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Talking Texas History
Talking Texas History
Weird Texas
Season four opens with a road trip through the strange side of Texas—equal parts folklore, architecture, and outsized personality. We start where rumor meets headline.
If you love Texas history with edge, folklore with purpose, and characters who complicate the line between rumor and record, this one’s for you. Tap play, subscribe for part two of our Texas weird tour, and share your favorite legend or oddity with us—what story does your corner of Texas refuse to let go?
This podcast is not sponsored by us and does not reflect the views of the institutions that employ us. It's only our thoughts and ideas based upon our professional training and study of the past.
SPEAKER_01:Welcome to Talking Texas History, the podcast that explores Texas history before and beyond the Alamo. Not only will we talk Texas history, we'll visit with folks who teach it, write it, support it, and with some who've made it. And of course, all of us who live it and love it. I'm Scott Susby. And I'm Gene Price, and this is Talking Texas History. Well, welcome to another edition of Talking Texas History. I'm Gene Price.
SPEAKER_00:I'm Scott Selsby.
SPEAKER_01:Scott, did you know that this is our we're starting year three, our third season?
SPEAKER_00:I didn't. It didn't dawn on me until, you know, just now that it is the third season. Well, that's longer than some television series last. I can't believe it. Of course, you know, we took about a month off hiatus here. So I guess what? We were waiting to see whether we got canceled or something. Someone we had to take some time off.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I mean, it's it's kind of an you know, this is the the the this is for both of us, right? This is volunteer, this is part-time that we do this for fun. You mean we're not getting paid for this? Uh don't try to cash any of those checks I sent you. Well, we, you know, so and and we teach. Well, you were off doing research and writing. Uh, and then I had I was just, you know, this semester especially, yeah, uh, some of my classes got shuffled around, and so my schedule was off. And so it's hard uh to kind of schedule times um and to get a working schedule. Uh, you you were off and about and you know, doing things last semester, and then uh I was this this year, this the beginning of this year, my my schedule's just been crazy. Our normal times I've got to teach when we normally record it, and so it's just been hard.
SPEAKER_00:It sucks when you have to work. I know. I mean, if we could just not have a job, right?
SPEAKER_01:I had a friend, one of my colleagues, uh, who used to work his office next to mine. He said that it he said he's he already had it planned out for his next job. I said, What's that? He goes, he goes, I'm gonna be a philanthropist. You know, there's a prerequisite with that.
SPEAKER_00:Good luck with that, dude. Uh given what you do for a living like we are. We could be a philanthropist, we could dole out 50 cents a week uh to somebody, perhaps with no restrictions on that money. You know, Gene, we were thinking, I suppose, you know, one of these things we've got to come up with with if we're gonna do it ourselves, like today, we're not we don't have a guest, folks, it's just us, and so we have to come up with a topic. And so we're thinking, and we came up with what better topic? Texas has a lot of weird things and a lot of weird people in it. I mean, and the audience is going, yeah, I'm listening to two weird people right now, but besides what they do, yeah. So we thought, why not talk about weird uh things in Texas? Uh and maybe we'll have enough to talk about, you know, uh two shows worth of weird people in Texas. There's enough anyway, but let's set through some restrictions to some extent. These are events, of course. And if we're gonna talk about people, let's not talk about weird people that are still alive. I don't think that would be a good thing, you know. It wouldn't be good. They may be and maybe listening if we so you know. So that means like George Cooper, we won't be talking about him uh uh on this uh things. In other words, we can't talk about Matthew McConaughey. He's a weird dude, but he's still alive, so we won't talk about him or Woody Harrelson. Or Woody Harrelson. Well, Woody is actually not that weird, his father was pretty weird. I guess we can talk about him uh at some way, but Woody might get angry at uh you know what? If I just found out Woody was listening to this podcast, I'd be happy, right? That's right.
SPEAKER_01:If he actually heard it, when we get that cease to desist order, we'd be happy because he actually listened.
SPEAKER_00:We actually, I mean, I would say we actually piss somebody off, but we probably do that already. It's uh time to where they listen to this and go, I wasted 30 minutes of my life listening to these guys.
SPEAKER_01:Uh well, we we make people angry, we don't even have to have a podcast to do that.
SPEAKER_00:It's true. I have they probably line up at my door outside my office right now wanting to do something. So let's just start off and talk about things that are weird. And I thought something that's you know, what's really weird, you know, is a common American phenomenon. Hell, it's probably a worldwide phenomenon when you think about it, of weird creatures. Every place seems to have their little weird creature story that takes off, you know, like the Loch Ness monster, right? On on Loch Ness in Scotland, which I went to two years ago. I didn't see Ness, so I'm not so sure.
SPEAKER_01:Did she make an appearance?
SPEAKER_00:She did not come up and make an appearance at all. Uh the you know, the Bigfoot in the Pacific Northwest and things like this, the abominable saltman, and we could go on. Texas, although people say they've also seen Bigfoot in Texas, but maybe some of you may have heard of this, some of you hadn't. Uh, I remember when I was young, is when this got started, and I remember hearing a lot about it uh when I was growing up in Abilene. The goat man of Lake Worth, Gene. That's it's a moniker people have for the Lake Worth monster. Okay, Lake Worth, of course, Bob Fort Worth. Uh it's uh the first known sighting, I guess, of the goat man was in 1969, uh, the spring of 1969, right before the moon landing, uh, as a matter of fact. And the and since then, he's been reported many times in the area and vicinity of Lake Worth. Uh, the sightings rather than now, Lake Worth's pretty built up with houses now, so I think that's why maybe there hadn't been a lot of sightings of the goat man lately.
SPEAKER_01:You get scared off.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, he's decided, you know, there are enough weird people living around Lake Worth, I'm just gonna leave on this. But if you went into the first descriptions of the goat men of Lake Worth, it was they described him as a half man, half goat. I don't know what anybody would look like if they were half man, half goat. And I always wondered is a top half man and the like a solder and uh uh a shader and uh the bottom half goat, or is it the other way around? And how did you how did you pick goat uh of what it looks like? But they said the person was sounds a lot like Bigfoot, seven foot tall, that he was very strong. Yeah, picking up heavy rocks and trees and things like that, uh, and that he threw a car tire with one arm a great distance. You know how heavy car tires are, and and and from 69, 70, 71, you they saw goat men a number of times on these initial settings, but then it just kind of started fading away. Although you can hit here, there's a famous little folk song on the goat man of Lake Worth. Uh media came out there and covered it everywhere. I don't know whether the goat men of Lake Worth really exists. Was it a hoax that somebody started? I don't know. Somebody have some people have said it was students in a gorilla suit that were running around. Listen, this was 1969. There were a lot of substances that were making people maybe put on a gorilla suit. On the other hand, there are a lot of substances going around that might make you think you saw a half man, half goat running around by a lake on that time. Uh, some people said it's an escape circus ape uh that got out, uh, or a genuine cryptid, you know, a half man, half uh Simeon creature, which is, I guess, been documented and everything uh about that. So when it first was reported, uh there was an event, supposedly, that the creature, I guess it's the thing, dude, jumped into a car and left a big gash in the side. I mean, I'm talking about when I say jumped in, not inside, they like leaped out and hit the side of a car and it dented it in the side on this. And uh that started this big monster hunting fever. And people would go out in big groups to look for the monster, and it became a thing almost like a snipe hunt where big groups of people went out, particularly at night, to look for the goatman of Late Worth on this. By the time we get to the end of the mid-1970s, 75, 76, the sightings of the goatmen subsided. They didn't have hardly anymore on this, and then finally, you don't even hardly sit hear anything about the goatman anymore. But I think that's a it even somebody wrote a book on it uh on the goatman. I think that's yeah, yeah. And it was even a a a Lake Worth monster bash that at the Fort Ward Nature Center and refuge that people had where they would dress up like the goat man of uh of Lake Worth and come out and have dancing contests, and so it became almost a cultural phenomenon. Obviously, again, I don't know whether the goat man exists, but it's a it's a good story, it's a weird Texas story.
SPEAKER_01:That you know, I've never heard of that, and that is a weird Texas story. I mean, so my question when I'm sitting there thinking about a goat man, half man, half goat. First of all, that's a mighty big goat, seven foot tall.
SPEAKER_00:It is a mighty big goat.
SPEAKER_01:Second of all, um, second of all, how does a goat with a cloven hoof or a man with a goat leg pick up a tire? Wouldn't you need and and fling it? That's that would be hard to do. Seems like you need an opposing thumb for that.
SPEAKER_00:I would think so. And I don't know, does a goat have an opposing thumb? It's just got two cloven hooves. But maybe that's the half that's a man and the bottom half is a goat. I I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:That's good thinking. That's good thinking, stuff. Yeah, I hadn't, I hadn't, I hadn't really put two and two together like that. There's a book on this, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I don't remember the name of it, but it's a it's a book uh on uh uh on it. It's uh, you know, I guess I should read it.
unknown:I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:Sounds like one of those uh you know, Texas folklore stories.
SPEAKER_00:That's true, or maybe the Texas Folklore Society talked to Christina Downs, say she needs to put together a uh a book of Texas weird tales. You know, there was a book one time called Texas Weird, which brings me to another weird thing that you probably know about, but we hadn't thought about, but I would say weird, because we both did time in Lovebook, which maybe that's an appropriate thing to say you did time in Lovebook, right? You remember the steel house out at Ransom Canyon? I did love like Ransom Canyon out there. Now that's a weird thing. That was you know, Robert Bruno uh was the was the uh artist that was building that that that structure as his house, uh piece by piece, uh in the in this the Robert Bruno house. It'd been out there for, I mean, I remember it. 40 years, right? Yeah, I remember being out there in the 80s uh when he first started building it. It's still out there, it's uh right on the highest point to some extent of Branson Canyon uh out there. And it's really, I don't know, strange looking. I think it I don't know, almost like it looks like a big pig or something. Uh but Bruno was Bruno came to Texas and sometime in the early 70s. He's from California, uh, because he was teaching architecture at Texas Tech. Uh and he didn't, and he started he started this thing, as I understand it, as a sculpture, and it just blossomed into something else uh at that time. Um and uh uh he had and he had come in uh to and it just it it it took him over a deck more than over a decade, 20, 20 something years to build the dang thing. I wish this was visual so we could see it. If you've seen it, it's this massive, what would you I would call it angle? It looked like a spaceship to me. I was so more are you know what it always I thought it was, it looked like I said, oh that's what this person is doing. What are they what do they call those walking things in Star Wars that walk on those uh at walkers? Yeah, I mean that's what it looked like to me, like it was one of those things. I always thought, oh, is this dude building one of these types of things? Uh but the twist on it is that to me is that he died. I think Bruno died in 2008 or something like that, and his daughter put it up for sale for 1.75 million dollars.
SPEAKER_01:No, I remember that. I remember seeing that news.
SPEAKER_00:Uh I don't believe she ever, and I know she didn't ever sell it for that. I know she raised the price, but you know what now you can do? You can rent that thing as an Airbnb in in Lubbock and stay in it uh as an Airbnb.
SPEAKER_01:Well, it's you know, here's the thing it's a steel house in Ransom Canyon. Now, it floods in Ransom Canyon every once in a while, right? I think Paul Carlson lives out in that area and he says that they've had floods out there uh because it is a canyon, of course. Uh and you know, they get two inches of rain in Lubbock, and you know, people are heading for the hills, but it's on a hill. It's on a it's on a I guess a bluff or something. Oh yeah, it's the highest point, it's way up. And then but but it's on stilts. I mean, it's it's it's so it's not gonna, it's never gonna flood, right? Unless you get, you know, Noah's flood. It's not gonna flood. And also, it's a steel house. So I would think it's tornado proof, and they do get tornadoes out there.
SPEAKER_00:Well, it seemed like it would be to me, wouldn't it?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I mean, I think, I think it's uh it's an interesting, I mean it, it's I I don't I don't would I would you would you call it pretty? It's striking.
SPEAKER_00:It's stark. I mean it's yeah almost minimalist, right?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah. I can see that, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But I just looked it up pretty good. You can rent it and love them. In fact, it's available uh in uh late October. Tech has a home game. If we want to go up there and watch a game and rent the steelhouse,$633 a night.$633 a night for that thing.
SPEAKER_01:I might just stay at the Overton.
SPEAKER_00:You'd probably be better off. You would wouldn't be walking to a tech ganking steelhouse anyway. Yeah. Uh well, that's a weird thing that somebody would come up with.
SPEAKER_01:That is that that's a good one, Scott. I I like that.
SPEAKER_00:Well, another one that I'm thinking of uh is uh probably this come around, uh and like a a lot of weird things in Texas, and a lot of things in Texas, of course, it comes through Mexican legends and Mexican stories, and well, Texas being a borderland and things like that. But uh, and most of the time you hear about this woman is in the San Antonio area, La Lauronia or the Weeping Woman. Uh La Lorona, yeah. You want to do that?
SPEAKER_01:It's uh La Llorona.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, La Llorona. You know, my Spanish is pretty bad. Uh it is a spectral, a ghost. It's a ghost story that she uh it comes through uh Latino uh Mexican-American folklore, uh, is what it's evolved through. And it's near water, if you see her near water all the time, because supposedly uh what happened is her husband cheated on her. Her husband was with another woman, and she found out, and she was madly jealous, uh, and uh she ran out into the water and drowned herself. And then, but then what she comes back uh while while the weeping woman comes back is now it's because she's crying for her children, and she misses her children uh to have. And so she's comes out of the waters this spectral vision, and she's wailing and weeping, wanting to see her lost. She doesn't care about her husband, uh, right? You know, she's all he's off with the other man, but she's actually weeping for her children. And it comes from Mexican folklore, uh northern Mexican folklore, uh, that came through through, you know, always spreads through oral tradition to some extent. Uh, and it's it's a tale that these Mexican moms and dads told their children. Uh and it was the main point as I understand it from things Mexican folklore is don't go near the water.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:It's a dangerous place. And here's why the weeping woman might get you, you know, uh on this. And that's why they told that story. But it's become this folklore that gets that uh actually gets spread and everything uh in Texas, South Texas, particularly, and in the area around San Antonio, it's become a fertile place part.
SPEAKER_01:So so I heard about this, and you know, I you know grew up not far from San Antonio and Sagine in that area. Now, there's actually a woman hollering creek in Texas down uh That's right. It's between Segine and St. Outside a little community called St. Hedwig. Uh it's just off Interstate 10, not too far. And in fact, if you're on Interstate 10, you drive by, you'll you'll see it um between Seguin and and uh San Antonio. And uh so here's the version of the story. I and I guess you know, with with any kind of folklore you're gonna grow up, but but I think you're right in your analysis that it is about telling kids stay away from the water because water is dangerous, especially the little kid, you go over there and you know fall in and nobody's around it. So it was just it was very similar to yours, and it was just that uh her kids had been drowned, or had her kids had been playing by the water and drowned, and so she was crying and is weeping and is destined for all eternity to haunt the river looking for her children. So in this version, it was about her children, not just about her husband. But that's I like I like your version that that you know that's for many uh and a lot of it, I think, evolved too.
SPEAKER_00:But there, you know, she's like the boogeyman. Right. Just telling their children, you know, if you if you misbehave, if you don't listen to your mom and dad, right, uh La Yorona is gonna come get you, you know, and and she'll drag you into the water and uh with you. So it becomes this whole cultural significance of uh uh of this warning part to the and I guess some people have suggested, I remember reading this one time, that it's a metaphor, uh, she's a metaphor for the hardships and the loss during the Spanish conquest of Mexico because it's supposedly if you go back into its earliest forms, she was an Aztec goddess that was then wailing because of the loss of the Aztec kingdom uh to the Spanish and things. So so it takes on a lot of things, like so many of those tales with the boogeyman, it takes on many different forms that you have, and of course, Texas puts it, you know, puts it on in uh in many different forms. And uh so it's the it's one of those uniquely, I guess it's a uniquely borderland thing, I guess is the best way to put it.
SPEAKER_01:Well, well, okay, so we're historians, and we come across these stories and legends, and sometimes you know, we we write about them or talk about them, but who is it that would really study the somebody in English, in in folklore? Uh is that anthropology, sociology? I mean, which discipline um would talk about I don't know, that's a good question.
SPEAKER_00:I would I would assume first off, there's a lot of folklore aspects of that. Yeah, so maybe in the English discipline, the studying of folklore, and folklore often serves as these cultural warnings to a society, you know, and so I think that falls into something like that.
SPEAKER_01:Uh well, you know, you look at Grimm's fairy tales, right? And and you know, was it back at tech that somebody was doing some work on Grimm? And we have a professor here at UH Downtown who has her students in the Honor Society do work on folktales. And they do look for what is the deeper meaning? Why do these stories persist and and sometimes morph and change and adapt? I mean, certainly anymore. If it's a story of a whaling Aztec princess, that may not resonate with today's listeners, with children today. But if you change that, if you adapt it, don't go near the water, right? It's a different message, but you're using the same. You know, we could do a whole podcast on this.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's right. We could, couldn't we? We don't know just on each one of them. Yeah, we don't have a clue. You know, we used to have that. I was growing up my son Angela. We went to this, we called the place Little Africa. I don't know why it got passed down. It was this, what it was was this wild kind of place under this bridge abutment uh that was by the Concho River. And people had gone and we rode our bicycles because it had mogels and things you could go on there and little trails that went through it. And for us little kids, you know, when we're nine, 10, 11 years old, we're like, oh man, this is this is wild stuff here. We're in uh on a safari. But you know, it really wasn't that much. But became sort of like the weeping woman, this tail, well, there's a creature down there. If you don't, if you go at the wrong times, it'll come up out of the river and grab you uh and pull you down into the river. Um so you know, that you know, and that's probably you know, it probably had the same type of origins. And I think that's a lot of this does come from the culture, and because it, you know, in the old culture, for example, the next one that we'll not bring up that everybody's heard of, the chupacabra. You know, that legendary creature that nobody can actually tell you, and it originates in Latin American folklore, that's where the chupacabra originated, but you hear it most often out in Texas, in that South Texas region, right?
SPEAKER_01:The goat sucker.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and nobody could ever really, every time you heard about the chupacabra, it was different. What was it? I mean, some people uh said it was reptilian, right? Or bat-like, or almost like a dog, like a rabid dog that didn't have skin on it, and even some oh, this is an alien creature from outer space that comes around. But the chupacabra goat and sucked the blood out of stock animals.
SPEAKER_01:It's like a vampire in many respects, right?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that did this, and uh you know, it could be one of those things that it was actual grew out of an actual vent. It could have been a rabid coyote or something, somebody saw attack something one time, but it it it it it developed into this this this almost uh eerie being that as a creature that no one could understand that you know roam the wilds of South Texas brush country. And you don't want to encounter the chupacabra, you know.
SPEAKER_01:Well, there have been times throughout, I mean, in recent times, I don't know, I don't know, I wouldn't say you know, at least into the 80s when I was in high school, every once in a while you hear somebody say, Well, they they caught a picture, they they got a picture, or they caught a chupacabra, or they shot one. And nine times out of ten, it does turn out to be like a dog with mange or maybe a coyote with mange. Yeah. Um, but I think you're right, but you're right. There have been other um other descriptions of the feared chupacabra. Now, is that another one of these metaphors for or warnings for don't go out into the brush, don't go out into the wilderness because you never know when you're gonna see the chupacabra?
SPEAKER_00:I would think so. Don't you think that's I mean, it's just the thing. That's that's a warning to kids. Don't go out by yourself at night because the chupacabra is never seen during the day. Only at night. Good point, good point. Only at night do you ever see a chupacabra, and you know, it's always has to have something that's sinister. I mean, you know, you suck the blood. What is more diabolical than something that'll suck the blood out of you?
SPEAKER_01:Right, just attack you, and you know, there you are minding your own business, eating some grass, and something jumps.
SPEAKER_00:All of a sudden the chupacabra jumps out and sucks all the blood out of you. I mean, I know it's terrible. No, I guess it does. I'm thinking again when I was a kid in San Angelo, we had this urban legend that and you know ticks are almost these sinister creatures. You don't want to get a tick. But this was about our our our dogs. It was a story that spread. It wasn't true. Nobody could actually find the house and the dog because it's happened. But supposedly, somebody had left their little dochin outside and they'd forgotten about it and left it out too long, and ticks came all over it, and it was sucked flat. There was nothing left of the dochin. Just ticks had eaten and sucked all the blood out of it. Well, and kids told that story all up and down the block about that happened. And I guess the same thing happens with the Chupa Cobra, that you just hear so much, and that begins to, you know, resonate. And people tell these stories of the macabre uh and things like that. I it it's it's a it's a strange phenomenon. Again, we probably have to ask a uh I was gonna say a sociologist, but hell, we might have to ask a psychologist about why things like this happen and spread uh to do this.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I I don't think that would be the first time anybody suggested that we see a psychologist.
SPEAKER_00:No, it would definitely uh not uh be the first time that anybody uh uh uh would suggest either of us should see a mental health professional. In fact, I think it's not the first time today since somebody uh has ever done that. Well, I bring when we brought up creatures, but let's think about people, weird people.
SPEAKER_01:Well, now you're gonna start getting into people we know, and that is gonna be.
SPEAKER_00:Well, that's true. We're gonna leave. Well, again, well, we said, you know, nobody's still alive. So that means Ty Cash and safe from this, uh right? Uh Ty Cash and George Cooper and yeah, they're they're safe from this.
SPEAKER_01:My one of you.
SPEAKER_00:Well, yeah. Howard Hughes, Gene. Howard Hughes. I remember the only time I did it, one time I came to Houston, and you went and showed me Howard Hughes' grave. I'd never seen it before. Yeah. Uh we went to the deal, but Howard Hughes, at one time, the richest man in the world, he was a weird dude. So a real weird dude.
SPEAKER_01:Well, and you know, talking about mental health professionals, I mean, I think today, um, and and I've heard, I don't know, I don't know, you know, he died. When did he die in the 80s?
SPEAKER_00:No, 70s. 76, I'm betting, I think. Something like that. Probably in 76, spring of 76.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I I remember when when it happened, um, yeah, April, April of 76.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, there we go.
SPEAKER_01:When it happened, you know, it was big news. My parents were like, you know, it was like it was a celebrity dying, right? And I was like, Well, who's this? Yeah. And you, it was, you know, somebody you'd heard about, but you know, the Hughes house is still, it's uh our friend Benedict Wynne, right? Uh the uh Dean and uh Dean of Students over at uh St. Thomas. Uh the Howard Hughes house is on on the on the St. Thomas campus is used as uh where he grew up. Um and you know, as you said, you know, his his uh his burial plot is is over here big. It's big, it's nice. Uh and and people go there and it's an attraction, and they have to have security uh measures over there, otherwise people will like jump over and go into it and whatnot. But you know, uh and you know, there's a lot of history around Howard Hughes because he built airplanes, right?
SPEAKER_00:The spring stuff started a uh started a Hollywood studio, Hollywood movie, yeah. You know, and was for a long time the richest man in the world.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And for the uh, you know, and and probably uh from what I understand, uh what got him in the end was uh his was maybe uh a venereal disease. Uh yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, there was no doubt, I mean, I don't know, you know, I don't know if we died enough, that he was, I mean, the thing that made him weird, he had severe obsessive compulsive disorder. I mean, he just, you know, he and it became him, he was this, he he was afraid of germs, he was a germophobe. I mean, the whole, I guess the I don't know if it's urban myth, he died when he died, and he died in Mexico. He was, you know, living down in Mexico uh when he died. Uh That he had Kleenex boxes for shoes and shovels, old tattered robe, with hair that was down to, you know, almost to his waist and fingernails that were, you know, seven inches long because he's afraid to cut off and things like that. I I don't know. I've never heard it said if that was actually true, if anybody actually verified that that was the case. I know they died on the way back to Houston, uh, that he had been sick and probably of heart failure, and they were flying him back to Houston, and he, I guess, to some extent died in the air before he could get back to Houston. But even after he died, it created this, there became the weird story about the guy uh in Utah that had given him a ride one time. Uh picked him up in the desert and uh gave him a ride to uh Las Vegas as a hitchhiker. And then years later, when he died, this guy, Melvin, was mentioned and Howard Houston had left him all of his money and everything. And he produced a will about that. It was a movie called Melvin and Howard. Start uh Paul Paul, I can't remember the guy's name. Paul that he was in uh American graffiti, he was the guy who played the guy that drove the car around. Uh and Jason Robards played uh Howard Hughes uh in that movie, Melvin and Howard, uh, about that. But I mean, Howard Hughes, for all of his eccentricities that he was, and of course, Leonardo DiCaprio did a great movie about even the aviator. But for all of those weirdness that he had, think of the things that Howard Hughes accomplished. And besides the studio, started, you know, he owned Trans World Airlines, started an airline, uh, took Hughes tool company to heights he'd never seen before, uh, basically started corporate Las Vegas uh when he bought the Desert Inn. Uh that's always a great story about a weird guy. He'd gone to Las Vegas and he's already developing this terrible uh obsessive compulsive disorder. And so he rented the entire top floor of penthouse suites of the Desert Inn that they reserved for their high rollers. Well, he rented the whole thing and had been there for months. And the owner uh of the Desert Inn, Mo Dallets, who was with the mob, basically went to uh Howard Hughes' people because he didn't see anybody and said, You gotta leave. I need that for my uh uh high rollers. You can't stay up here forever. And so Howard Houston says, I'm gonna leave, I'll just buy the hotel, and supposedly gave uh a number, and Moe Dalits could not turn down. And so he bought the desert in. And that started his big land aqua district. His company still owns more land in Las Vegas than any other company got. Wow, yeah, you know, a lot of the land that a lot of those big resorts on the strip uh set on, they're just leasing it from I can't even from how the Howard Hughes company, uh that they do that they've sold all this land. So I mean you can be weird and be rich. So there's there's well hell, that means there's there's a chance for us, right?
SPEAKER_01:Well, yeah, we just have to be the rich part.
SPEAKER_00:No, no, that's the problem. We we got the weird part, Dan. We just gotta find the rich part to do that. And considering what we do for living, I don't think we're ever gonna be rich. And neither one of us have children, so our children are not gonna be rich. I guess we've got to count on our nieces and nephews uh to actually make something so maybe we might get rich.
SPEAKER_01:I'm gonna tell them to start getting to work on that right now.
SPEAKER_00:That's I think that's a good idea. Oh, so I think we've established, Gene, we could make another whole show about weird Texas things, right?
SPEAKER_01:Well, the more you the more we went on, I started jotting down some notes. I and I think there, I think we can do another show about this.
SPEAKER_00:I think so. So there you go, folks. Another two-parter. You know, two partners happen for us because we don't shut up and we don't stay on topic, and we don't finish everything we were gonna finish. So because we haven't talked, for example, we haven't talked about the Marco lines.
SPEAKER_01:We haven't.
SPEAKER_00:Our time is drawing to an end, and we hadn't talked about the Marvel lines. Well, we've got more to cover. We do. So there you go, folks. Prepare for the next time we're gonna have to.
SPEAKER_01:So we start season three.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, with weird stories.
SPEAKER_01:Weird stories, weirder than normal.
SPEAKER_00:All right, Gene. Good show, right?
SPEAKER_01:All right, we'll talk to you soon. Thank you everybody for listening.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you.
