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On the Road Again
My first morning at the Holiday Inn Express in Pearsall, an hour or so south of San Antonio, I left my room just before six o’clock and rode the elevator down from the third floor. It was a Monday, and...
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Reel Life
I was about to make it past level 147 of Candy Crush when I discovered the Texas Archive of the Moving Image. Suddenly there was a powerful new contender in my distraction derby. It may have been hours...
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Linda Perez Ceramics
Growing up in San Antonio, Linda Perez envied the girls who left school on Fridays saying, “See you Monday. I’m headed to the ranch.” She vowed to one day have a ranch of her own, and even after she...
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Peace Out
I was attempting to navigate the bar crowd near the front door—feeling like a disoriented tuna swimming through a school of cocktail-crazed sharks—when the irony hit me and I almost burst out laughing:...
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Get Bucky
When Guy Bailey was named the sole finalist for the presidency of the University of Texas–Rio Grande Valley in April, he no doubt anticipated a few of the challenges involved in overseeing the launch...
View ArticleRoar of the Crowd
Orangebloods descended on the AT&T Executive Education and Conference Center, on the University of Texas at Austin campus, to hear from men’s athletics director Steve Patterson. Part of the TM...
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The Texanist: When Did We Start Calling the Chicken’s “Second Joint” the Thigh?
When did we start calling the chicken’s “second joint” the thigh? Illustration by Jack UnruhQ: During my boyhood years, I would spend time at my father’s family farm, near Sardis, in Ellis County. The...
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Fried Pies
Faithful readers of this column (if there are any still alive after cooking and eating all the puffy tacos and corny dogs and queso) may have noticed a pattern: anything that’s good is better fried....
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Changing the Channel
It’s dawn at the site of Santa Anna’s capture, atop the Washburn Tunnel in Pasadena. Two fishermen are angling at the water’s edge, joined by a great blue heron, neck coiled and ready to strike. The...
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Anna Todd, Revealed!
Two years ago, Anna Todd was a 23-year-old Army wife living at Fort Hood, attempting to be a college student. “I had no clue what I wanted to do,” she says over a honey-cream latte at Dominican Joe’s,...
View ArticleWe Love That Dirty Water
On a late September afternoon, Brady Blackmore stands at the business end of a few lengths of heavy-duty oil field hose, spraying a thirsty St. Augustine lawn in Wichita Falls’s Country Club Estates...
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Number Nine’s Revolution
In 1993 Michigan native Mike Modano was playing for the Minnesota North Stars when the team became the Dallas Stars. Six years later, Dallas got a Stanley Cup parade. Due in no small part to Modano’s...
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Meanwhile, in Texas . . .
Firefighters rescued a pet frog from a Westworth Village home that had caught fire. A Texas computer repairman was detained by South Korean border guards for attempting to swim across a river to North...
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Old News: An Illustrated Look at Curious Headlines From a Bygone Era
“At Bonham, recently, Miss Jessie Bryant, while sleeping, was robbed of her beautiful golden tresses by some unknown party. Six years ago the little lady met with the same misfortune.”—Shiner Gazette,...
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Five Reasons Why Texas Won’t Turn Blue This Year (or Anytime Soon)
Wendy Davis. Battleground Texas. “The emerging Hispanic majority.” Texas Democrats had a lot of reasons to think this might be the election cycle when their fortunes turned. But barring some sort of...
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It’s the New Three R’s: Readin’, Ritin’, and Riot Control
Advocacy groups revealed that at least ten Texas school districts received surplus material from the U.S. Department of Defense, including armored vehicles, tactical vests, assault rifles, and several...
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Read State
Out of my always-churning maelstrom of treasured Texas titles, these ten (listed in no special order) arise from my current reflections, either because the books are always with me—abiding voices like...
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Against the Canon
As a writer born in San Antonio, I have always felt myself anointed, or perhaps branded, by the conflicted literary legacies of the Lone Star State. I was never sure whether my origins—as a descendant...
View ArticleThey Spoke Volumes
WHAT IS THE ONE BOOK EVERY TEXAN SHOULD READ?Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Ben Fountain—Sarah Bird, author of Above the East China Sea The Son, Philipp Meyer—Don Graham, editor of Lone Star...
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The Creation of Baylor
On a Wednesday afternoon in late June, more than two hundred members of the largest incoming freshman class in the history of Baylor University boarded a convoy of chartered buses and headed from the...
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Harvester Good
The sun wasn’t even up when Trent Loter returned from the kitchen with another Diet Mountain Dew. He drank seven cans of the stuff a day, but this morning he was putting them back with purpose. That’s...
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The Silvertone
Texas has a new mixological pilgrimage site, and it’s in a hotel basement. Midnight Rambler is the handiwork of Chad Solomon and Christy Pope, craft-cocktail pioneers whose fingerprints can be seen on...
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A Shooting on Spring Grove Avenue
A light drizzle was falling in the early morning hours of May 9, 2010, when detective Dwayne Thompson pulled up in front of a modest home on Spring Grove Avenue, in a tree-lined neighborhood in North...
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Bottle Rocket
It was one of the finest marketing slogans ever hatched from the mind of man, a simple, unmistakable declaration of pride and resolve: “Long live long necks.” Fittingly, it seemed to just float into...
View ArticleThe Checklist
BOOKS The Flatlanders, John T. Davis (UT Press, October 20)Given the profound influence Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock have had on Texas country music—and therefore country music,...
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