Al Reinert

Cool, clear, and pure, it’s the bounty of the Edwards Aquifer, and if something isn’t done to limit pumping by Hill Country farmers and a thirsty San Antonio, it may also be dry.

True Confessions On Wednesday, August 1, 1973, the La Grange Chicken Ranch, the Oldest Continually Operating Non-Floating Whorehouse in the United States, was closed down. The Texas Chamber of Commerce elected to ignore the passage of an establishment possibly older than all its members; and the State Historical Society, equally misfeasant, overlooked the shuttering of the house that slept more politicians than the Driskill Hotel and the Governor’s Mansion combined. You all know about the…

This article appears in our February 2019 “Love Letters to Texas” collector’s issue. Subscribe today. Frantically squealing and moo­ing, as if somehow aware of their destination, two cows and four calves lurch and bounce through an August Monday morning in the trailer towed by J. B. Haisler’s half-ton Chevy pickup. The cows are ten and twelve years old, the calves about five months, and none has ever before left the cozy 230-acres of pasture that now lie fifty traumatic miles behind them. The c…

Five minutes away from 6:30 p.m., eastern standard time, three of the four seats in the CBS News control room are still empty. In the occupied seat, a tall, gaunt quiet man of about 50—the chief engineer, formerly known as the technical director—confronts a flashing yard-square panel of buttons, switches, and erratic meters. There seem to be over a hundred pulsing, mysterious buttons between his outstretched arms, and he appears very intent upon them. The engineer and his panel sit to the far le…

An Astrofable The county commissioner was positively indignant at the way everybody, particularly the news media, kept calling the new county facility by the wrong name. “The county built it and the county paid for it,” he loudly complained to a packed hearing room, “and, dammit, the county owns it!” Growing purplish, the commissioner blustered that “People by God ought to start calling it by its right name: The Harris County Domed Stadium!!” “Well,” soothed the agreeable Judge, “you can call it…

This night life ain’t no good life, But it’s my life.” * Willie Nelson wrote “Night Life” more than fifteen years ago—before he’d even moved to Nashville let alone returned—and sold it for $150. Of all the songs he’s written—literally hundreds, including some great ones—it’s probably been recorded by the most performers, more than seventy at last count, ranging from B. B. King to Rusty Draper to Frank Sinatra. A classic barroom lament, the sadly proud confession of a loner’s desperation, it touc…

Politically, 1974 is shaping up as a momentous year: the President is in hot water, what James Madison called “the decisive engine of impeachment” is being cranked up for the first time in a century, and this fall’s elections promise the greatest congressional shake-up in a generation. All of which helps account for the cataclysmic rhetoric and hyperbolic journalism currently emanating from Washington. In the midst of all that, though, as ever, arms are being twisted and egos crushed in the back…

Featuring “The Big Thicket Tangle,” “1973: The Ten Best (and, Sigh, the Ten Worst) Legislators,” “Sam Houston, Warts and All” and more stories from across the state of Texas.

One morning in June of last year, Houston defense attorney Jack Carroll arrived preoccupied at Harris County’s 338th District Criminal Court. He had never appeared before the court’s presiding judge, Brock Thomas, and he needed to ask for a continuance. As he waited for his client to be brought in, he ignored the disheveled woman in jail orange waving frantically at him, trying to get his attention.The woman was Ana Lilia Trujillo, who was on her way to becoming the most notorious accused murder…