A compilation of author and journalist Bryan Woolley's The Dallas 
Morning News columns from 1999 through 2003, Texas Road Trip 
explores back roads, small towns, and Texas originals. Follow him 
on his road trips across the Great State as he meets interesting 
people and hears fascinating, even bizarre, tales. As Woolley says, 
Texas Road Trip takes us beyond the "super highways spewing 
diesel smoke and danger to the sparsely traveled farm-to-market 
roads and the old highways that used to connect the little towns 
before the interstates bypassed them."

    Tinged with nostalgia for a bygone way of life, the essays 
acquaint us with the pleasure of drinking a Coca Cola in a bottle 
that sports ice crystals ("Cold Drink") or a Comanche ceremony in 
Palo Duro Canyon to re-sanctify the canyon that was once sacred 
("Quanah's People"). He also explores more personal terrain in 
such stories as "Boys," in which he recounts a trip he and his 
grown sons took in remembrance of their summer vacations in Fort 
Davis when the boys were young.

    Woolley's thoughtful take imbues each essay with a generosity 
of spirit and a real enthusiasm for his subjects. From the stars 
of the Davis Mountains to the sophistication of Austin and Dallas, 
Texas Road Trip is an homage to Texas—its history, people, and 
culture.

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BRYAN WOOLLEY is a senior writer on the staff of the The Dallas 
Morning News. He has won numerous awards for his journalism and 
has published several collections of his work. He is a past president 
of the Texas Institute of Letters and is a member of the Texas Folklore 
Society and the Texas State Historical Association. He and his wife, 
poet Isabel Nathaniel, make their home in Dallas.


Number Twenty-two: Chisholm Trail Series


What people are saying about this book

"There are 300,000 miles of roads in Texas and twice that many 
stories. Bryan Woolley covers a lot of those miles and more than forty 
stories and finds the heart in every one of them—a stubborn man 
facing a life-threatening disease with courage because that's all he 
can afford, a woman who realizes her dreams of being a cowgirl on 
her wedding day, a box of letters that find their way home after sixty 
years, a pair of moccasins that find their meaning in the birth of a 
grandchild. It's a heckuva ride, and no one will wish it were shorter."—
Robert Flynn