Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2018 i Texas Highways Magazine

Small-Town Centerpiece ONE OF THE PERKS OF spending time in a small town is the promise of carefree, leisurely travel. Reservations aren’t required to enjoy a good meal, and you don’t have to navigate complex parking or contend with rush-hour traffic. I was reminded of this on a recent trip to Lockhart, where my family and I parked in front of the Caldwell County Courthouse and spent the afternoon exploring the town square of the Barbecue Capital of Texas. Naturally, we started at Smitty’s Market (we’d been to Black’s and Kreuz on previous trips) where a no-frills approach to Texas’ favorite meal matched the day’s theme of simplicity—hand-tied sausage and tender brisket, no plates or forks necessary. We continued around the square with a stop at Chaparral Coffee, one of…

THE ART AFICIONADOS AT THE OPENING OF Frank X. Tolbert 2’s Texas Bird Project exhibition in Austin were clearly enamored with the artist’s prints, paintings, and drawings of the state’s winged and feathered beings. But the birdwatchers who came to meet the Houston artist were absolutely rapt. “Do you have a life list?” asked one devoted observer of the beaked creatures that soar and beguile. Unassuming and down-to-earth, Tolbert replied that he did not: “But I just really enjoy seeing the birds.” In that case, the artist hit the jackpot when he was hatched in this neck of the cactus and pine patch. The diversity of Texas’ natural environment—from the mountains and desert to the deep woods and Gulf Coast—makes the state a birder’s paradise where one may behold thousands…

In broad daylight, the Silver Slipper is hardly a looker. The compact building 4 miles northeast of downtown Houston is about as long and wide as an eight-lane bowling alley—“indistinct Minimal Traditional,” according to The Handbook of Texas. Three days a week, it’s a bar, short-order eatery, and neighborhood hangout. Saturday nights, however, the Silver Slipper transforms into something else. A portable sign with metallic letters lights up to advertise: “OPEN SAT LIVE,” and a sodium-vapor street lamp lights the way to the front door. Once inside, adjust your eyes to the warm red interior lighting and try to find an empty chair, because the joint is usually packed. A mostly African American crowd is decked out for the night in fancy hats, tuxedos, jackets, loose slacks, tight dresses, and…

“HE LIKES TO SIT AND drink and think.” That’s what one of Donald Judd’s interns told me about the New York artist, pioneer, and patron saint of Marfa’s contemporary art scene. We were standing by the bonfire, bagpipe song rolling over the Chihuahuan Desert. It was late winter in ’93, the year before Judd passed away, and I was a guest at one of the bonfires Judd regularly hosted at his Marfa art compound, The Chinati Foundation. He’d flown bagpipers in from Scotland; the burly, jolly Scotsmen in full kilt made a surreal contrast against the wide skies and pale grasses of this West Texas landscape. Even more surreal for me is the memory of Judd telling me why he likes bagpipes: They are, he said, the music that least…

KYLE BRANDS ITSELF THE PIE CAPITAL OF TEXAS, so it should come as no surprise that the southern suburb of Austin will celebrate all things pie Aug. 31-Sept. 2. Suspend your low-carb diet and purchase a sweet slice in the festival’s pie cafe as you watch hot air balloons glow on the ground at dusk on Friday and Saturday, and ascend at daybreak on Saturday and Sunday. The pie offerings extend into savory, with vendors also offering pizza and Frito pies in addition to fruit-filled pastries. Claim victory in the pie-eating contests, or resurrect Grandma’s recipe for the baking competition. On Saturday, the festival will attempt to break the Guinness World Record for the most people named Kyle in one location. kyletxpieinthesky.com BIG BEND COUNTRY ALPINE: Independencia de Mexico, Sept.…

I DON’T GO TRIPPIN’ to North Texas as much as I’d like to, so in the hopes of finding a new adventure I hopped on the highway and drove as far north as it would take me (without landing in Oklahoma). And what I found was Nocona, a fascinating town with a storied leatherworking tradition. 9 a.m. I cruised into historic downtown and noticed the New Orleansinspired architecture that gives this district a French flair. Among the shops, restaurants, and bars, I spotted the ruins of the factory where HJ Justin and Sons (founded in 1879), later known as Justin Boots, once made its world-famous footwear. Turns out that Nocona has been making handcrafted boots for longer than just about any other Texas town. 9:30 a.m. Across the street from…

SOMETIMES IT’S ALL IN THE PACKAGING: TELLING my 8- and 10-year-old children we’re going to spend an entire day looking at art isn’t likely to make their hearts leap—that would require a water slide or afternoon at their favorite arcade. But we’re lucky enough to be surrounded by dazzling, funky, and truly significant works of public art in Austin, available to anyone who takes the time to view them. Because these pieces reflect the diverse and quirky culture of our city, I was determined to create a window to take them in as a family. But I needed to get crafty. I decided to turn our trek into an art-inspired “scavenger hunt,” complete with questions, special notebooks and pens, and—here’s the key detail—a prize for full participation. Suddenly, my kids…

WALKING INTO OPA’S SMOKED MEATS IN FREDERICKSBURG IS A BIT LIKE stepping foot in your grandparents’ kitchen—especially if you call your grandparents oma and opa. Long shelves are curated with odds and ends like jars of red cabbage and bottles of vinegar, and beer steins sit next to faded drop horns, cast iron pans, and copies of The New German Cookbook. Every day, the staff sets out a large board of samples with cheese and meat, slices of sausage, and red bell peppers filled with zesty dips. Despite selling nearly 6 million pounds of slow-smoked German sausage every year, Opa’s remains a humble Hill Country smokehouse run by the same Fredericksburg family that founded it more than 70 years ago. The Opa’s story began in 1947 when Arno Schwethelm, a…

TEXAS’ HISTORIC COUNTY COURTHOUSES shine with grandiosity and ambition. Often politically controversial because of their expense, courthouse projects in the 19th and early 20th centuries lasted years as counties selected architects and builders, quarried and imported materials, then painstakingly assembled the larger-than-life landmarks in the middle of town. It’s not hard to imagine a farmer stopping by a courthouse construction site to take in the scene, scratching his head at the columns, parapets, and towers rising from the prairie. Sharon Fleming, director of the Texas Historical Commission’s Texas Historic Courthouse Preservation Program, notes the courthouse was often a community’s first architect-designed building. And counties placed them in the most prominent locations possible. “In large part, the county courthouse gives each county its own unique identity,” Fleming says. “It was intended…

THERE AREN’T ENOUGH SYNONYMS FOR “quaint” in describing Brenham, that rare landlocked town that feels like it should have a lighthouse. Arranged around an Art Deco courthouse which, built in 1939, is one of the newer buildings downtown, Brenham keeps history in its place. Once best known as the halfway point between Austin and Houston on US 290, this town of 17,000 on the Brazos River has increasingly become a destination in its own right with restaurants, shopping, wineries, sightseeing, bed-and-breakfast inns, and a vibe that mixes progressive attitudes with small-town charm. There’s much more to Brenham than bluebonnets and Blue Bell ice cream, though the former makes Washington County a spectacular springtime drive; and the latter’s creamery is still the favorite stop for tourists, who can watch dairy become…

LAWRENCE WRIGHT DOESN’T DO WELL WITH DOWNTIME. “I’m horrible, just horrible,” Wright says, lounging in his west Austin home. “I cannot stand not having something to do.” Along with restlessness comes a curiosity and commitment to deepdive into dangerous and labyrinthine subjects like terrorist organizations, the Church of Scientology, and the Satanic underground. That exacting combination has earned the author and staff writer for The New Yorker a year for the ages. Wright, 71, welcomed 2018 with the Hulu miniseries The Looming Tower, based on his 2007 Pulitzer Prize-winning book about Al-Qaeda and 9/11. Then came the world premiere of his play Cleo, about the love affair between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton during filming of the 1963 epic Cleopatra. Most recently, Wright played a key role in the acclaimed…