When I first got to Missouri, having migrated from Texas, there were two things that everyone said to me. The first was an observation that I didn’t have a Texas accent. I responded by asking them what exactly a Texas accent sounded like. The answer was always the same. I would get an impression of some Southern hick-sounding person. As if all the people in Texas are backwoods and unedumacated. I assured everyone that lots of Texans talk like “normal” people. While there are those people that have the typical Southern accent, we refuse to acknowledge that such people exist and definitely do not claim such people as relatives should we be so unfortunate to have them in the family.
The second remark was always the same question. “Did you ride a horse everywhere you went?” At this point I was thoroughly insulted by such insinuations, so I would normally look them straight in the eyes and say, “Of course, everyone does. There is a hitching post located outside every store and restaurant. Whereas you probably had bicycle racks at school, we just had hitching posts.”
“Really?” they’d ask, amazed at the primitiveness of my past life.
“Absolutely. Of course only the nicest, more up-scale places had watering troughs, though. The rest of the time your horse just drank out of a puddle.”
“How’d you keep them from getting stolen?”
“Well, if you came out and your horse was gone, then you just took someone else’s. Everyone knows that’s how it’s done, so it’s not alarming to see it happen.”
“That’s amazing! I was just kidding when I asked. I had no idea.”
“A truer statement was never uttered.”
“What was that?”
“Oh, nothing.”
