A plaque remaining from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem.

Above, a 1934 plaque from the Big Apple Night Club at West 135th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem. Discarded as trash in 2006. Now a Popeyes fast food restaurant on Google Maps.

Recent entries:
“Instead of ‘British Summer Time’ and ‘Greenwich Mean Time’ we should just call them ‘Oven Clock Correct Time’...” (3/28)
“Has anyone here ever drank a pint of tequila? I know it’s a long shot” (3/28)
“A pint of tequila? That’s a long shot” (3/28)
“The U.S. should add three more states. Because 53 is a prime number. Then they can truly be one nation, indivisible” (3/28)
Entry in progress—BP4 (3/28)
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Entry from November 18, 2006
“Everything’s bigger in Texas”

“Everything’s bigger in Texas” (sometimes ““Everything’s bigger and better in Texas” or “They grow things bigger in Texas”) reflects what was once (before Alaska was admitted) the largest state in the United States. The term was popular by 1950 and is still used.
 
   
7 December 1950, Chicago Daily Tribune, pg. 19:
A LAST LINE from the Live Stock show quotes the exposition’s president, Jess C. Andrew: “With the Texans winning most of the titles this year, there’ll be no stopping their bragging. I thought I could do it once. Had two Texan cattle buyers down to my 5,000 acre farm at West Point, Ind. Everything I showed them, chickens, hogs, horses, cows, they had bigger and better in Texas. Finally I went down to the creek and got several snapping turtles which I put in my visitors’ beds. That night when they pulled back the covers, they jumped back and yelled, ‘What’s them?’ ‘Jest some of our Indiana chiggers,’ I told them. ‘Kinda small, ain’t they?’ said the Texans. I gave up.”
   
22 March 1951, Valley Morning Star (Harlingen, TX), pg. 7, col. 1:
AMARILLO (AP)—Everything’s always bigger in Texas. The Panhandle sky even had a plurality of moon Wednesday.
 
10 May 1953, New York Times, pg. 79:
“That’s what they get for always saying everything comes bigger in Texas,” murmured the wife of an Easterner.
   
27 January 1955, Washington Post, pg. 43:
Replied a colleague: “Everything grows bigger in Texas.”
 
9 December 1957, Chicago Daily Tribune, pg. 26:
Sen. Johnson [D., Tex.] compares sputnik launching to the Pearl Harbor attack. They raise everything bigger in Texas, including hectic imaginations.

Posted by Barry Popik
Texas (Lone Star State Dictionary) • Saturday, November 18, 2006 • Permalink


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