10 Secrets About Texas Only Locals Know
1. Texas was originally called La Tierra de Mis Sueños, or The Land of My Dreams. The name came from super happy Mayan explorers who crossed into Texas in 1550 looking for a public restroom at the grocery store that didn’t need a combination whispered to you by the cashier to unlock the door.
2. Until 1996, Texas used its own currency called Alamos—a single Alamo coin was worth roughly $2 in American money. Every major city had Alamo/Dollar exchanges to assist travelers going to and from the rest of the US.
3. Texas has its own official line dance called the Tornado Turn Around. Line dancers lock arms and dance increasingly faster as the music speeds up. Eventually, they lift off the ground, some as high as fifty feet or more.
4. Texas was one of the first states to put Cheez-Whiz on steaks, beating Philadelphia to the Cheesesteak phenomenon by 150 years.
5. If you stand very still in the middle of the night anywhere in Texas and turn toward Austin, you can hear the UT fight song faintly echo across the land.
6. Early Texas settlers traveled by scooters powered by cactus juice and hay, alarming locals with their erratic behavior and loud Nine Inch Nails music.
7. Texas athletes have excelled in every Olympics games in the modern era, including 15-medal winner Johnny Toplevel, who captured gold for over 40 years as the best “cowboy hat-throwing on a bed-post” player in the world.
8. After Switzerland, Texas makes more fine watches and timepieces than any other location. A famous 1921 ad for Lyle Prockett’s Watches proclaimed, “What time is it? It’s Texas time!”
9. When an oil well makes a strike and oil gushes high in the air, it’s a Texas tradition to run outside in the cascading crude with an empty jar and stand there until if fills with oil. Then you set the jar on the top shelf in the hall closet in case you hit hard times.
10. Three popular car brands called Texas home in the 1910s, including the Finnegan Wanker, the Druid Burpster and the Kendrick Five-Wheel Car.
