Texas Similes

Growing up, I was immersed in the Texas vernacular, and there seemed to be a simile for every occasion. To be as tough as boot leather or rough as a cob was to be praised for being manly. Or a person could be as nervous as a cat in a roomful of rocking chairs. Or you could do something faster than a minnow can swim a dipper. Or it could be hotter than a two dollar pistol. And then there were probably a hundred similes used up at the packing house where my grandfather worked that I will not post on this family-friendly blog. 

When I first arrived at Southwestern University my freshman year, my classmates sometimes asked me where on Earth I learned to talk. Self-conscious, I tried to tone it down a tad, but now I take great pride in using the colorful sayings of my grandfathers and father. Fewer and fewer people know the old similes today, and as a fiction writer I use them often for they are part of my heritage and because they just sound right. After I finish the first draft of a story, I read the dialogue out loud. If a word or phrase doesn't sound natural, I revise it. And those old similes just seem to roll off the tongue.