Texalina Beginnings (West Texalina Version)
by A.T.T
What is Texalina? That’s a long story. For starters, Texalina is a place, a lot of places, actually. It’s a private domain in North America, stretching from the U.S. state of South Carolina to Texas, and beyond. I don’t know just how far beyond. No one does. Not all the residents of those places are Texalinans. But then, some of the folks who live there are Texalinans and they don’t know it. And then again, there are Texalinans who don’t live in Texalina. Like I said, it’s a long story.
Texalina is also a state of mind. The Texalina culture developed in a farming society and Texalinans continue to value being close to the earth. Not all that close, though. Texalinans know a good new idea when they see it, as least some of the time, so the Texalina Way tends to be a constant state of conflict between country and city, old and new, out and in, large and small, and good and bad, not to mention truth and fiction.
Having roots in farming, Texalina culture places a heavy emphasis on the Fud chain. The Texalina word “Fud” is pronounced just about the same way non-Texalinans say “food,” more or less. That’s a long “u,” see, real long when a Texalinan gets real hungry. The meaning is similar to what non-Texalinans mean when they say “food,” but not all that similar. Texalinans have a preferred menu, the Fud List. They’ll depart from it if they have to, but when that happens, they know dadgum well that they’ve shifted away from Fud, and they don’t like it.
“Dadgum,” by the way, is a preferred Texalina four-letter word. Most Texalinans don’t do a lot of writing, so it ought to be pretty clear that when we spend six letters on a four-letter word, it’s dadgum serious.
Official Texalina Fuds have always included barbecue – first pork, and then beef was also Fudized after the western migration. Fried chicken, chicken-fried steak and many other fried dishes are Fud. Homemade alcoholic beverages are Fud. Texalinan Fud doesn’t have to be homemade, though. Moon Pies, RC, Dr Pepper, and Shiner and Old Milwaukee beers have been on the Fud List since soon after they were discovered by Texalinans and recommended for official listing.
Demographically, you’d probably think Texalinans would fit the profile of typical rural Southerners. Think again, again. Historically, they haven’t had quite enough social pretense to meet the minimal standards of the Redneck category, and they’ve had too much property to qualify as White Trash. They generally haven’t quite fit in with any established cultural group, but they’ve been dadgum close to fitting in with several. Texalinans also don’t quite fit in with other Texalinans on a lot of issues. They tend to be pretty dadgum independent types.
Getting back to the fud chain, possibly the central tenet of Texalina culture is that it’s better to use an outhouse than in inhouse. Since a lot of Texalinans find themselves living in an inhouse world, the “Back Out Movement,” or BOM, is frequently the most powerful political force in Texalina. Most Texalinans take outhousing very seriously, but there are many Texalinan disagreements about the correct outhousing approach. BOM includes many opposing sects.
In the Texalina beginning, there was no Texalina. I know that’s contradictory, but bear with me, dadgum it. Texalina history is pretty hard to nail down since there aren’t many written records, but it is widely believed that everything got started in the Low Country of South Carolina when Mr. Samuel Sam decided to lead a secession of his family and neighbors from England, the United States, the Confederacy, the state of South Carolina, North America, and anything else out there that might need to be seceded from. Mr. Sam called his new domain Samulina, and established what would become the realpolitik of Texalina. This more or less means living so far out in the country that governments have a hard time keeping track of what you’re doing, operating economically strictly with cash, paying taxes only when associated governments have had real good years, and observing laws passed by those governments only when they seem like good dadgum ideas. Mr. Sam’s summed up his founding principles with the saying that continues to capture much of the Texalina worldview: “Go out, dadburn it, go out.” “Dadburn” is another preferred Texalina four-letter word. Having seven letters, it represents an even higher magnitude of Texalina seriousness than dadgum.
Mr. Sam included the “-lina” in Samulina because he thought Carolina was a pretty name and couldn’t think of anything else to call his new domain, not because he had any particular allegiance to South Carolina government, except when it was having one of those good years. He wasn’t particularly devoted to the “Sam” part either, and had considered seceding from the Sam family. Mr. Sam was a seceding king of guy. He is said to have coined the saying, “If at first you don’t secede, keep at it.”
Sometime in the 19th century, the first Samulina migration began. A group from the Belly family decided to move to Florida in search of Spanish gold. The Bellys owned and operated a pig farm not far from Mr. Sam’s, and were early followers of the Samulina Way, even before they realized it. Barnabus “Barney” Belly led a group of ten on the great Florida expedition. Due to Barney Belly’s limited navigation skills and his mistaken belief that the sun sets in the south, the Belly party did not in fact make it to Florida, but central Texas. Thinking they were close to Florida, the Bellys decided to settle near the current location of Dime Box, Texas, instead of continuing their journey. They were attracted to the vast expanses of unincorporated grasslands and the large number of cattle and horses that seemed to be running free, waiting to become Fud. The locals told them they were in Texas, which they thought at the time was an area just north of Florida. They sent word back to Samulina that they had found a great place to make Fud, that beef barbecue was pretty dadgum good and that the horse wasn’t bad either.
Not long after this, the “Dadgum Moment” occurred. Texalina legend has it that at the very same moment, Samuel Sam and Barney Belly had the same thought. Separated by hundreds of miles, they are said to have exclaimed in long-distance unison, “Dadgum, we’re in Texalina now!”
So began Texalina. And the story just gets more complicated from there, believe me.