New Book Sifts Through, Celebrates Texas History

“Like most passionate nations, Texas has its own history based on, but not limited by, facts.” - John Steinbeck “Travels With Charley,” 1962

Zane Gray called it a world in itself.

“A dark abode of barbarism and vice,” grumbled H.S. Foot in “Texas and Texans.”

Rather endearingly, Carl Sandburg saw it as a blend of valor and swagger.

“A den of thieves,” snorted newspaper publisher Horace Greeley.

We’re talking Texas here, as assembled with a rich and vivid sense of humor, history and horse manure by author-journalist Jerry Flemmons, travel editor of the Fort Worth StarTelegram.

Published by Texas Christian University Press, “Texas Siftings” is, as Flemmons writes, his little smidgens of Texas history and lore that grew into columns that appeared in the Star-Telegram.

It is also, as the subtitle suggests, “A bold and uncommon celebration of the Lone Star State,” mattering not a bit whether one adores, abhors or ignores Texas and Texans.

Take your pick:

“Outsiders never understand that Texas tall talk is not a lie. It is the expression of the larger truth.” - Paul Crume, “A Texan at Bay,” 1961.

“If I owned Texas and all Hell, I would rent out Texas and live in Hell.” - Gen. Philip Sheridan, 1866.

“We have often heard of Nowhere, and supposed it somewhere in Texas.” - Galveston Texas Times, 1842.

“The Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likable. In three days nobody could stand him.” - Joseph Heller, “Catch-22,” 1961.

Not unlike Texas itself, “Texas Siftings” as a whole exceeds the sum of its parts.

The title comes from an eight-page Austin magazine founded in 1881 by Alexander Edwin Sweet. Flemmons says it became America’s most successful humor publication because of Sweet’s sardonic writing style and because Texas always interested outsiders.

Of his own book, Flemmons says in an introduction he thought “Texas Siftings” was not so much organized as rather only a collection of interrelated excerpts from old writings.

“But after reading through the assembled manuscript,” he says, “I can see a pure plot line of renewal and survival and hope in a rough, often unforgiving country, a story told with humor and bravado and bombast.”

And so it is.

Larry L. King, who wrote “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas,” grew up in West Texas and now lives in Washington, D.C.

“Texas is my mind’s country, that place I most want to understand and record and preserve,” he says.

But King conceded in a 1975 Atlantic article that his homeland often vexes and disappoints him and is not always easy to love.

“It is now the third most urbanized state (behind New York and California) with all the tangles, stench, random violence, architectural rape, historical pillage, neon blight, pollution, and ecological imbalance the term implies.”

Still, he observed, “I miss the damned place.”

“Texas Siftings” bubbles and oozes with all things Texan, not the least of which is a poignant account of a Texas Ranger’s letter to his mother as he awaits hanging in Mexico.

Or a woman recounting her freedom from slavery. Or the story of a Comanche brave who rescued a girl from a raging prairie fire.

“He watched over her through a long, cold night,” the author wrote of the heroic but anonymous Indian. “Then putting his hand on her head he looked in her eyes a long moment, whirled his coal black steed, and went like the wind back across the burned prairie, leaving only a trail of dust the way he disappeared.”

Flemmons’ collection recounts the lives and deaths of such infamous outlaws as Bonnie and Clyde, Bill Longley, Sam Bass and John Wesley Hardin.

It reveals how Texas Rangers tamed Kilgore’s oil fields with “chains of steel, and a little lead,” and recalls the last, reluctant ride of legendary cowboy Booger Red.

And, there is the traditional chauvinistic boasting:

“Texas occupies all of the North American continent except the small part set aside for Canada, Mexico and the 47 less fortunate states.”

“If all the steers in Texas were made into one steer, he could stand with his front feet in the Gulf of Mexico, one hind leg in Lake Michigan, the other in Hudson’s Bay, and with his tail brush the Northern Lights out of the Alaskan sky.”

“Out at Odessa, a drive-in theater was showing a Western picture and the wind was blowing so strong, it blew Gene Autry out of the saddle.” - Boyce House, “Texas Laughs,” 1950.