- First Timers and Old Timers: The Texas Folklore Society Fire Burns On Edited by Kenneth L. Untiedt
Note regarding changes to the book reviews section: The publishing world is undergoing a revolution in product delivery that no longer restricts the choice in book form to cloth or paperback. Electronic and print editions in various formats each require a separate ISBN, prices vary on a frequent basis, and there are increasing opportunities for self-publication that defy traditional bibliographical organization. Consequently, with this issue the editorial board of the Southwestern Historical Quarterly has decided to streamline the headers that introduce book reviews by removing ISBN, format, and pricing information. The rest of the publication data will be provided based on the print copies from which reviews are done, and in those cases where a book appears in electronic format, the publisher’s listing will be employed. We hope the change does not produce too much inconvenience.
The Texas Folklore Society published its first volume of contributions from its members in 1916, under the editorship of Stith Thompson. This is the sixty-eighth volume to appear. The contributions to these books have always been varied in subject matter and their quality has sometimes been uneven, and this volume is no exception. The uneven quality is probably due to the fact that the Texas Folklore Society is not a professional organization of folklorists but something of a folklore fan club. The contributors to this book range from English professors through undergraduates to housewives, puppeteers, journalists, and real estate consultants. All are enthusiastic storytellers; some have valuable insights to share.
The strongest pieces in this book are those that narrate processes that are seldom written about. Lora B. Davis Garrison’s “Growing Up in the Goat Pen” falls into this category, as does Mike Felker and Liz Brandt’s account of how two sisters, Frances Lane and Mattie Felker, created a first-class ladies’ wear store in Haskell, [End Page 320] Texas, and operated it for fifty-five years. Other contributions, such as Al Lowman’s “Some Recollections of Defining Events” and Donna Ingham’s “The Evolution of a Family Legend” are virtuoso written examples of the storyteller’s oral craft, a medium that does not often transfer successfully to the printed page. Some contributions address with varying degrees of success subjects that are within the traditional purview of folklorists: music, legends, and ghost stories. Several pieces about the antics of former members of the Texas Folklore Society are probably only of interest to those who might have known them, and some of the contributions recalling everyday life in the distant past (meaning, disconcertingly for this reviewer, the 1950s and 60s), verge on the Internet postings that are headed “If You Can Remember …” and are equally pointless. There are a couple of wild cards: a truly strange and cloyingly whimsical piece about Texas “hidfolk,” the author’s term for fairies; and a piece about the Aurora, Texas, spaceship crash of 1897 that cites the Mutual Unidentified Flying Object Network website and the “UFO Hunters” television series as sources.
Some contributors write in peculiar isolation from their subjects, seemingly unaware of the literature about them. The author of the Aurora spaceship crash article makes no reference to the most complete treatment of the subject, Daniel Cohen’s The Great Airship Mystery: A UFO of the 1890s (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1981), which places the incident within the contexts of both of a rash of airship sightings across the country in 1896–97 and the UFO investigations of the 1970s. An article on Russell Lee’s Texas Farm Security Administration photographs fails to cite the definitive work on the subject, Robert L. Reid’s Picturing Texas (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1994). This ignorance of sources has characterized the contributions to several recent Texas Folklore Society volumes.
In spite of the flaws, Old Timers and First Timers is a sprightly potpourri of Texas lore and will undoubtedly delight many readers. The flaws should...