Texas Monthly October 2020

THE TEXANS ARE COMING (TO COLORADO)! After months of sheltering in place, many are getting restless and seeking cooler climes. The solution? For more and more Texas travelers, Allison McNearney writes, it’s a road trip to Colorado. COVID-19 HAS TEXAS PARENTS TURNING TO HOMESCHOOLING Some parents fear that their children will be exposed to COVID-19. Others are disappointed by schools’ plans for virtual learning. Many of them, Courtney Runn reports, are unenrolling their children from public school and homeschooling them. CAN A HIGH-TECH KIOSK ADDRESS A HEALTH-CARE CRISIS IN MILAM COUNTY? A thermal camera, a remote-controlled stethoscope, sanitizing via ultraviolet light: Texas A&M University researchers are hoping the tech in this telehealth station can help fill the healthcare gap left after Milam County’s two hospitals closed in 2018. What remains to be seen, Jason Heid…

One of my favorite novelists, Richard Price, observed that when you circle around a killing long enough, “you get to know a city.” Another of my favorite writers, Texas Monthly executive editor Skip Hollandsworth, agrees and cites as a prime example the cover story he wrote for this issue. “Tom Brown’s Body” is set in the Panhandle town of Canadian. When a popular high school student disappeared in 2016, many residents joined the search on foot and horseback. But four years on, with the case still unsolved, Skip notes, much of the town has devolved into “finger-pointing and baseless accusations, setting neighbor against neighbor.” This story is so full of twists that we’re publishing it in installments across three consecutive print issues, in smaller bites on our website, and as a…

“YOUR BEACHCOMBING ADVENTURE [WAS] EXACTLY THE TYPE OF ESCAPIST EXPERIENCE THAT I NEEDED.… IF YOU ARE EVER LOOKING FOR A WALKING PARTNER FOR YOUR NEXT MIDLIFE CRISIS, I’LL BE AVAILABLE.” Sheller in Place Having just returned from my vacation on South Padre Island, I was pleasantly surprised to read David Courtney’s adventures walking the length of the island [“The Beachcomber,” August 2020]. I too developed my fondness for the beach from my childhood excursions with my parents and family friends. As Courtney ambled along, I could feel an almost spiritual coexistence he had with the coast, a feeling many of us beach lovers share. I am most envious of his encounters with seagulls, egrets, herons, and my favorite birds, pelicans. The yearning to return has me wondering: Does Courtney need a buddy…

A million years ago, otherwise known as early March—when the prospect of hopping on a bicycle didn’t require a plan for disinfectant and social distancing—I drove to Palmetto State Park, near Gonzales, with my husband and a friend. We paid our entrance fee, parked the car, and climbed onto our bikes, pedaling south of the park on FM 2091 for a mile before turning onto a network of gravel roads. We rolled past chicken farms, fields of wildflowers, and barking dogs. We chugged north over a rusty iron bridge, then looped back toward the park, stopping to chat with a very vocal donkey, and checked out the old warm springs in Ottine. For more than thirty miles, only a handful of motorists passed us. ¶ For me, that’s the appeal…

BASTROP For a mostly gravel, 35-mile spin through pine groves and rolling farmland northeast of Bastrop State Park, ride Gotier Trace and Antioch roads toward Paige. LULING-GONZALES Begin your relatively flat, 38-mile cruise at Palmetto State Park, crossing the San Marcos River via the Slayden Bridge. Wind your way to Harwood parallel to Interstate 10 before turning back on County Road 230. PALESTINE In East Texas, the undulating El Camino 105 route (so named for its 105 miles, although it’s actually 107) through Grapeland, Latexo, and Mission Tejas State Park intersects an old Spanish and Indigenous trade route. WEST TEXAS At Big Bend National Park, bike Old Maverick Road from the Maverick Junction entrance station to Santa Elena Canyon, about 14 miles each way. The improved dirt road cuts through the Terlingua Creek…

On the last day of March, a sign went up on the door at Prause Meat Market, in La Grange. The historic barbecue joint and market would be closed temporarily, it said, as a response to the pandemic. But despite what they were telling customers, the family felt like it might be the end for the business, which was deep into its fourth generation. ¶ Many residents of the town of about 4,600 people, which sits between Austin and Houston, had probably assumed Prause Meat Market would always be there. Sure, it wasn’t a secret that the market had been for sale since 2013. But the Prause family had processed and sold fresh meat in town for more than a century, and it was hard to imagine they would ever…