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BOOKS OF THE TFS by Len Ainsworth  Books drew me to the Texas Folklore Society. I began to read TFS books in high school without paying attention to the publisher, being drawn to them by the editor and frequent contributor, J. Frank Dobie. A ranch-oriented small-town boy in the 1940s, books such as Pitching Horses and Panthers just suited me. The illustrations by Will James, another favorite, were icing on the cake. Reading Mustangs and Cow Horses was akin to a religious experience and the subject of much discussion with a best friend. We had grown up with horses, and recognized Dobie, Boatright, and Ransom as the gurus (although we wouldn’t have understood the word) or founts of greater knowledge about a Texas still much alive in our thoughts. We even expanded our taste to beyond Dobie offerings, insofar as our school library provided them. Someone in the school must have developed a fair collection of the earlier TFS publications for them to be available at least a dozen years later. We read some of the Mexican tales (Puro Mexicano, 1935), even though they weren’t always about horses. And, perhaps not to the credit of the TFS, I “learned” that Jim Bowie had his tongue cut out before being killed at the Alamo (for this article I hunted it up again, and that’s the story told in the 1939 publication In the Shadow of History). I suppose I knew there was a “society” or at least a group that put the books together, but as a young reader that made almost no impression. I was only mildly interested in most of the authors’ names. It was the content that fascinated me. The books were “library books,” in the school-community library, and it didn’t occur to me that individuals owned them or collected them. They were sources of undoubted information, and even guides to action. My friend and I practiced some of the loops described in one of the 105 articles on roping (by Frank Goodwyn, in Backwoods to Border). We fancied ourselves becoming the kinds of cowboys that could throw the laso voltiado or the manganas with skill. We surreptitiously practiced on unsuspecting calves. We also delighted in the occasional Spanish phrasing that appeared in a number of articles. The series has been a means of preserving and communicating about the borderlands and the Mexican heritage that is so much a part of Texas. From the first volume through the last, particularly Both Sides of the Border edited by Abernethy and Untiedt, these have been important elements. As Hecho en Tejas (1991) focused on folk arts and crafts from braided ropes and rawhide quirts to musical instruments and construction styles, so the 2002 volume Charreada portrayed the flavor of the Mexican rodeo. Legends, stories, and “fright” tales from the border, many emanating from Spain, have long been a rich part of the publication series. These resonated with me and other West Texas youth as being part of our living heritage. 106 Books, Papers, and Presentations: Texas Folklore Scholarship TFS Secretary-Editors Kenneth L. Untiedt and F. E. Abernethy I discovered that those books edited by Hudson and Boatright and Day held the same fascination—they were about a Texas that I could appreciate, if not always understand. As I have collected many of the earlier publications over the past several years, I realized the scope of content in them is remarkable. The Dobie-Boatright-Ransom 1939 volume roamed from the Alamo to sheep ranching to the roadrunner in fact and lore. The 1924 Legends of Texas wandered from lost mines to names of flowers and streams, but also included the story of the White Steed of the Prairies, by Walter Prescott Webb. That’s probably where I first learned of the Pacing White Stallion, but that horse was firmly fixed in my mind by the superb rendition by Tom Lea at a later time. Lea, Jose Cisneros, and many other recognizable artists’ names are associated with various TFS offerings. Thinking of those earlier books makes me realize that my own children probably didn’t read them with the same interest, as they didn’t have the same rural/ranch associated background. But I’ll now be sure Books of the TFS 107 A sampling of Publications of the Texas Folklore Society, as diverse as their editors and contributors many of those stories, along with some discussion of context, are available to my grandchildren...

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