75 Things We Love About Texas
Bluebonnets? Check. Enchanted Rock? Yup. Barton Springs? Duh. You probably guessed those. But what about buckle bunnies? Or goat barbecue? Or Thong Island? From Texas trademarks to personal favorites to the just plain weird, you’ll find everything here. And we do mean everything.
(Page 5 of 5)
62. “My Hometown,” by Charlie Robison, and “My Brother and Me,” by Bruce Robison
The Robison brothers came of age in early-eighties, pre–cable television Bandera, where their only meaningful exposure to pop culture came from country music radio and heavy-metal concerts in nearby San Antonio. These two songs tell you what that world looked liked. Bruce’s is a ruminative family history detailing how four generations of wildcatters, whiskey drinkers, teetotalers, and hayseeds took root in the Texas Hill Country. Charlie’s is an anthem about using any means available—summer pipeline jobs, football, music—to get out. Neither song wastes time on apologies or nostalgia; both close with the prodigal storytellers back home in Bandera. Taken together they give a good idea of what Larry McMurtry might have accomplished if he’d grown up in the eighties instead of the fifties and fallen in love with a guitar instead of a typewriter. Put them back to back on a playlist and subtitle them “Metalhead, Pass By.” John Spong
63. T-Bone Walker’s guitar sound
The Linden-born bluesman transformed his instrument from a rhythm into a lead voice and invented the guitar solo, which today is taken for granted. But it’s not just that everyone who’s since plugged in, especially in Texas, has a little T-Bone in him. It’s that Walker’s tone, touch, dynamics, note selection, harmonies, and emotional expression have rarely been improved upon in the ensuing six-plus decades, only refined. Have the elegant and the down-and-dirty ever absorbed each other into one package quite so eloquently? John Morthland
64. Dog Canyon Campground, Guadalupe Mountains National Park
This place is so remote you can’t even drive to it from Texas. Sixty-five miles of New Mexico byway brings you—only just—back across the state line into a forested canyon hidden high in the Guadalupe Mountains. The range is a national park, and from a campsite here you can explore eighty miles of trails that lead through sky islands of ponderosa pine and Douglas fir to six of the state’s ten highest peaks. Up here, there are bobcats and elk, green-skinned madrone trees and white-eyed phlox, and more than three hundred kinds of birds. I recommend making your way from Dog Canyon along the McKittrick Canyon Trail for a view over this famous glen, whose hardwood trees explode into color every fall. For nature lovers, photographers, and adventure seekers, this place is a very holy grail. Charlie Llewellin
65. Dublin Dr Pepper
For three decades now, the original Dr Pepper bottling plant, in Dublin, has refused to make the switch from cane syrup to the cheaper—and inferior—alternative, corn syrup. The result? Dublin Dr Pepper, a soft drink of cult status. Because of a franchise agreement, Dublin Dr Pepper is readily available only in a forty-mile radius around Dublin. But a few retailers elsewhere bend the rules a bit. “We call them bootleggers, but we mean that in the best way,” says Jeff Pendleton, Dr Pepper creative director. But the best place to drink it is at the Dublin Dr Pepper Museum, where a soda jerk still serves it ice-cold from a fountain. Laura Griffin
66. Dallas freeways
To me, freeway intersections can be as thrilling as the most provocative art installation. The junction of I-30, U.S. 75, and I-45 in Dallas is one of the most stunning, especially in the evening, when the towers of downtown are silhouetted against the hyper-real colors of a Texas sunset. A downtown skyline is the face of a city, and Big D has one of the most instantly recognizable. From this gravity-defying nexus, you can stare straight into the unflinching eye of this great conurbation. Charlie Llewellin
67. “Fandango”
The movie’s premise is familiar to anyone who ever tried to stretch an extra semester out of adolescence: Five drunk frat brothers blow out of a party in the middle of the night in a car loaded with beer and headed for anywhere. In this case, the year is 1971, the school is the University of Texas, and the boys wind up in Big Bend. Led by then-unknowns Kevin Costner and Judd Nelson, the group celebrates one last, lost weekend in which beer for breakfast still staves off graduation and growing up. Slacker Costner sums up the struggle for straight-arrow Nelson while the latter showers off in a Marfa car wash: “There’s nothing wrong with going nowhere, son. It’s a privilege of youth.” The film tanked at the box office but soon found a home in frat-house VCRs. Since then it’s validated bad-idea, spur-of-the-moment road trips undertaken from every campus in the state. John Spong
68. The Devil’s Bowl Speedway, Mesquite
Spend an extra $2 for a reserved seat so that you can sit in the center section. Buy a beer and a cheeseburger. And then watch these drivers, almost all of whom spend their weekdays working in blue-collar jobs, race around the half-mile oval track, slamming into one another and spinning out so hard that dirt can fly into the parking lot. Between races, pull out your binoculars so you can get a good look at the “pit lizards,” girls who wear jeans that leave only enough room for a pack of cigarettes in the back pocket. Skip Hollandsworth
A tall, steep roof and silvery cupola rising above the farmsteads and oak mottes—that’s the Bismarckian profile of Festival Concert Hall, a magnet for musicians who appreciate fine acoustics. A unique example of folk architecture begun in 1981 by wood craftsman Larry Birkelbach and his crew, the still-unfinished 1,100-seat hall was conceived in process and has developed slowly under the direction of the institute’s founder, pianist James Dick. Inside, one sees why: Intricate designs in wood parquetry embellish every surface. Above, two great stars anchor swirls of wooden diamonds, and 110 Celtic-patterned medallions line the balconies, a delight to the eye as well as the ear. “Sound has to be broken up,” says Dick. “The diamonds do that.” Chester Rosson
70. Dirty’s, Austin
Because when Martin’s Kum-Bak Place started serving burgers to University of Texas students in 1926, it had a dirt floor, thus the nickname. Because the legend goes that Bobby Layne, the Longhorn quarterback of the mid-forties who should have been mentioned in all those recent articles about the greatness of Vince Young, drank beer at Dirty’s on Saturday mornings before suiting up. Because Earl Campbell still stops in at least once a week for a beer and an OT Special. Because Wesley Hughes, who flipped burgers there from 1957 until 2003, still goes in on weekdays to serve as Head of Public Relations. And because not once in its eighty years has anyone ever dropped a frozen meat patty on the grill. John Spong
71. The “pachanga”
It’s the heart and soul of politics, South Texas–style, a combination beer bust, barbecue, dance, and political rally that gives voters a chance to meet candidates. In the suburbs, Anglo candidates block-walk; in the Rio Grande Valley, Hispanic politicos travel the pachanga circuit. On weekends close to an election, this means attending four or five pachangas in a day, working the crowd, grabbing a taco, washing it down with beer from a keg, and shooting zingers at their opponents. The rituals harken back to a time when politics was intensely personal and political rallies were a form of entertainment. Paul Burka
72. Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, Austin
It was the Gutenberg Bible I first fell in love with, then the love letters and dream diaries of Graham Greene. More recently it’s been the center’s big-name acquisition coups—Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s Watergate papers, Norman Mailer’s archive. But what keeps me coming back to the University of Texas’s unplumbable cultural repository are its more intimate gems: John Steinbeck’s original draft of East of Eden. Gertrude Stein’s letters. A lipstick-stained note to Arthur Miller. E. E. Cummings’s artwork. All I do is flash a photo ID, and the world is mine. Katharyn Rodemann
73. The Commemorative Air Force Hangar Dance, San Marcos
This may not be the only hangar dance around, but—with the Glenn Miller–inspired nineteen-piece orchestra and the jitterbugging World War II vets in vintage attire—it has to be the most popular. The Central Texas Wing of the Commemorative Air Force sponsors this annual shindig around Veterans Day in a forties-era hangar at the San Marcos Municipal Airport to honor the Greatest Generation, and I know of no better way to pay your respects than with a Lindy Hop with an eighty-year-old pilot. Besides, it’s hard to say no to a man in uniform. Katharyn Rodemann
74. Houston criminal lawyers
What is it with these guys? Their scary-smart rapport with the press? Their go-for-broke contempt for prosecutors and plea deals? First there was Percy Foreman, who successfully defended Melvin Powers, the lover/nephew of socialite Candace Mossler, against the charge that the two of them murdered Mossler’s husband, in the society trial of the sixties. His protégés, Dick DeGuerin and his brother, Mike DeGeurin (the former reverted to the older spelling of the name), have taken up a string of celebrity clients, from Kay Bailey Hutchison to Tom DeLay to various Branch Davidians. Along the way there has been Richard “Racehorse” Haynes, who freed, among others, Cullen Davis, charged with murdering his stepdaughter in the seventies. (Wasn’t the murderer really aiming for his estranged wife?) Then last year Dick DeGuerin, the smoothie, and the folksier Mike Ramsey teamed up to free Robert Durst, who chopped his Galveston neighbor into little pieces and then claimed self-defense. Now Ramsey has Ken Lay for a client. One final question: Is it Houston lawyers or Houston defendants who make life here irresistible? The answer: irrelevant, as long as they put on a good show. Mimi Swartz
75. Quail hunting
It’s the most exhilarating and most dangerous type of hunting this side of going after big game. Dogs take the lead, followed by hunters, three or four abreast, advancing through brush and tall grass. You can be right on top of a covey and not know it. With no warning, the birds flush, and the air is filled with quail. It’s a Hitchcockian moment. Then you’re firing in close quarters with an incredible adrenaline rush. Just don’t forget the two most important rules: Never, ever shoot behind you, and if you shoot somebody, it’s your fault. Even if the White House blames the victim. Paul Burka
My Library
