Katy Vine joined the editorial department of Texas Monthly in 1997 and became a staff writer in 2002. As a general assignment reporter, she has written dozens of features on a range of topics, including rocket scientist Franklin Chang Díaz, hip-hop legend Bun B, barbecue pitmasters, cult leader Warren Jeffs, refugees in Amarillo, the moon landing, a three-person family circus, chess prodigies, a woman who kidnapped the Kilgore Rangerettes director and her daughter, an accountant who embezzled $17 million from a fruitcake company, and a con man who crashed cars, yachts, and planes for insurance money. Her stories have been anthologized in Best American Sports Writing and Best Food Writing. Her feature story about a West Texas sting operation was the inspiration for the 2012 television series The Client List.
When flames erupted at the West Fertilizer Company plant, the members of the local volunteer fire department pulled on their bunker gear and jumped in their trucks, just like they always do.
West, Texas, has two florists, but the fertilizer plant explosions forced one to temporarily shut down its business. That left Divine Designs responsible for creating sympathy arrangements for six funerals in one week.
You can’t go home and tell your friends that you came to Central Texas and never ate any barbecue. It would be like going to SXSW and not listening to any music. But there are so many briskets and so little time! How do you sort it all out? No
The famous astronaut was notoriously shy about granting interviews to the press, but in 2009 he answered a few questions sent to him by senior editor Katy Vine. Here is her unedited Q&A with Neil Armstrong.
I was thrilled when my daughter began learning a second language at day care. But what was I supposed to do when my three-year-old started engaging in conversations I couldn’t understand?
Austin Mahone is sixteen years old. He doesn’t have a record contract, a tour bus, or a backing band. But he does have more than 650,000 followers on Twitter and the email addresses of 2,000,000 fans. Meet San Antonio’s answer to Justin Bieber.
ROUTE: Port Arthur to Port AransasDISTANCE: 308 milesNUMBER OF COUNTIES: 11WHAT TO BRING: A pair of binocularsI started as far east as you can go on the Gulf Coast and still be in Texas. And since the Sabine Pass Lighthouse, which is technically across the state line in Louisiana, is
John Mueller was the heir to one of the great Texas barbecue dynasties. Aaron Franklin was an unknown kid from College Station who worked his counter. John had it all and then threw it all away. Aaron came out of nowhere to create the state’s most coveted brisket. Then John
The child custody battle between the State of Texas and a fundamentalist Mormon sect prompted many people to wonder how 437 kids could have been ripped away from their parents. When the criminal trials of a dozen sect members got under way this month, the question became, Was it really
The Civil War may be 150 years old, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still stir up a fuss (Confederate license plate, anyone?). Just ask one of the hundreds of very accurately uniformed reenactors who descend on Jefferson every year to die for the cause.
Victor Emanuel can find you a hooded warbler, a horned guan, or maybe even an Eskimo curlew. But his real genius is that he can get you to really look at a grackle.
On March 18, 1937, the residents of New London, southeast of Tyler, endured the worst small-town tragedy in U.S. history: an explosion at the combined junior-senior high school that killed some three hundred students and teachers.
Although some might consider the Kilgore Rangerettes an anachronism, every summer dozens of fresh-faced teens from around the state flock to East Texas to perfect a seemingly effortless hat-brim-touching high kick—and preserve one of the state’s great traditions.
When Jacob Isom swiped a Quran from an angry evangelist, he figured a few of his friends would enjoy the prank. Two months and one million YouTube views later, his life may never be the same.
San Antonio's Marshevet Hooker is not just any old high school sprinter; she's an Olympic gold medalist in the making. Meet her and nine other women we're betting will lead the new Texas—and the world.
And not just any mall. The Marq*E Entertainment Center is a marvel of marketing: a teen-friendly hangout where kids from all over the city flock to shop, flirt, skateboard, and otherwise act their age.
Katie Wernecke is many things: a precocious, freckle-faced Bible-drill champ; the valedictorian of her seventh-grade class in Banquete; and—since she was diagnosed with cancer last year—a pawn in the custody battle that pits her parents against the State of Texas.
How a fish called Ethel (seventeen pounds, ten ounces) caught by a fishing guide named Mark (Stevenson, in 1986, on Lake Fork) revolutionized a once-sleepy sport.
It may well be at Arnold’s, in Amarillo. Think twenty pounds of unseasoned meat and some forty slices of American cheese (if you please). Can anyone say “supersize”?
Last week, I caught up with Steve Bett, the editor of the Journal of the Simplified Spelling Society and moderator of a discussion group on Foolswisdom. Bett is a retired professor living in Austin who joined the 99-year-old international organization in the late eighties believing, as most simplified
Fernando Spada and Fernando Mendez are the Karpov and Kasparov of Brownsville: chess champions whose lifelong competition has produced a rivalry every bit as fierce as those of Ali and Frazier, McEnroe and Borg, or Nicklaus and Palmer. Did I mention that they’re in the fourth grade?
Where are the best places to eat barbecue in Texas? Six years ago we published a highly subjective—and hotly debated— list of our fifty favorite joints, and now we’ve gone back for seconds. Ten intrepid souls drove more than 21,000 miles in search of 2003’s worthiest ‘cue. Here’s what they
Forty-nine years of post oak coals in the pit have smoke-cured the building, which previously housed a ladies’ basketball court and a grocery market. Louie moved in with his barbecue business in 1959; his son, Bobby, took over more than three decades ago, but not a thing has suffered from
The Texas State Championship 42 Domino Tournament is in Hallettsville this weekend, and members of the Austin 42 Club, the largest league in the state, prepare for the big game.
When Warren Jeffs fired his attorneys and decided to represent himself in his sexual assault trial, many predicted, accurately, that he would fail miserably. Few realized just what a wild show he would put on.
