Down here folks call it "The Valley." But there are no mountains, no walls, nothing you'd fall into. The Rio Grande Valley is a wide, flat river delta — the "valley" part was a marketing flourish some land-seller dreamed up a hundred years ago to move citrus groves up north.

The phrase was born somewhere between McAllen and Pharr, got a good laugh, and stuck around ever since. Now it lives on a line of caps and tees for locals, ex-locals, and anybody who's had to explain to an out-of-towner that no, it's not that kind of valley.