Why are we crazy for Cadillacs, silly for Suburbans, passionate about pickups?
Because Texans love their cars, that’s why.

He had it all: a wife and a mistress, a limousine and a motorcycle, the second-highest job at the Pentagon and some good-time Dallas buddies. Then the SEC took an interest in his life.

At a slightly wacky hotel in southern Mexico, you can lose your inhibitions and find a little romance.

Remember when children played dress-up in their own clothes? They still can.

An interpretation of a classic genre.

It all started at my grandmother’s when I was seven years old. No biscuit has since measured up, but my lonely search for that sublime confection continues.

In 1883 the University of Texas got stuck with two million acres of West Texas scrubland. Then it hit oil, and the money started rolling in.

There are a hundred of them, and their job is invisibility. They come into giant office buildings after everyone has gone home and, if they do the job right, make the evidence of the day’s work disappear.

William Humphrey’s Hostages to Fortune tells a sodden fishing story; C.W. Smith’s The Vestal Virgin Room tells of an empty quest for fame; Rosemary Catacalos’ Again for the First Time is an outstanding collection of verse.

On the Edge of Life

Roger Staubach finds happiness by swapping Rolaids for real estate.

The Public Opera of Dallas aimed its first season at opera greenhorns and scored two bull’s-eyes.

UT reports on how well students from Texas schools do.

Prince’s Purple Rain is short on plot and dialogue but long on fancy anguish; The Bostonians is a namby-pamby treatment of Henry James’ biting novel.

“Herd It Through the Grapevine,” a new disc anthology, has the top of the pop crop.

A new Henry Lee Lucas mystery in Lubbock

Great café meals, dubious political deals, Luckenbach’s ideals.

Trauma for Texas hospitals; more trouble (what else?) for Clinton Manges; why Doggett should win—but probably won’t; and real deals in Houston.

It’s all here in black and white.