East Texas

One of Those Syrupy Thanksgiving Tales

Sunny Day

Cover Story: Heads You Lose, Tails You Lose

One of Those Syrupy Thanksgiving Tales

Here Comes the Black

Barbecue in Black and White

Carving the racism out of Texas barbecue mythology

The King Catfish Ranch

If you're looking for shining examples of the local indigenous cuisine while driving Highway 59 through East Texas and you've already had your fill of barbecue then its time to pull over for some catfish. I purchased this fried catfish dinner with cole slaw, french fries, odd cylindrical hush puppie ... More >>

Greater Houston's Greatest Pits

Ten of the best old-fashioned barbecue pits within a one-hour drive of downtown Houston

The Art of Smoke

Technology has changed the nature of barbecue. But deep in the heart of Texas, a few true artists still cling to the old ways. We go in search of greater Houston's greatest pits.

Best Barbecue Restaurant

Drexler's Bar-B-Que

Strings Attached

Will Linden move on to become a music mecca or fall beneath the weight of a racist past?

Best Place to Buy an Engagement Ring

A.A. Benjamin

A Dozen Brisket Sandwiches

The best black East Texas barbecue within an hour of downtown

Best Barbecue

Thelma's Bar-B-Que

War Dance

Alabama-Coushatta Indians are shedding their passive ways in big bets on land claims and casinos. But some fear they could be gambling away their great tribal heritage.

Calendar Editor Shoots Up

Shooting people is fun

Dewberry Season

For a couple of weeks in May, the wild blackberries known as dewberries are ripe in East Texas. The right-of-ways alongside railroad tracks are a good place to pick the intensely flavored blackberries. You also can buy them on the side of the road. The intersection of Highway 290 and Highway 6 jus ... More >>

Road Trip!

Break the summer monotony at one of these out-of-the-way destinations.

Superthief

Joshua Paul Calhoun likes to take things...BIG things

The Great East Texas Ten-Ton Oil Pump Heist

​On one hand, you have to tip your John Deere hat and salute this little feat of deep East Texas Redneck ingenuity and derring-do. On the other hand, you just have to wonder WTF they were thinking.The Web site of Jasper radio station KJAS picks up the tale: According to Jasper County Deputy Mike ... More >>

Houston Press MasterMinds Awards: Money For Artists

​For the second year in a row, the Houston Press is on the prowl for artists, innovators and entrepreneurs who are changing our creative and cultural landscape.And we need your help.If you know of one of these life-changing artistic types -- if you are one yourself -- please tell us. From all th ... More >>

Pit Bull Puppies, A Toddler & Injuries: The Debate Continues

​A newspaper report out of East Texas probably isn't going to do wonders for changing the vicious image normally associated with pit bulls. From the Tyler Morning Telegraph:Police and animal control officers continue an investigation Tuesday into an attack involving the child, who suffered major i ... More >>

The Shameless Chef: Emergency Chicken 'n' Dumplins

Yet another dish that will be possible to cook during / after the Apocalypse.​Today's dish centers on a concept that might be difficult to understand if you've never experienced a certain sensation: once you've had good, Southern chicken 'n' dumplins, sometimes you will wake up needing them. " ... More >>

Fried Green Tomatoes at Home

Photo by kate e. did​In my mind, the summer months in Texas are inextricably tangled up with one food above all others: tomatoes. Growing up, we had a dish of sliced tomatoes with nearly every single meal during the summer. Breakfast, lunch and dinner, the bright, ruby slices were consumed as ... More >>

Deep In The Piney Woods, A Big-Ass Pot Farm Grew

Don't give these two any ideas​Police say they typically find a couple of hundred pot plants when they raid an outdoor growing operation. This is Texas. Everything's bigger here, including the pot farms.Hunters sprucing up their deer blinds in darkest East Texas made a startling discovery Sunday - ... More >>

The 5 Most Underrated Vegetables

Photo by norwichnutsChayote-jicama slaw in tortillas.​With fall headed our way, one of my favorite things to do in cooler temperatures is to roast vegetables. Breakfast, lunch or dinner; it doesn't matter. Heating up my old oven long enough to roast sweet potatoes or brussels sprouts isn't suc ... More >>

Jacob Thompson: $20 Gets You A Tat And Minor Surgery (Allegedly)

Jacob Thompson: The doctor is in​Not many of us would confuse James "Jacob" Thompson with a medical doctor, but to an unidentified 16-year-old East Texas woman, the fact that the Groveton man was something of a tattoo artist was qualification enough for her to ask him to perform minor surger ... More >>

Chinese Tallow Trees Continue East Texas Takeover

An example of a Chinese tallow tree​The Texas Parks & Wildlife Department says the invasive Chinese Tallow tree is getting more and more of a grip in East Texas. The tree, which can hinder plant diversity, has seen its numbers grow 174 percent in a 15-year period ending in 2007, TPWD says. T ... More >>

Jacob Thompson: Cops Drop Illegal Doctoring Charge Against East Texas Tattoo Artist

Photos courtesy Angelina County JailThompson and Zylstra: Wow...just...wow​Last month, we brought you the tale of James "Jacob" Thompson, the 23-year-old East Texas tattoo artist accused of accepting a $20 fee for both illegally tattooing and surgically removing a birth control implant from th ... More >>

Google Street View Lawsuit: Texas Gets In On The Action

According to a federal lawsuit, Google stole private information in Texas when it was collecting data for Street View. ​An East Texas attorney has filed a class action lawsuit against Google, claiming the company illegally stole data from Wi-Fi networks while collecting data for Google Maps Street ... More >>

Manuel Lopez-Mendoza: Guilty In Brazen Attempted Heist Of Giant Pink Bunny

A giant pink rabbit in a pick-up truck. In Lufkin, of course​Thieves around the world are often noted for their sleight of hand, their ability to conceal what is not theirs and spirit it away to a place of safe-keeping undetected. Some are true masters of the art. Fifty-year-old Manuel Lopez- ... More >>

The Ten Oddest Crimes Of 2010, Southeast Texas Style

Hard as it may be to believe, the criminal element of Southeast Texas did dumb and weird things in 2010, continuing a tradition that dates back to the creation of Southeast Texas. Here are ten of the oddest and dumbest: 10. Two former EMS employees in Santa Fe were arrested after they allegedly p ... More >>

Jasper's Hidden Past: Terrific Vintage Photos of Black Life

Alonzo Jordan/Texas African-American Photo Archive​The New York Times has a great slideshow up now called "The Hidden Half of an East Texas Town" featuring photos of black life in Jasper back in the pre-Civil Rights era. They come from a new exhibit at the International Center for Photography ... More >>

UFOs in East Texas: The Compelling Video That Will Make You Believe

UFOs, as all perceptive scientists know, do most of the F-ing in the rural portions of the world. Something about supple farmer ass just begs for an anal probe, we guess. We don't judge. Here in Texas, the western part of the state gets its fair share of UFO claims, but we prefer the East Texas kin ... More >>

Cleveland Gang-Rape Story: Times's Ombudsman Says It Was Flawed

In-house criticism over the East Texas gang-rape coverage​The New York Times's ombudsman has joined the chorus criticizing the paper's coverage of the Cleveland gang-rape of an 11-year-old girl. Arthur S. Brisbane noted that many people thought the story leaned towards blaming the victim and ... More >>

The New York Times Takes Another Shot at the Cleveland Gang-Rape Story

Take two​Last Sunday, Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, noted in his column that the paper's original story on the horrific Cleveland gang rape was a "ham-handed article that led some readers to think we were blaming the 11-year-old victim." He said "the only way to make am ... More >>

Comment of the Day: Oh, East Texas

​We have some great commenters here on Hair Balls, and it's time we paid some damn attention to them. So we'll be highlighting a Comment of the Day each morning, from the previous day's work. Maybe two comments, even. This will all be determined by a highly rigorous scientific formula involv ... More >>

ATF, Military Called Out To Defuse East Texas Sparkler Bomb

San Augustine County JailHeather Horn: Desperate terrorist​Two young East Texas women -- 25-year-old Candice Harris and 29-year-old Heather Horn, both of Bronson, Texas -- are charged with felonies after authorities caught them earlier this week with what they are branding as dangerous incendi ... More >>

Blake Broadway: Fear And Loathing in Lufkin Vegas

Blake Broadway probably doesn't look like Johnny Depp, either​"The trunk of the car looked like a mobile police narcotics lab," wrote Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. "We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a ... More >>

Man Drags Huge Propane Tank Behind Bumper Down East Texas Highway

Wages of Fear, East Texas style.​There's an old East Texas joke that goes something like this: A few years back, Chevy started installing black boxes in the cabs of their pickup trucks so they could learn something about how fatal crashes occurred. In 49 American states, the last thing they ... More >>

This Week in Deliciousness

Calamari is delicious but sad. Just think of all the many-armed hugs that squid will never give.​Welcome back to the weekly roundup here at Eating Our Words, where, thanks to our new Gelatin Piranha™ we bought off of a late-night infomercial, we can now gelatinize an entire cow in under four ... More >>

Comment of the Day: Preachers Raping Children

​We have some great commenters here on Hair Balls, and it's time we paid some damn attention to them. So we'll be highlighting a Comment of the Day each morning, from the previous day's work. Maybe two comments, even. This will all be determined by a highly rigorous scientific formula involv ... More >>

The Five Best (& Five Worst) Stretches of Texas Highway

Scenic routes, and others​Texas has some beautiful stretches of highway, and it has some where you just want to pluck out your eyeballs. Truth be told -- if you take out the urban panoramas of strip malls and national franchises -- there's probably more of the former than the latter. Let's l ... More >>

Ray's Drive-In in Lufkin: Surpassing Expectations

Head north on Highway 59 to meet this monster burger.​On the way out to deep East Texas last week for a story, I found myself suddenly starving and in unfamiliar territory: Lufkin. Unwilling to sacrifice myself upon the fast-food altar when I know that there's great small-town food to be had ... More >>

Texas Tweakers

James "Bull" Durham burned down his mother's house while cooking meth. In Angelina County, the jail is full of guys like him..

Friday Night: Hollisters at Blanco's

Photos by Lauren Marmaduke​A capacity crowd jammed into Blanco's Friday night for the return of 90s local favorites, the Hollisters. The dance floor was thronged, the beer line was long, strings were bent and twanged, and there was plenty of big hair. Fronted by Mike Barfield, currently of th ... More >>

The Countriest Auto Wreck Ever

how-to-draw-funny-cartoons.comThis East Texas donkey's escape from his pasture was tragically brief.​By the time the dust had settled Tuesday afternoon on the two-truck, one-animal wreck on FM 1005 near the Deep East Texas hamlet of Mount Union, a 97-year-old man would be hospitalized, a donke ... More >>

Elaborate Ocean's 11-Style East Texas Bank Heist Nets $70

Frankie Blue Eyes would have been ashamed to tip a bellboy the tiny sum these East Texas bandits stole​A crew of East Texas bank raiders could use a good freshening-up on the concept of costs vs. benefits. If this report from KTRE is any indication, the unknown suspects who raided the town o ... More >>

Comment of the Day: The Great $70 Bank Robbery

​We have some great commenters here on Hair Balls, and it's time we paid some damn attention to them. So we'll be highlighting a Comment of the Day each morning, from the previous day's work. Maybe two comments, even. This will all be determined by a highly rigorous scientific formula involv ... More >>

The Rest of the Best: Houston's Top 10 Barbecue Joints

KIDDING. But seriously, the fried chicken here is outstanding. Get that.​For the next 20 weeks, we'll be rounding up the runners-up to our 2011 Best of Houston® winners. In many categories, picking each year's winner is no easy task. We'll be spotlighting 20 of those categories, in which the ... More >>