January 1998

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Features

The 1998 Bum Steer Awards

A year of altered antlers, bawdy broadcasters, comedian corrections, dining detectives, emancipated emus, fossilized felines, gullible Gore, hemline harassment, insatiable igniters, jazzed-up jewelry, Kay’s kennelwear, lottery loonies, metric madness, numerous nudes, 007 oenophiles, poultry protesters, questionable quizzes, revengeful revenuers, Spam slingers, tie tirades, unallowed uniforms, variant videotapers, warning! water, x-humed x-mascots, yanked Yvonne, and zodiac zombies.

A Few Bad Boys

The slashing of a cadet’s throat at the Marine Military Academy in Harlingen is only the latest incident of violence at a venerable institution under not-so-friendly fire.

by Pamela Colloff

Anatomy of a Drug Cartel

The cocaine goes north. The money goes south. And Mexican kingpins like Juan García Abrego laugh all the way to the bank—a Texas bank, that is.

by Helen Thorpe

Midnight in the Garden of East Texas

In sleepy Carthage a rich, haughty widow disappears, and nobody seems to notice. When she turns up dead, everybody seems to feel sympathy for the nice young man who killed her.

by Skip Hollandsworth

The Family That Played Together

Ty and Koy Detmer were South Texas high school football heroes. Now they’re NFL quarterbacks. They owe it all to their father, a coaching whiz everybody calls Sonny.

by Jason Cohen

Columns

Art

Joan of Art

Less than a decade ago, she was a homemaker and an arts volunteer, but today the Arlington Museum of Art’s Joan Davidow is the most imaginative and adventurous museum director working in Texas.

by Michael Ennis

Behind the Lines

Who killed the Texas Democratic party?

by Gregory Curtis

Crime

Ku Klux Klowns

There was something comical about the plot by four Klan members to blow up a chemical plant in Wise County— and that was before their own Imperial Grand Wizard turned them into the feds.

by Christine Biederman

Media

What’s Left?

When you listen to Jim Hightower’s talk radio show, that’s the question you inevitably ask—about him, the medium, and Texas liberalism.

by Joe Nick Patoski

Sports

Life of Wiley

At his pool hall near White Rock Lake, on bar tables across the country, and at professional tournaments around the world, Carson “CJ” Wiley earns his keep by ramming balls into pockets. It’s that simple.

by Michael P. Geffner