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The Forgotten Poets (and Unlikely Alliance) of Crystal CityIn Crystal City lie the remains of an enormous swimming pool. The circular structure, which stretched for 250 feet across and was originally an irrigation tank, was filled in long ago. Now all that remains is a field of cracked concrete, overgrown with grass and weeds parched by the South Texas sun, in this small town about two hours southwest of San Antonio. In the 1940s, the swimming pool was an oasis for the more than three thousand people of Japanese, German, Italian, and Latin American descent who were locked up at the Crystal City internment camp—up until the drowning of two Japanese Peruvian girls in 1944 imbued the spot with tragedy. I’m here, not far from a statue of Popeye guarding city hall, for…

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TCR Sea-Rim-State-Park-crabs-fishing-angler-Donny-Crane-Sabine-Pass-TexasAfter a career that took him around the globe, retired Navy veteran Donny Crain settled in his hometown of Sabine Pass. Crain spends much of his time at Sea Rim State Park, teaching others what he has come to learn—that the Texas Gulf Coast has some of best fishing in the entire world. See more in this dispatch from Texas Country Reporter.

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Former Aggie quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel watches from the Aggie sideline during the football game between the Louisiana Monroe Warhawks and Texas A&M Aggies at Kyle Field on September 16, 2023 in College Station, Texas.For most of the past several years, you would have had to be hanging out with some hardcore Aggies to hear Johnny Manziel’s name dropped in casual conversation. Over the past six months, though, the first freshman Heisman winner has been having a bit of a resurgence. Not on the football field—that part of his life is over—but as a media presence, Johnny F—ing Football is back. Last August, the Netflix documentary Untold: Johnny Football chronicled his rise, fall, further fall, and still further descent. The timing, though, was good. His College Station sports bar, Johnny Manziel’s Money Bar, was about to open, and the publicity didn’t hurt his attempt to get his financial situation sorted out after burning through some NFL cash. On Wednesday, Manziel’s…

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The Primary Race That MAGA Candidates Say is "America's Last Stand"Tony Gonzales is missing. That was the unmistakable theme of the Republican primary debate for the Twenty-third Congressional District, a polity larger than North Carolina that spans much of southwest Texas, in early February. The two-term congressman’s absence at his own public flaying was referenced twice before the start of the main event, held in San Antonio’s Aggie Park by hosts who theatrically refused to say his name aloud. First, Bexar County GOP chair Jeff McManus, wearing the blue suit–red tie combination favored by Donald Trump, expressed his profound disappointment in the “one person missing.” Then, platinum-haired moderator Kimi-Lyn Reed worked her way across the stage introducing each candidate before teasing Gonzales with a loaded “and . . . ,” trailing off and devolving into laughter. The crowd followed…

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Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

The Primary Race That MAGA Candidates Say is "America's Last Stand"Tony Gonzales is missing. That was the unmistakable theme of the Republican primary debate for the Twenty-third Congressional District, a polity larger than North Carolina that spans much of southwest Texas, in early February. The two-term congressman’s absence at his own public flaying was referenced twice before the start of the main event, held in San Antonio’s Aggie Park by hosts who theatrically refused to say his name aloud. First, Bexar County GOP chair Jeff McManus, wearing the blue suit–red tie combination favored by Donald Trump, expressed his profound disappointment in the “one person missing.” Then, platinum-haired moderator Kimi-Lyn Reed worked her way across the stage introducing each candidate before teasing Gonzales with a loaded “and . . . ,” trailing off and devolving into laughter. The crowd followed…

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Get in-depth coverage of news, reviews and conversations about Texas barbecue. It's basically Christmas every day for barbecue-lovers.

Wild Game on the Menu? You Might Have This Pioneering Texas Company to Thank for That.In Texas, native, hoofed ruminants—white-tailed and mule deer—are held in a public trust, meaning they are owned by the people of Texas. It is illegal to sell the meat of those animals in a restaurant, so if venison is on the menu, it is exotic—and probably from Broken Arrow Ranch.Established in the 1980s, Broken Arrow Ranch is headquartered in Ingram, in the Hill Country. The company sells blackbuck antelope, nilgai antelope, axis, and other game to more than eight hundred restaurants across the country. One of its notable clients is the French Laundry in Napa Valley, which has three Michelin stars.But the road to getting Texas’s wild game on menus has been a nearly one-hundred-year journey.In the early 1900s, Caesar Kleberg was a ranch foreman…

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Panther City BBQ smokersNew Year’s Day of 2024 was rough for Chris Magallanes. The co-owner of Panther City BBQ, in Fort Worth, received a call that morning from his son, Cristian, who’s also an employee of the barbecue joint, asking why their twin Moberg smokers that are mounted on a trailer, together worth about $30,000, weren’t parked outside the restaurant. Magallanes pulled up footage from a security camera and saw someone cutting the trailer lock at 5:12 that morning, then hitching it to a white van and driving away. “It’s hard enough to turn a profit, and when your equipment gets stolen,” Magallanes said, “that could put you under.”That’s why he and co-owner Ernest Morales had attached a GPS tracker to the trailer right after they purchased it.…

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What Does Religious Freedom Mean in Ken Paxton’s Texas?The borders of Ken Paxton’s vision of religious freedom became a little clearer this week when the attorney general sued Annunciation House, an independent Catholic immigrant ministry in El Paso. Claiming suspicions of “alien harboring, human smuggling, and operating a stash house,” on February 7 Paxton demanded the respite center’s documents regarding the identities and services rendered to the immigrants. Annunciation House asked for more time to seek counsel on whether any of the documents could legally be withheld. Paxton refused, so the migrant-aid group sued Paxton; now Paxton is suing Annunciation House to revoke its state license.In describing Annunciation House, Paxton’s press releases use the term “nongovernmental organization” (NGO), the term used most commonly to describe international relief agencies such as those that partner…

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Democrats keep campaigning on guns in Texas--how does it play?Given his often testy relationship with Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, the leader of the upper house of the Texas Legislature, it’s understandable that Roland Gutierrez, a Democratic state senator, felt especially uncomfortable when he couldn’t control his emotions in Patrick’s presence. Days after the May 2022 mass shooting in Uvalde, which falls within Gutierrez’s sprawling district, the state senator found himself in Patrick’s office, pleading for at least some small step toward gun control. Gutierrez had recently signed a nondisclosure agreement that allowed him to view police body cam footage of what he could only describe as kids being “mutilated.” One image in particular, of a little girl whose face was shot off, being dragged out of a classroom, was seared into Gutierrez’s brain. The…

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sepia-toned photo of Luther Hotel in 1910The 121-year-old Luther Hotel, in Palacios, looked spooky enough to star in a horror flick. When I visited in mid-January, the bottom-floor windows were boarded shut, and the white paint on its cypress facade was peeling in stripes that stretched the length of the structure’s east and west wings. Weeds grew tall around its broad lawn, which hadn’t been mown since the hotel closed its doors in July 2022. The interior, I would soon discover, was worse.I was there with local retirees Margaret Doughty and Edith Gower, who cofounded the all-volunteer Palacios Preservation Association to save the Luther and find an investor who will restore it. “You cannot tear down something that has such a remarkable history,” Gower told me. The Luther holds the story…

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