On a perfect October evening in Lubbock, I sit enjoying a glass of viognier while watching members of Chris Crow and the Cat’s Pajamas lug amplifiers and instruments through the garage door at La Diosa Cellars, a romantic bistro-winery.
Bastrop had been on my mind since last fall, when I spent a couple of hours poking around the picturesque downtown, which nestles against the banks of the Colorado River southeast of Austin.
The three glass-and-metal pyramids of Galveston’s Moody Gardens have always been something of a mystery to me.
In most parts of Texas, flowering trees are the harbingers of the season—their blooms appear before those of many wildflowers and even before some of the trees themselves leaf out.
“The prettiest post in Texas” is how General of the Army William Tecumseh Sherman described Fort McKavett in 1871.
I’ve long been attracted to the ways of life in small towns. This photo feature on Quitaque, a Panhandle town about 40 miles east of I-27, between Amarillo and Lubbock, is the fifth in a series I’ve done for TH.
I grew up in a grocery store in Amarillo. My dad and his brother took over the family business from their father when they returned from World War II.
In the course of this project, I got to meet some terrific Texas people. There is no single theme, other than the willingness to work incredibly hard for incredibly modest rewards, that connects all the makers of Texas barbecue.
Fair Game
The annual State Fair of Texas, held in Dallas every fall, probably has the market cornered on inventive fried-food concoctions; think of deep-fried Coke, deep-fried Oreos, and chicken-fried bacon.
When folklorist Alan Lomax chose music for the Voyager Golden Record, a recording placed aboard NASA’s unmanned Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1977, he selected Navajo chants, a Beethoven symphony, and a timeless tune by a Texan named Willie.
It’s a Picnic
In South Texas, even certain temperate days in February lend themselves to picnics.
The Texas Big Bend country creates fantasy, illusion, mystery. Wide-open spaces, fabulous light, and the wild creatures and eccentric characters that typify the region suggest that a trip into the untamed Chihuahuan Desert can be not only fascinating, but also transformative.
Determined to take a West Texas walk one particularly blustery spring day, my son and I blew into Fort Davis.
The night skies of Texas’ Big Bend country often mesmerize in ways that mirror the peculiarities of dark dreams and lullabies.
Mention the far-flung West Texas town of Marfa and most folks reference the mysterious lights that sometimes dance not far outside the city limits.
Somewhere in the Piney Woods north of Beaumont, a 12-passenger van barrels down the road. Mud splatters cover its windshield and dirt cakes its sides.
San Antonio boasts a diverse culinary tradition, from the chili queens who began selling the iconic bowl of red here in the 1880s, to the debut of the Frito in the 1930s, after Frito-Lay founder Elmer Doolin purchased the recipe from a local café owner.
It’s been almost a decade since I visited the splendid Texas Sports Hall of Fame in Waco.
There’s always more to the story. Consider outtakes: All of the photographs (and text) that we want to publish but can’t fit into each issue of the magazine.
“When I was born, I didn’t cry,” swears cowboy-hat stylist Don Livingston of Longhorn Hatters
in Schertz.
The big bird hovering above me turned out to be a white raven. More precisely, a Robinson R44 Raven, a pearly-white helicopter with blue pinstriping.