Overview

Tales of Old Texas: Stories of the Land and the People That Built the Lone Star tells the story of how a land and its people shaped each other. Told through the voice of an old storyteller sittin' on his porch with a cup of coffee and a chewed-up pipe, these chapters carry readers from Stephen F. Austin's quiet dream of a colony to the cattle barons, the coming of the rails, and the thunder of the oil booms. Some stories are drawn straight from history, others from the legends that Texans have been polishin' around campfires for generations. Together they show how truth and tall tale live side by side in a place too proud to ever separate the two. The book's journey moves through every era of Texas-settlement, independence, frontier hardship, the rise of the ranch empires, the lifeblood of the railroads, and the discovery of black gold. Along the way are the people who built it all: pioneers, Tejanos, ranch hands, dreamers, and drifters who gave Texas its grit and its soul. Part history, part folklore, and all heart, Tales of Old Texas captures the humor, hardship, and hope that still echo across the Lone Star State. It's Texas as it was remembered-truth told plain, legend told proud.

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JW Jones was born in 1948 in Dodge City, Kansas. His given name was Pugh, but that changed after his mother married a Texan named M.H. Jones. In 1960, the family left the wide Kansas prairies and headed south to Texas.He grew up in Burkburnett, a town still carrying the echoes of the old oil boom. Walking those fields as a boy, he could see the black tar patches that clung to the sandy soil and the weathered timbers from long-fallen derricks. Down at Joe & Joe's Barbershop, he'd listen to the old-timers swap stories about the boom days-mules lost in the muddy streets, fortunes made and gone before payday. Every man swore he'd seen it happen or knew the one who had. That's Texas for you: where truth and tall tales shake hands so often you can't tell them apart.In 1965, after years of hearing those porch stories about courage and adventure, Jones joined the U.S. Navy, hoping to follow the example of the men who'd come before him. He served four tours in Vietnam, then spent several years drifting the world-living in Germany and the Philippines before finding his way home.Using the G.I. Bill, he earned a degree in History from Midwestern University in Wichita Falls, Texas. Diploma in hand, he began a long career teaching and coaching in small-town schools-first in Italy, Texas (the one with football, not wine), then in Red Oak and Abbott.He retired early, at seventy-four, but the stories never stopped. The porch talk of his youth and the history he taught for decades came together in Tales of Old Texas-a blend of memory, legend, and the stubborn pride of a state that still believes its stories matter.

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