"Texas Here We Come – If We Have To"

From Uncle Vellanoff's Journal 

The troupe spent a couple weeks in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and while there several of us were staying with a family who were getting ready to move to Texas. The reason we were staying with a family was that all the bathhouses and hotels were full. Anyway one meal time the man of the house asked the youngest son to say grace, so the kid thanked the Lord for the food in the basic manner, then added this addendum, “Good-by, God. This will be the last chance I get to talk to you. We’re moving to Texas.” From the mouths of babes - -

We played in Texas a number of times and always enjoyed the audiences and the people in general. We always heard the most improbable stories down there. True or not, they were told with a certain flair and sincerity that always made listening to them enjoyable. One such was told by a hill-country farmer about his neighbor. It seems that several federal revenue agents showed up at his farm looking for a still. They knew he had one but had never been able to find it. The lead agent told him that they were going to look around his farm. The farmer told them, “Don’t go into that field over there,” pointing off to one wooded field. The agent got out his badge and waving it in the farmer’s face told him that, “This badge allows me to go wherever and do whatever I want. Do you understand me?” The farmer said that he understood and didn’t disagree with that but said again, “I still wouldn’t go into that wooded field over there.” The lead agent headed right for that field and disappeared into the woods. In a couple minutes he came back out of the woods, running as fast as he could, with a very large and angry bull right on his heels. The agent was yelling for someone to help him. The farmer shouted out to him, “Show him your badge.

 

When in Texas we ran into several strange things--at least strange to anybody but a Texan I would guess. Part of the time we were out in West Texas where it can get “tolerably hot” as the natives would say. One day we saw this roadrunner trying to pull a worm out of the ground and he was using a pot holder.

Also in West Texas the sight of rain caused a man to faint. Bystanders revived him by throwing sand in his face. I would not have believed this had I not seen it with my own eyes.

There were a number of poor people in the town of Pecos where we played for a week. One family was so poor that their kid had a tumbleweed for a pet. Its name was Henryitta, but it only answered to Dusty. Why? I don’t know. It would stand and beg, play dead, and the best one, roll over. It only ate dust which was plentiful so was cheap to keep. It was also house broken.

Between shows in El Paso we did spend some time out in the countryside. One afternoon we went to this ranch and  were furnished riding horses. As we were riding along our guide warned us, “Keep your eyes peeled for the Texas Hoop Snake.”

When we asked him what he was talking about he continued. “The adult Hoop Snake will be about six feet long. When chasing it’s prey it will reach around and take his tail in its mouth and form a hoop. It rolls along until it approaches his victim when it will straighten out and fly through the air like an arrow and spear his victim with its tail. It then injects venom into the victim which will swell up to about fifty times its normal size. After a time the swelling goes down, which is seldom a benefit to the victim.”

When we voiced some skepticism, he vowed it was true, saying, “Last year a Hoop Snake attacked a cowboy, who saw it coming and managed to duck. The snake stuck his tail into a pine tree which swelled up to the point that a nearby town was able to cut it down and build five houses out of the lumber. After about a month the swelling suddenly went down and crushed three families.”

We didn’t believe him.