Texas Monthly

At Galveston’s Mardi Gras Parade

Hair Piece

Worn Free

Top-flight wear (from hat to shoes) for rugged adventures on the Texas terrain.

Scrapbook

Temple of doom, Spence for hire,, deals that won’t Hunt, Blount analysis, and the King of the ranch.

Authors

About our contributors.

Brother J.H. Lewis and His Church

Political Pretexts

The 1993 Bum Steer Awards

It was a year of absent Alamos, buried Barbies, castrated calves, derriere drawings, errant escalators, filching frats, grid-iron graduates, hightailing hoopsters, income-tax immigrants, jailed joggers, Keating kudos, lascivious linksters, mercenary morticians, nonoffensive nachos, overdrawn officials, Perot pumpkins, querulous quackers, relaxed Rangers, safe-sex students, testosterone teeth, undersea upraisings, visionary vacuumers, wounded

Date-Nut Chews

Recipe from Dean Fearing of Dallas’ Mansion on Turtle Creek.

Petrouchka Discovers the Ballerina with the Moor

They Lovett

The Cowboy Boot Book

This fall, photographer Jim Arndt and Western props supplier Tyler Beard visited the annual event in Burnet to chew the fat with many of the craftsmen featured in The Cowboy Boot Book (Peregrine Smith Books), their pictorial guide to fancy footgear. Arndt and Beard have dressed Western

Family Fortune

Reader letters published in our November 1992 issue.

Life or Death?

Reader letters published in our October 1992 issue.

Stagecoach Alpine

ON A HILLTOP NEAR THE INTERSECTION of U.S. highways 67 and 90, just east of Alpine, a plywood stagecoach and four horses seem to be hightailing it into town. “A local artist-character built the stagecoach,” says Rick Sohl, who owns the hilltop. “He used it in parades but was looking

Last Rights

My son ended his life after three years of madness and unbearable depression. Who am I to say he did the wrong thing?

Bull Snake on a Sofa

When James H. Evans moved to Marathon in 1988, he was struck by its abundant wildlife. “Anything unattended will be overrun with animals,” says the photographer. Evans takes up that theme in his “Lucille” series, focusing on a house vacated by the death of an elderly friend of that name.

Easy Rider

Reader letters published in our September 1992 issue.

Rodeo Reliquary, 1991

After a visit abroad in 1987, Sean Earley transformed his art. He returned steeped in Italy’s ubiquitous religious imagery, eager to paint the icons of his home state’s country and western myths (see “Earley Texas,” TM, December 1990). In this memorial scene, the Rodeo Queen presides over ascending contestants. Set

People’s Choice?

Reader letters published in our August 1992 issue.

The Puffy Taco

HIS HEAD IS A TOMATO CHUNK. HIS tortilla shell is surprisingly furry. His feet look like jalapeño peppers. And when kids tackle him during the sixth-inning footrace at the San Antonio Missions’ home games at V. J. Keefe Field, they sometimes send his shredded lettuce and grated cheese flying. What’s

Workin’ on the Railroad

Meet the people who keep Texas' trains on track.

Arcola Cafe

When Birney Imes began working on his juke joint series in 1983, the black honky- tonks that nourished the Mississippi Delta’s rich blues tradition were being replaced by discos. “What attracted me,” Imes says, “was the creativity that went into that special atmosphere. The older places have a timeless quality.”

Tough Choices

Lawrence Wright’s “The Case For Castration” [TM, May 1992] provides an interesting view on the issue of castration, sex offenders, available treatment, and society’s concerns about the best response to such acts of assault and violence. As the article documents, treatment of sex offenders is a recent development. In Texas,

Eye of the World

Starting in 1923, Beaumont businessman John Gavrelos carved out a realm of his own at his J&J Steak House on the Eastex Freeway. Gavrelos died in 1979, but his Eye of the World, a tiny museum appended to the side of the restaurant, still lures visitors with its enigmatic jumble

Elvisualizations

Elvis fans will have their very own sightings in a new book, In Search of Elvis, just published by the Summit Group in Fort Worth ($12.95). The cartoon book is a knockoff of the prodigiously successful Where’s Waldo? children’s series, but Summit’s publicity coordinator Bryan Drake suspects that more parents

Henry, Hillary, Colin, and Mort

THE PRESIDENT CAN’T RUN THE COUNTRY BY HIMSELF. the people he appoints to key positions can make or break his administration. Here is a possible lineup of Cabinet officials and major appointments. They are able, diverse, and largely nonpolitical. Most of them are people that Perot is known to respect.

Fay Ray at Siesta Time

William Wegman’s subtle portraits of his weimaraners have elevated the pet photo to high art. But few connoisseurs have known the range of his creativity—until now. The &first retro- spective of the artist’s output, on view at Houston’s Contemporary Arts Museum, offers more of his trademark pups but also plenty

Character Study

“THE KILLER NEXT DOOR” [TM, April 1992]? I thought someone had sent me a copy of True Detective instead of Texas Monthly. The title and cover illustration are definitely out of character for the magazine we subscribed to the last time we lived in Texas. Once the

Picture Perfect

As the sole studio photographer in Granger from 1924 to 1955, John Trlica recorded on film most of the important occasions—public and private—in the Central Texas farming community. Because Trlica kept meticulous records and saved every negative, his shop became the repository for an intensely documented history of a small

House of the Century

“Still ahead of its time, even after twenty years,” says architect Doug Michels about Ant Farm’s futuristic House of the Century, designed and built in 1972. The colony of anti-establishment architects (of whom Michels was one) christened themselves Ant Farm in honor of the toy ant colonies popular in the

Contortionist with her puppy, Sweety

Close Calls

Gimme a Break

Scenes from spring vacation 1992 on Texas’ Gulf Coast.

The Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup

Photojournalist Jim Cammack was struck by an odd sight at Sweetwater’s annual spring rattlesnake roundup: a man with a tail. No, the man, a Jaycees volunteer, was not participating in a roundup-sanctioned snake-wrestling contest. He was demonstrating one technique for holding the powerful Western diamondback while milking its venom.

Corps Values

As a female member of Texas A&M’s Parsons Mounted Cavalry (“one of the units most determined to remain all male”), I want to clear up some of the misconceptions in Mimi Swartz’s “Love and Hate at Texas A&M” [TM, February 1992]. I have been a Drill and

Aquarena Mermaids

Water acts may ebb and flow, but since 1950 the polyester-clad mermaids at San Marcos’ Aquarena Springs have barely had time to keep their heads above water. Their subaquatic dances are a tribute to the popularity of such swimming celebrities as Esther Williams and Johnny Weissmuller, a testament to

Liquor Licker

Larry Peterman is a revisionist where suckers are concerned. His new tequila lollipop con gusano (complete with the worm) is his take on making hard liquor palatable: “We tried using mescal,” he says, “but it tasted so bad—kind of like burned dirt with rubbing alcohol—that nobody would eat it.”

Roadside Veterans

The grand scenery of the American Southwest draws hordes of tourists bent on capturing calendar-perfect panoramas on film. In “Revealing Territory: Photographs of the Southwest by Mark Klett,” an aptly titled show opening March 14, the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth presents quite different views, ones that the vista-hungry

Bum Raps

THE 1992 BUM STEER AWARDS” [TM, January 1992] recognized the Texas Department of Agriculture for fining an aerial pesticide applicator $1,250 for mishandling a chemical. What the piece failed to note were the constraints that bind our enforcement proceedings.The TDA is bound, by legislative action and by

Danny Turner with Roy Rogers

On assignment for Country America magazine, Dallas freelance photographer Danny Turner traveled to Southern California’s Roy Rogers—Dale Evans Museum to snap a portrait of the singing cowboy. Turner just couldn’t resist grabbing the opportunity for a “me and Roy” photo, and it turned out so well that Turner put it

Ghosts of Dealey Plaza

Jan Jarboe’s “Wonder Drug on Trial” [TM, December 1991], on fluoxetine (Prozac), left me disappointed. As an instructor on antidepressant pharmacology for psychiatric residents, I emphasize that antidepressants are neither good nor bad but simply drugs with individual side-effect profiles and efficacies. I am appalled that the article did not

Bass on the Hook

A state breeding program aims to fatten up the trim, pugnacious bass.

Well Strung

An Austin artist makes a stringed instrument of monumental scale.

Robert Rauschenberg

Artist, 1988

Texan at the Core

As fans of the CBS Evening News and Dan Rather, we believe that Robert Draper’s “Dan Rather Is a Good Ol’ Boy” [TM, November 1991] is a fair and unbiased account. It is a mystery to us that Mr. Rather provokes such controversy. He seems to make

John the Baptist, Spain, 1954

Photograph by George Krause

Food for Thought

I had high expectations when I subscribed to Texas Monthly to use in a reception area of our company. I was very disappointed when I saw the “What a Dish!” cover [TM, October 1991]. If I had wanted to put a half-naked, sleazy female in my reception area, I would

Fishing Cabin on the Pedernales River

Austinite Rebecca McEntee’s nostalgic view of a Hill Country retreat appears in Texas on a Roll–Images of Texas by Texas Photographers (Thomasson-Grant, $50), a project of the state’s three chapters of the American Society of Magazine Photographers. Members were asked to submit the best of their work. Some 160 photographers

A Select Few

“The Texas 100” [TM, September 1991] refers to my attitude about George Bush and Dresser Industries. Dresser is a fine company with an excellent leader, Jack Murphy. We enjoy extensive business and personal relationships with that company; in fact, on my trip to Iraq we retrieved the Dresser employees and