I’ll Never Forget What’s His Name
By Edward H. Garcia I’ve recently turned 70, so naturally I’m concerned with memory problems. I find that names and abstract nouns have started dropping out of my brain at an alarming rate. I am telling my wife about the pilot for a tv show I’ve seen. I want to tell...
Musgraves: Country Music Future
By Tom Geddie Is Kacey Musgraves, the Golden girl from the Upper East Side of Texas, the next big thing in country music? Golden, in this case, is where Musgraves grew up, near Mineola in Wood County. Here is what Jody Rosen wrote for Slate: "Until last week, I’d...
Notes From The Other Side of 70
By Edward H. Garcia I know it’s not necessary, but is there really anything wrong with looking at the tube of toothpaste you’re squeezing in the morning and thinking, "Someday — and it could be any da — I will squeeze a toothpaste tube for the last time"? And the...
Atlanta Native’s Aviation Dreams Live On
By Alia Pappas The year is 1925. Imagine the wind is at an easy three knots. Above the dusty runway, there is little cloud cover. Visibility is high. Conditions for achieving uncommon dreams are optimal. The yoke of the familiar Jenny airplane is comfortably well-worn...
Remembering the Battle of the Neches Cherokee Chief Bowles, Other Victims
By Shea Gilchrist Down some winding backroads that push into remote country is a place that goes by many names to many different people. Stories are told of a mysterious air that lingers, the presence of others, and even the hum of hand-beaten drums. This land is...
Geezer Voice, Geezer Walk
By Edward H. Garcia You get to my age and you start worrying about decrepitude. That’s not the same as getting older—which is inevitable, and it’s not the same as looking older, which in spite of Ginger Roger’s best efforts, is also inevitable. But I’m hoping that...
Sissy Spacek Takes Quitman Roots to Hollywood Fame and an Ordinary Life in the Hills of Virginia
Sissy Spacek’s memoir, My Extraordinary Ordinary Life premiers this month. It’s divided into four sections: Texas, New York, California, and Virginia. Texas, as in Quitman, Texas, is the biggest section, perhaps because in Sissy’s words, "All the things that are most...
Artists Prepare for Show in Ben Wheeler
By Edward H. Garcia Bill Faulkner sets up his video by the side of a narrow street in Callender Lake and focuses it on Don Hollis who is kneeling by a patch of sand and clay, trowel in hand. As Bill makes final adjustments to tape Don harvesting "Callender Lake...
Longview Artist Explores Bright Possibilities
By Tom Geddie Longview artist Anup Bhandari’s paintings are, in a way, like life itself: an exploration of self and bright possibilities. Born in Nepal, in 1980, his banker father, Achyut Bhandari, encouraged his early interest in art. So he found himself in East...
Reading Trollope on an iPod
By Edward H. Garcia For the past few weeks I have been reading Anthony Trollope’s Barchester Towers on my iPod Touch. An iPod Touch is essentially an iPhone without the phone. The one I have, last year’s model, also lacks a camera, but otherwise it shares most of the...
On Culverts and Best Laid Plans
By Edward H. Garcia We see them all the time around Callender Lake — a young couple, often with a couple of kids "helping out" clearing a newly-acquired lot. They’ll come on weekends for a few months, working on their land and probably dreaming of what they’ll do...
Everything I Know About Relationships I Learned from Vines
By Edward H. Garcia My wife and I have been clearing parts of our property in Callender Lake. We live off the lake and have several acre lots around us—lots of privacy and lots of brush. Every winter we like to get out and push back against Nature and expand what we...
Coming Summer 2025
County Line Magazine archives are going to The Portal to Texas History, a gateway to rare, historical, and primary source materials from or about Texas. Look for the County Line issues there soon.