Remember Your Valentine with Chocolate Souffle
By Lyndsay Caldwell Valentine’s Day goes hand in hand with flowers, presents and chocolate. February 14 falls on a Saturday this year and that means expectations are even higher. If you prefer to stay home and avoid the reservations nightmare of tables for two, I’ve...
The Legend of Wild Willie
By P.A. Geddie It was 20 years ago this month when a tall, pony-tailed, white-bearded man and his band of dreamers began inviting the public to come experience the East Texas hillside they turned in to a mountain town. Just a few months earlier, the bearded one,...
The Pulpwood Queens
By Alia Pappas Tiaras and bedazzled hot pink t-shirts sparkle while scissors, blow dryers and hairspray bottles flit about in the hands of Beauty and the Book’s stylists as they perfect the looks of their clients. While waiting under the dryers for their dye jobs to...
Northeast Texans Enjoy Hawk Patrol
By Heidi K. Bailey For "nature nerds" and others, playing a game of "count the hawks" is a fun pastime on scenic drives and winter is a great time since there is an abundance of them here during this time and they’re easy to see with the leaves off the trees....
Celebrating 15 Years and Living the Dream in the Upper East Side of Texas
As we began to make plans for the approaching 15th Anniversary of County Line Magazine, we discovered quite a few other businesses celebrating their 15th as well in the Upper East Side of Texas and wondered if there was something special about that particular year...
Remembering Karen Silkwood
By Madison Payne November 13 marks the 40th anniversary of the suspicious death of Longview native and nuclear safety whistleblower Karen Silkwood. Portrayed by Meryl Streep in a 1983 award-winning motion picture, Silkwood gained national attention after voicing...
Orchid Lady of the Screen
By P.A. Geddie Corinne Mae Griffith was born November 21, 1894, in Texarkana, to Ambolina Ghio and John Lewis Griffith. She became a popular star of the silent movies beginning in 1916. At the height of her popularity, she was known as the "Orchid Lady of the Screen,"...
They Won’t Know What to do With Some Things
By Edward H. Garcia On a window sill in my study is a small conch shell. It’s nice but not particularly colorful or beautiful. It’s a souvenir of last year’s trip to Ireland. I picked it up on the Bay of Dublin beach, about a block from the house where we stayed. ...
Womack Widens Thread of Soulful Country Music
By Tom Geddie Lee Ann Womack is back. Not with a vengeance but with what may be her best collection of songs ever. The Jacksonville native took six years to make and finally release an album it seems like she always wanted to make: The Way I’m Livin’. The dozen songs...
He Was the Best Don Meredith He Could Be
Jeff and Hazel’s son, Don Meredith, was always one of the great ambassadors for The Upper East Side of Texas with both his talent and his down-home sense of humor that always seemed to cut through pretension. Dandy Don died December 5 in his adopted Santa Fe home...
The Lady with the Pen Leads Norwegians to Texas
By Lisa McKinney Born in Norway in 1815, Elise Tvede lived a comfortable, pastoral life as an upper-class clergyman’s daughter. After the death of her parents, she married Sven Foyn, a whaling magnate, and continued a life of ease until the suffering of others caught...
Living As If
By Edward H. Garcia When my grandmother reached her sixties, she stopped buying nice shoes. By nice, I mean (and she would have meant) something at a department store. Instead, she bought her shoes at Pay-less and discount stores. She explained that she wasn’t going...
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.