Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2016 i Texas Highways Magazine

STYLLE READ TOOK AN INTEREST IN re-creating old-time Texas with colorful artwork while growing up in Lufkin in the 1950s. “It was the decade of Davy Crockett on TV’s wild frontier and the John Wayne Alamo movie,” he explains. “I was hooked on history from a very young age.” Born in 1953 “with a palett e and brush in my hand,” Read was influenced by his father, Sleepy Read, whose paintings range from abstracts to Texas landscapes. The youngster began mixing his love of art and history in junior high school, when he painted a scene of the Batt le of the Alamo aft er a trip to San Antonio. Today, Read’s murals depicting scenes of Texas history and culture make him one of Texas’ most recognizable painters. About 150…

AT5:30 ON SATURDAY afternoon, my husband and I turn off US 67 onto twisty, narrow Somervell County Road 1004 southwest of Glen Rose. About a mile down the way, we come upon a ramshackle barbecue joint where pickup trucks, SUVs, and an assortment of Harleys and other motorcycles are parked beside a cedar-post fence. LOCO COYOTE is at 1795 CR 1004 in Glen Rose. Hours: Thu-Fri 5-9 p.m., Sat 11 a.m.-9 p.m., Sun 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Call 254/897-2324. After we park the car, we walk beneath branches of gnarled, spreading oak trees toward the hostess stand beside Loco Coyote’s front door. The teenage hostess greeting us beams a pretty smile as she delivers the news. “It’s a 45-minute to one-hour wait for a table, and then it’s up to an…

REAL TEXAS STORIES BORN AND BRED NASH FARM is at 626 Ball St. in Grapevine. Hours vary seasonally. Call 817/410-3558; www.nashfarm.org. FIND MORE ONLINE For more photos of Nash Farm, visit texas highways.com/true. LIKE MOST TEXANS, I GREW UP LOVING PORK: BACON, bratwurst, ham, carnitas, chops, loin, hot dogs, baby-back ribs, breakfast patties, chorizo, and so on. But also like most people in this urbanized state, my primary contact with pork has been the plastic-wrapped products in grocery stores. When my grandpa tells one of his favorite stories about growing up on a farm in Wharton County—the one about chasing down a fugitive hog that had somehow escaped his father’s initial slaughter attempt—I’m struck by my ignorance of the nitty-gritty of raising, butchering, and preparing meat for the dinner table.…

30º 35’ 35.05” N 103º 56’ 36.96” W Inside Davis Mountains State Park at the end of Park Road 3, the historic Indian Lodge hotel offers spectacular views of the park, including this Keesey Canyon vista taken from a walkway on the east side. Constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, the lodge is a stunning building of adobe blocks and hand-hewn pine beams tucked into the hillside. For more information on Indian Lodge, visit www.tpwd.texas.gov/state-parks/indian-lodge. To order a print of this photograph, call 866/962-1191, or visit www.texashighwaysprints.com.…

EACH VISIT TO BUFFALO GAP proves more rewarding than the last. This tiny burg (population about 460) sits in a woodsy hollow less than 10 miles south of Abilene, and reassures me that there are still places whose charm stems from old-fashioned simplicity. Equally removed from modern-world worries is a refuge known as Perini Ranch Steakhouse, the primary reason I bothered to find Buffalo Gap in the first place. This visit, I’m introducing my husband to a weekend of Perini Ranch pleasures, starting with lunch at the steakhouse on a sunny Saturday afternoon. As we nab a picnic table on a patio shaded by towering cottonwoods, I’m reminded why I was so taken with this very spot well more than a decade ago: There, at another table, sit proprietors Tom…

WHAT ARE YOU DOING FOR FUN? “What is going on here?” The question applies not just to the impressive offerings and architecture of the Science Mill, but to Johnson City as a whole. ROMANESCO BROCCOLI, I JUST LEARNED, IS THE ultimate fractal vegetable. On a visit with my children to the new Hill Country Science Mill in Johnson City, we gaze into a supersized glowing head of broccoli. Its multicolored geometric shapes swirl down from a 40-foot silo, giving us a glimpse into the world of fractals, those repeating patterns in nature that can be found in everything from snowflakes to seashells. Now, my children are curious to learn more. Now, the word “fractal” will have an association for them. Now, just maybe, they will eat their broccoli. The primary…

ON A 1709 EXPEDITION into the unsett led territory north of the Rio Grande, Fray Isidro Espinosa of Nueva España wrote in his diary about the springs and river that later gave rise to the city of San Antonio, noting that the river could “supply not only a village but a city” and that “we called it the river of San Antonio de Padua.” In the three centuries since the Spanish priest recorded those impressions, a multitude of authors have sought to capture and convey the city’s mystery and charm. I spent a stimulating aft ernoon last spring learning about those works and their creators, both historic and contemporary, from my San Antonio amigo Bryce Milligan. Poet, novelist, playwright, and all-around authorial top hand, Bryce edited the forthcoming book Literary…

GOT SOMETHING TO SAY? OUR FAVORITE SOCIAL MEDIA OF THE MONTH... Mary’s Cafe in Strawn is the best! Used to tell the Mrs. we were going hunting. But that was just an excuse to stop in Strawn for chicken-fried steak! Lewis Griffin I’m VERY disappointed that the November comfort food issue isn’t scratch & sniff. Christopher Wilson, @CDub06 Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram Good for the Hearth I have enjoyed campfires [December] in many places and with many people. One favorite was a night alone on our acreage with just my two dogs— one little poodle snuggling on a cot with me and the other sleeping under my cot. We had a tree stump to burn as we cleared the property. I dozed but mostly was awake enjoying…

THERE’S A NEW SENSE OF ENERGY and possibility on the streets of downtown Waco—not a boom, exactly, but a steady drumbeat led by some determined entrepreneurs whose vision of the future is infused with an affectionate regard for the city’s past. Taking in the city’s small downtown on a recent visit, I got the sense that it’s both reinventing itself and staying true to its roots. Up and down Austin Avenue, Waco’s main street, longabandoned brick buildings have come back to life as hip cocktail bars, art galleries, and live music venues. THE WACO HIPPODROME THEATRE is at 724 Austin Ave. in Waco. Call 254/227-6723; wacohippodrome theatre.com. “Twenty years ago, you did not come to downtown,” says Casey Turner, an outgoing fourth-generation Wacoan with a slight Texas twang. Casey, along…

January’s travel spotlights: GULF COAST >Houston MLK Day The spirit of civil-rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. lives on in Houston—a city he visited less than six months before his assassination— where two MLK Day parades will celebrate his legacy on January 18. The Black Heritage Society’s MLK Birthday Parade takes place downtown, while the MLK Parade Foundation’s MLK Grande Parade is in Midtown. The parades culminate several days of activities, including children’s parades organized by both groups, the Heritage Society’s Gospel Fest, and the Parade Foundation’s marching-band contest at Rice Stadium. www.blackheritagesociety.org; www.mlkgrandeparade.org. PRAIRIES AND LAKES >Fort Worth Texas Folk Art Texas Folk Art, at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art through September 19, features paintings and sculptures by nine self-taught Texas artists, including Clara McDonald Williamson, H.O.…