How Curandero Don Pedro Jaramillo Became a South Texas Legend
The burial shrine for saintly South Texan Don Pedro Jaramillo sits beside a dusty farm-to-market road in the ... Read More »
With a Gift and a Grin, Amos Milburn Helped Invent Rock ‘n’ Roll
Born in Houston in 1927, Amos Milburn was a piano prodigy, sounding out tunes from the age of 5. Piano ... Read More »
Reflecting on Mission San José’s 300 Years in San Antonio
The bells of Mission San José set the pace for everything I did growing up in 1950s-’60s South Side San ... Read More »
Texas-Based 7-Eleven Mastered the Art of Curbside Service a Century Ago
From the 1920s to the ’60s, the Dallas convenience store chain made its name delivering good to customers’ cars. During COVID-19, the antiquated service as made a major comeback. Read More »
A Small-Town Enthusiast Embarks on the Revitalization of Bartlett in Central Texas
Robert Zalkin dares to dream small. Beginning in mid-2019, the native of the small town of Liberty, New York, began buying 15 buildings in Bartlett, a once-thriving cotton center 50 miles north of Austin on State Highway 95. He was drawn to Texas because of the welcoming people and economic feasibility of such a project. He intends to enliven the small town by preserving and repurposing its downtown, which he’ll document on Instagram at @downtownbartlett. “I drove through quite a few Texas towns,” Zalkin said, “but when I stepped out onto the red brick streets of Bartlett, it was magical. I felt the old ghosts and knew immediately this was the one.” Read More »
Get Your Chickens! A Vintage Vendor at Weatherford’s First Monday Market
Weatherford’s First Monday Trade Days began in 1900 when merchant A.H. Gernsbacher first advertised “Stray ... Read More »
How the ‘Grape Man of Texas’ Saved the French Wine Industry
When leading tours of Blue Ostrich, a winery and vineyard near Saint Jo, winemaker Patrick Whitehead likes to ... Read More »
Texas’ First Film Studio Stood in San Antonio’s Padre Park
Star Film Ranch, a former silent filmmaking studio in San Antonio, is just dust in the wind, but author and ... Read More »
The Galveston Legend of the Infamous Pirate Jean Lafitte
On Galveston Island’s east end, behind a rusting chain-link fence, the concrete bones of an old structure sit ... Read More »
A Peaceful Day on the Guadalupe River in Kerrville in 1910
Texans have always had a reverence for water, perhaps because we live on the edge of where it’s abundant and ... Read More »
A 1939 Photograph Captures Fishermen on a Corpus Christi Pier
Fishing is a great equalizer. A fish doesn’t care whether you have a fancy rod or, like these men on a Corpus ... Read More »
How Juneteenth Brought Emancipation to Enslaved People in Texas
For several of my adolescent years in the 1960s, my family motored 45 miles northwest on US 290 from southeast ... Read More »
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