Two boys in Trapp Spring
The story of Texas 42 begins in Trapp Spring (later renamed Garner), Texas, in 1887, with two young neighbors, William A. Thomas (age 12) and Walter Earl (age 14). Their devout Baptist families and community strictly forbade playing cards, which were widely shunned as "the Devil's Picture Book" due to associations with gambling and tavern culture. According to local lore, after being caught playing a card game in a barn hayloft and having their cards confiscated, the boys realized that dominoes carried no such moral stigma. Working with a standard double-six set of 28 tiles, they adapted the trick-taking, bidding, and trump mechanics of Auction Whist to the dominoes. What they invented was not a pale substitute but a new game with its own character, tight enough for a lifetime of study and warm enough for a kitchen table after supper.
They did not set out to write history. They set out to play a fair game under the rules their households could accept.
Word of mouth across Texas
There was no advertising campaign. Texas 42 traveled the way the state itself often did: by word of mouth, through church socials, family potlucks, and courthouse squares. A cousin taught a cousin; a driller taught a roughneck; grandparents passed the count tiles and the bidding ladder to grandchildren between innings and after sermons. Because 42 was card-free, it was enthusiastically embraced by congregations throughout Texas, giving it a stamp of moral legitimacy that accelerated its spread.
One of the most famous vectors of the game's popularization was the "Fruit Route." William Thomas himself taught the game to residents in nearby Mineral Wells while delivering fruit from his father's orchards. This casual face-to-face transmission helped the game spread like wildfire, to the point that early accounts occasionally confused Mineral Wells as the birthplace of the game. Fanning out from these rural roots, 42 eventually found a massive home in the dormitories of Texas A&M University and on the front lines of World War II, where Texas soldiers proudly taught it to service members from across the globe.
Iconic Texans at the table
The game’s footprint is inseparable from small-town Texas life, but it also reached the halls of power. Lyndon B. Johnson was a legendary player, frequently keeping a 42 game going in the upstairs living quarters of the White House to relieve the immense stress of his presidency. Other prominent Texans like Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, First Lady Laura Bush, Governor Ann Richards, and country music icon Willie Nelson have all spent hours at the table. For many Texans, that image captures something true: 42 is casual and democratic, yet dignified enough for anyone who respects a good partner and a clean mark on the score sheet. Whether the setting is a ranch house or a Washington sitting room, the table is still four chairs, two teams, and the quiet drama of whether the bid will hold.
Zavala blue and the Republic
Texas 42 shares air with the Republic of Texas imagination: independence, neighborliness, and symbols that outlive any single generation. The deep blue associated with Lorenzo de Zavala, statesman and signer, echoes in the colors Texans still reach for when they want to say “this is ours.” Follow Me 42 leans on that same Zavala flag blue not as a costume but as a nod: this game belongs to the same cultural family as the flag, the courthouse lawn, and the stories Texans tell about who they are.
Official State Domino Game
In 2011, the 82nd Texas Legislature put the weight of statute behind what parlors had already decided: Texas 42 was named the Official State Domino Game of Texas. The resolution was more than symbolism. It recognized generations of teachers and players who kept the game alive when flashier pastimes came and went. For newcomers, it is an invitation: if the state puts its name on the game, there must be something in it worth learning.
N42PA and Hallettsville
Organized play found a home in the National 42 Players Association (N42PA), founded in 2005, and in the annual pilgrimage to the Knights of Columbus Hall in Hallettsville for the Texas State Championship, which has run since 1981. There, strangers become partners, local experts meet statewide competition, and the subtle arts of bidding and trump selection are on full display. If your first 42 game was on a phone screen or a browser tab, the lineage of those tournament tables still runs straight back to Trapp Spring in 1887.
This preservation of history is also a debt owed to modern standard-bearers and authors who helped codify the game's strategies. Dennis Roberson's seminal 1997 book, Winning 42: Strategy & Lore of the National Game of Texas, served as the first formal codification of 42 strategy and culture, elevating the game to a recognized cultural icon. Other foundational works followed, including Keith Mack's comprehensive Texas 42: How to Play, How to Win. Analytical frameworks for tournament-style aggressive bidding were further shaped by strategy commentaries like Gary McClish's Power Bidding in Texas 42 (2012). Broader works like Jennifer Kelley's Great Book of Domino Games (1999) also helped preserve 42 and its variants like Moon on a national scale. Meanwhile, Paul Proft's texas42.net, launched in 1997, has spent decades serving as the central unadvertised archive for rule variants, tournaments, and historical documentation, ensuring the game’s oral tradition remains unbroken in the digital age.
Why Follow Me 42
Follow Me 42 exists to carry this uniquely Texan tradition into the place today’s players actually gather: online. Distance, deployment, college, and diaspora no longer have to mean giving up the game you grew up on. We are building respectful, faithful tools so that bidding, trump decisions, and the old familiar count tiles can travel in your pocket or on your desk. This site uses a deep flag blue associated with Lorenzo de Zavala as a deliberate Texas nod; the star-and-42 mark is ours, meant to sit alongside the play you already know from kitchen tables, porches, and wherever your crowd draws tiles. The legislature gave the game a name in law; generations of Texans gave it a heartbeat. Our job is to help it follow you wherever you go.