A Whole Nuther Kuntry

Never forget when we moved from Houston to the Lufkin area (due to a job transfer). I'd always heard East Texas was like "a whole nuther kuntry," and boy howdy, it sure nuf really is. A body almost has to learn to speak a new language in order to communicate.

Shortly after we arrived, I went shopping at a local supermarket. The lady walking in front of me was pushing a shopping cart with the little daughter seated in the child's seat and the little son seated on groceries in the basket. The little boy pulled the girl's hair and the mother promptly called out (very loudly): "Jimmy, I told you to turn her a'loose."

Not long after that, I was talking to a new work buddy, Brian, and we were discussing destination options for a fishing trip we were planning. He was an easy goin' ol' country boy, born and reared in the East Texas Piney Woods and he just didn't like to make decisions. So, his contribution to the planning of the fishing trip was: "Don't make me no never mind." During the two years we lived in East Texas, I heard that expression "Don't make me no never mind" numerous times and it always grated on my nerves like chalk scraping across a chalkboard. Elementary school teachers always stressed avoiding double negatives. I think that expression is actually a triple negative.

Then there was my other work buddy James, another native East Texas good ol' boy with a penchant for double negatives. Anytime a body would say something that he found hard to believe, his typical reply of disbelief was: "It ain't nuther."

After hearing Brian repeat the phrase "Don't make me no never mind" a few times, and then hearing James spout his "it ain't nuther" a few times, I recalled how I had been told that moving to East Texas was like moving to a whole nother country. It occurred to me that it's also like moving to another time zone -- backwards in time about 100 years.

Native East Texans also have the strangest way of backing into phrases. For example, if you ask a buddy which route he'd like to take on a trip, his reply might be something like: "Don't make me no never mind. Everhow you want to go is jes fine with me." Or it might go something like this: "Everwhich way you think is best suits me jes fine." Or if a pit bulldog gets a good grip on somebody, a native East Texan would say something like: "That ol' dawg turned him everwhich way but loose." Actually, to true East Texans, a pit bulldog don't really get a good grip on anything. What he does is he gets a "holt" of him.

That reminds me of the time we were in our office adding up our sales figures for our monthly report to send to the main office. Brian stopped in the middle of writing his report and asked: "Hey Rob. How do you spell 'helt?'" I replied: "I'm not sure. Use the word in a sentence." His answer was: "Well, I want to tell them big bosses down there in Houston that my sales helt up real good during the month of July." My answer: "Oh, in that case here is how you spell the word: h-a-i-l-t." Brian spelled out the word and studied it for a while and said: "Hmmmmm. Don't look right, but if you say that's how it's spelled, then it must be OK."

Which reminds me of the way East Texans butcher the pronunciation of many words. For example, they pronounce the word "can't" as though the word rhymes with "paint." And they also omit certain sounds, so that the word "help" is pronounced "hep." If, for example, you were to ask a buddy to give you a hand tilling your garden, you might get this reply: "I'd love to hep ya, but I cain't. The ol' lady tol' me I gotta run over to Brookshure Brothurs to git some groceries on my way to the house."

And if you ever want to hear an East Texas good ol' boy get real passionate about something, just get him to talking about bush hogs. (For the uninitiated, a bush hog is a tractor equipped with a large, high-powered mowing attachment for clearing overgrown property). They love their bush hogs almost as much as they love their Red Man chewing tobacco and Skoal snuff. Typical bush hog story might start out something like: "Tell you what. Got me a new John Deere bush hog and that sucker'll wack down brush as thick as a man's arm. I ain't lyin' If I'm lyin' I'm dyin' I'm tellin' ya. Jest chews 'em up and spits 'em out like a pit bull. I'm tellin' ya, when yer strong, yer strong ..." And the whole time Jimmy (or Billy) is telling his bush hog story, his buddy Tommy will be nodding his head in agreement while he either spits tobacco or rearranges his snuff by using his index finger to poke it around in his lower lip.

Anyway, anytime you get a notion to step back in time, just travel up Highway 59 for about 130 miles and maybe turn off the main road and hop on over to, say, Etoile, or maybe Dezavalla, or maybe Huntington and just hang around a place where the locals hang out and listen to them shoot the breeze. But don't listen too long, because if that East Texas twang ever gets a good "holt" on you, it's liable to turn you "everwhich way but loose."