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 Texas : Features :

Love, Marriage, & Weddings
Texas Style

"By all means, marry.
If you marry a good woman you will be happy.
If you marry a bad woman you will become a philosopher." - Socrates

Romance

  • St. Valentine And The Year Of The Tiger by Britt Towery 2-8-10
  • Valentine’s Day by Mike Cox
    Must have been around Valentine’s Day in 1877 when a young man named Donaho took pen in hand to write a love letter to his sweetheart in Dallas...
  • A Texas-Norwegian-German Valentine
    'No Person Shall Put Asunder' by Benard Burson - A synopsis
  • Speak for yourself, Robert by Archie P. McDonald
    Sam Houston was a man of many loves...
  • Outlaw Letter by Mike Cox
    An outlaw's love letter in 1878
  • Pirate chieftain Jean Laffite and Polly Crow
  • The Espersons - The "Mr. and Mrs. Esperson Buildings".
  • Lillian by George Lester
    "Probably every boy has had a crush on a girl who didn't even know he was alive. It happened to me."
  • Romance at Spunky Flat or Little Schoolhouse in the Cotton Field

  • Weddings & Elopements

    Historical
  • Funerals have changed, but this wedding was old-timey by Delbert Trew 9-15-09
    In the early days of my youth all my country neighbors and friends had a "funeral suit" or dress hanging in the closet. Bought and kept for that purpose, it showed utmost respect for the deceased when worn at a funeral...
  • Common Scents: Why Brides Carry Bouquets by Maggie Van Ostrand 6-1-09
    Everybody loves a bride. Why, women love to see one almost as much as we love to be one, especially a June bride...
  • Indian Stories by Mike Cox 2-19-09
    Shortly before the Civil War, Indians nearly spoiled a wedding...
  • Early settlers threw mega-wedding by Delbert Trew 5-13-08
    Strict, religious Mexican laws allowed for unusual ceremony
    There was a time in Texas history when our grand state still belonged to Mexico, where the law required all Colonists to adopt the Catholic faith to become Mexican citizens... Complicating the problem, only marriages performed by a Catholic priest were recognized...
  • The Tailor and the Hideaway Bride: The man who kept his wife in stitches
  • The Bride, He Wore White by John Troesser
    Or How Men Wed in 1953 Waco
  • Right lubrication greases squeakiest of wheels by Delbert Trew
    Many classic Old West tales are similar in plot but different in location. The following tale has been told many times with the same plot but featuring different ranches, different characters and different tunes. The original story is probably true, but where it happened is anybody's guess. Our version here supposedly happened on the famed XIT Ranch...
  • For Better or Worse by Louise George
    In their own words some of yesterday’s brides tell about their weddings and the early days of their marriages. Texas Panhandle in the early 1900s.
  • Drive-up Wedding 1906

    Humor / Contemporary
  • Sabotage by Elizabeth Bussey Sowdal 12-18-09
    By the time you read this the wedding we have been planning and working toward for the last nine months will be all over. The bride is doing fine as I write this two days before the ceremony...
  • MOB vs. MOG by Elizabeth Bussey Sowdal 9-24-09
    This is my first go around as Mother of the Bride and it’s been fine so far. We’ve got the gown, got the favors, lined up the photographer, talked to the wedding coordinator at the church. Yesterday we lucked onto just what we were needing...
  • Wedding Nightmare by Elizabeth Bussey Sowdal 8-3-09
    It is approximately 140 days until the wedding and some hidden time bomb of a countdown timer in my brain must have just kicked on. I can imagine it like a big red alarm clock – the old fashioned kind with two bells on top – nestled snugly in the soft folds of my gray matter tick tock, tick tocking away...
  • Wedding Belles by Elizabeth Bussey Sowdal 3-27-09
    Older Daughter is getting married... I learned very early on in the planning process exactly what my role will be....

    Marriage

    Historical
  • An Introduction of Two Persons 3-9-09
    From "The Americanization of Edward Bok: The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After"
    “Make the world a bit more beautiful and better because you have been in it.”
  • Belle Christmas by Mike Cox 12-22-08
    No matter how she came to be called Belle Christmas, she had a reputation as a local character long before someone dreamed up the “Keep Austin Weird” bumper sticker...
  • Doe and a Bride by Mike Cox
    Anyone accidentally walking up on the young couple sitting on a wagon tongue near Brushy Creek outside Round Rock that day would have realized they discussed something very important. Indeed, their topic had to do with the rest of their lives.
  • Transitions by Mike Cox
    When you take time to think about it, everything in life is in a state of transition. Back in 1921, a young Methodist preacher assigned to the vastness of the South Plains approached a major transition – the adjustment from single life to being married...
  • Reconstruction Valentine by Mike Cox
    In modern chick-flick speak, Ansel "Hance" McKinney must have had a "fear of commitment." Before marching off to fight for the South at the beginning of the Civil War, the 23-year-old Goliad County cattleman gave a ring to his younger sweetheart, 15-year-old Martha Campbell...

    Humor/Opinion
  • Shoes by Peary Perry 1-27-10
    I’d like to discuss another subject which I believe proves up one of the fundamental differences between men and women. Shoes...
  • I Fear That My Wife Is Insane by Byron Browne 10-2-09
    I fear that my wife is insane. There can be no other reason for her continued presence here in our home. Any rational, right-thinking person would have been packed and gone months ago. Yet, she stays and even finds a way to maintain a smile on that marvelous, olive-skinned countenance of hers...
  • Holiday Season by Peary Perry 9-11-09
    Anyone who has had married children or in laws of their own should be able to identify with what I’m about to say. This time of the year (the holiday season) puts an enormous amount of stress on family relationships...
  • Nine Phrases Women Use by Peary Perry 7-29-09
    I promise that this will be the last article I write about my youngest son getting married...
  • Battle of the sexes by Peary Perry 7-22-09
    Anyone who has been married as long as I have can certainly relate to what I am about to say. It really makes little difference how long you have been married, there are always going to be daily challenges to your relationship...
  • Father-Son Talk by Peary Perry 7-16-09
    Our youngest son is getting married in a few weeks.
  • Men Watch Survivorman, Women Watch Holmes on Homes by Peary Perry 5-6-09
    I wonder if anyone has performed an extensive study on how television has changed marriages over the past fifty years...
  • Special Occasion by Peary Perry 4-23-09
  • Keepsakes? by Peary Perry 4-15-09
    I’m beginning to think the nomads and the Mongols had the best approach…..throw everything away….keep nothing but what you need to feed yourself and your clothes.
  • What happened after the move by Peary Perry 4-12-09
    Anyone who has been married for any length of time can identify with what I am about to say...
  • How Women Think or How They Don’t Think by Peary Perry 3-25-09
    Once you’re married, she’ll begin to collect and save things you cannot begin to imagine. You give her a Valentines Day card? She’ll save it. Birthday cards? Never thrown away. Mothers Day cards? She’ll keep them until she dies and then they’ll pass onto someone else, God only knows who...
  • Moving by Peary Perry 2-18-09
    After nearly twenty months we have finally sold our home and will be moving in a week or so. I say a week or so, because it isn’t me that is in charge of this move. It’s my wife...
  • Happy Trails by Elizabeth Bussey Sowdal 5-9-08
    By the time you read this I will be a long gone baby! Our vacation, the first in two years (two really awful years, if you want to know), will be well underway...
  • “I Now Thee Wed”, Half a Century Later…. by N. Ray Maxie
    FLASHBACK TO 1957….. We, the 1957 McLeod Longhorn seniors, each and everyone had our head full of dreams, all twenty-one of us. Life was new and fresh for this small group of eighteen-year-old wannabes...
  • A Blessed Event by Elizabeth Bussey Sowdal
    This week Mike and I have had a taste of what it is going to be like when our empty nest is truly and finally empty...
  • Delicious Crow by Elizabeth Bussey Sowdal
    I flipped out this weekend. I lost my temper and I told my husband everything - and I mean every single thing - that I was thinking...
  • Subtext by Elizabeth Bussey Sowdal
    We have... evolved a different way of expressing our irritation. When we are stressed out by circumstances, tired, down-trodden and cranky we do not throw dishes or scream, "I hate you, ya big poo- head." ... Instead we have subtexts...
  • The Truth About Love by Elizabeth Bussey Sowdal
    Here it is, the truth about love. Some of you know it already. Some of you will read it and scoff. "Ha!" you will say, "what does she know about it? Obviously nothing! She knows nothing about love, real love, true love." I can hear you saying that now. And I have to tell you two things...
  • Man Should Not Live Alone by Peary Perry
    As I recall somewhere it is written, "Man should not live alone." I don't remember if this is in the bible or some other place, but as whoever wrote it (God?) was a really smart fellow, or person (to be gender sensitive)...
  • Men I Wanted to Marry by Elizabeth Bussey Sowdal
  • Home Improvement by Elizabeth Bussey Sowdal
    "It is the strong marriage that survives each spring without a tremor or two."
  • Butter Manners by Elizabeth Bussey Sowdal
    "The women in our family can be as sweet and mild as milk through all kinds of adversity. But everyone has their breaking point..."
  • Love is in the Hair by Elizabeth Bussey Sowdal
    "In the early years of our marriage, romance was a challenge... "
  • Two addendums to vows help marriage to last by Delbert Trew
    "Unlike the Ten Commandments, which were chiseled in stone to prevent erasure or change, marriage vows are merely spoken. This allows these sacred promises to be forgotten, ignored, misunderstood, changed or deleted by the modern-day theory of "doing whatever feels good at the moment." ...
  • ‘Harmful to Marriage' Questions by Peary Perry
    "A question such as this requires extreme diplomacy, tact and sensitivity training to answer properly. Having said that, let me add… give it up you and I don’t have the ability to do this. If you can, run…."
  • 50-50 VS 110% by Peary Perry
    "Marriage is not all wine and roses, sometimes its vinegar and weeds."
  • Fayetteville Photographer William Tauch


    Doomed
    "To love and win is the best thing; to love and lose the next best."
    - William Makepeace Thackeray.
  • Six Degrees of Separation, or, How a Mexican Star Became a Cajun Legend by Maggie Van Ostrand 5-6-09
    Evangeline and Gabriel
  • Pansy by Mike Cox 2-26-09
    Though her looks could have given her a shot at Hollywood, Pansy opted for the circus world. She and her husband had a trapeze act in a traveling show. They drew big crowds and made good money. All that changed in a moment. ...
  • A Gruesome Prophecy Tattooed on a Soldier’s Breast 2-8-09
  • Indian Emily by Mike Cox 10-2-08
    One of the most romantic stories in the lore of the Old West originated at Fort Davis. The tale has been told and retold in all media. It’s the story of Indian Emily and goes like this: In the late 1860s, an Apache female fell wounded in a skirmish between cavalry troops stationed at Fort Davis and her band....
  • The White Lady of Rio Frio by Linda Kirkpatrick
    The love triangle of Gregorio, Maria and Anselmo
  • Schulenburg's Heartbreak Hotel
  • Leaping Lovers by Mike Cox
    Knowing their love can never be, the young couple stare at the swirling river far below. One last kiss, and then, holding hands, they leap off the cliff, united forever in death - and legend.
    Texas has at least four landmarks known as Lover's Leaps ...
  • Metheglin Creek by Clay Coppedge
    How the creek got its name
  • Old Buddy George by George Lester
  • Where are you Benny Goodenberger? by Perry Peary
    In his last letter, he wrote ”Mom, I am worried about this trip…if, by chance anything should happen to me, there is this girl, Benny Goodenberger, in …………, and I’d like you to tell her what happened to me.”


    Where
  • Mother Neff State Park by Clay Coppedge
    "It's especially popular with couples who want to say "I do" amid the oak, elm, juniper and cottonwood trees near the banks of the Leon River. The park is the setting for about 30 weddings a year."

  • Love's Lookout by Bob Bowman
    Perched atop a scenic forested ridge beside U.S. Highway 69 north of Jacksonville, Love's Lookout offers perhaps the grandest view in East Texas.


    What
  • The Wedding Oak, San Saba, Texas


    Issues
  • Harvard Strangles First Amendment
    ...
    and what women really want


    Miscellaneous
  • My Heart on a Sleeve by Gael Montana
    "...Valentine's Day has traditionally been the scene of massive romantic disasters around here. My husband and I even waited to get hitched until two days afterwards to avoid that pesky dark cloud. If you recall, Chicago has a rather grisly connection with Valentine's Day..."

  • The Saddest Valentine by John Troesser
  • True love prevails by Mike Cox
    Or outsmarts his girl’s dad

    Vintage Wedding Photos
  • Vattmann, Texas
  • Fayetteville, Texas
  • Granger, Texas

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