Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2020 i Texas Highways Magazine

East Texas rewards the slow traveler. Unlike West Texas, where vast distances and remote landscapes require planning ahead, East Texas reveals itself most fully to the unconstrained wanderer. The divine is in the details. We took our first East Texas trip as a family last March. My husband and I were looking for a spring break vacation away from the beach crowds and wanted to pick a location that would allow for an unhurried pace. We made sure to purchase tickets for the Texas State Railroad ahead of time for our train-loving 4-year-old boy, but we kept the rest of our plans loose. Since having kids, I don’t know that I’ve taken a trip where nearly every day wasn’t meticulously scheduled. It’s a much more enjoyable way to travel, and…

Tim Bryant became a bookstore owner somewhat by accident. In 2010, around the time he published his first novel, Dutch Curridge, he owned a T-shirt shop in Nacogdoches called The Runaway Mule. The store was named for a famed incident in 1910 when a runaway mule up-staged a Marx Brothers performance at a local theater, prompting Groucho Marx to make up a ditty with this chorus: “Nacog-doches is full of roaches.” Bryant had to explain the title of his store so often that he eventually printed the story on cards he handed to customers. The T-shirt business was serviceable, but Bryant, always sporting a porkpie hat, began to do well selling copies of his book at the shop. Soon, other East Texas authors were asking him to carry their books.…

“If there were a Sasquatch in Texas, he’d be here,” says Angie, a tour guide at Johnson’s Ranch Marina in Uncertain, as she steers a mud boat through the cypress-draped misty waters of Caddo Lake. “But there are some great hunters around here, so he’d probably end up mounted on somebody’s wall.” The lore around Sasquatch in these parts of East Texas is so compelling that for some, the furry, hulking creature also known as Bigfoot is as good as real. At the Shady Glade Cafe in nearby Karnack, a popular greasy spoon with a boat dock on the edge of Caddo Lake, diners can dig into a 16-ounce bacon-topped Sasquatch Burger on a jalapeño bun with fries for $13.99 while admiring Sasquatch décor, like a sign that cautions: “Please…

In the February drabness of bare-branched hardwoods, frothy white flowers burst from small thorny trees deep in the understory of the East Texas Piney Woods. Generations of families have noted their locations—sometimes flagging the trees with orange tape, ribbon, or twine—to be able to find the trees again once the canopy leafed out. For by May, the white blossoms of these trees will become clusters of firm red berries called mayhaws. They’ve been prized since antebellum times as a source for syrup, wine, and especially jelly—similar in flavor to tart apple, but with a sassy, wild kick. Found across the Deep South and only north and east of the Trinity River in Texas, these thorny hawthorn trees traditionally grow around nearly impenetrable soupy hardwood bogs called “baygalls”—smaller, and often shallower,…

The Texas Historical Commission’s database of Rosenwald Schools has identified 39 extant buildings—seven listed on the National Register of Historic Places—including schools in Lockhart, Cedar Creek, Pleasant Hill, De Kalb, Wolfe City, Beeville, and Seguin. Two of the former schools—both covered in this story—have been converted into museums. (thc.texas.gov/rosenwald) Annie E. Colbert/Rosenwald School Museum, 231 S. Colbert St. in Dayton, is open the third Saturday of each month 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Plans for a Black History Month event in February were pending at press time. Call Frosty Pruitt, 936-391-0720; facebook.com/Colbert.Rosenwald Columbia Rosenwald School, 247 E. Brazos Ave. in West Columbia, is open Thu-Sat 10 a.m.-2 p.m. Tours available for groups of 10 or more. On Saturdays in February, the school will host events with speakers and music in honor of…

The Crow Museum of Asian Art of the University of Texas at Dallas has celebrated the art and culture of Asia for more than 20 years. That mission is demonstrated annually through the museum’s signature event, the Chinese New Year Festival. The party takes place a full month later than the Western New Year, on Feb. 1, and caters to the area’s increasing diversity. According to the Greater Dallas Asian American Chamber of Commerce, Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial group in the Dallas area and make up nearly 19% of the suburb of Plano’s population. Un-surprisingly, the Crow Museum’s extravaganza has expanded as well. “Now, multiple generations of the Asian and greater Dallas community have grown up celebrating with the Crow Museum as a family,” says Caroline Kim, the…

The mixed-media artist Trenton Doyle Hancock stands in-side his cluttered warehouse studio, in the Acres Homes neighborhood of Houston. He is flipping through drawings of the graphic novel he began creating a couple of years ago while living in Berlin. It’s a customarily hot summer day, with no A/C, and beads of sweat form on his bespectacled face as he explains the storyline for Chapter 2: something totally outlandish and impossible to follow, yet deeply felt and mesmerizing to hear, about veganism as a form of religion. The graphic novel is a deep-dive into Torpedo Boy, the Mounds, and other characters Hancock uses to play out morality tales in his artworks. In addition to drawing and painting, he’s dipped into opera (Cult of Color: Call to Color, a collaboration with…

I t’s easy to bypass Shankleville, an East Texas community with no business district or convenience store. But what it lacks in stature, Shankleville makes up for in heritage—a proud history that resident Phillip White calls an “enduring love story.” White traces his ancestry to the town’s founders, Jim and Winnie Shankle, an African American couple originally from Mississippi. When Winnie was sold to a Texas slave owner in the mid-1800s, Jim escaped and fled after her, swimming across the Mississippi River and traveling nearly 400 miles. The two reunited, and after emancipation, they settled this farming community of freed slaves. Today, Shankleville numbers no more than 100 people, but it got a burst of national attention last year when Michael Strahan, the retired football star and TV personality, discovered…

Absolutely Fiction Despite its name, this bookstore, opened in 2016, sells nonfiction volumes as well. Owner Becky Jackson, a former librarian and chain bookstore employee, is especially proud of the children’s books collection, which is the largest section in the store. “I love selling kids’ books because they’re up-and-coming readers,” she said. 903 S. Redditt Drive, Lufkin. 936-639-4143; absolutelyfiction.com The Blind Pig Manager Christina Meek describes the store, opened in 2019, as a “modern-day speakeasy,” with books in the front and a bar in the back. There are used books of all genres, plus the store hosts various events, such as trivia night, kid’s readings, and open mic shows. 129 S. Main St., Paris. 903-231-5122; the-blind-pig-book-store. business.site The Bookstore in Kilgore This house turned law office turned bookstore nestled next…

Approaching the East Texas hamlet of Carthage, I tune the car radio to KGAS-FM, which broadcasts country music, farm shows, and local news. It sets the mood for a spring weekend in the Piney Woods. “People ask, ‘Is this more of the West than the South, or the other way around?” says Tommie Ritter Smith, president and CEO of Carthage’s Texas Country Music Hall of Fame and the Tex Ritter Museum. “The answer to both is yes.” That’s not surprising. Carthage is the seat of Panola County, which borders Louisiana. And cotton—the historic crop of the old South—dominated the economy before natural gas displaced it. Here you’ll find Panola College’s rodeo team training under the pines, and menus offering boudin and brisket side by side. During my weekend of exploring…

A grassy park on the bank of the Houston Ship Channel marks a monumental moment in Texas history—though it’s easy to miss it if you don’t stop to read the fine print. Tankers, trucks, trains, and pipelines converge in an orderly swarm on the petrochemical refineries that line the channel today. But 183 years ago, Texas soldiers presented a captive Antonio López de Santa Anna to General Sam Houston here, one day after the Texans’ triumph over Mexican troops in the Battle of San Jacinto. Propped against an oak tree in the Texas Army’s camp and nursing a musket-ball wound to his ankle, Houston resisted his men’s thirst for blood revenge. Though outraged over the massacre of Texas rebels in the preceding weeks at the Alamo and Goliad, Houston opted…

In the tiny foyer of Monica Cobb’s namesake restaurant in Beaumont, a chalkboard sign reads: “No matter where you go in life … one thing you can count on is being greeted with food. That’s the strength in our cultural connection. We honor this path and we honor you.” Cobb speaks from experience—she’s traversed the globe in pursuit of international flavors and diverse cooking gigs for more than 20 years. She brings what she’s learned to Monica’s Restaurant, which opened in 2016 and serves dishes based on the many cultures that influence southeast Texas, from Vietnamese to Cajun to Italian. For example, her Bahn Mon sandwiches—inspired by the Vietnamese/French banh mi—are served on bolillos (rolls) from nearby Ana’s Mexican Bakery. One variety is stuffed with broiled Gulf shrimp, soy aioli,…

Few Texas heroes are as revered as Davy Crockett, the coon-skin-cap-wearing, rifle-swinging, fiddle-playing frontiersman from Tennessee who built his legend in the Lone Star State. The East Texas town of Crockett bears his name and tells some amazing stories about him. Throw in a little music and a whole lot of nature, and you’ve got a day trip that’s sure to quench your thirst for adventure. David Crockett Spring No trip to Crockett is complete without a stop at the town’s namesake spring. Davy stopped here on his way to the Alamo and took the most famous sip of water in Texas history. A mural and marker commemorate the occasion. I’m pretty sure the municipal water fountain wasn’t there in the 1830s. Nonetheless, visitors can retrace Davy’s steps and quench…

Some say that deep in the East Texas woods, where the muddy Sabine River flows, there dwells a creature called the Goat Man. This furry, hoofed denizen of the dark woods lives under a swinging bridge, where he sates his taste for human flesh on unsuspecting passersby. Or so went the legend when I was young, and perhaps that legend has played out now. Kids run the river and woods less, and spend minimal time beneath the swaying shadows of the pines and hardwood trees that once grew thick for miles. Stories grow not only out of the available environment, but also the use of the environment, so perhaps due to the lack of attention to the Goat Man’s world, he has ceased to exist. Almost as mythical are the…