Hollerin’

 As a young boy growing up in Houston, we made many trips to my grandparents house in East Texas. This was back in the day a small child could make a long road trip in the car, falling asleep, comfortably up in the back window behind the passenger seat or on the floorboard at your mothers feet. The trip usually took around six hours and since we often left after school that out, we were usually arrive late at night. It was not uncommon for me to sleep most of the trip and wake up with a familiar turns of the last few hundred yards approaching my grandparents house.

They lived on the outskirts of a one stoplight down in East Texas, near Lake of the Pines. My grandmother was a very careful and caring woman who’s watchful eye was mostly driven by a fear that something would happen to me. Since that area is generally known as The Big Thicket of Texas, it was not uncommon for people to get lost in the forest. I don’t think I fully understood the implications of getting lost until I heard strange noises coming from the woods. The noises weren’t screams but it was yelling of some kind that was so unusual. I came to learn that it was a practice called Hollerin’. This was a kind of yell that people use to communicate to one another over long distances, and they were very specific, a language to themselves.  The practice died out with the advent of technology, except for those who keep it alive in contests. As search parties moved through the woods, they would not only holler back-and-forth to keep track of one another, but also to make themselves heard to the individual who was lost.

In a very small way we continue the practice daily and don’t even realize how or where it came from. “Hello,” was often used as one approached a house. With the advent of the telephone, the word fell in the common usage, and softened from a yell or a holler to near-thoughtless spoken word.