May 2002
On the Road
Senior editor Michael Hall, who wrote about Arnold "Pee Wee" Kornegay, and others tell the story behind this month's cover story, "Drive, We Said."
texasmonthly.com: How did you end up with the drive you wrote about? Was it assigned? A drive you suggested? What?
Paul Burka: No editor in his right mind would assign Texas Highway 6; I take sole responsibility. It's a secondary road that doesn't go anywhere in particular. What intrigued me about it, when I looked at a map of Texas, is that 1) it started out just outside my hometown of Galveston; 2) I had driven the first part of the route many times; and 3) I had no idea it was the Energizer Bunny of roads that kept on going and going, all the way to western Oklahoma, into a part of Texas where I had never been—and I've been just about everywhere. When I started researching the route on the Web, it turned out there were a lot of interesting things to see and do en route.
Katy Vine: I had read Jan Morris' story about U.S. 281 from an old issue of Texas Monthly and wanted to see how the road had changed since we published her story. Morris is a remarkable travel writer; if you haven't read her work, run to the store right now and buy her books. I wasn't that surprised to find that the towns along the road haven't changed much. Everybody has a different experience on a trip—different people, different impressions—so even though I was passing the same towns, I could write about different things.
Patricia Sharpe: I was incredibly lucky I got Texas Highway 16 given that I procrastinated about choosing a route until the last minute—it was one of the best roads we did. My editor had traced everybody's routes with a highlighter on a big map of Texas. The obvious roads were already taken, so we started looking for a blank area. I lucked out.
Eileen Schwartz: I requested the drive because I've become fascinated with East Texas. My boyfriend, James, who went with me, is familiar with a lot of the turf there, and I've spent more time in the region over the past year or so since my first East Texas assignments. Those took me to Tyler, Longview, and Crockett. The beauty I found in East Texas then really surprised me, and I've been making trips to the area ever since. I suggested the route we took, trying to take the more scenic roads, off-the-beaten-path routes, rather than just going from point A to point B.
Michael Hall: I've always loved this drive [Austin to Caddo Lake], the way it goes from the west to the south, up through the piney woods and all, so I volunteered for it.
Kathryn Jones: I suggested my drive from Brownsville to Laredo along U.S. 83, part of the Los Caminos del Rio, "Roads of the River," heritage trail along the border. I had made the drive in 1996 for the New York Times travel section when the heritage trail was still developing and many of the historic sites were in the process of being restored and documented. On that trip I focused more on the historical sites and I started at Laredo and drove downriver; on this trip I wanted to visit a wide range of places and I wanted to start at Brownsville and go upriver, following the chronology of history and the paths of Spanish explorers and settlers. I'm from South Texas and spent a lot of time in the Rio Grande Valley growing up, and I've crossed the river more times than I can count. But every time I visit, I discover something new. This is one of the richest drives in Texas, and it's one of my favorites.
texasmonthly.com: What was the most difficult part about this assignment? Why?
KV: Getting people in restaurants and convenience stores to talk about the area. Part of it was my fault because I get into a driving mode and I have to force myself to stop and chat and not appear rushed. But even when I did get somebody to talk, it was hard to get them to discuss the city. Most people—especially young people—in small towns think their life is boring. I'd ask something like, "What do you do around here for fun?" and they'd respond, "Drink. No, not really. We don't do anything. There's nothing to do." One high school girl said, "Cow tip."
PS: The most difficult part of the assignment was not having enough time to do it in a leisurely way—not that I didn't have plenty of fun. But on a travel story, you have to make every minute count, so you're always taking notes while you're eating or you're pulling off the road to write down something you've seen that you're afraid you'll forget. People think a travel story is like a vacation, but it isn't. It's work. You're always thinking, "How am I going to write this so it's interesting?"
MH: Not buying one of Pee Wee Kornegay's miniature donkeys. They are pretty adorable. But they poop a lot and eat a lot of hay.
PB: The hardest thing in any travel writing assignment is the writing part. If you aren't careful, you wind up saying, ". . . and then I went here, and then I went there, and then I went somewhere else." You have to reflect, to give a sense of the land and the history, to introduce the reader to some people, to give a sense of the miles passing, and no matter how much space you have to fill—and I had a generous allotment—it's never enough. My first draft ran a thousand words too long.
KJ: The most difficult thing was choosing which points of interest to include in my piece because there are so many interesting places on this drive. The driving itself was a pleasure. I had feared that I might experience delays at border crossings because of the added security since September 11, but I didn't have any problems.
texasmonthly.com: How long were you on the road?
KV: A week.
PB: I left Austin on a Friday night and drove to Houston. I started early on Saturday, drove down the Gulf Freeway to the Texas Highway 6 intersection by Galveston Bay, started on my route, and reached the Red River on Sunday night. I returned to Austin the next day.
ES: Four days.
MH: It took three days—of course, that was stopping at every place that looked interesting, or even not interesting.
KJ: I was on the road for three days, but if I had to do this trip over again, I'd give it at least five days and maybe even a week.
texasmonthly.com: What kind of research did you do before you headed out on the road?
PB: I looked up each town on the Web—not Houston or Waco or Bryan-College Station, but the smaller towns. I also checked out their histories in the Handbook of Texas and read through various Texas guides looking for B&B's and historical markers. I interviewed a couple of legislators about their districts; then-state senator David Sibley of Waco was especially helpful.
KJ: I did a lot of research before I headed out. Since I had been on this drive before, I knew quite a bit about it, but I wanted to find out what had changed since my last visit. The first thing I did was call Mario Sánchez, who is now at the Texas Department of Transportation. Sánchez, perhaps more than anyone else, is responsible for the creation of the Los Caminos del Rio Heritage Project, a cooperative program between the U.S. and Mexican governments. In his previous job at the Texas Historical Commission, Sánchez was intimately involved in the details of documenting the history of the region and identifying which sites needed preservation work. He helped me a great deal on my previous visit to Los Caminos in 1996, and he was very helpful again, as were other people at the historical commission. Anyone making this trip should get a free copy of a brochure detailing the historical sites. I ordered a copy from the historical commission Web site. Another great resource available from the historical commission is a book called A Shared Experience, which has detailed histories of the area, maps, and locations for more than two hundred historical sites on both sides of the Rio Grande.
texasmonthly.com: What was the most interesting thing that happened to you while on the road?
