Coffee in the Gourd gathers vernacular lore, local history, song, anecdote, and regional observation into a richly textured portrait of Texas and the wider Southwest. Its range—from scholarly folkloric inquiry to vivid recollection and narrative sketch—preserves the idioms, customs, occupational knowledge, and social memory that formal histories often overlook. The volume belongs to the early twentieth-century movement to record living traditions before modernization altered or erased them...