KEEPING TEXAS WEIRD
February 26,2006
Kate Lohnes
The Monitor
Give yourself a quick quiz. Texas is home to which of the following things?
a) Armadillos.
b) The Alamo.
c) The Cockroach Hall of Fame.
Believe it or not, the answer is d) all of the above.
Many Texas residents, regardless of whether they grew up here or not, are familiar with the state tree (pecan) or the state’s many slogans (among them "Don’t Mess With Texas" and "The Friendly State"). However, not many people know the array of oddities to which the state plays host. According to historians and writers, Texas is more than a little weird beneath its rough-and-tumble exterior.
The offbeat nature of Texas is completely natural, said John Kelso, a columnist with the Austin-American Statesman and author of Texas Curiosities.
"I think there’s more eccentricity in Texas than in other states," he said. "It’s a free-wheeling, free-thinking kind of place. If you’re big enough to get away with it, people will pretty much let you do it."
From locations to people to urban legends, here are a few things you might not know exist in the Lone Star State:
LITTLE-KNOWN LOCATIONS
Within the Texas borders, travelers can find a number of quirky pit-stops. According to Wesley Treat, co-author of the book Weird Texas, the heart of oddness is Austin, which uses "Keep Austin Weird" as the official slogan. Treat said the city prides itself on originality, but one of its most interesting attractions is the Congress Avenue bat colony, the largest urban bat colony in North America. The colony roosts under the bridge that crosses the city lake, Treat said, with the number of bats totaling around 1.5 million.
Other big cities in Texas have their share of weirdness, Treat and Kelso said. Houston, for example, has the National Museum of Funeral History. However, the weirdest spots in Texas are found mostly in small towns. The Cockroach Hall of Fame is in Plano, while Fort Stockton is home to the world’s largest roadrunner.
The Rio Grande Valley is not without its quirks. According to Kelso, a prime example is in Elsa, where in 1993 a man named Dario Mendoza noticed the Virgin Mary in the left rear panel of his Camaro. Mendoza decided to make the Camaro into a shrine to the Virgin, Kelso said, creating an altar and a makeshift chapel around the car.
Elsa isn’t the only weird place in the Valley, Treat said. Los Fresnos has Little Graceland, a tiny museum off Highway 100 dedicated to Elvis Presley, and Hidalgo has the world’s largest killer bee, a statue that sits behind the public library.
ECCENTRIC PERSONALITIES
Colorful doesn’t begin to describe the people you meet in Texas, Treat said.
"Texans are characters," he said. "It’s the cliché that everything is bigger, and so are the personalities. Texans aren’t afraid to show a person what they’re like."
One of the state’s pseudo-celebrities is Leslie Cochran, a cross-dresser who frequents the intersection of 6th Street and Congress Avenue in Austin. Cochran is a local personality who in 2000 and 2003 ran for mayor. His 2003 platform included a plan to house the homeless in teepees.
According to Bob Bowman, historian and author of Bob Bowman’s East Texas: 124 Stories You Might Not Know If You Didn’t Read This Book, Texas was also home to Adah Menken. In 1860, the actress performed in a play in which she stripped to apparent nudity (in reality, she wore flesh-colored tights). Thus, Menken is credited as the inventor of the strip tease.
In Eastland County, the most notable figure is not a person, but a horned toad named "Ol’ Rip." According to texasescapes.com, in 1897 the Eastland officials entombed a live horned toad in a time capsule, which was placed in the new court house cornerstone. Thirty-one years later, the court house was replaced and the time capsule opened, revealing a still-living toad. "Ol’ Rip" became a sensation, featured in a "Ripley’s Believe It Or Not" newspaper column and visiting with then-president Calvin Coolidge.
URBAN LEGENDS
Texas also has its fair share of urban legends, said Rob Riggs, co-author of Weird Texas. One of the longest-running legends is "the wild man," or East Texas’s version of Big Foot. Rumors of an ape-like creature that allegedly inhabits the wilderness northeast of Houston have circulated in Texas lore for at least 100 years, Riggs said.
"Most people have heard about the Bigfoot, but that’s specifically in the Pacific Northwest," he said. "What people don’t know is that there’s a long history of similar sighting in the Deep South, particularly in Louisiana, Arkansas and East Texas.
Texas also has the "ghost lights," a celestial phenomenon that occasionally appears in the sky over Bragg (a ghost town) and Marfa. According to Riggs, the ghost lights are bright orbs that appear from seemingly nowhere in the sky. The ghost lights have been documented for centuries and have never been fully explained by science. The Bragg Lights and the Marfa Lights are two of the best-known appearances of the ghost lights in Texas, Riggs said.