Talk Like a Texan: The Story Behind the Houstonian “Feeder Road”
One of the last markers of the Houstonian dialect dates back to the Southern Pacific Railroad.
John Nova Lomax has been an oyster shucker in Tennessee, a landscape gardener and British Telecom mail clerk in Lancashire, and a field hand on a kibbutz in the Arava section of the Negev in Israel. He is also the author of Houston's Best Dive Bars: Drinking and Diving in the Bayou City, a guidebook to Houston dive bars, and co-author of Murder & Mayhem in Houston: Historic Bayou City Crime, a compilation of notorious Houston crimes.
Lomax has been a full-time journalist in the Bayou City since 2001. He spent eleven years at the Houston Press as a music editor and staff writer and is proudest of helping discover Hayes Carll, rediscover Lil’ Joe Washington, and winning an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award in 2008. With future Marfa city councilman and justice of the peace David Beebe, Lomax walked a total of more than 200 miles of Houston streets on about a dozen different trips, writing about the adventures as part of the “Sole of Houston” blog series. After leaving the music beat, Lomax covered crime, courts and culture for the Press. His work has also appeared in Spin, the New York Times, the Village Voice, and LA Weekly. He has been a senior editor with Texas Monthly since January 2015.
Articles by John Nova Lomax
The Benevolence of Father T.J.
The founder of Cristo Rey Jesuit College Prep in Houston's last gift to his students—and to all of us—was his wisdom.
Talk Like a Texan: What Do We Mean By “Fair to Middlin’ ”?
It's better than good—at least if you're talking about cotton quality.
A Deep Dive Into How Dallas Got Its Name
Prepare for a tale of blackface minstrelsy and swashbuckling high seas adventures, a whodunit with the last page maddeningly ripped out.
Talk Like a Texan: How Texans Use “Down,” “Out,” “Over,” and “Up”
Prepositionally, you can go over or out to Abilene—depending on where you're coming from.
Leon Bridges’s Houston Rodeo Performance Wasn’t Booked for African-American Music Fans
Who should play on Black Heritage Night? And who gets to decide?
Luis Perez: The Most Interesting Football Player on the Planet
The senior quarterback for Texas A&M at Commerce, the winner of Division II's version of the Heisman, has one of the strangest stories in all of football.
Talk Like a Texan: Is “Tumping” Texan?
An etymological investigation into the Southern phrase.
A Comprehensive List of How Texans Mispronounce Places With Spanish Names
From Amarila to Wad-a-loop to the Purda-nalleez River, we've taken some liberties when it comes to pronunciation.
