August 1987 Cover

August 1987

Table of Contents

Features

The rich and eccentric heir to a rich and Galveston family, Shearn Moody, Jr., craved an empire all his own. But his lack of self-restraint cost him his bank, his insurance company, his fortune, and now, perhaps, his freedom.

The wettest spell in memory has given the people who live in West Texas an unfamiliar topic of conversation.

For some entrepreneurs, the dark cloud of AIDS has proved to have a silver lining.

When eighty-year-old Decker Jackson gives financial advice to Texas public officials, nothing in life is certain but debt and taxes.

Meet Bruce Auden of San Antonio, the fairest of the Fairmount.

Nobody remembers his name, but the photographer who passed through Corpus Christi in 1934 left behind an unforgettable series of images.

There’s one place where you can still find plenty of oil in Texas: the beach.

Columns

Should we have an income tax?

Business

Maybe as much as $20,000, if Lee Ballard of Dallas has anything to do with it.

Art

Hans Holbein’s life drawings are a tantalizing glumpse into the lusty court of Henry VIII. And courtesy of HRH Queen Elizabeth II, they’re on view at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts.

Mexico

Brownsville has everything Mexico’s leading filmmaker could want—except visas.

Popular Music

The Fabulous Thunderbirds, Mason Ruffner, and Omar and the Howlers all got the same message from album-oriented-rock radio: Wrap it up, we’ll take it.

Reporter

Reporter

Let’s play pretend by swapping out Houstonians for Dallasites. Plus: Battling books, good Mex-Mex where you’d least expect it, and our guide to the latest legislative phrases (use ‘em three times and they’re yours!)

Miscellany

Behaving yourself in the eighties; keeping the faith in the parish; winning Pulitzers with penguins.

Playing fast and loose with the new speed limit; an oil drilling technique gets the shaft; dam builders strick back—with Authority; how the budget battle is changing the Legislature.

Sixteen ways to make an entrance.

Passing (slowly) through Kendleton. Then on to Houston, where student murals record the march of time and Vietnam vets gather; to a meal so good it’s kept under lock and key; and finally to the (formerly) Golden Triangle.

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