All Hallows Eve, which descends from the grand Celtic festival of the dead, was stirring up a cauldron of supernatural activity long before kids started donning costumes to harvest candy from the neighbors. But, alas, for some time, Halloween and the belief in spirits of the departed have
In Marfa, a big night out means one thing above all: the cumbia.
Every day more than a thousand people move to the Lone Star State. Lucky enough to be a new arrival? This crash course will get you thinking, eating, and talking like a native in no time. (Lucky enough to already be a native? You’ll be reminded of all the reasons
Once a year, a San Antonio congregation relives Jesus’ last days—and leaves the cellphones at home.
“I get to see things other people don’t get to see.”
Big Tex will be back. Sadly, we cannot the say same of Larry Hagman, Darrell Royal, Amarillo Slim, Leslie, and the many other Texans we lost in 2012.
It’s not just another roadside attraction—here’s to a lasting monument of Texas kitsch.
It spelled the end of the open range and the beginning of modern Texas.
The King Ranch saga: how one family conquered, tamed, loved, toiled on, and fought over a great piece of Texas.
Some people call it a quartoseptcentennial, or a septaquintaquinquecentennial (seriously), but you’d better save your breath. You’ll need it on this wide-ranging 6,000-mile voyage commemorating Texas’s 175th birthday. It starts in Glen Rose, ends in Austin, and stops along the way at 175 places that tell the story of the
What was so special about Mance Lipscomb’s dentures?
The laid-back Texas way of saying howdy on the road.
Bolstered by his favorite phrase, my son Mark faced life with grace, dignity, and good humor. I knew he’d face death the same way.
It’s big, it’s fast, it’s powerful, it eats gas, it’s the Suburban.
The thirty Texans with the most iconic, unforgettable, eye-popping looks, from Davy Crockett to Beyoncé.
History makes no mention of what was one of the most popular all-female country acts ever. Yet the story of the Goree Girls—inmates who banded together in the forties at Texas’ sole penitentiary for women—is worth a listen.
Texans tell why they love their Suburbans.
The nuts and bolts of a Suburban are more complicated than you might think.
What is ex–football star Bill Glass’s plan for reforming hardened prison inmates? God is in the details.
How has the state’s most storied ranch managed to survive and thrive in the twenty-first century? By operating in a way that its founder, Captain Richard King, would scarcely recognize.
Even on her one-hundredth birthday, the Texas Capitol looks good in places other building don’t even have places.
She may be past her prime, but Galveston still clings to her aristocratic heritage and her precarious place on the sand.
From buckskin to polyester, a look at 166 years of Texas fashion that doesn’t skirt the issues.
How Jim Wright schoozes, George Foreman bruises, ZZ Top trims, and Janet Evans swims, plus the straight skinny on everything else from nearly fifty other Texas celebrities.
On National Signing Day, Ivan Maisel recalls LBJ's failed attempt to get Joe Washington to play for Darrell Royal at the University of Texas.
An Austinite’s profane, sarcastic (and NSFW) map of Texas makes its way around social media, prompting laughs and scoffs.
63 things that all Texans must do before they die.
Love has been the director of the forensic anthropology division at the Harris County Medical Examiner’s Office since 2006. She was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.The forensic anthropology division here has three anthropologists, and we have three main responsibilities: identification, skeletal recovery, and forensic anthropology services. Anyone who is a victim
A violent tackle in a high school football game paralyzed John McClamrock for life. His mother made sure it was a life worth living.
Must I pose with my kids in the bluebonnets?
Once upon a time, before the pundits and the politicians hijacked it for their nefarious ends, “cowboy” wasn’t a dirty word. The lifestyle and worldview it suggested was seen as completely in line with the very finest Texas values: hard work, independence, honesty, decency, valor. For the sake of today’s
What Samir Patel learned in five years of not winning the national spelling bee (other than the root words of “eremacausis”).
When the rough-and-tumble bikers known as the Bandidos gathered in San Antonio for the funeral of one of their beloved members, they swore a lot, drank a lot, defended themselves against the police and the public’s misperceptions, and—amazingly—let a reporter observe the whole fascinating scene.
As governor, Miriam “Ma” Ferguson pardoned as many as one hundred people a month, but what’s really interesting is how she got to be the first female elected to that office.
Including: the sopa azteca at El Mirador, in San Antonio; the spring-fed pool at Balmorhea State Park; the humidity; elbow room; free advice at White Rock Lake, in Dallas; county courthouses; boots-and- jeans-clad Academy Award–winner Larry McMurtry; and—seriously— quail hunting.
The fastest-growing church in the world. The biggest congregation this side of the Vatican. The highest ratings of any religious broadcaster. One of the best-selling religious books in years. Can Joel Osteen get an “Amen”?
He asked me if I was going to be white my whole life. I was, of course. But because of our friendship, I’m no longer the clueless upper-middle-class kid I once was.
There was something irresistibly romantic about the gutter punk’s description of stowing away in freight cars. No wonder I wanted to try it—even if, at 38, I probably should have thought to myself, “You’re too old for this.”
What to do in ten more worst-case scenarios, from getting bitten by a brown recluse to getting caught in a dust storm.
To experience the majesty and peril of the desert on my own terms, I spent a week alone in the Solitario, the most remote area of Big Bend Ranch State Park. I confronted my darkest fears—and made small talk with an insect.
It’s the nation’s biggest spread within the confines of a single fence—more than eight hundred square miles extending across six counties. So it’s fitting that the family feud over its future is big too. And mythic.
Cynthia Ann Parker was nine when a Comanche snatched her from her East Texas home in 1836. Yet throughout her life as her captor's wife she remained strong, brave, and devoted to her husband and children. Which is to say, she was the original Texas woman.
Richard Young knows it takes a lot of practice—and a little natural ability—to be a proficient cowboy action-shooter.
Break out the hog-bladder balloons and get ready to chase livestock! It’s time for a look at Texas’ Christmas past.
Bob Phillips' passion for small-town oddities makes Texas Country Reporter as irresistible as a bookshop that doubles as a beauty parlor.
For teenage girls in the Hill Country town of Llano, life can be short on glamour and excitement—except at the annual rodeo, when one of them gets a rhinestone tiara and a rare, thrilling moment of glory.
Brandon and Denise were not like other people. They were smarter, more introverted. They adored computers, playing games online at three in the morning with people in Finland. When they and other hard-core techies moved to Walden, a Houston apartment complex with the fastest residential Internet connection in the world,
For years my relatives have claimed that they were robbed of oil and gas royalties on Padre Island. Last May a Brownsville jury agreed, vindicating—for now—the family’s proud heritage and proving that, sometimes, the little guy does win.
Hot CDsInevitable baggage accompanies an album whose sessions splintered a great band, ousted three producers, and outlasted a record company. But if ex-Austinite Lucinda Williams is a paragon of self-doubt, she’s also a gifted writer who gets to the core of a character in the course of a three-minute tune.
Why was the former governor Pa Ferguson nicknamed Farmer Jim?
