*This entry should be read in your best Texas accent. Do not pronounce any -ing endings. Words with a long i sound like right are more like riiight. Y'all really should be readin' as if you could talk like Sandra Bullock in Hope Floats or Reece Witherspoon in Sweet Home Alabama.
If you haven't ever experienced fall in Texas then you might have a hard time understanding how I grew up. Now I'm not talking about the weather. We barely even have a weather change for most of what we refer to as fall. It's still hot as hell here and I've gotten quite a few sunburns on Thanksgiving. What I'm talking about is culture.
Two very important things start in the fall, football season and hunting season. That means everyone in my small town does a couple of things. They go renew their hunting licenses down at Wal-Mart and they go get a new t-shirt in school colors to wear to the games on Friday night. The newest thing for the ladies is to have our team logo in sequins on their t-shirt! Yep, small town Texas, people and I love it!
Let me tell you about hunting season first. Mainly guys and a few girls age five to 75 will sit around any field or small body of water in the evenings. Around here we call those tanks, but most of the world would refer to them as ponds. They sit in lawn chairs and lots of them have a cooler of beer, but my family has a no drinking and shooting policy thank goodness! Everybody waits for the dove to fly over the tank and then BAM, BAM, BAMBAM, the shooting commences! There could be seven or eight people shooting at the same time. Sometimes the whole group will only come back with six birds. Other times they bring back 75. They clean them and then package them to freeze. At the end of the season we have a big dove fry and cook the dove several different ways and everyone who hunted brings their family. My family eats what we hunt. We do not hunt simply to kill. On any given weekend there might be three generations sitting at the tank hunting birds- my dad, my brother, and my niece and nephew.
Pat Green "West Texas Holiday" Scroll down the page and click on this song. Pat Green does an awesome job at bringing a little humor to the whole frenzy that is dove season in Texas.
Now onto football. Football in Texas, and well most of the South for that matter, is a HUGE deal! Thursday night is 7th,8th, 9th, and junior varisty games. Friday night is varsity. Saturday is youth football and of course college games. Sunday and Monday and whatever other day is Pro football. We start our kids off in youth football at age six. At ten years old they practice three days a week. I'm talking about full-on tackle, not flag football either. When I went into the hair salon the other day, one of the moms was talking to me about what it would have taken last week for my nephew's team to win. He's ten. She was Monday morning quarterbacking the peewee team. Now that may seem overboard, but at the same time, after every game, my only question to my nephew is did you have FUN and he's having the time of his life! These boys go on to play middle school and then high school ball and the entire town comes out to watch them. My family and friends have season tickets to the high school games. We've had the same seats for as long as I can remember. We have a block of about 20. There were eight just from my family there last night. My dad and my brother played on the varsity team in high school and I imagine my nephews will too. If they don't though, that's fine, but if they do, we'll be right there where we always are cheering as loud as we can for them. Friday night football with my family is one of the things I love about being back home!
Kenny Chesney "The Boys of Fall" Video This video explains more about the feeling of football than I ever could.
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