The Bucket List
Amanda says: Love the new Texas Monthly iPhone Apps. Could you make an App for the Bucket List with links to the places on a map (and maybe even space where we can add our own items to the Bucket List)? It might also be fun to let us include pictures of us experiencing the different items in the list... Just a suggestion. (June 13th, 2011 at 1:57am)
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53. Attend Mass at Mission Concepción, in San Antonio
Come, all ye who are heavy laden—whether with life’s travails or an insatiable interest in history—and you will find rest at Misión Nuestra Señora de la Purísima Concepción de Acuña. As the best preserved of the churches in the San Antonio Missions National Historical Park, this eighteenth-century chapel is also arguably the most beautiful: The original walls, roof, and twin bell towers remain intact, as do many of the frescoes. A renovation project that began last fall has temporarily shuttered the building, but as soon as the replastering and repainting is completed (sometime this month), slip in at ten o’clock on a Sunday morning for Mass. The ancient carved stonework, the bilingual liturgy, the unrivaled acoustics that always make the choir sound bigger than it is, and the congregation’s members around you—who are almost all second-, third-, and fourth-generation parishioners—unmistakably evoke our Spanish colonial past. 807 Mission Rd., 210-534-8646. KR
54. Collect a Lightning Whelk on Matagorda Bay
Stop beachcombing for starfish and sand dollars and concentrate instead on sifting the sand for a lightning whelk. Named for the brown, lightninglike streaks running vertically down its side, the official state shell features a rare counterclockwise spiral with a left-handed opening. The mollusk is common enough in Gulf waters, but an abandoned shell can be an elusive souvenir. Your best bet? Matagorda Bay, near Palacios, whose relative lack of visitors increases your chances of spotting the perfect specimen. AV
55. Enter a Chili Cookoff
Do you turn up your nose at Frito pies bedecked with canned chili? Do you brag on the secret family recipe that’s been passed down for seven generations? Then quit boasting from the confines of your kitchen and put your bowl of red center stage. Thousands of chiliheads regularly celebrate our state dish by devoting hard-earned Saturday mornings to cookoffs, hoping for a coveted first-place trophy and the chance to earn enough points to qualify for one of the championship cookoffs in Terlingua. Contact your local chamber of commerce to find the closest competition, and start stewing up your magical mix of meat, red chiles, secret spices, and various other ingredients, which, I’m obligated to point out, cannot include beans. The major chili societies forbid the offending filler. AV
56. See the Dogwoods Bloom in Palestine
“If winter comes,” asks the poet, “can spring be far behind?” In the forests of East Texas, it is not the west wind of Shelley’s ode that heralds the turning of the seasons but the dazzling white blooms of the Cornus florida, commonly known as the flowering dogwood. The name of the tree, which can grow forty feet high, comes from a variety that originated in England, where its bark was used to help bathe mangy dogs. And the best place to see dogwoods in all their glory is Davey Dogwood Park, in Palestine, which has hosted the Dogwood Trails Festival every year since 1938 (held on the weekends of March 20, March 27, and April 3 this year). The park has more than five miles of roads where you can drive among the trees or walk on the trails. Yet a more, well, romantic option is to ride the Texas State Railroad, a journey through the forest from Palestine to Rusk and back. 210 N. Link, 903-723-3014. PB
57. Buy a First Edition in Archer City
Why hasn’t Archer City become the next Marfa? It has all the qualifications: It is perfectly located on the way to nowhere, a famous film was shot there, it has lots of quaint buildings downtown that nobody is using, and it has a patron saint in Larry McMurtry, who over the past 24 years has turned his quiet North Texas hometown into a magnet for a particular type of visitor. With more than 250,000 books, McMurtry’s bookstore, Booked Up, now fills four downtown buildings, making it one of the largest collections in the country. One recent arrival was a 1929 inscribed first edition of The XIT Ranch of Texas and the Early Days of the Llano Estacado, by the West Texas historian and antisocialist crusader J. Evetts Haley. At $1,500, it’s still cheaper than most of the art for sale in Marfa, and you can look at it and tell right off the bat what it means. 216 S. Center, 940-574-2511. NB
58. Stop for Kolaches at the Czech Stop, in West
Remember these coordinates: fifteen miles north of Waco, exit 353, east side of Interstate 35. It’s there that you’ll find a modest Shell gas station that happens to be one of the most frequented pit stops in the state. Road-trippers in the know jockey for spaces in the parking lot (and the overflow lot across the street) to wait in line for the kolaches made daily at the bakery inside. The yeasty rolls, which come sweet (fruit and cream cheese) and savory (sausage and cheese), are served right from the oven. As a friendly employee stuffs a box with your requests—a couple of the švestkové (prune), a handful of the trešnové (cherry), a few of the broskvy (peach), throw in a jablkové (apple)—take a moment to silently thank the Czech and German immigrants who began settling (and baking) here more than one hundred years ago. Bolstered by the smell of sweet dough filling your car, you can veer back into the slipstream of maniac drivers on I-35 knowing that happiness is a warm kolache. 105 N. College, 254-826-5316. JB
59. Read the First Chapter of Los de Abajo at the Pablo Baray Apartments, in El Paso
Mariano Azuela’s Los de Abajo (loosely translated as “The Underdogs”) is not exactly a Texas classic, but it should be. Azuela, who had been a field doctor for Pancho Villa’s forces, wrote the first novel of the Mexican Revolution while living in exile in El Paso’s Segundo Barrio. It was published as a serial in the city’s Spanish-language weekly, El Paso del Norte, in 1915, during a period in which many key figures of the revolution were coming and going in El Paso, plotting, planning, arguing, and writing. Azuela’s action-packed book (shots are fired on the very first page) gives a vivid sense of the men and women at the heart of this epic war. Read the first few paragraphs while standing on the sidewalk in front of the Pablo Baray Apartments, at 609 S. Oregon Street (where El Paso del Norte’s printing press was located and near the site of Azuela’s residence) and listen to the Spanish and English being spoken all around you and you’ll also get a vivid sense of El Paso’s rich international history. J. Silverstein
60. Snag a Picnic Table at Railroad Blues, in Alpine
You can play pool, drink one of 128 beers, and watch touring rock bands play on the big stage inside. The real action is outside, though, especially on Friday evenings around five. Take a seat at a picnic table and listen in on a crusty bunch of local lawyers, writers, politicians, businessmen, and Sul Ross professors who gather to talk, bitch, argue, pontificate, fulminate, and drink. A few of them—like journalist Jack McNamara (who calls the gathering the “Ain’t It Awful?” seminar)—are famous, at least as these things are measured in West Texas. Political gossip is welcomed, then debated. Conspiracies are offered and mocked. Heroes are praised and torn down. You can take part or you can just sit and watch as the sun crosses the high-desert skies and the train races past just thirty feet away. 504 W. Holland Ave., 432-837-3103. MH
61. Attend the Futurity, in Fort Worth
No offense to bull riding and barrel racing, but for me, nothing captures the spirit of the cowboy way more than cutting. And no event is more important or authentic than the National Cutting Horse Association’s World Championship Futurity, at Will Rogers Coliseum (this year it runs from November 20 through December 12). Fans can enjoy riders from all backgrounds as they saddle up and work to keep one cow separated from the herd for a short period of time, a skill that is an absolute necessity on a working ranch. The elegance of the sport is apparent in how the rider and horse function as a team to keep the animal at bay; the drama comes when one realizes how fast a calf is—and how determined it is to return to the fold. 3401 W. Lancaster Ave., 817-392-7469. BDS
62. See Stephen F. Austin, in Austin
A well-preserved state secret—hiding in plain sight—is the Texas State Cemetery, a place every Texan should discover firsthand. It’s located just east of downtown Austin, between Seventh and Eleventh streets, a beautiful and tranquil sprawl of hills, dales, and pastures, pleasantly shaded and amazingly alive. A walk through the cemetery’s 21 acres is a trip through time, our state revealed in all its greatness, courage, tragedy, and pomposity. You’ll see the grave of Stephen F. Austin, with its bronze Coppini statue, as well as the final resting places of more-contemporary Texas leaders like Ann Richards, John Connally, Barbara Jordan, and Allan Shivers. But this isn’t just a place for politicians: Also buried here is Willie “El Diablo” Wells, who played in the Negro Leagues and is perhaps the greatest shortstop who ever lived. 909 Navasota, 512-463-0605. GC
63. Appear on the Cover of texas monthly
Only a handful of texas monthly writers have ever appeared on our cover. Richard West was once accompanied by a beautiful model. I was accompanied by a bowl of chili, which, when readers turned to the story, was flipped upside down on my head. It was November 1978, and the Legislature had just declared chili the official state dish. Outraged at the snub of barbecue, I decided to write a story debunking chili—chili cookoffs, chili restaurants, chili recipes, chili chic, chili lore. I said no to the cover idea, but the art director bribed me with the offer of a new suit. Before the shoot, I called the cleaners. “Can you salvage a suit with chili all over it?” I asked. “Bring it in right away,” they said. “It won’t have chili on it until tomorrow,” I replied. The cover line was “I’m Paul Burka, and I hate chili,” and if I didn’t really hate it before I was on the cover, I sure did after the magazine came out. I didn’t go out in public for a month. If you’d like to be on the cover of texas monthly doing something on your bucket list, go to texasmonthly.com/covercontest and follow the directions to upload your photograph. PB
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