Little Schoolhouse on the Prairie
Life and learning in the smallest school district in Texas.
Katy Vine joined the editorial department of Texas Monthly in 1997 and became a staff writer in 2002. As a general assignment reporter, she has written dozens of features on a range of topics, including rocket scientist Franklin Chang Díaz, hip-hop legend Bun B, barbecue pitmasters, cult leader Warren Jeffs, refugees in Amarillo, the moon landing, a three-person family circus, chess prodigies, a woman who kidnapped the Kilgore Rangerettes director and her daughter, an accountant who embezzled $17 million from a fruitcake company, and a con man who crashed cars, yachts, and planes for insurance money. Her stories have been anthologized in Best American Sports Writing and Best Food Writing. Her feature story about a West Texas sting operation was the inspiration for the 2012 television series The Client List.
Life and learning in the smallest school district in Texas.
By Katy Vine
He wasn’t diplomatic and he wasn’t subtle, but Curtis Graves forged a political path for black Texans—and altered history forever.
By Katy Vine
Alyssa Michalke was recently named the first female commander of Texas A&M’s corps of cadets. It’s been a long time coming.
By Katy Vine
Jeff Boswell will find your dream spread.
By Katy Vine
Eight-year-old Giovanni and six-year-old Victor can ride the Globe of Death, spin plates, and transfix large audiences. As the eighth generation of the Flores Family Thrill Show, it’s their birthright.
By Katy Vine
When throngs of shoe fanatics descend on Houston for the annual Sneaker Summit, it’s the perfect time to understand the sole of a man. And if you happen to be a high school junior named Adam, the goal is finding the right pair of Nike Galaxies for a mere $750.
By Katy Vine
Texas Monthly writers Katy Vine and Sonia Smith watched "Outlaw Prophet," the new Lifetime movie based on the life of FLDS leader, and it was actually pretty good.
By Sonia Smith and Katy Vine
The rise and fall of David Renk, one of the few Americans to become a matador.
By Katy Vine
Every year, some of Mexico’s very best matadors travel to a remote South Texas bullring—one of the few in this country—for no-kill fights. Their pageantry draws spectators by the busload.
By Katy Vine
Plan a kid-friendly summertime weekend through this historic city by the sea using this guide with tips on what to do, where to eat, and where to stay.
By jordanbreal and Katy Vine
A carefully designed, kid-friendly romp through a historic city by the sea.
By Katy Vine
How did rapper Bun B become Houston’s unofficial mayor?
By Katy Vine
At 94 years old, debate icon Thomas Freeman has taught everyone from Martin Luther King Jr. to Barbara Jordan.
By Katy Vine
If the church doesn’t appeal a ruling that allows the seizure of the 1,600-acre ranch in Eldorado, it could become property of the state. What will Texas do with the infamous compound?
By Katy Vine
What's a better gift than Christmas-morning kolaches? Christmas kolaches ordered from West, Texas.
By Katy Vine
The Tall City gets taller.
By Katy Vine
When flames erupted at the West Fertilizer Company plant, the members of the local volunteer fire department pulled on their bunker gear and jumped in their trucks, just like they always do.
By Katy Vine
When the local vernacular dies, what goes with it?
By Katy Vine
Once a year, a San Antonio congregation relives Jesus’ last days—and leaves the cellphones at home.
By Katy Vine
West, Texas, has two florists, but the fertilizer plant explosions forced one to temporarily shut down its business. That left Divine Designs responsible for creating sympathy arrangements for six funerals in one week.
By Katy Vine
You can’t go home and tell your friends that you came to Central Texas and never ate any barbecue. It would be like going to SXSW and not listening to any music. But there are so many briskets and so little time! How do you sort it all out? No
By Patricia Sharpe and Katy Vine
Learning to love the foreign, overcharged, crowded, obsessive, and actually pretty exciting world of Texas’s newest major sport.
By Katy Vine
What will happen to the fundamentalist Mormon compound?
By Katy Vine
The famous astronaut was notoriously shy about granting interviews to the press, but in 2009 he answered a few questions sent to him by senior editor Katy Vine. Here is her unedited Q&A with Neil Armstrong.
By Katy Vine
Are the kids at the Yearning for Zion safe?
By Katy Vine
Jurors found former polygamist leader Wendell Loy Nielsen guilty of bigamy for illegally marrying three women.
By Katy Vine
Texas Monthly senior editor Katy Vine shares a few stories from one of her favorite writers of the year.
By Katy Vine
I was thrilled when my daughter began learning a second language at day care. But what was I supposed to do when my three-year-old started engaging in conversations I couldn’t understand?
By Katy Vine
Austin Mahone is sixteen years old. He doesn’t have a record contract, a tour bus, or a backing band. But he does have more than 650,000 followers on Twitter and the email addresses of 2,000,000 fans. Meet San Antonio’s answer to Justin Bieber.
By Katy Vine
ROUTE: Port Arthur to Port AransasDISTANCE: 308 milesNUMBER OF COUNTIES: 11WHAT TO BRING: A pair of binocularsI started as far east as you can go on the Gulf Coast and still be in Texas. And since the Sabine Pass Lighthouse, which is technically across the state line in Louisiana, is
By Katy Vine
John Mueller was the heir to one of the great Texas barbecue dynasties. Aaron Franklin was an unknown kid from College Station who worked his counter. John had it all and then threw it all away. Aaron came out of nowhere to create the state’s most coveted brisket. Then John
By Katy Vine
A tribute.
By Katy Vine
Dispatches from the Warren Jeffs trial in San Angelo.
By Katy Vine
The child custody battle between the State of Texas and a fundamentalist Mormon sect prompted many people to wonder how 437 kids could have been ripped away from their parents. When the criminal trials of a dozen sect members got under way this month, the question became, Was it really
By Katy Vine
Victor Emanuel can find you a hooded warbler, a horned guan, or maybe even an Eskimo curlew. But his real genius is that he can get you to really look at a grackle.
By Katy Vine
Assistant Editor Katy Vine tells us what he said.
By Katy Vine
On March 18, 1937, the residents of New London, southeast of Tyler, endured the worst small-town tragedy in U.S. history: an explosion at the combined junior-senior high school that killed some three hundred students and teachers.
By Katy Vine
Although some might consider the Kilgore Rangerettes an anachronism, every summer dozens of fresh-faced teens from around the state flock to East Texas to perfect a seemingly effortless hat-brim-touching high kick—and preserve one of the state’s great traditions.
By Katy Vine
When Jacob Isom swiped a Quran from an angry evangelist, he figured a few of his friends would enjoy the prank. Two months and one million YouTube views later, his life may never be the same.
By Katy Vine
San Antonio's Marshevet Hooker is not just any old high school sprinter; she's an Olympic gold medalist in the making. Meet her and nine other women we're betting will lead the new Texas—and the world.
Jamie Foxx pulls no punches.
By Katy Vine
And not just any mall. The Marq*E Entertainment Center is a marvel of marketing: a teen-friendly hangout where kids from all over the city flock to shop, flirt, skateboard, and otherwise act their age.
By Katy Vine
Katie Wernecke is many things: a precocious, freckle-faced Bible-drill champ; the valedictorian of her seventh-grade class in Banquete; and—since she was diagnosed with cancer last year—a pawn in the custody battle that pits her parents against the State of Texas.
By Katy Vine
Quitman
By Katy Vine
How a fish called Ethel (seventeen pounds, ten ounces) caught by a fishing guide named Mark (Stevenson, in 1986, on Lake Fork) revolutionized a once-sleepy sport.
By Katy Vine
On October 26, the first FLDS criminal trial in Texas begins. What legal strategies remain for the defense?
By Katy Vine
It may well be at Arnold’s, in Amarillo. Think twenty pounds of unseasoned meat and some forty slices of American cheese (if you please). Can anyone say “supersize”?
By Katy Vine
Last week, I caught up with Steve Bett, the editor of the Journal of the Simplified Spelling Society and moderator of a discussion group on Foolswisdom. Bett is a retired professor living in Austin who joined the 99-year-old international organization in the late eighties believing, as most simplified
By Katy Vine
Why the closing of a footbridge to Mexico is bad for Candelaria.
By Katy Vine
Fernando Spada and Fernando Mendez are the Karpov and Kasparov of Brownsville: chess champions whose lifelong competition has produced a rivalry every bit as fierce as those of Ali and Frazier, McEnroe and Borg, or Nicklaus and Palmer. Did I mention that they’re in the fourth grade?
By Katy Vine