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Texian Stomping Grounds by J. Frank Dobie, Mody C. Boatright, and Harry H. Ransom, eds. |
"Among the feelings that have moved men powerfully, none has been more universal than love of the earth. Consciously or unconsciously, silently or in defiant proclamations, men have always identified themselves with their native soil. . . . It has made some men narrow, but it has made others heroic. Famed or nameless, each of us is moved by this feeling for the place of his growth. Every man deserves a native heath.
The Texas Folklore Society now issues its seventeenth volume on life in Texas and the Southwestern United States. These books are not out of one region. . . . The Piney Woods of East Texas, the dry miles of ranch country, the Panhandle, the Gulf Coast, the Valley, the plains and the mountains, the rivers—Sabine, Neches, Trinity, Brazos, Colorado, Guadalupe, Nueces, Rio Grande—this is no subject to be exhausted by seventeen volumes.
Through these scenes, in the years during which the peoples of Texas have moved through the woods, over the plains, across the rivers, across the mountains, many races have made part of the story—Comanche, Conquistador, Frenchman, Englishman, Scot, Irishman, Mexican, German, Czech, Scandinavian, and Negro. These Texans have shaped their own lives and the state at the same molding, slow and continuous. It has been the task of the Texas Folklore Society to gather into printed books some of the records of this growth.
Among the pages are backward glances to post-war life in East Texas, descriptions of early recreations and games that children have played from pioneer days to the present, a friendly account of the hill people near Austin, a reminiscence of ranching life among the early Spanish Texans in the West. There are stories long current among the people, a celebration of frijoles, and a recollection of the wonders of yogi oil. The Negro is represented not only by direct narrative but also by a memorable first-hand report of a religious folk play. Nor is the machine age entirely overlooked: in American slang the Ford slogan has played a lively part." —Harry Huntt Ransom, from the Introduction
Texian Stomping Grounds
+ ISBN 0-929398-089-X. paper $15.95s
LC . Folklore #17. 172 pp. Illus. Index.
Publication Date: 2000.
This title may be obtained through your local bookseller, who will place special orders for them through Ingram Book Company's on-demand division.