He asked me if I was going to be white my whole life. I was, of course. But because of our friendship, I’m no longer the clueless upper-middle-class kid I once was.
No one in McAllen saw Irene Garza leave Sacred Heart that night in 1960. The next morning, her car was still parked down the street from the church. She never came home.
Elmo Henderson’s entire life story can be summed up in a single moment: when he stepped into the ring in San Antonio one night in 1972 and knocked out Muhammad Ali. At least that’s the way he tells it. And tells it.
And they most definitely conquered. The inside story of how a ragtag bunch of hippies made the wildest Texas movie ever (and spilled no more fake blood than was absolutely necessary).
Eight years ago, 42 people in the West Texas town of Roby—7 percent of the population—pooled their money, bought lottery tickets, and won $46 million. And that's when their luck ran out.
For Sharon Bush, membership in the world's most powerful family had its privileges. But as she discovered after her husband of 23 years—the brother of one president and the son of another—ended their marriage via e-mail, it can be revoked without warning.
She named him Mark. I didn’t know why, any more than I knew why my daughter was drawn to riding in the first place. But I did know that she loved him—and that letting him go was the hardest thing she’d ever done.
To experience the majesty and peril of the desert on my own terms, I spent a week alone in the Solitario, the most remote area of Big Bend Ranch State Park. I confronted my darkest fears—and made small talk with an insect.
To his suburban Dallas neighbors, Todd Becker was a doting husband and devoted father. They had no clue that he led a secret, lucrative life as a safecracker.
It’s the nation’s biggest spread within the confines of a single fence—more than eight hundred square miles extending across six counties. So it’s fitting that the family feud over its future is big too. And mythic.
At this year's Miss Texas Teen USA pageant, girls from big cities and small towns stuffed their bras, slicked Vaseline across their teeth, and prayed that their thighs were toned enough. Anything for the crown.
Did Richard King cheat his partner's heirs out of a chunk of the King Ranch nearly 120 years ago? He may have—and if the Texas Supreme Court permits Chapman v. King Ranch, Inc., to go to trial, the past could come back to haunt the state's most storied spread.
Once upon a time, the Central Texas town of Crawford was like Mayberry: Everyone knew everyone, no one talked politics, and the air was ripe with the aroma of hogs. Then the leader of the free world bought a little place west of the Middle Bosque River, and nothing was
In 1996 the body of a cheerleader from a small town in Oklahoma was found on the Texas side of the Red River. She had been raped and shot. The brutal crime destroyed several families and the illusions of an isolated slice of the world.
He was a ladies’ man who owned a tavern. He kept gators in a pool behind the place, into which he liked to toss small animals. He hired women to wait tables, and some of them disappeared. What happened? With Joe Ball, it was easy to believe the worst.
His cache of unpublished interviews and unreleased recordings is unrivaled—but both collector and collection are showing signs of age. Who will save the legacy of the man who saved Texas music?
The North Texas teenager went missing in the late eighties. For years, no one knew where she was, or even if she was still alive-no one, that is, except a mysterious young woman two thousand miles away.
Last September a human torso was found floating in Galveston Bay—a gruesome discovery that opened a window into the bizarre life of the accused murderer, New York multimillionaire Robert Durst.
Once upon a time I thought I wanted to be a bullfighter (and not the kind that wears sequined tights). A legendary cowboy named Leon Coffee and an animal named Pretty Boy changed my mind.
The life of Roky Erickson—one of the most influential Texas rock and rollers of all time—has been one calamity after another. His family and friends have taken care of him with the best of intentions, but you know what they say about the road to hell.
The Houston-based energy giant put the pursuit of profits ahead of all other corporate goals, which fostered a climate of workaholism and paranoia. And that was only part of the problem.
Psst! Looking to have somebody murdered? You might want to call Gary Johnson, the number one hired killer in Houston. Then again you might not. You see he works for the cops.
For teenage girls in the Hill Country town of Llano, life can be short on glamour and excitement—except at the annual rodeo, when one of them gets a rhinestone tiara and a rare, thrilling moment of glory.
Brandon and Denise were not like other people. They were smarter, more introverted. They adored computers, playing games online at three in the morning with people in Finland. When they and other hard-core techies moved to Walden, a Houston apartment complex with the fastest residential Internet connection in the world,
The most famous bank-robbing lovers of all time weren't nearly as glamorous as Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty. Although the fragile, pretty Bonnie Parker had her good points, Clyde Barrow was a scrawny, two-timing psychopath. They were straight out of a country and western ballad. And when they died in
Nine years after the brutal murder of four teenage girls in a yogurt shop rocked the city of Austin, the police say they have finally caught the killers. But they have no evidence and no witnesses—only two confessions that the defendants say were coerced. Which is why, when the case
These days, a plane trip can entail more time in the terminal than in the air. But why get stressed when you can have a massage, taste Texas wines, go for a jog, check your e-mail—even eat gumbo while watching (other people’s) planes take off? A survivor’s guide to DFW,
In the Gulf Coast town of Santa Fe, high school football games had always kicked off with a prayer, but in June the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the practice violated the separation of church and state. Now the issuewhich has turned neighbor against neighbor and provoked some decidedly un-Christian
What they lack in cash they make up for in cachet: on the road with the Trail of Dead, Austin's coolest punk rockers of the moment, as they head east in search of fans, fame, and a free place to crash.
For Tom Cherry, the precise place where loyalty to his dad ends and a larger obligation to society begins lies deep in the woods of East Texas, at the intersection of history and conscience, where the truth about a church bombing during the struggle for civil rights in the South
For years Dallas’ most prolific jewel thief robbed the mansions of socialites like Nancy Brinker and Annette Simmons. If not for his girlfriend’s crack use, he might have gotten away with it forever.
Amarillo is a city where conformity counts, so the death of a punk at the hands of a football player had more than a little symbolic significance there. So did the jury’s decision to keep the killer from going to jail.
Why Peter Bogdanovich filmed in black and white, who discovered Cybill Shepherd, which onetime soap opera diva read for the role of Jacy, and other secrets of the making of ‘The Last Picture Show.’ Plus: A few words from the late Ben Johnson.
For the first time in its history, the world-famous King Ranch is being run by someone other than a descendant of its founder. Can the mythic institution survive a changing of the guard?
He’s the front-runner even before he has officially entered the race, but sky-high expectations are the least of the obstacles George W. Bush faces in his quest for the White House.
In suburban Fort Worth the frail psyche of a football prodigy collided with the crazed ambition of his dad, who himself had been a high school football star way back when. The consequences were deadly.
For fifteen years Galveston knew Tim Kingsbury as a civic leader and do-gooder. Then the wife—and life—he deserted back in Ohio caught up with him in Texas.
He may soon compete for the super featherweight championship of the world, but for now Austin boxer Jesus Chavez is in the fight of his life—with federal immigration officials.
After thieves stole his daughter’s horse, deputy U.S. marshal Parnell McNamara didn’t make a federal case out of it. Instead, he rounded up a group of old-style lawmen and lit out after them.
More than a year after his death, he’s still being remembered as the best Texas songwriter of his time. This month’s star-studded Austin City Limits tribute shows why.
With a major retrospective of his work at three Houston museums, Robert Rauschenberg is once again the talk of Texas. What’s he been up to? A portrait of the artist as an old man.
The verdict is in: Oprah loves Texas—and Texas loves Oprah. The queen of daytime talk swept into the Panhandle, turned the tide of public opinion, and had courtroom watchers asking, Where’s the beef?
