Innholdsfortegnelse for December 2022 i Texas Highways Magazine

Like many acclaimed authors before him, Edward Carey found that moving away from his homeland gifted him the freedom to write about it in a way he wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. Born in North Walsham, England, Carey has lived in Austin for the past 12 years. While he spends most of his time in the capital city, where he teaches at the University of Texas’ New Writers Project and Michener Center for Writers, he has traveled to some of the state’s most remote destinations for previous Texas Highways assignments. Of his trips to the ghost town of Terlingua and the forests of Big Thicket National Preserve, he says, “I felt I was falling off the world, and it was both troubling and liberating.” For his fourth illustrated story…

Great to see the elusive chile pequin finally receive the attention it deserves. This venerable pepper has long been a secret weapon for Texas chili cooks. A chosen few chomp away and embrace the heat. Neophytes are in for quite a surprise. Steve St. John, Plano Chile Pequin Here in the middle of Texas we call them turkey peppers because the turkeys eat them [“Some Like It Hot,” October]. James N. Mann, Eastland Cemetery Tourism I really enjoyed the article about cemeteries [“The Last Time Anyone Says Your Name,” October]. I grew up spending time in cemeteries connecting the generations. Mike Woods, Krum Haunted Monteleone’s Took my kids one time and they were too scared to go all the way into the restaurant [“Dining With the Dead,” October]. @7notwanderglittergold7 Family…

The tagline for the American Windmill Museum in Lubbock is “Walk Among the Giants,” which is ironic considering some of the most impressive structures on display inside the 66,000-square-foot space are itty-bitty. The towering wooden and metal wind machines collected from across the globe are worth a visit. There are 200 on display and more in storage. But peer into the museum’s permanent collection of diminutive dollhouses measuring from 6 inches to 3 feet tall, with leopard print bathrooms and wee greenhouses, and you’ll discover the imagination of local artist Alta Reeds. A bright pink and blue sign reading Miniatures by Alta Reeds hangs inside the museum. “You don’t expect to see a neon sign with your name on it, but when you’re in the museum you can’t help but…

Driving west from Fort Worth into the rolling, woodsy hills known as the Palo Pinto Mountains, visitors to Mineral Wells see the behemoth Baker Hotel well before entering the city limits. A beacon since its 1929 opening, the 14-story Spanish Colonial Revival beauty hosted vacationers during Mineral Wells’ glory days as a resort in the ’30s to ’50s. Celebrities such as Judy Garland, Clark Gable, Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, Marlene Dietrich, and Lawrence Welk flocked to the Baker to drink the local well water and soak in mineral baths, which were thought to alleviate everything from rheumatism to dementia. The Baker hasn’t hosted a guest since it shuttered 50 years ago, but an ongoing renovation has already inspired new economic activity downtown. While a group of investors works to debut…

The Gault School of Archaeological Research hopes to open the Gault Site to the public someday, but for now it’s only accessible through guided tours. To schedule a tour with the Gault School of Archaeological Research in Austin, visit gaultschool.org. At the Bell County Museum in Belton, the exhibit Gault Site: A Wealth of New Archaeological Evidence covers the site’s history and culture with murals, artifacts, and a film. 254-933-5243; bellcountymuseum.org At The Williamson Museum in Georgetown, the Tech in Ancient Texas exhibit presents technology from flintknapping to contemporary imaging. 512-943-1670; williamsonmuseum.org Monthly guided tours of the Gault Site are offered on alternating months by the Bell County Museum and The Williamson Museum. The tours start at 9 a.m. and last about three hours. Cost is $10 per person; children 10…

When writer Luis Rendon traded Laredo for New York City, he knew he was leaving some long-held customs behind. He returned to his childhood home to write “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” (Page 40), which explores classic holiday traditions in Mexican American households. The experience reminded him of what he’d been missing. “I could never have enough tamales,” he reminisces. “The best part was waking up on Christmas morning and heating up the leftover tamales from the night before on the comal so they’d be nice and crispy.” Rendon appreciated the break from the commercialism of a New York Christmas. “There’s a definite romance to all of that,” he says, “but I’m happy to give that up to have a great night in my parents’ backyard with family.”…

One of Big Bend National Park’s most spectacular landmarks, Santa Elena Canyon extends 7 miles along the Rio Grande border of Texas and Mexico. The river cuts a gorge through thick limestone mesas, creating sheer walls that soar more than 1,000 feet above the water. Dallas-based photographer Sean Fitzgerald was hiking the Santa Elena Canyon Trail, exploring the end of the canyon near Terlingua Creek on a sunny late December day, when he captured this image. “The water was super clear at the time, but I didn’t really see the blue sky until I waded out into the river and looked down at the reflection,” Fitzgerald says. “That’s one of the things I love about Big Bend. It always reveals itself in a new way the more time you spend…

CHRISTMAS MOUNTAINS VIA TERLINGUA RANCH LODGE 16000 Terlingua Ranch Road, Terlingua. 432-371-3146; terlinguaranch.com At least three stories persist about how the Christmas Mountains in West Texas got their name. In one version, a cowboy working a lonely cattle camp in the late 1880s celebrated Christmas Day by exploring the range. A separate account attributes the name to a survey crew that spent Christmas in the mountains as they traversed the region in the early 1900s. A third legend from the same era holds that a family went camping in the range one summer and didn’t return home until Dec. 25. Whatever the case, the quirky appellation is one of many intriguing aspects of the Christmas Mountains, a jagged range abutting the northwestern boundary of Big Bend National Park. Known for…

The annual holiday celebration Merry Wells begins Thanksgiving week with a festival and lighted parade, along with the debut of an outdoor ice-skating rink that will stay open for a month. Throughout the season, the city and local shops and businesses decorate to make revelers feel like they’ve landed in a Hallmark Christmas movie. A driving tour to see holiday décor runs through the month of December, and related annual events include a Frosty 5K race and the progressive drink-and-snack party called the Santa Crawl. visitmineralwells.org…

THE FIRST PERSON WE SAW UPON entering The Strand in Galveston was Charles Dickens. It was an early December afternoon in 2021, and this was something of a shock, as Dickens died in 1870. On closer inspection, the beard of this Dickens, not the famous English writer, may perhaps have been a little overwaxed, and he was perhaps a little short. But even so, there was the fellow in the flesh still in his old Victorian togs. How else would we know him? I refuse to fathom Dickens in a Stetson. Something strange was happening: Dickens was being interviewed for a local television station. We said to our-selves, Let it be true; Dickens has come back to us. My teenage son, Gus, and I had traveled from Austin to Dickens on…

The tiny, early-to-rise Panhandle town of Slaton runs on the fresh-brewed coffee and just-baked breakfast pastries from the historic Slaton Bakery. Employees arrive before dawn to whip up assorted doughnuts, kolaches, muffins, and more by 6 a.m., when doors open. “Our town’s pretty blue collar, so a lot of them are getting started early,” says Chad Wilson, who owns the bakery with his parents, Sherrell and Robin Wilson. First come the farmers, then the hungry schoolkids and their parents, followed by regulars who enjoy sandwiches on house-made bread in the bakery’s small dining room. From sunrise to 6 p.m., the bakery bustles with locals and tourists—Chad has counted visitors from every state and 50 countries—who have kept it running for nearly a century. Slaton Bakery resides across the street from…

Head to downtown Brownsville these days and the area is almost unrecognizable compared to just a few years ago. Once-vacant storefronts of old buildings are now home to an assortment of locally owned bars and restaurants. People gather around the historic Market Square—a one-block area that served as an open air market years before the city was even a city—for community events, shopping, dining, and performances. In an area of the Rio Grande Valley that some locals say has been neglected too long, a new generation of Brownsville natives is working to revitalize their hometown. Beloved establishments like the city’s 100-year-old Rutledge Hamburgers and Vera’s Backyard-Bar-B-Que—known for its underground pit-smoked barbacoa—are joined by an array of newcomers seeking to make downtown a lively, welcoming space for the community. Part of…

Most Nativity stories include the typical cast of characters: Mary, Joseph, the infant Jesus, three wise men, sheep, donkeys, camels, and a manger in a stable in Bethlehem. But in 1961, playwright and activist Langston Hughes wrote the musical Black Nativity, which tells the Nativity story with gospel music, song and dance, a Biblical narrative, and an all-Black cast. From Dec. 1-18, the Bishop Arts Theatre Center in Dallas will perform its own rendition of the musical performance. The theater’s annual performance of Black Nativity features a new director each year, meaning audiences see a brand-new show each season. “Langston wrote it for interpretation, so any director can come in and fill in the blanks that Langston couldn’t—or create an entirely different vision, if they wish,” says Albert Wash II,…

Sam Sanders’ popularity as a radio and podcast journalist is driven by his insightful takes on news and culture delivered in an engaging, eminently listenable style. Though his on-air career—first as an NPR reporter and producer, and then as a host of the NPR talk show It’s Been a Minute with Sam Sanders—came with barely a hint of Texas twang, Sanders attributes his style in part to his childhood in Texas. “Growing up a Texan, you learn how to have a certain kind of kindness and charm and warmth with new people that translates into a very clear interview skill,” he says. “So much of the work in these interviews is getting folks comfortable with you enough to really open up.” Born in New Braunfels, Sanders lived in Seguin, Converse,…