Plowboys, Cowboys, and Slanted Pigs

This book is an unexpected treasure. It mixes musings about the majesty of the perfect chicken fried steak with stark rememberences of two profound Texas tragedies that the author witnessed first hand -- the Whitman shooting from the UT Tower in 1966 and the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas in 1963. These columns capture a part of Texas that gets lost in both the hype and the lore. It paints loving pictures of small town life -- of the weather extremes, the harsh land and the effect that those external forces have on the 18 million people that live there.