Texas Standard » Stories from Texas

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...

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 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 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...

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...

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...

James Dean – in the movie “Giant” – tells Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor that he has struck oil. And not only that, it’s payback time. James Dean was playing Jett Rink, a hard drinkin’, brawlin’, tough-talkin’ uncultured Texas wildcatter who struck it rich. But everybody in Texas knew that he was really playing Glen...

James Dean – in the movie “Giant” – tells Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor that he has struck oil. And not only that, it’s payback time. James Dean was playing Jett Rink, a hard drinkin’, brawlin’, tough-talkin’ uncultured Texas wildcatter who struck it rich. But everybody in Texas knew that he was really playing Glen...

Every Christmas my mom would bake eight pies: four apple and four pecan. Now, we wouldn’t eat all of those ourselves. Two would be given away to pie-less people and two would be placed in the deep freeze for some emergency of the future. Pies and money were similar in my mom’s mind. Save a...

Every Christmas my mom would bake eight pies: four apple and four pecan. Now, we wouldn’t eat all of those ourselves. Two would be given away to pie-less people and two would be placed in the deep freeze for some emergency of the future. Pies and money were similar in my mom’s mind. Save a...

If you want to hold public office in Texas, you have to believe in God. You cannot serve even as dog catcher – if it’s an elected office, you must believe in God. Given the long history we have had of con artists, and scofflaws, carpetbaggers, and white-collar criminals holding public office around the state,...

If you want to hold public office in Texas, you have to believe in God. You cannot serve even as dog catcher – if it’s an elected office, you must believe in God. Given the long history we have had of con artists, and scofflaws, carpetbaggers, and white-collar criminals holding public office around the state,...

There is an unusual map of the world that was once a popular poster. You still see it around in many places because it is a map that makes you see the world in new ways. This map reduces the world’s 7.3 billion people to a village of just 100 people. It keeps all the...

There is an unusual map of the world that was once a popular poster. You still see it around in many places because it is a map that makes you see the world in new ways. This map reduces the world’s 7.3 billion people to a village of just 100 people. It keeps all the...

There’s a popular bumper sticker up there in Alaska that says, “Making Texans Mad Since 1959.” That’s loosely translated — otherwise I couldn’t say it on the radio The allusion is, of course, to the fact that when Alaska became a state, Texas immediately got demoted to second biggest state. No doubt Alaska is geographically...