Liquid Light at Barton Springs, 1988
Top-flight wear (from hat to shoes) for rugged adventures on the Texas terrain.
Temple of doom, Spence for hire,, deals that won’t Hunt, Blount analysis, and the King of the ranch.
About our contributors.
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
Recipe from Dean Fearing of Dallas’ Mansion on Turtle Creek.
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
Reader letters published in our November 1992 issue.
Reader letters published in our October 1992 issue.
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
My son ended his life after three years of madness and unbearable depression. Who am I to say he did the wrong thing?
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.
Reader letters published in our September 1992 issue.
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
Reader letters published in our August 1992 issue.
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
Meet the people who keep Texas' trains on track.
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.”
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,
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
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
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.
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
“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
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
“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
Scenes from spring vacation 1992 on Texas’ Gulf Coast.
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.
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
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
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.”
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
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
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
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
A state breeding program aims to fatten up the trim, pugnacious bass.
An Austin artist makes a stringed instrument of monumental scale.