Twenty years ago my hometown made national headlines when the local college staged an internationally acclaimed play about gay men and the AIDS crisis. The people I grew up with are still feeling the aftershocks.
He was a world-renowned piano prodigy whose romanticism and technical virtuosity inspired thousands and famously helped thaw the Cold War. But as a visit to his hometown of Kilgore made clear to me, Van Cliburn was also a Texan, a Southerner, a Baptist, a patriot, and a man who loved
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.
Every Christmas, from the time I was three until I was ten, my family would drive in a stream of cars to Kilgore, where, during the Depression and a very big oil boom, oil wells had been drilled downtown. Hundreds of derricks on street corners and next to office buildings
