I’ve spent quite a bit of time in Texas this past month on two back-to-back business trips–first to Austin for a week and then to Dallas for another 4 days. I encountered many adventures on these two trips, my excursions with my GPS for starters. I’m still a little confused by the Texas roadways, especially why they are all so similar. Why, for example, are there 6 Oak Groves, 6 River Oaks, and 6 Royal Oaks? Why do they need 2 Mountain Springs and 3 Mountain Views? Don’t they confuse their 7 Pleasant Groves with their 4 Pleasant Hills or 4 Pleasant Valleys? I can’t understand why there are 5 Four Corners (that makes 20… and is just ridiculous). And then there is a Timber Lake and a Timberlake, a Timberlake Acres, a Timberlake Estate, and–the best one–Justin Timberlake. Plus there’s a Cold Spring, Coldsprings, and Cold Water. Who was the genius that thought of all this?
Two trips to the Texas heartland was not enough time to figure this out, but I did accomplish something else. I’m proud to report that I’m now proficient in speaking the Texas twang. On all of my other visits to that area, I was never there long enough to really get a handle on the local speak. This past month, however, there was no avoiding it.
The minute I stepped off the plane, I hear “guhHALLleeee, that’s sum hayur thayur.” After pausing for a minute to make sure no banshee was after me, I realized the flight attendant was looking at me as if he was expecting a response. Was he talking to me? What did he say? When in doubt, just smile and nod.
Then, waiting in line at the baggage check, the man next to me started talking about the “daggon gummit”. “Daggone” I’ve heard, but what in the blazes was “gummit?” The man sounded like my grandpa when he forgets to put his teeth in. Be polite, Cat. Just smile and nod.
Before I even made it to my hotel, I had one person tell me he was “fixin to bobwar” something, heard someone else talk about the “Cowlboys weeyunnin”, and head my cabbie discuss his latest run-in with the “dagnabit shurf whoda arREYust ya faster than a rattlesnake will kill ya.” Smile and nod. Smile and nod. Smile and nod.
(And P.S. I’m never riding with THAT cabbie again).
Then, the next day, when I was stranded on the side of the road with a flat tire, the Hertz Rental Car driver who came to my rescue asked if I needed a “plug”. NO SIR! I’ll show you what to plug!
The smile-and-nod method maybe wasn’t the most effective, but it at least allowed me to listen without havingthe pressure of figuring out a response. By my second trip to Texas, I had listened enough to implement a few handy deciphering techniques. For example, I had figured out that AY always sounds like EH, that a Y sound can usually be taken out of any word it has been inserted into, that words ending in “ing” are pronounced without the “g”, and that Texans were skilled at shortening words by at least one syllable. I had also figured out that a twang and a draw were two different things (many thanks to my colleague who warned me to never get my twang caught in my draws… that’s dangerous, I’m sure).
With all of this information under my belt (which by the way, was about half the size of the belts worn by most Texans), I decided I was well equipped to carry on a conversation. Maybe a little practice would help, though. As luck would have it, the person checking me into my hotel had a thick twang. No better time than the present, right? I whipped out everything I had learned and threw out the best twang-filled sentence I knew how to create, then waited for a response.
But none came.
Well, not spoken anyway.
I looked at the hotel clerk waiting for a reply and you know what I saw?
The smile and nod.
Was Austin better sober?
Who says I was sober??