Small World

I just found out that Anne Nicole Smith was born and grew up in Mexia Texas as Vicki Lynn Hogan.

I have relatives in Mexia, which I always use as a guide to Texas pronunciation - it is very close to "Muh-hair" or a blend of that and "Muh-hay-uh". Another pronunciation in Texas, only rarely pronounced "Tay-has" in Texas, is Bexar County as "bay-er" or "bear" - the X is silent or a very soft h. There is some discussion about the growing Latino influence in Texas affecting pronunciation but it is really the opposite - there was a big influx of damn Yankees and gringos who brought their mistakes in and that may be wearing off.

I visited Mahair over 30 years ago and stayed the night at some cousins. I wondered at the time what I would do if I had grown up there. My cousins were into watching wrestling on TV and preparing animals for contests - shudder.

Her first born son Daniel Wayne Smith has just died mysteriously while visiting her in a Bahamas hospital and it mentioned she met his father Billy Smith while working at Jim's Krispy Fried Chicken in Mexia, Texas. Fried chicken in these small Texas towns is pretty good.

She is a Texas semi-celebrity with huge hooters and rural low income Texas tastes who married a very rich Galveston man and was cheated out of her hundreds of millions of dollars inheritance by the son and the rich Texas good ol' boy judge network. Or, if you follow the other storyline, she is a gold digger who married a very old dirty old man just so he would quickly die on her and she could cheat the family out of their inheritance. That case is still in litigation as the US Supreme Court has ruled she can retry it in California.

I'll have to ask my dad what he knows of the Hogans and Smiths of Mahair, Tayhas.

Tags: Texas, Mexia