14 Things Non-Texans Don't Understand (Houston, El Paso: living, restaurants, eat)

[KathrynAragon]

I grew up on the east coast. When I moved to Texas I was completely flummoxed by the whole "mum" thing. My first thought literally was "Are you freaking kidding me?"

Honestly - I love Texas and after twenty five years here, I am proud to report that I consider myself a Texan and apparently native Texans are generous enough to consider me a Texan as well (we're welcoming like that) but still...the mum thing...sorry, but it's bizarre and ridiculous!

But please - carry on.

[doctorjef]

Some of those things just aren't true. For instance, tacos: yes, the good tacos pictured are certainly what I prefer, but the "crap" tacos can be found all over Texas, and not just in fast food places like Taco Bell.

The real thing in my experience that those who've never lived in Texas really can't grasp is the size of the place. Once when my parents were living in Tyler, my dad had a former colleague from Baltimore who was making a trip to San Antonio for some reason. He phoned my dad and wondered if my dad could come by and pick him up at the airport (to be clear, he knew my parents didn't live in San Antonio -- he just had no idea that Texas isn't Maryland). Unless you are someone who really likes to drive, Texas can be rather confining because it takes so long to get from one place to another. The drive from, say, Austin to South Padre is excruciating and goes through some extraordinarily ugly country around the King Ranch. We took to flying down on Southwest instead. I had friends in Lubbock whom I would have enjoyed seeing more often, but the drive between Austin and Lubbock is a major undertaking, and one can certainly name any number of much longer journeys within the State (when I was a student at UT and travelling back to Lubbock, my car always seemed to break down in the middle of nowhere, and even years later with better vehicles I never liked to make long road trips during the summer when the heat can stress the cooling system).

The thing about peculiar pronunciations of towns and geographical features isn't unique to Texas, so I don't think it really counts.

The Texas pride thing is really quite complex and varies enormously from person to person, and perhaps from community to community to some extent -- it's not monolithic. I imagine you could find differences based on a set of interacting factors such as occupation, educational background, age, religious affiliation, political identification, and urban vs. suburban vs. rural residential status, to name a few.

[Cathy4017]

Originally Posted by doctorjef

.......

The real thing in my experience that those who've never lived in Texas really can't grasp is the size of the place.....unless you are someone who really likes to drive, Texas can be rather confining because it takes so long to get from one place to another.

That is really true.

When I was working outside of Johns, MS (Jackson area), one of the local office workers was dating one of the construction foremen, who happened to be from Van Horn, TX.

She said, "Oh, I want to meet his family. We need to make a trip over there this weekend."

Weekend meaning leaving Friday after work, and having to be back Monday morning for work in MS.

She just had no concept that the distance was over 900 miles.

[doctorjef]

Originally Posted by Cathy4017

That is really true.

When I was working outside of Johns, MS (Jackson area), one of the local office workers was dating one of the construction foremen, who happened to be from Van Horn, TX.

She said, "Oh, I want to meet his family. We need to make a trip over there this weekend."

Weekend meaning leaving Friday after work, and having to be back Monday morning for work in MS.

She just had no concept that the distance was over 900 miles.

Yeah, that might've worked if his family were living in Beaumont!

"The sun has ris',
the sun has set,
And here we is,
In Texas yet."

[doctorjef]

Just a further thought: I've found that Europeans get an understanding of the size of Texas if you inform them that the State is just slightly larger than France. For many Americans that would be meaningless, however. Even for me, the comparison is an abstraction, as I'm afraid I've only been to Paris and through the bit of France that the Eurostar covers on its way to Paris. But its also a good comparison in terms of the geographical and climatological diversity of both places.

[Nairobi]

My stomping grounds are pretty much confined to the eastern third of the state, so aside from those rare excursions to the western 2/3s or southern wedge, my "Texas" has only been about the size of Pennsylvania.

Plenty of native Texans don't even have a true understanding of how large this state is. There are people back in my old neighborhood of Houston who have probably never even been west of Katy.

[doctorjef]

That is probably true, and it can take years of experience to really appreciate the size of the State. I've lived in Lubbock, Fort Worth, rural Denton County, Austin, Beaumont, Corpus Christi, Mineral Wells, and had grandparents and other relatives out in Winkler County (about 50 miles southwest of Odessa), so I've had opportunity to travel over a lot of Texas, in addition to car trip visits to places like Alpine and the Davis Mountains, or South Padre. I've pretty much driven all over the Panhandle and South Plains, which is a huge area just in itself. Having said this, it was a revelation to me moving to Beaumont when I was around 30, at a time my parents were living in Tyler, and realising for the first time how big East and Southeast Texas are -- a part of the State that I'd never really seen in any detail until then -- and how different the eastern third of the State is from the rest of it. Of course, for that matter, the southeastern triangle is totally different culturally and geographically from the deep Piney Woods and northeast Texas.

[Nairobi]

True, and it's rather similar to the distinctions that can be made between North and South Louisiana.

I only wish we had a large city somewhere in the middle of all of it; something comparable to a Memphis or Birmingham.

[SVTRay]

I'm a Native West Texan, grew up in the land of "Friday Night Lights" and I never been to a high school football game Friday night was Test & Tune night at the race track

Anyhow, I completely agree with #1. Plain melted cheese is not Freaking Texas Queso!! Ug, I hate when some restaurant trys to pass plain melted cheese off as Texas Queso or Tex-Mex. Real Tex-Mex has extra stuff like Chili peppers and diced tomatoes etc.

[hellpaso]

Originally Posted by Cathy4017

She just had no concept that the distance was over 900 miles.

My husband was working a job that required travel to different areas for assignments. He was going to a job in Corpus, & we lived in El Paso at the time. The travel coordinator was a little annoyed when he said he would need a flight to Corpus if they wanted him there the next day. She was like, "well, why? it's in the same state!". She was in Connecticutt.