{"id":678,"date":"2018-12-31T13:24:20","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T13:24:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=678"},"modified":"2018-12-31T13:24:20","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T13:24:20","slug":"glenn-dromgooles-texas-reads-column-appears-weekly-at-lonestarliterary-com-39","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=678","title":{"rendered":"Glenn Dromgoole’s Texas Reads column appears weekly at LoneStarLiterary.com"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/span><\/span>Texas Reads<\/span>>> archive<\/span><\/a><\/span>Glenn Dromgoole<\/span><\/h1>\n

10.9.16\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Texas Reads: Miles and miles of Texas stories<\/h1>\n

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<\/span><\/span><\/span>Two Texas books have been published this fall with similar covers<\/span> but quite different content. Both covers feature photographs looking down a long, empty, yellow-striped Texas road. But that’s the only thing they have in common.<\/p>\n

Miles and Miles of Texas: 100 Years of the Texas Highway Department<\/span><\/a><\/span> (Texas A&M University Press, $39.95) is a 400-page coffee-table history of what is now called the Texas Department of Transportation. Written by Carol Dawson<\/span><\/a><\/span> with Roger Allen Polson<\/span> and including nearly 400 photos, the book tells the story of the development of Texas\u2019s model highway and farm-to-market road system as the highway department looks ahead to celebrating its centennial next spring.<\/p>\n

Willie Nelson<\/span> actually wrote the book’s foreword, inviting readers to \u201cwave if you see me. I am out there on the road again somewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Governor Jim Ferguson signed the law creating the Texas Highway Department on April 4, 1917.<\/p>\n

The other book is On Texas Backroads: Stories Found Along the Way<\/span><\/a><\/span> by veteran Texas author Carlton Stowers <\/span>($16.95 paperback). It is a collection of more than forty stories, essays, and musings by Stowers, most of them previously published in the last few years in American Way (the American Airlines magazine) or other magazines or newspapers.<\/p>\n

Included are such gems as the author\u2019s remembrance of a perfect day at the ballpark with a grandson, a piece pursuing the far-fetched possibility that Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth actually escaped and made his way to Texas, a touching story about a special Christmas the author fondly recalls, a tribute to Ballinger\u2019s still-operating Carnegie Library, a debate about the origin of the hamburger with a humorous note about how fried potatoes came to be called French fries, a tribute to the chicken-fried steak at Mary\u2019s Caf\u00e9 in Strawn, and a tale about how Wichita Falls came to have the world\u2019s smallest skyscraper.<\/p>\n

Stowers has written more than forty books and is in the Texas Literary Hall of Fame as well as the Big Country Athletic Hall of Fame. Fellow Texas storyteller Elroy Bode wrote the foreword, proclaiming \u201cThere is something here for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

War stories:<\/span> Retired newspaper publisher Jerry Morgan<\/span> of DeLeon didn\u2019t have to leave home to find plenty of interesting stories for a book. In War Stories from DeLeon<\/span><\/a><\/span> (Outskirts Press, $20.95 paperback), he relates the World War II stories told by sixteen local men. Realizing that the men were getting on up in years back in 2000, Morgan set out to get their stories in print before they died. The stories first ran in the DeLeon Free Press in 2000, 2001, 2002, and 2004.<\/p>\n

Of course, it had been more than fifty years since their war experiences and some of the men were a bit fuzzy in their recollections, Morgan said, but \u201cI did not detect any obvious indication of grandiosity or exaggeration in their recounting.\u201d All sixteen men are now deceased, but thanks to Jerry Morgan, their stories live on.<\/p>\n

Glenn Dromgoole\u2019s<\/span> latest book is More Civility, Please. <\/span>Contact him at g.dromgoole@suddenlink.net.<\/p>\n

>> Read his past Texas Reads columns in Lone Star Literary Life here.<\/a><\/span><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Texas Reads>> archiveGlenn Dromgoole 10.9.16\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Texas Reads: Miles and miles of Texas stories Two Texas books have been published this fall with similar covers but quite different content. Both covers feature photographs looking down a long, empty, yellow-striped Texas road. But that’s the only thing they have in common. Miles and Miles of Texas: 100 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}