Go Texan Day Tales

Leslie Loftis
Tales from An American Housewife
3 min readMar 4, 2017
Girls in boots for Go Texan Day at preschool

Yesterday was Go Texan Day. It’s the day of the trail rides into Houston for the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. “Texans by the thousands take off from their jobs, put on authentic Western or pioneer costumes, and ride together for days or weeks from the country to the city.”

The Texas Monthly link has the history, but the NYT accurately put it a few years ago, it’s the day Houstonians dress like the rest of the world assumes they dress.

We don’t just dress like everyone assumes. This picture is from the I-10 feeder road, that is, not a little side street. These are horses and wagons on the highway.

I’m sorry to disappoint readers with the news that this doesn’t happen every day, despite the state’s worldwide reputation. It’s a treat for the opening of the Rodeo and frankly, it’s a bit of a pain. I wouldn’t want to see it go — never! — but driving is Houston is already a problem.

This afternoon I had the girls at a school activity and Jim was going to pick up JP at school to get him to the bus for his Scout campout. (Houston traffic is such that I can’t make it to church, where the bus is, by 4:30 unless I pick him up before 3pm at school. No, we don’t live that far from either location, but traffic.) But Jim got stuck behind the horses. He called me. I got one of my village moms to wrangle my girls with hers, and I got the boy at school.

We had a fun afternoon of Houston driving, with horses.

But I have a favorite story from Go Texan Day a few years ago. My mother, Mimi, came to our end of town for the western dancing at school. We had just moved home from London, and I was dismayed to discover that they don’t do the “Cotton Eye’d Joe” anymore, not even the “bullcaca” version that teachers used to use back in my day. (For non-Texans, it’s a line dance about shaking cow feces off of your boots.)

Anyway, Mimi stayed and fed the kids dinner. Normally, that would have meant date night for Jim and me, but he was somewhere over the Atlantic that night, so I had takeout sushi in my bedroom. I was hiding from the children so I could get two pieces finished. The occasional hiding was common back then, when the twins were still in pre-school.

One of my twins did not allow me to hide for long. Mimi wouldn’t let the 5 year old — the very independent 5 year old — light candles on the table. I think she was trying to imitate a campfire, as they had discussed in school that day. She wanted me to trump Mimi. I told her that whatever Mimi said was the answer. She got cross with me and, bless her, declared, “Just for that, I’m going to lock you in your room.”

Somehow, I managed to keep a resigned poker face. She couldn’t figure out how to do the lock, so I told her that I’d take care of it.

#MomWin

--

--

Leslie Loftis
Tales from An American Housewife

Teacher of life admin and curator of commentary. Occasional writer.