Grinding axes with Texas

TEXAS STEPPED UP WHEN THE CALL CAME!!!!
9/2/05

Texas, you've got our dander up, and we don't even know what dander is. First, you take credit for having more lakes than us. You lay claim to 'Red River Valley,' the century-old tune that's really (well, some say) about our turf, not yours. Oh, and you took our hockey team. And you gave us Red McCombs. And that right there makes us madder than an armadillo with adenoids.

Our top seven beefs with the Longhorn State:

LAKES

You're all wet, Texas

An Ohio professor stirred this up in June by defining a lake as any body of water 100 feet across (you know, like, a puddle). That sorry standard put Texas No. 1 and the Land of 10,000 Lakes No. 7. Sorry, pardner, but those are ponds you're soakin' in.

RED RIVER VALLEY

That song has an uff-da sound

A couple of deejays on the Current's 'Morning Show' (89.3) recently dug their spurs into the old 'Red River Valley' dispute. This cowpoke dirge, which appeared on about 35 old Western movie soundtracks, is really a Northern tune, if you believe Canadian folklorist Edith Fowke. She claimed it's about the part of the river separating Minnesota and North Dakota. And who can argue with someone named Edith?

MCCOMBS

He came, he saw, he whined

Red McCombs, the Texas tire kicker who used to own the Vikings, cried poverty for seven years, sold the team for a huge profit and then insisted he get credit for any future success the team might have. You'd need a 20-gallon hat to cover that hubris.

HERSCHEL WALKER

You want fries with that trade?

In 1989, the Vikings traded five players, six draft picks, seven samurai and eight maids-a-milking to the Dallas Cowboys for Herschel Walker, which set off gales of laughter throughout the Lone Star State. The Cowboys went on to win three Super Bowls in the '90s and didn't even send us a thank-you note.

LYNDON B. JOHNSON

Taking Humphrey down

More than three decades ago, we sent a veep to Washington, and who does he get saddled with? A Texan who proves as popular as a scorpion in a souffle. With the stain of LBJ upon him, Hubert Humphrey lost to Richard Nixon (oh, the shame!) in the 1968 presidential election.

HOCKEY

Dallas sees (our) Stars

A cold day in Texas is when you can't grill a T-bone on the hood of your car, but that didn't stop Dallas from skating away with our ice hockey team in 1993. The North Stars became simply the Stars and, most gallingly, won a Stanley Cup in 1999, something they never did here.

ATTITUDE

Texas truculence makes us smile

As slogans go, 'Don't mess with Texas,' is just plain mean. We'll stick with 'Minnesota Nice,' thank you very much, because it allows us to put a happy face on our festering hostilities."