Helen Thompson

Vietnamese Restaurants

AustinSaigon Kitchen, 9200 N. Lamar, 512-837-9910. This modest-looking restaurant’s bracing hot-and-sour soup was filled with shrimp, pineapple, celery, tomato, okra, noodles, and anise. Vermicelli with rice-paper pancakes that were more like omelettes came with grilled pork, fish sauce, and a platter frilly lettuce, cilantro, cucumbers, and mint. Tender frogs’ legs

Vietnamese Grocery Stores

Most of the specialty items needed to prepare Vietnamese recipes can be found at the following Asian and Vietnamese groceries.AustinLien, Huong Oriental Market, 8610 N. Lamar, 512-835-9618. My Thanh Oriental Market, 7435 N. Lamar, 454-4804. Say Hi, 5249 Burnet Road, 453-1411.DallasAsian Grocery, 9191 Forest Lane, 214-235-3038. Laos Store, 4536 Bryan,

Sour Notes

Bullets over Broadway at the Granbury Opera House.

Getting His Kicks

He scored big for UT and four NFL teams; now Raul Allegre is back in the game with his weekly Spanish-language football show.

Texas Twenty: Princess

The celebrity realtor as realtor celebrity.

Family Plot

For Dallas writer Carlton Stowers, Sins of the Son is more than just another true crime story. The son is his own.

Walk, Don’t Run

After years of arguing that vigorous activity is a key to good health, Kenneth Cooper is exercising his right to change his mind.

A Fan’s Notes

For sixty years, Austinite Raymond Daum befriended Hollywood’s biggest stars. Now he’s selling off his memories.

Freedom Fighter

Best-Case Scenario

To win a high-profile these days, you need to hire a jury consultant. Galveston's Robert Hirschhorn is one of the best.

Black and White World

Life as it really was in Texas’ African American community, as seen through the eyes of almost forgotten photographers.

Tom Caskey

Tracking down deadly genes.

Russell Stanphill

Hello, Mr. Chips.

Messing With Texas

TV glitzmeister Aaron Spelling tries to wakeup Michener’s epic snooze.

Rebel Rousers

In Tyler, a high school student’s Confederate flag T-shirt is raising old fears.

A Whole New Ball Game

Once, the fight for funding and attention in college sports pitted women against men. Today, with women’s sports commanding greater respectability, it’s also women versus women, and the fight is uglier.

Grande Larceny

Who has stolen almost $1 million worth of chemicals from South Texas farms?

Picture This

A creative Dallas man nails down fees hanging rich people’s artwork.

Tested by Fire

A South Texas town rebuilds its church with faith, hope, and lots of charity.

Stink Big

The sour odor of calf chips from an Erath County feedlot has one family crying foul.

Broiling Over

Propane producers and the Railroad commission want us to retire the charcoal grill.

Movie Mac

Houston’s Mattress Mac is making a comfortable living as a film producer.

Snakes Alive!

Collectors flock to Del Rio to capture a care, fantastically patterned reptile.

Water Foul

As the Guadalupe overflows with tourists, locals battle over managing crowds.

Free Weights

A San Antonian is going out of business by giving away the store—literally.

Fire Storm

Fanned by winds, flames ravage West Texas’ mountains.

Trial by Video

A Dallas Lawyer juries with cinematic reenactments of accidents.

Land Grab

In a historic move, the state claims co-ownership of some Brazos Valley farms.

Blood Relations

A modern surgeon employs a long-discredited cure-all: medicinal leeches.

Hog Wild

Houston’s young execs take to the streets on a fleet of shiny Harleys.

Art Attack

Novel Twist

A big new Dallas bookstore with amenities is a hit with the reading public.

Race Wrangling

Will public housing in East Texas be integrated? Not if the Klan has its way.

Focus: Withdrawn

In the heady days of banking, Texans ran the state’s biggest, most profitable institutions. Not anymore.

Bunker Mentality

A small town hunkers down for a court fight with Bunker Hunt’s bankruptcy trustee.

Tandyland

The biggest, most boisterous Radio Shack in the universe lands in Arlington.

Seed Fee

Cottonseed was delicious and nutritious, but it was only for cows—until now.

Bombs Away

The Pantex H-bomb plant prepares to mothball the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Cowboy Texas Randall

Old-timers around Canon recall that in 1959, when Harry Wheeler erected the seven-ton concrete-and-stucco cowboy outside his trading post and curio shop, he had to bring in a truck and crane from a local drilling company to set the big galoot on his feet. Towering over U.S. 60, Tex Randall

Java Jive

“WE CATER TO REAL COFFEE drinkers,” says seventy-year old Joseph Fertitta, the president of Beaumont’s Texas Coffee Company and son of the founder. Texas’ only family-owned Coffee-manufacturing company has been perking along with its Seaport brand since 1921, competing in the national market by virtue of its product’s prodigious strength.

Radio Foreplay

In the beginning, say Stevens and Pruett, a listener dubbed them “radio gods.”

Grim Reaping

As bills mount, AIDS patients sell their life insurance policies—in Waco.

Rhino Relapse

Deaths among rare rhinos leave scientists scratching their heads.

A Yen to Golf

Can the desire to win transform Japan’s gung ho golfers into pros?

Novel Approach

A gift from James Michener enriches Texas’ student writers.

Johnny’s Round Top

Johnny’s Round Top cafe had a colorful history that spanned more than fifty years before the restaurant went out of business in 1989. Built by a franchiser who was partial to rotating roofs that looked like circus tents, the Round Top in Big Spring was one of a modest chain

B-ing There

“People will watch anything,” says B-film director Bret McCormick.

Unresolved Trust

Condo Manager Sharon Butler questions what officials consider affordable.

So Cool

A summer guide to the coolest place in Texas: the Davis Mountains.