November 2002

Find the access code — required to read stories online — on the third contents page in the most recent issue of Texas Monthly. Subscribers can also visit our Customer Care page to get the code. Subscribe now and get instant access.

Features

Suburban Madness

Why did Clara Harris run over her husband with her Mercedes, then do it again and again? Call it the tragic final chapter in an otherwise amusing story—a demented version of Love, American Style starring four unhappy couples and one chatty private investigator.

by Skip Hollandsworth

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

Once upon a time, the Central Texas town of Crawford was like Mayberry: Everyone knew everyone, no one talked politics, and the air was ripe with the aroma of hogs. Then the leader of the free world bought a little place west of the Middle Bosque River, and nothing was ever the same again.

by Pamela Colloff

How Good Is Your Kid's High School?

Find out in our updated, expanded, and still exclusive ranking of nearly every public high school in Texas.

by S. C. Gwynne

Mr. Right

The line on James Leininger is fairly simple: He's a doctrinaire conservative who spends millions supporting candidates and causes he likes—and opposing those he doesn't. That makes him one of the most influential players in Texas politics in the post-Bush era.

by Karen Olsson

Lights Out

Most of the lighthouses that once kept watch over the Texas Gulf Coast have vanished, victims of time and the modern world. Yet a few romantic relics remain.

by Anne Dingus

Columns

Sports

Ice on the Block

If your goal is to own a pro hockey team, Tom Hicks has a deal for you: He'll sell you the Dallas Stars for a mere $300 million—and throw in the prospect of an NHL-destroying lockout at no extra charge.

by Jason Cohen

Environment

Water Hazard

The mayor of San Antonio says a 2,600-acre golf resort on top of the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone won't ruin the city's sole source of drinking water. Who wants to tee off on that one?

by Joe Nick Patoski

Texana

Fave Combo

Let's hear it for beans and cornbread, the tastiest of plate-mates, a classic Southern supper�and a meal any fool can cook.

by Anne Dingus

Behind the Lines

Left Out

Billie Carr, R.I.P. Liberals too.

by Paul Burka

Travel

Now, Voyager

I'm susceptible to seasickness and sun poisoning, and I hate being part of a herd. So, naturally, I took a cruise.

by Suzy Banks

Music

The State of Illinois

At eighty, most of us would be off our feet, not out on stage. But Illinois Jacquet, the great Texas tenor, keeps blowing his sax—and tooting his own horn.

by Jeff McCord