Catching Up With a Friend
We just returned after five months outside of Texas, and I’m catching up on your magazine. Interesting stories: the missile silos, goats, flour, Frisbees and grapes.
J. Bailey, Bandera EC | Utopia
Two Bits and a Bag of Chips
From 1956 to 1960, I worked at the G.F. Wacker variety store in Levelland [It’s in the Bag, September 2025]. The Fritos chili pie was sold daily—with a Coke and candy bar, all for about 25 cents.
Genie Ballew, Lamb County EC | Levelland
Mary Apple-Williams leads the way on a trail ride at soon-to-open Palo Pinto Mountains State Park.
Dave Shafer
A State for Horses
I moved to Texas thinking it was a state for horses but was astonished to learn there are few places to ride but the roads and private property [Mounts in the Hills, September 2025]. In Washington I helped pack families and hunters into the Cascade wilderness, where we could ride for weeks.
While I admire the Texas Equestrian Trail Riders Association for all its work, I think our state forest service should support trail riders as other states have done, for example the rails-to-trails projects in which the state pays to convert old railroad tracks into riding trails.
Loretta Bedford, Deep East Texas EC | San Augustine
I hope the article results in increased membership in TETRA since they do such awesome and necessary work. I’m not a horse rider, but I can appreciate the importance of maintaining equestrian trails to help keep people in contact
with nature.
Elena Rivera, Pedernales EC | Austin
Jonathan Rice
Nature Erases
I did not know the story of the ghost town Eagle Springs [Ebb and Flow, September 2025]. The simple beauty of Martha Deeringer’s final paragraph—“evening breeze shivers” and “whispering of voices”—took my breath away. Nature erases, and it reclaims.
Mark Troth, Bluebonnet EC | Chappell Hill
