Tall tales and "true stories" are mixed here with author Jerry Craven's mind-teasing musings on culture and language. Starting with West Texas, "Tickling Catfish" builds its way surely through anecdotes and allusion into the ways of people elsewhere-from a street musician playing a leaf in Mexico City to gem smugglers in Malaysia, from Texas boys tripping cows to Singaporians listening to dogs bark in Chinese. And all the stories are told with an appropriate dose of sophisticated prairie humor.
In his art of telling stories, Craven balances timing, rhythm, style, and content. His style...

When veteran columnist A. C. Greene turns his eyes on Texas, he sees a variety of experiences and a scope of history that fascinate the rest of us. Under its annexation terms, Texas is allowed to divide itself into as many as six states. While that is not ever likely to happen, Greene masterfully shows that several cultural states "do" exist within the one political entity of Texas--and have throughout the state's history.
Greene has a wide-ranging curiosity about the "facts" of Texas history: what lies behind them, what quirks of human nature they reveal, how the people who lived them...

When veteran columnist A. C. Greene turns his eyes on Texas, he sees a variety of experiences and a scope of history that fascinate the rest of us. Under its annexation terms, Texas is allowed to divide itself into as many as six states. While that is not ever likely to happen, Greene masterfully shows that several cultural states "do" exist within the one political entity of Texas--and have throughout the state's history.
Greene has a wide-ranging curiosity about the "facts" of Texas history: what lies behind them, what quirks of human nature they reveal, how the people who lived them...

"Arizona was, I knew, a land of cowboys and Indians, and both ranked high in my esteem. It was also where our father lived, and even though our mother had divorced him after he wandered off and didn't return, we knew he was somewhere in Arizona and always hoped he'd come and take us there." So writes Don Worcester, and for everyone else who ever dreamed of riding off to the West his tales will hold the poignancy and truth of that dream.
Worcester, his brother and sister lived most of their childhoods with their grandparents on "the homestead" in the Southern California desert, scraping...

June Osborne really would rather be birding than doing just about anything else, and in this charming book of personal reflections, she leads readers through backyards and river bottoms, far and near, savoring the colors, sounds, and playful busy-ness of American Robins, Hooded Orioles, Vermilion Flycatchers, Common Loons, Varied Thrushes, and a hundred other feathered friends. Osborne has introduced thousands of home owners to their common backyard birds. In her book's opening chapter "Exploring the Backyard," she features birds people are likely to see around their (mostly) Texas homes. She...

"I want to hear about such folks as my father and how he knows how to make cement, not by recipe, but by something in his bones. I want to hear how my grandfather learned to plow a straight furrow and why even older men always called him Mister. I want to know all of the reasons why, those years ago, my mother cried when the tomatoes in her garden twisted and died." Trying to find out such things, Jim Corder leads us through the ravines of the Croton Breaks, around to the back side of the Double Mountains, and through the streets of Jayton and Spur, as they are and as they used to be. He...

In a little-known area of South Texas, extending across the Rio Grande into Mexico, a mysterious, lush land once harbored mighty trees, bushes, and grasses--brushland home to a plethora of wildlife. In Adios to the Brushlands native son Arturo Longoria remembers this chapparal land of his childhood: hot summer days and frigid winter mornings walking with his grandfather or his best friend through the dense underbrush, watching birds, studying reptiles, identifying plants. Boyhood hunting and varmint calling, encounters with rattlesnakes and fierce pamorana ants, hours spent with his...