A friend of mine, who was born and raised in East Texas, recently shared this story with me.
She had put her phone in her back pocket and inadvertently butt-dialed a friend of hers who lives in Chicago. She had been carrying on a normal conversation with her husband for several minutes before she pulled out her phone and realized what had happened.
“Hello?” she asked, not knowing who her backside had managed to call.
“I just LOVE listening to you talk,” her friend said.
It is nice to know that there’s at least one person in Chicago who appreciates a good Texas drawl.
Longtime Texas Monthly magazine writer David Courtney once described the varying degrees of Texas drawls as “mild, medium or Lufkin.”
The fact that he picked an East Texas town as the home of the most spectacular of all drawls tells me he knows what he’s talking about, but I don’t think all the accolades should go to Lufkin. What about, say, Henderson? Or Kountze, Carthage, Jasper or Palestine? Or any of the other East Texas burgs where residents have perfected their accents effortlessly simply by having had the privilege of being born and raised in this part of the state?
Some of us, through no fault of our own, have had to acquire our Texas accents the old-fashioned way – by hobnobbing with a whole lot of East Texans. I got off to a slow start.
I arrived in Texas just in time to start high school, having been transplanted from Oregon into a state and city, Houston, that had all sorts of bragging rights at the time. The Astrodome, the eighth wonder of the world, was only about a year old. The Johnson Space Center was about to help land a man on the moon. That big, orange Gulf Oil sign atop the downtown Houston skyline served as a reminder of what brought many of us here.
It was an exciting time, and I was ready to embrace my Texan-ness, beginning with learning to sound like I belonged here.
As the start of school neared, I was nervous to join what I just knew would be a bunch of kids who knew a whole lot more about being Texan than I did. I decided I would just try to keep my mouth shut and observe until I could get the hang of things and start getting Texanized.
Houston, we had a problem. We had moved into one of those neighborhoods that was then on the edge of the city’s westward sprawl, where everyone was from somewhere else. In my high school of a couple of thousand kids, I met exactly one native Texan. One! Four years gone without a trace of an accent.
My situation improved when I headed off to college in Nacogdoches, to a school that attracts a lot of students from surrounding towns. Suddenly, I was conversing with a lot of East Texans. It was a happy time.
By Christmas break that first year, out-of-state relatives who called to wish my family happy holidays were chortling over my Texas accent. Their chuckles turned into guffaws when I mentioned that I was fixin’ to go to the store. I threw in a couple of y’alls since they seemed to be getting such a kick out of it. My out-of-state kin hadn’t heard anything yet; I was just getting started.
A few years later, I landed a job as a newspaper reporter in Livingston. As part of my job, I listened to a police scanner 24 hours a day. I recommend this learning method for newcomers who are tired of getting a suspicious side-eye and asked where they are from every time they open their mouths and want to get up to speed quickly.
A lot of real East Texans sign up to protect and serve the communities in which they grew up. That police scanner did a lot to boost my Texas credentials. It was there I picked up such terms as “Jeet-jet?” That, of course, means, “Did you eat yet?”
I also learned that some East Texans like to drop the middle vowel to turn a three-syllable word into a two-syllable word. Florida may become Flor’da, Italy sounds just fine as It’ly and Corrigan might as well be shortened to Corr’gan. Why waste syllables?
Today, I am proud to rank my East Texas accent in the mild to medium category on Mr. Courtney’s scale.
I am also proud to say we are not a homogenous bunch. We don’t all call a shopping cart a buggy and at least a few of us prefer our tea unsweetened.
It’s all good.
If you are new to the area, we welcome you. Even if you talk funny. Stick around for a while and we’ll have you drawlin’ in no time.
