Each stranger in a small town must overcome a Texas-sized hurdle: it is called the “Where Are You From?” quiz.

As strangers in our East Texas town, we were inundated with the question; over, and over, and over. The refrigerator repairman set us straight on proper Texas testing. He started with the Official Quiz Question: “Are you from around here?”

The gift of small talk about weather and local happenings was reluctantly bestowed when my husband answered, “graduated from high school just down the road.”

There is a trick to this question; one we learned right there and then. This was not a satisfactory, nor complete, answer. “But are you FROM here?” our repairman persisted.

Ahhhh. Now the magic kernel of acceptance was dangling before our eyes.

“Yes,” my husband was able to answer, “born and raised nearby.”

Much like members of an obscure African tribe might attend to their rituals, the native’s world could now return to normal, thus permitting him to spill his guts while he fixed our refrigerator.

We learned that some of our neighbors were not “from here” after all, but had lived here a mere forty years. We were allowed to hear that a local politician was as crooked as the scrub tree in our front yard.

We also found out that if a stranger takes photographs on the town square on a Sunday – that was me, the guilty one – the entire town would question the validity of such actions.

The first native spread the word throughout his village that one of us was a born-and-bred-just-down-the-road Texan. Others in the tribe could then raise an index finger or nod in greeting as we passed on the streets, but all with great skepticism until they, too, could personally administer the Official Quiz.

We had literally jumped out of the melting pot and into the trial by fire.