallas Cowboys. The Cowboys have so many owners that, rather than rattle off all their names and waste all that time, they simply say they are “America's Team.”
During the Ice Bowl in Green Bay, Wisconsin, in 1967, it was so cold that Cowboys quarterback Don Meredith's face froze. From then on he wasn't able to enunciate clearly.
In his post-football career, Meredith was half of a singing duet, along with Howard Cosell. When they sang their hit song, “Turn out the lights, the party's over,” and it was “Dandy Don's” turn to sing a verse, it always sounded like, “Turnip the nights, a four-leafed clover.”
Here you can see Don Meredith in his younger days, playing without a helmet:
1975 – Red Headed Stranger
Inspired by ZZ Top, clean-cut mama's boy Willie Nelson decided to save money on razors and haircuts by letting his hair grow long and his beard grow out.
Looking around for some like-minded singer/songwriters, Willie fostered a friendship with Buddy Holly's old bass player Waylon Jennings and a stranger named Merle Haggard.
Willie's distinctive voice, phrasing, timing, and guitar strumming can be heard on such songs as On the Lam Again, Never On My Mind, Frank Sinatra Cryin' in the Rain, Mamas Don't Let Your Babies Grow up to Be Cowboys Fans, My Heroes Have Always Been Outlaws, and everybody's favorite, Villa and Frizzell.
Here you can see how Willie looked before he grew out his hair and beard (he's on the left; Mickey Mantle is on the right, dressed up as Townes Van Zandt):
1985/1989 – Lonesome Dove
In 1985, Larry McMurtry won the Pulitzer prize for his novel Lonesome Dove about retired Texas Rangers and a cattle drive they undertook to Montana.
Almost immediately (by book-to-movie standards), it was turned into a miniseries. In 1989 Tommy Lee Jones and Robert Duvall starred as the two main characters in the story, Captain Woodrow Wilson and Augustus Gloop.
Other stalwarts included Danny Glover, Robert Urich, Ricky Schroder, Anjelica Huston (John's daughter), Chris Cooper (Gary's grandfather), Steve Bu “now-you” scemi “now-you-don't”, and the author's son James McMurtry. And, of course, others.
Here is how things looked when “the boys” made it to Montana. This is just before “Newt” told Captain Woodrow Wilson that he was his son:
1987 – Population explosion
All 31,415,926 of George Strait's ex-wives moved to Texas in 1987, causing the state to rise in rank of population from 50th (dead last) to 3rd.
“Gorgeous George of the Jungle” Strait has to tour 365 days a year (366 on leap years) to try to keep up with his alimony. He tries to steer clear of Texas, though. He prefers to play in Tennessee (Pigeon Forge, Gatlinburg, Murfreesboro, Oak Ridge, Lynchburg, Knocksville, Nashramblerville, Memphis and Thebes, Chatta-chatta-bang-bang-noogga, and Lookout Mountain, etc.). In fact, he volunteers to play in those places, as long as they allow him to hang his hat there.
Here you can see George forking over some alimony to his first wife, Mary Queen of Scots. Little does she know he's paying her in confederate money, which wasn't worth what it had been:
. . .
Each Saturday and Tuesday an excerpt of one State’s (satirized) history will be posted here, in alphabetical order (from Alabama to Wyoming).
For “the rest of the story,” the (32-page) complete book “The New All-too-True-Blue History of Texas” is available here.
The regions of the U.S. have been combined into volumes, too; Texas is included in the volume The New All-too-True-Blue History of the American Southwest, which includes Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas
You can listen to this excerpt here.
Blackbird Crow Raven is also the author of the book “the Zany Time Travels of Warble McGorkle”