Pine Curtain

East Texas is home to the Piney Woods. For some people, the wooded area is the “pine curtain”—another “-curtain” expression borrowed from Winston Churchill’s famous speech about countries being behind an “iron curtain.” The “pine curtain” reference is often derogatory, meaning that a “pine curtain” cuts East Texas off from civilization.
     
South Texas has a “tortilla curtain/cactus curtain.”
   
   
Wikipedia: Piney Woods
The Piney Woods is a terrestrial ecoregion in the Southern United States covering 54,400 mi² (140,900 km²) of East Texas, Southern Arkansas, Western Louisiana, and Southeastern Oklahoma. This coniferous forest, is dominated by several species of pine, including Longleaf Pine, Shortleaf Pine and Loblolly Pine, as well as several varieties of hardwoods including Hickory and Oak. The World Wide Fund for Nature considers the Piney Woods to be one of the critically endangered ecoregions of the United States. 
 
Pine Curtain Refugee
I have escaped from behind the fabled Pine Curtain of northeast Texas.
         
OCLC WorldCat record
Autobiography in fiction, or, Time, a place, and a people : an essay
by William Goyen;  George Hendrick;  Gary Borders
Type:  Book; English
Publisher: Austin, Tex. : Texas Observer, 1982.
Document Type: Book
Notes: From the Texas observer, v. 74, 1982, no. 21. Also includes Goyen’s world by George Hendrick and Behind the pine curtain by Gary Borders.
Description: p. 1, 8-15 : ill. ; 28 cm.
Other Titles: Goyen’s world., Behind the pine curtain.
 
OCLC WorldCat record 
East Texas : tales from behind the pine curtain
by Michael Dougan
Type:  Book; English
Publisher: Seattle : Real Comet Press, 1988.
 
Dallas (TX) Morning News
TALES FROM BEHIND THE PINE CURTAIN
Michael Dougan’s comically wry remembrances of home
Author: Steve Blow The Dallas Morning News
Publish Date: March 20, 1988
“Growing up in East Texas was weird. It might as well be Poland.” And thus Michael Dougan began his reconciliation with the land of his youth.
 
With those lines, the 29-year-old Dougan opened the first installment of his cartoon strip, East Texas—Tales From Behind The Pine Curtain. In the three years since, the strip has been part culture lesson, part personal confession. “It’s my way of dealing with feeling like an immigrant, like I came from another…
 
Google Groups: alt.tasteless
Newsgroups: alt.tasteless
From: .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Date: 11 Aug 93 09:25:37 CST
Local: Wed, Aug 11 1993 11:25 am
Subject: Re: Help Wanted: Meeting with Adventists
 
Living in East Texas - behind the Pine Curtain, the only thing we have more of than Bible Thumpin assholes are pine trees - and that’s a close race. I think this is part of the “charm” of Nacogdoches - aka nacanowhere.
 
Google Groups: rec.woodworking
Newsgroups: rec.woodworking
From: Dave Randolph
Date: 1998/08/05
Subject: Re: Sawmill
 
Waall, shoot, pahtnr, Jest like you’ll have a few redwood trees, Texas has a few pine trees. Behind the “pine curtain” of East Texas, the national forest service actually makes a profit off of the trees here.
   
New York (NY) Times
June 13, 1999
Local Justice
A debut novel about the Texas prison industry.
By SARA MOSLE
(...)
Before long, a reporter gets nosy about the goings-on in Shepherdsville, a fictional stand-in for Huntsville, a prison community of 35,000 north of Houston, on the edge of East Texas’ Pine Curtain.
 
OCLC WorldCat record
Behind the pine curtain : a look at Child Protective Services’ utilization of resources in rural East Texas
by Valerie Ann Barclay
Type:  Book; English
Publisher: 2000.
Dissertation: Thesis (M.S.W.)—Stephen F. Austin State University, May, 2000.
 
Google Groups: rec.arts.bonsai
Newsgroups: rec.arts.bonsai
From: Myron Thomas

Date: 2000/02/11
Subject: bonsai 911
 
Myron Thomas
Locked behind the pine curtain in east texas, zone 8, I think
 
North Texas Daily
City proves miles away from small town life
By Marie Eschenfelder
Posted: 10/17/01
East Texas is like a completely different country. The differences between metropolitan city life and the sticks never ceases to amaze me.
Trust me, as one that has escaped from behind the pine curtain, I know.
 
Austin (TX) Chronicle (February 1, 2002)
The Pine Curtain
‘A Death in Texas’ pulls the James Byrd Jr. murder out of the east Texas woods
BY CLAY SMITH
(...)
Temple-Raston isn’t content to make her sometimes harsh assessments of Jasper without historical imperative. In one of her smart discoveries that make you wish this book was longer than it is, she reminds us that when the negotiations for the Louisiana Purchase were being conducted, the United States and Spain failed to demarcate the new western boundary of the U.S. The two nations agreed that the land on both sides of the Sabine River, which now separates Texas from Louisiana, would become neutral territory “The area became ... a safe haven for murderers, rapists, thieves, and fugitives from authority,” she writes. “Most Texans said East Texas wasn’t really Texas. Residents behind ‘the pine curtain’ had failed to come out of the woods during the great westward movement. They were, people in Houston said, different.”
 
19 April 2002, Dallas (TX) Morning News, letters:
Perhaps this is indicative of how East Texas once came to be disparaged as “The Pine Curtain.” 
         
4 February 2003, Washington Post:
Some call East Texas the Pine Curtain, and not always as a term of endearment.
 
New York (NY) Times
LOSS OF THE SHUTTLE: RECOVERY EFFORTS; Heavy Rains Threaten to Entomb Debris in Muck
By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN
Published: February 11, 2003
(...)
Several thousand pieces of shuttle debris have been collected here, in a thickly wooded section of Texas known as ‘‘the pine curtain.’’
     
OCLC WorldCat record
Behind and beyond the pine curtain : a collection of essays by an East Texas editor
by Gary B Borders
Type:  Book; English
Publisher: Austin, Tex. : Eakin Press, ©2004.
 
OCLC WorldCat record
Behind the pine curtain : community theatres of Deep East Texas
by Patrick Clay Vaughn;  Texas Tech University.
Type:  Book; English
Publisher: 2004.
Dissertation: Thesis (Ph.D.)—Texas Tech University, 2004.
 
Redneckgirls (Livejournal)
Shadowcat’s wrote in redneckgirls,
@ 2005-08-01 21:17:00
(...)
I’m a redneck, through and through, a red headed red neck in fact. I live in a small town in deep south east texas behind the pine curtain in where you can find me.
     
listal
Behind the Pine Curtain
Manufacturer : Bella Books
Release date : 30 June 2006
Description
Jacqueline Keys was ostracized from her small hometown of Pine Springs, Texas when she was seventeen, sent away because she was gay. Her family was the largest employer in the county, owning Pine Springs Lumber, and her father was mayor of this small town. Her mother could not accept the fact that h Jacqueline Keys was ostracized from her small hometown of Pine Springs, Texas when she was seventeen, sent away because she was gay. Her family was the largest employer in the county, owning Pine Springs Lumber, and her father was mayor of this small town. Her mother could not accept the fact that her only child was gay, could not tolerate the gossip about her family. So, with a hundred dollars in her pocket and a one-way bus ticket out of town, Jacqueline was told not to come back until she had come to her senses. And that included being prepared to marry the son of a business associate of the family.