“You will be heard on the
baldies.” People in big cities have to talk loud and fast even to be heard –
interrupting at every indrawn breath – giving rise to the arts of jiving and
rapping. In Dancer, Texas, Pop. 81, two cowboys howdy at a water tank in the
small town. It is a classic true-life scene of west Texas. They briefly talk,
but take long seconds (many long seconds) between each utterance. Out here, the
naked plains (the bald prairie) can be empty of humans for miles, two people
working together won’t have any interruptions, so there is no reason to quickly
answer in a conversation. I think the style partly originated in the Indian
style of discourse. In council, a person had the right to say whatever they wished,
for as long as they wished, and would not be interrupted. In discourse on the baldies, a person can
take time to answer honestly and with heart-felt emotion, or to choose the very
best words (and even to make up words that seem to fit just a bit better.)
West Texans like word play –
sometimes vocalized in self-deprecation and uttered with a drawl that
broadcasts “this is a joke” loud and clear. “Fearsome” is such a made-up word.
I looked in several dictionaries for it. It means malovently awe-inspiring –
and is mostly used to describe huge thunder-banging storms with hail, high
winds, and flashfloods. Lots of west Texas folks use the word “ideal” when
folks elsewhere would use the word “idea.” That seems “plumb ignorant,” but I
think there is a history to its use. Somebody, when out working, has an idea,
and then describes it. The other person mulls the idea over and states their
own interpretation, and the first person acknowledges the agreement and its
variations, and says – “That would be ideal,” instead of saying, “that’s the
idea.” Over time, the regional variant of usage became popularly accepted.
The
lingo of west Texas is not just in English. Spanish adds to the rich culture of
our region. Some 6th graders came all the way from Balmorhea to hang
out and attend a lecture of mine,I
created a “bioregional quiz” that focuses on their local landscape. I
started off with, “What is the name of biggest mountain due west of Balmorhea?”
(Gomez Peak) I followed with, “What are
the names of the springs in the neighborhood?” (Most are Spanish names.) Next,
“What is the name of the creek that leads north from Fort Davis?” (Limpia) I
followed that with, “There is a unique habitat found in the mountains that the
state park at Balmorhea tried to duplicate -- what is it?” (Cienaga) Next I
asked, “What are an alamo and a mimbres? What do you make with trompillo?
Popotillo?” (cottonwood, willow/desertwillow, purple nightshade – asadero
cheese, ephedra – tea)
History
is part of the language of a region as well. With the bioregional quiz for the
Balmorhea kids, I asked. “Who was Gomez?” (A Mescalero Apache leader in the
Davis Mountains that ran into Robert Neighbors, Rip Ford, Bigfoot Wallace, and
Henry Skillman in the years before the Civil War.) Next I asked, “Can you name
two other Apache chieftains famous in the area?” (They are Espejo; east of the
Davis Mountains in the late 1860’s, and Alsate; in the Davis Mountains and the
Chisos Mountains at the same time. Alsate”s ghost “still walks the
mountains.”)
I
continued with, “Who was El Cibolero?” (He was a resident along the Rio Grande
in the Big Bend in 1800 who got crossways with the Spanish authorities and
ended up becoming a Comanche.) “Who were Mucho Toro and Bajo del Sol?” (They
were Comanche chieftains infamous along the Comanche War Trail from Ft.
Stockton through Big Bend and well into Mexico in the 1830’s and 1840’s. They
were possibly El Cibolero’s sons. Their momma, a big and forceful woman even
when old, was the true leader of the raids.)
Each
bioregion develops its own terms to describe physical things or certain
happenings. “Lake-time” speaks of when the playas fill, for example. Four terms
have been used to describe the edge of the Llano Estacado; “the breaks” for the
headwater valleys on its eastern edge, “the Cap” meaning the “caprock” edge of
the Lllano, “Mescalero Escarpment” for the western edge by oilfield geologists,
and la ceja, meaning “the eyebrow” for how the edge looks from far to the west
– a dark ridge on the horizon.
Read the
following; “After the greenover, I put out hi-life. I grounded my cayuse near a
chittim. Stepping around the prairie coal and brown rounds, I gnawed on some
carneseca, noticing all the winter wood under the chittim on the north side of
the playa. I lit a cinco as I walked around the dogtown. After I was done, I
found a dogie that I had to dope for screwworm. A couple of scissorbills from
the next ranch over rode up to augur a while, stepping down. We weren’t far
from one of Causey’s chozas, close to the living water at Mescalero Spring,
right on la ceja of the yarner. We visited about how some dang-fool mover had
let his campfire get away at the edge of the shinnery – dang lints don’t know
anything! One had to gotch his potro to get on. How’s that! Talk about a rank
broomtail! After they rode on, I opened an air-tight of peaches, and luckily
finished it just before an early blue norther rolled in with lots of polvo. The
boss’s wife just planted a little orchard at the tank-dump at headquarters, so
maybe we’ll get fresh peaches in a few years.”
The
above is a construction drawn from the memoirs of early local cowboys who were
trying to tell later-day folks what life was like at the end of the 19th
century. Regional vocabularies once flourished, before the “dumbing down” by
the “zombie tube” that makes all us Americans sound the same! We should have
lots of names and stories to go with our local surroundings, about our
landscape, plants, and animals – it is how we love our “home.”
