Reporter

Kid Heaven

One boy’s excellent adventure at the new playground of the nineties.

Joe v. Bob

American CEO Crandall and plaintiff’s lawyer Jamail waged the latest airline war in court.

Yes, Yes, Georgette

In her new book, Georgette Mosbacher gives feminism a feminine touch.

Feats of Laredo

Trade with Mexico has made this onetime border pit stop Texas’ fastest-growing city.

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.

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.

Water Foul

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

Blues Bayou

At an obscure backwoods honky-tonk, Houstonians get a dose of the blues.

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

No Airhead

NASA scientists ignored amateur Forrest Mims—until he proved them wrong.

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.

A Natural Phenomenon

A Hill Country ecobusiness discovers that green is also the color of money.

Engraved in Stone

An ancient cache of pebbles and flints yields North America’s oldest art.

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.”

Russian Around

Dateline Moscow: From Red Square to yellow journalism?

Grim Reaping

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

Stagecoach Alpine

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

House Arrest

THE HOME OF SAM HOUSTON’S WIDOW, Margaret Lea Houston, and their eight children is for sale. A shrine of Texana, the 1830’s Greek Revival classic in the tiny hamlet of Independence comes complete with a Houston family heirloom piano that is said to render a ghostly “Come to the Bower,”

Rhino Relapse

Deaths among rare rhinos leave scientists scratching their heads.

Donkey Business

Small-town Texas gets a taste of national politics up close.

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

Cretaceous Crash

The dinosaurs had been doing just fine for 150 million years. All of a sudden …

B-ing There

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

Unresolved Trust

Condo Manager Sharon Butler questions what officials consider affordable.

Heavy Duty

Houston’s favorite bouncer keeps the peace with style and a smile.

Panhandle Hollywood

Plainview became Rustwater, Kansas, for the shoot.

Narc Central

Agents target the flow of contraband on the border.

The Puffy Taco

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

Cattle Recall

John L. Guldemann scorns claims that Longhorns damage the natural area.

Eye of the World

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

Elvisualizations

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