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.
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16. Larry McMurtry
For Horseman, Pass By and The Last Picture Show and his debunking of J. Frank Dobie—simply because he was ornery and talented and he could. For Terms of Endearment and sneering at the entire myth of Texas—only then to win the Pulitzer with Lonesome Dove. For recreating Archer City with his outlandish bookstore—only to threaten to close it (the store and the town) down. When he won a Golden Globe for Brokeback Mountain a few months back, someone who introduced him called him a genius; the camera happened to land on Johnny Depp, whose nostrils flared to contain his yawn. Then Larry was up there attributing everything wonderful in life to buying a manual typewriter from Europe, sparing himself the computer revolution. And when he received his Oscar in March for best adapted screenplay, he wore jeans and boots. One of a kind. Jan Reid
17. Dallas Cowboys fanaticism
Their seasons are our renewal, our life cycles. The rest of the year is pretty much a waste, waiting for the first kickoff of fall. This is such a solid franchise that even Jerry Jones hasn’t been able to mess it up. Gary Cartwright
18. Medina to Leakey on Ranch-to-Market Road 337
Take this drive on a Sunday afternoon in October. Trust me. Brian D. Sweany
19. The county courthouse
When I’m on the road, I make it a point to drive into county seats I haven’t previously visited and view the local courthouse. Texas has some magnificent ones, which is not surprising, since we have 254 counties and some of them should be expected to get it right. My favorite is Alfred Giles’ Second Empire courthouse in Marfa. Everything about it is perfect—the proportions, the pastel-peach exterior, the restored dome, the rotunda inside, the town surrounding it. Another Giles gem is in Lockhart. James Riely Gordon is the most prolific architect; his masterpiece is in Waxahachie. Paul Burka
20. Mexican border towns
Okay, they’re violent and dangerous now, but you had to see them through the eyes of a young man for whom cheap liquor and cheap thrills were the essence of freedom. In the words of Billy Joe Shaver, “that border-crossing feeling makes a fool out of a man …” May it ever be so. Gary Cartwright
21. Lubbock
A large university, Texas Tech, sets Lubbock apart from kindred cities on the plains, but its soul is music. Folks still talk of Buddy Holly styling through the Hi-D-Ho drive-in in a pink Caddy convertible with four girlfriends. In his wake came Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Waylon Jennings, Butch Hancock, Terry Allen, Angela Strehli, Jesse Taylor, Ponty Bone, Lloyd Maines. Now a coveted and busy record producer in Austin, Maines used to take his quiet teenage daughter out to watch him play steel guitar in Ely’s band. In the blink of a generation’s eye, Natalie Maines was belting out number one country hits—and yes, sassing the president—as a member of the Dixie Chicks. Sprouting talent like mesquite, Lubbock is Texas’s cool and homely subcapital out west. Jan Reid
22. The spring-fed swimming pool at Balmorhea State Park, Balmorhea
The last time we were there, on a summer trip through nearby Marfa, we tried to take the picture for our Christmas card: me jumping in, then my wife, Julia, our daughter, Carson, and finally our son, Wyatt. Dad and Mom obliged, and so did big sister, but the normally fearless little guy, all four and a half years and 35-odd pounds of him, couldn’t bring himself to do it. And why would he? The temperature in this 77,000-square-foot, 25-foot-deep, 3.5-million-gallon pool, which was built by FDR’s Civilian Conservation Corps before World War II, is consistently on the quite-cold side of refreshing, even in the scorching heat. The algae-covered pool bottom is the slipperiest on earth. And there are the creatures: endangered species of fish and turtles, which swim right under and alongside and through you. We never got that picture—well, we did; the three of us in midair and him peering skeptically over the side—but we had a great time, as we always do. Balmorhea is, not just spiritually but literally, an oasis in the desert. Evan Smith
23. 8 a.m., weekdays, Las Manitas Avenue Cafe, Austin
Because every big-time city needs a place where power breakfasters can feed their need for gossip, schmooze, and the ritual taking care of business. This Tex-Mex cafe is owned by Cynthia and Lidia Perez, Henry Cisneros’s sisters-in-law, who are unabashedly bluer than the Danube, but the crowd of lawmakers and lobbyists and lawyers and media blowhards who gather here is absolutely bipartisan; Karen Hughes and Karl Rove, among others, were semi-regulars back in the day. At the moment, you’ll have to elbow state-senator-to-be Kirk Watson, People for the American Way statewide director Deece Eckstein, and Rick Perry’s former legislative director Hector Gutierrez out of the way to get one of the prized booths; lotsa luck. Also: The food is terrific. Evan Smith
24. Ruby Red And Star Ruby Grapefruit
No other grapefruit is worth all the rigmarole required to prep it for eating. John Morthland
25. The size of our ranches
King Ranch (825,000 acres). Briscoe Ranches (640,000 acres). Waggoner Ranch (524,000 acres). We could go on. Paul Burka
26. The downtown Neiman Marcus, Dallas
This is still the holiest site of Dallas’s religion of shopping, and in those halcyon days of “Mr. Stanley” Marcus’s impeccable taste and legendary customer service, it was less a finishing school for the nouveau riche than a secular temple where a generation of Texans whose wealth still came out of the land threw themselves on the altar of fashion, seeking redemption for the sins of vulgarity and boorish excess. The miracle of Neiman Marcus is that they found absolution and, from this sacred place, an entire city moved fashion-forward to become a stylish retail mecca. Michael Ennis
27. The World Championship Barbeque Goat Cook-Off, Brady
Established 33 years ago partly as a joke—Brady was struggling to find a civic-celebration theme other towns hadn’t already taken—this Saturday-of-Labor-Day-weekend blowout maintains a great sense of humor about itself. To say nothing of producing pounds and pounds of lean, succulent, smoky kid goat that goes down rich, smooth, and easy; the overall level of the entries is unusually high for an open cook-off. (Meanwhile, most regions of America don’t even know yet that you can eat goat …) John Morthland
28. The Broken Spoke, Austin
Long before Austin began dubbing itself the Live Music Capital of the World, this honky-tonk was busy playing host to the best country acts in the world—up-and-comers like Willie Nelson and George Strait, progressive cowboys like Asleep at the Wheel, and later still, alt-country rockers like the Derailers. These days the Broken Spoke still features live music five nights a week, and you can dance on a waxed concrete floor, drink longneck beer, and eat chicken-fried steak. Check out the Tourist Trap Room, where you can see pictures and hats from celebs who’ve popped in and onto the stage, from Dolly Parton to Kris Kristofferson. The latest addition to the club are new rear walls, courtesy of the tour bus driver who accidentally floored her bus into the interior of the club one night in October. The Spoke is proof that if a classic honky-tonk stays open long enough, anything can happen. Michael Hall
29. Sunsets at Enchanted Rock, near Llano
As you approach it from the north on RM 965, Enchanted Rock looks as if a bald giant were poking his head out of the ground. The pink granite dome rises 425 feet, covers 640 acres, and is just begging to be climbed. The hike is by no means a cinch, but almost anyone can make it with enough will and a comfortable pair of shoes. And nothing rewards the effort like resting on the windswept peak as the sun falls in the west. On a clear evening, as the stars begin to shine, it’s as though the entire Hill Country below you has become soaked in orange light and deepening shadow. You’ll never take sunsets for granted again. Brian D. Sweany
30. Lady Bird’s daffodils
As a girl, the future Lady Bird Johnson, whose mother died when she was five years and nine months old, took long walks in the piney woods around her hometown of Karnack. Every spring, when Lady Bird spotted the first daffodil in bloom, she held a private ceremony and named the flower Queen. It was a solitary ritual, a game that provided solace and left Lady Bird hungry for beauty. Years later, during her five years as first lady, Lady Bird supervised the planting of two million daffodil bulbs in Washington, D.C., the largest planting of daffodils in history. I never see the first daffodil of spring that I don’t see the beauty of all that I have lost. Jan Jarboe Russell
31. Boca Chica
The name says it all—“Boca Chica” sounds exotic but means “small mouth” in Spanish—and the spot where the once-mighty Rio Grande flows quietly into the Gulf speaks to how fragile the international border is. The stretch of beach remains undisturbed—no showers, no restrooms, no improvements of any kind. And within shouting distance are Mexicans on their side of the river doing exactly what you’re doing: splashing in the water, soaking up the sun, and easily straddling cultures. Brian D. Sweany
32. San Jacinto
Okay, let’s admit it. The park doesn’t really work. The monument to Texas’s independence is an all-too-obvious effort to top the height of the Washington Monument. The battlefield is not evocative, and the battle itself is hard to envision. And the site is surrounded by one of the ugliest industrial landscapes this side of New Jersey. In the end, though, the only thing that matters is that because of what happened here, Texas is a state that was once—and always—a nation, and that makes all the difference. Paul Burka
33. Buckle Bunnies
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