Fear and Loading
At the state capitol, where talk of concealed weapons consumes us still, emotion is winning the day.
Gary Cartwright earned his BA in journalism at Texas Christian University. He had a distinguished career as a newspaper reporter and as a freelance writer, contributing stories to such national publications as Harper’s, Life, and Esquire. He was a senior editor at Texas Monthly for 25 years, until his retirement in 2010 at age 76. He died in 2017.
Cartwright was a finalist for a National Magazine Award in 1986 in the reporting excellence category. He was the recipient of a Dobie-Paisano fellowship and won the Texas Institute of Letters Stanley Walker award for journalism and the Carr P. Collins Award for nonfiction. He won the 1989 Press Club of Dallas Katie Award for best magazine news story. He also received the 2005 Headliner Club of Austin award for best magazine story. Cartwright wrote several books, including Blood Will Tell, Confessions of a Washed-up Sportswriter, Dirty Dealing, Galveston: A History of the Island, and Heart Wiseguy, a memoir published in 1998. He cowrote three movie scripts, for J. W. Coop (Columbia, 1972); Pair of Aces (CBS TV, 1990), which he also coproduced; and Pancho, Billy and Esmerelda, which he coproduced for his own production company in 1994. He also coproduced Another Pair of Aces for CBS. Blood Will Tell was adapted by CBS TV as a four-hour miniseries in 1994.
At the state capitol, where talk of concealed weapons consumes us still, emotion is winning the day.
During the first week of April, as the Legislature considered the case for concealed weapons, Texas mourned the consequences of two gun-related tragedies in Corpus Christi: the murder of Tejano superstar Selena Quintanilla Perez and the shooting of five workers at a refinery inspection company by a disgruntled
With the end of the cold war, the Pantex nuclear facility is dismantling its bombs. Will nearby Amarillo’s environment and economy get blown to pieces?
Is Charles Voyd Harrelson a natural-born killer? His movie star son, Woody, isn’t sure—but I am.
He invented the boneless breast and made his chicken a household name. But now his critics are out to roast him.
With his starring role on The Larry Sanders Show, Rip Torn is no longer Rip scorned.
Jerry Jones may have the biggest ego in football, but don’t bet against him. Even without Jimmy Johnson, he still has the best team.
The quietest member of the governor’s fitness panel throws his weight around—at last.
How 89-year-old Harvey Penick turned life’s lessons into a best-selling book—and followed it up with another master stroke.
This will be our routine, I’m sorry to report. Very early every morning, at an hour when the Mogollon Mountains are still velvety silhouettes against the star-smeared sky and the predawn tranquility of the Gila Wilderness has swallowed us into the deepest valley of our dreams, we will be
At play in the fields of Mexico, onetime major leaguers find beisbol is an entirely different game.
Decades after his family controlled Galveston’s liquor and gambling, 89-year-old Vic Maceo is clinging to his gangster past—and to his pistol.
There’s trouble brewing at the Capitol this spring, and it has lobbyists and legislators foaming at the mouth. The issue? Your right to drink a glass of fresh, tasty beer.
Jimmy Johnson said he’d see us in the Super Bowl, and he was right. Now he is a hero, and his critics are eating crow.
A few weeks with the Polk family showed me how the welfare system made things better—and worse.
Hacker Crackdown tells how the feds busted employees of a Texas games company for a crime they didn’t commit.
Three years after he replaced Tom Landry, Jimmy Johnson is giving Dallas Cowboys fans something to cheer about—and his critics are eating their words.
Once, the State of Texas was going to put Kenneth McDuff to death as payment for his crimes. Instead, it set him free to murder again.
Kenneth McDuff is just one among hundreds of violent criminals who never should have been paroled—but they were.
Dallas professor Mel Bradford thinks that Abe Lincoln was a scoundrel and that equality is nonsense. I had to find out why.
Black bears have returned to Big Bend National Park, and our author is determined to find one.
Sure, they were gangsters, but they were our gangsters.
Oilman, sports-man, high liver, Clint Murchison also knew how to write a good letter.
And now, speaking for the poor and downtrodden, Ernie Cortes.
Boxing caught its second wind when George Foreman went the distance with the champ, Evander Holyfield.
Is being himself good enough?
In 1957 General Walker warned his troops of rampant communism and lost his job. Today the world has changed, but he hasn’t.
It all looked so different 27 years ago.
Clues left behind by a former Dallas cop convinced his son that he killed President Kennedy—but that’s just the beginning of the mystery.
Discover the charms of Galveston off-season, when the only visitors are you, the gulls, and the ghosts.
On September 8, 1900, a devastating hurricane blasted Galveston, changing life on the Island forever.
Whether it wells from the high pine walls of East Texas, the haunted valleys of the Hill Country, the violent uplifts of the Trans-Pecos, or the salty, low-relief vistas of the coastal plains, the Texas myth shapes and claims us all.
For some, work is its own reward. For others it is a compromise, a trade-off to some ulterior purpose. And yet it is the work that defines us. There is something in the doing that gives us stature and makes us whole.
Texas was founded by risk-takers, place-makers, and folks on the run, and their spiritual descendants are our common stock. Our heritage is not a concert for the fainthearted, but if you hear the music, you’ll want to dance.
Our search for identity is really a search for familial bonds. By our children and our parents, by our forebears and our closest friends, by the reflections of those with whom we surround ourselves, so shall you know us.
When oil and real estate boomed, a lot of Texans rode the tiger. But the beast turned, and those who weren’t devoured faced the prospect of limping back. It has been a long but not uninteresting trip.
Forty-two extraordinary tales from forty-two ordinary Texans.
Face it, life isn’t fair. The cards fall in random patterns, and for every winner there is an uncomfortable number of losers. But what goes around comes around, and in the seeds of calamity we often find new beginnings. Mary Margaret Adams. To Russia With Love. Letty Banda. Be It
In which a landlubber chronicles the saga of getting his sea legs aboard the good ship Elissa.
It took him a decade to throw the punch that knocked out his toughest opponent—his own obsession with getting another shot at Ali. Now he wants to take on Mike Tyson.
The disappearance of a University of Texas student in Matamoros led police to the discovery of a drug-dealing cult whose rituals were not only unholy but unthinkable.
They were elderly people, flattered by the attention of a nice young man. But sometimes it’s a mistake to depend on the kindness of strangers.
An employee’s vandalism by computer might have gone unpunished but for a rookie prosecutor out to test a new law.
My Mad Dog days behind me, I’ve found contentment with young jackanapes at my feet and the girl of my dreams beside me.
The parents of a confessed killer went to jail rather than testify against their son. Now the murder conviction has been reversed, and the family of the deceased must endure renewed anguish.
San Antonio put a full-court press on basketball superstar David Robinson in hopes that he wouldn’t forget the Alamo City.
Las Colinas was supposed to be Can-Do City. So why couldn’t it?
The rich and eccentric heir to a rich and eccentric Galveston family, Shearn Moody, Jr., craved an empire all his own. But his lack of self-restraint cost him his bank, his insurance company, his fortune, and now, perhaps, his freedom.
He was one tycoon who enjoyed the hell out of his money.