Guardian of the Whooping Cranes
One of our most important TCR stories involved a surprise encounter with an early advocate of whooping crane conservation efforts.
Bob Phillips is the creator and host of Texas Country Reporter, the longest-running independent TV show in the nation. Bob has traveled to every county, every incorporated city, and nearly every unincorporated city in Texas. He has contributed travel columns to Texas Monthly, and during the show’s fiftieth year is sharing reflections and classic moments from the back roads of Texas.
One of our most important TCR stories involved a surprise encounter with an early advocate of whooping crane conservation efforts.
By Bob Phillips
After a terrible car accident, the self-taught pianist’s reprise was nothing short of amazing.
By Bob Phillips
Jody Powers ran a bakery with her grandmother’s kolache recipes, and when business would slow down, she would resort to unusual promotion tactics.
By Bob Phillips
I’m not sure I ever bought the story of the Texas horned lizard that survived thirty years in a courthouse cornerstone, but it’s a tale that reminds me why I love storytelling.
By Bob Phillips
Stacy Brown of Arlington was just the character to reignite my love of muscle cars.
By Bob Phillips
In 2007, Texas Country Reporter met Sister Damian, the Houston Astros’ most patient and faithful baseball fan.
By Bob Phillips
Michael Gregory faced many hardships, and his unlikely path as a sculpture artist and teacher is a powerful story of resilience.
By Bob Phillips
For decades, Roddy Wiley ran the only bank in the small town of Oakwood, which happily resisted modern technology well into the twenty-first century.
By Bob Phillips
Scott Wade’s dusty windshield paintings are a temporary art form that makes a lasting impression.
By Bob Phillips
In 1998, Texas Country Reporter did an episode about Roxanne Ward, a champion hog caller who was quirky, kind, and so unapologetically herself we’ll never forget her.
By Bob Phillips
Sixteen years ago, a small town’s only public school closed its doors. But not before the final graduating class invited a former POW to walk the stage, finishing what he started nearly six decades before.
By Bob Phillips
Bob Anderson says the self-inflicted title is for amusement only, but the quirky farmer sure seems serious about garlic.
By Bob Phillips
I’ve visited the T. C. Lindsey & Co. General Store multiple times over the years, but our most recent visit was a surprise in the best possible way.
By Bob Phillips
Getting a haircut in a small town used to be a story-finding strategy for Texas Country Reporter, but the tale of Blanche Harris is one of my favorites.
By Bob Phillips
Bill Richardson’s creations from discarded metal were featured numerous times on Texas Country Reporter, but our friendship remains near and dear to my heart.
By Bob Phillips
The bookmaker apprenticed under the famous Charlie Dunn and is now training a new generation of talented craftspeople.
By Bob Phillips
Pastor Buddy Blake led volunteers who help step in for the Department of Defense to honor fallen soldiers with a proper military burial.
By Bob Phillips
Texas Country Reporter paid a visit to the world-class wildlife preservation center, where a rehabilitated Kemp’s ridley turtle made a return to the sea.
By Bob Phillips
Founded by Holocaust survivors, the bakery is known for Jewish specialties rooted in 200-year-old family recipes.
By Bob Phillips
The piano teacher turned touring musician from Lockney has been inducted into several halls of fame across the U.S.
By Bob Phillips
The community 50 miles east of Austin celebrates its Slavic heritage each year with music, crafts, and lots of buttery, handmade noodles.
By Bob Phillips
On a remote ranch south of Alpine, Bonnie and Dick Cain have carved out their ideal lifestyle, without electricity, refrigeration, or running water.
By Bob Phillips
In Matagorda, the Huebner Brothers Cattle Company has been leading a semiannual cattle drive for more than a hundred years.
By Bob Phillips
After Becky Smith took over the B-C Ranch in Alpine, her all-women team took a different approach to wrangling cattle.
By Bob Phillips
After fifty years on the road, the host of Texas Country Reporter recalls his favorite dish at Mary’s Cafe in Strawn.
By Bob Phillips
The Gutierrez family still runs the South Texas cafe, specializing in Mexican recipes passed down for generations.
By Bob Phillips
Texas Country Reporter remembers the late artist, whose San Antonio house was covered from corner to corner in art, memories, and poetry.
By Bob Phillips
In the courthouse basement, dozens of lawyers, judges, and jurors lined up for Esther Rollins’s famous fried chicken.
By Bob Phillips
The Carpenter family, featured in this classic episode from ‘Texas Country Reporter,’ has operated the industrial machine shop since 1937.
By Bob Phillips
Across U.S. highways and country roads, Wilson was determined to move cattle in a way that honored the men that came before him.
By Bob Phillips
Every year, Floyd Boyett takes a break from his routine to gather with friends and participate in the old-world process of making syrup from raw sugarcane.
By Bob Phillips
On a farm in Grimes County, one man unexpectedly stumbled upon his life’s passion—double-aught, two-fisted, skull-and-crossbones, hot pickled carrots.
By Bob Phillips
Mary Ann Fordyce is a straight-talking chicken farmer calling for a return to country roots.
By Bob Phillips
In Fredericksburg, Perkins’s creative approach to life can be seen in every inch of his one-of-a-kind retreat.
By Bob Phillips
Years ago, I learned an important lesson from a family in West Texas—happiness can be found in the simplest places.
By Bob Phillips
I’ll never forget Herman “Train” Gates, the man who collected junk on an empty lot in Carthage, helped fix bikes for neighborhood kids, and wrote poetry.
By Bob Phillips
One of the most inspiring subjects I’ve met in five decades of interviews is Diane Rose, an acclaimed quilter who sees life through the eye of a needle.
By Bob Phillips
Snag a front-row seat at Old Tunnel State Park for one of nature’s finest displays.
By Bob Phillips
Keeping baseball pure at Kokernot Field, out in far West Texas.
By Bob Phillips
For this Houston artist, the writing is on the wall—in a good way.
By Bob Phillips
Lower Pecos River, near Del Rio.
By Bob Phillips
In Oldham County, off U.S. 385.
By Bob Phillips
In the town of Guthrie, off U.S. 83.
By Bob Phillips
The mouth of the Colorado River, in Matagorda County.
By Bob Phillips
Crossing the Rio Grande by hand-pulled barge.
By Bob Phillips
Outside San Saba stands the last Texas suspension span still open to traffic.
By Bob Phillips
If you ask thirteen famous Texans to name their favorite place, don’t be surprised when you get thirteen very different answers.
By Texas Monthly, Bob Phillips and Larry McMurtry