Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2023 i Texas Highways Magazine

This issue includes our last story by inimitable Houston writer John Nova Lomax, who died in May at age 53. I became acquainted with John’s work when I lived in Houston, and he was writing for Houstonia and the Houston Press. For the latter, he wrote a memorable series, “The Sole of Houston,” from 2006 to 2010, recording his walks on every major Houston street. His first story for Texas Highways, on the small coastal town of San Leon, was published in the June 2020 issue. I was thrilled when he accepted our proposal to become a writer-at-large in 2021. From the beginning, he had a keen sense of the stories our readers wanted to hear. He once told me in an email that Texas Highways was “the magazine I…

“ Pardon the poo,” says Melanie Moreau, the founder of My Pig Filled Life, a pig rescue organization in Wills Point, east of Dallas. On a tour of her 17-acre sanctuary, Moreau leads us from the grassy front lawn of her brick farmhouse through pens, pastures, and at least a half-dozen red barns and shelters. Almost 300 rescued mini pigs reside here. Goats, sheep, and ginny hens, too. Also, roosters, whose constant crows mix with the cacophony of cicadas coming from the surrounding woods. Despite Moreau’s warning, there’s not a whiff of manure. “Pigs are very clean,” she says. “Some of our pigs here, their pheromones smell just like maple syrup.” Smart and affectionate, pigs can make great pets and are increasingly popular as domesticated animals. People in big cities…

The drums are first. I’ve never been able to figure out if the drums echo my heartbeat or if my heart races to match the drums. From my first step into the arena, I can feel the drums thrumming under my feet. Then the singing registers, voices ferocious and free, like lightning, like wind—all the voices singing as one. And then there are the dancers—a kaleidoscope of performers, from tiny toddlers in full regalia spinning like tops, to stately senior women elegantly swaying, to young women in dresses with bells that chime to the drumbeat, to men in the Fancy dance competition whose feet hardly seem to touch the ground as they transform into blurs of color. Everything is drumming and singing and dancing. I take a moment and absorb…

I magine driving down US 69 through south Beaumont and seeing a seemingly defunct oil derrick. Suddenly, a geyser of water spews from the top, shooting 100 feet in the air. Keeping your eyes on the road as best as possible, you watch the gusher continue for as long as it takes the derrick to pass from view in your rearview mirror. You’ve just witnessed a reenactment of the 1901 Lucas Gusher, courtesy of Spindletop-Gladys City Boomtown Museum’s replica of the derrick. Former director Troy Gray says it’s been known to bring cars to a halt on the highway, its occupants scrambling out to take photos. “We’re like, ‘Oh no! Don’t do that!’” he says. Other drivers exit immediately, but it’s over before they can do a U-turn. “We only…

Restaurateur Brad Lomax never thought much about the oyster shells his patrons discarded after eating the decadent meat inside. A lifelong surf enthusiast and owner of four eateries in Corpus Christi, including Water Street Oyster Bar, Lomax didn’t worry about the oyster shells until his waste management bills started skyrocketing in the late 2000s. “The price of diesel was through the roof, and we were getting significant surcharges on our dumpster bills because of the weight we had in there—and the lion’s share of our weight was oyster shells,” Lomax says. Tough like cement and a bit ugly, oyster shells typically make their way to landfills, where they take years to decompose. Lomax was still thinking about his bottom line when he took a walk with his neighbor, Joe Fox,…

The 17 original families that made up the small community of Smithville moved 2 miles west to meet the Bastrop and Taylor Railway when it was built in 1887. As the railway grew and changed, so did the town, which peaked at a population of about 4,200 in the 1940s. These days, Smithville is perhaps best known as a popular filming location for movies, including Hope Floats starring Sandra Bullock, The Tree of Life with Brad Pitt, and Bernie featuring Jack Black. It’s also the birthplace of world-renowned composer, jazz musician, and author Hannibal Lokumbe. Now living in Bastrop with his wife, Sumai, and their family, Lokumbe spent more than 30 years in New York City, performing with such jazz luminaries as Roy Haynes, Gil Evans, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and…

MY FATHER WAS A MAESTRO OF THE COOKOUT. FAJITAS AND TABLITAS, OR SHORT RIBS, WERE HIS SPECIALTY. For our family carne asadas, he'd hold court at his enormous grill in our backyard in Del Rio. He’d poke at the crackling fire as it burned down to cooking coals, a row of aluminum pans full of skirt steak marinating in a light lager—usually Budweiser. Around him, my brothers and assorted cousins and friends bantered, trading stories and jokes while radio station 580 AM, La Rancherita del Aire, blasted conjunto from his workshop. On summer evenings, lightning bugs glowed in the dark pasture beyond our fence. When winter came, another fire would be lit in the pit just for warmth, the guys bundled in their Carhartt jackets. “Bring me another tray,” my…

The life-size Old Yeller statue sits prominently in front of Mason County’s M. Beven Eckert Memorial Library. It’s a fitting spot for a timeless tribute to a beloved children’s novel and its prolific author and Mason native son, Fred Gipson. He wrote 12 books and several screenplays before he passed away at his ranch near Mason in 1973 at age 65. “Old Yeller was written in between books, almost on a lark, and it’s one of the easiest things my dad ever wrote,” says Fred’s son, Beck Gipson, who resides in Kerrville. “The success floored him.” Published in 1956 when Beck was 11, Old Yeller remains one of the saddest boyand-his-dog tales ever written. Disney Studios’ faithful film adaptation, released Dec. 25, 1957, was an instant hit that still brings…

On a Saturday evening in Houston’s west end, hundreds of Indian classical music enthusiasts gather in the Auditorium at the Houston Durga Bari Society. Bright red velvet curtains frame a performance accompanied by Unmesh Banerjee on tabla—a pair of hand drums—and Indrayudh Majumdar on a string instrument called a sarode. For over 30 years, the Indian Music Society of Houston has hosted Indian classical music performances and taught tabla. The organization is part of a string of community orchestras in Houston that offer opportunities to learn more about the musical traditions of various cultures. Though the genre may be unfamiliar to westerners, Hindustani classical music has been performed for several millennia—longer than Western classical music with its estimated 17th-century debut. “But lately,” says Sunil Pangarkar, a longtime board member of…

The first column I ever wrote for Texas Highways, way back in November 2010, was about Waco. I graduated from Baylor University and wanted to tell the world about this under-the-radar tourist destination on Interstate 35. I even donned an all-red workout outfit to eat a cheeseburger at the locally famous Health Camp restaurant. Since then, Waco has transformed into a Texas hotspot thanks to the Magnolia effect. The city still has the classics, including the Dr Pepper Museum and Cameron Park Zoo, but there are myriad new places to explore. Waco Mammoth National Monument When mammoths roamed the earth 65,000 years ago, a herd of Columbian mammoth mothers and their young met their fateful end in a flash flood that buried their skeletons for thousands of years. Their fossils…

On the drive down to Texas, with most of my belongings jammed into my dad’s Lexus, my boyfriend and I trailed a caravan of polygamists who were also making the trip south. It was 2010 and I was 25, running from the destruction Lou Gehrig’s disease, or ALS, had levied on my dad. For two days, we traded places on the road with the polygamists’ trucks and an accompanying big, white van. Though in many ways nondescript, designed not to attract attention, I knew—all were filled with children, all had up-to-date Arizona plates. I relayed stories to my boyfriend of growing up in Salt Lake City with a polygamist nanny, getting haircuts and massages from her sisters, and wandering the secret passageways of Warren Jeffs’ abandoned fundamentalist compound at the…

Chuck THE SHOULDER, NEAREST THE COW’S HEAD This area is used for ground beef and is optimal for braising, slow cooking, or stews. Rib THE UPPER AREA OF THE COW’S CENTER Good for grilling, roasting, or searing, the rib is used for prime rib, rib-eye steaks, and back ribs. Loin THE TOP OF THE COW BETWEEN THE RIBS AND THE BACK END This tender region is used for T-bone and porterhouse steaks, and filet mignon. Brisket THE CHEST A strictly slow-cooked cut, brisket is the star of Texas barbecue joints and is also used to make corned beef. Plate THE BELLY This cut is ideal for braising and is where outside skirt steak for fajitas is cut from. Flank THE LOWER ABDOMEN Flank is leaner than skirt steak and can…

Doing a double take at something strange on the side of a remote highway is a rite of passage for any road-tripping Texan. Maybe it’s a geyser that shoots water 100 feet in the air or a 10-foot-tall killer bee with a menacing look in its eye. Our state is full of novelties, and many of these landmarks have a peculiar story of how they came to be on that particular bend of the road. In 2021, we started chronicling the stories behind some of the state’s roadside oddities on texashighways.com. Here, we feature the tales of nine attractions, including six penned by late Houston journalist and Texas Highways writer-at-large John Nova Lomax, who passed away in May. A chronicler of the curious, he never drove by a roadside attraction…

The Boot House and Cowboy Hat House are among Texas homebuilder and artist Dan Phillips’ more visible works of domestic architecture. They share a contiguous lot in the 2600 block of 11th Street in Huntsville. Phillips put the boot on the ground first. Completed as a rental in 2016, the home has been leased since 2017, when it hit the market at $1,200 a month. Not much of the living space is in the boot per se; it conceals a tin-roofed, rustic-looking bungalow with a wraparound deck that contains both bedrooms and much of the rest of the 711-square-foot living space. A spiral staircase coils within the boot 35 feet to a rooftop deck. Close at hand are 1836 Steakhouse, several fried-chicken joints, and a Mexican restaurant, so it’s probably…

Acubist-style armadillo stands atop a hillock next to a sleek roadrunner in a 2-acre field at the intersection of State Highway 288 and Bellfort Avenue, just south of Houston’s Loop 610. A dragon rears menacingly nearby, while King Kong scales a boom crane near a stegosaurus like dinosaur. A colorful grasshopper zips through the air, not as fast as the stealth fighter pilot—who looks a lot like Snoopy—or the missile they have let fly from beneath their plane’s wing. Arachnophobes beware: A 20-foot-tall spindly-legged spider will trigger you. But take comfort in the fact that the missile is well on its way to destroying the fearsome beast. This is the land of the Eclectic Menagerie, a public sculpture garden and roadside attraction that comprises some two dozen sculptures, including an…

The annular eclipse crosses Texas on Oct. 14, dimming the sky as the moon passes directly between the Earth and the sun. This is when the moon is at its farthest point from the Earth, making it appear slightly smaller than the sun and giving the impression of a “ring of fire,” around the moon, says Alana May of Hill Country Backyard Astronomy. Residents of cities from Odessa to Corpus Christi, which are in the direct path of the eclipse, are holding watch parties and cook-offs to celebrate. There’s even an armadillo race. The San Antonio Missions National Historical Park will host a viewing event this year at Mission San José, where visitors can talk with astronomers and participate in educational activities before watching the eclipse midmorning. In Ingram, the…