He can’t be more than 18 or 19, brown hair, tight T-shirt, tighter jeans, light blue eyes that have yet to be deadened by the street. It’s obvious what he wants: a quick hustle, sex for money, drugs, his next meal. Yet he approaches Neal Shaffer with some caution. Maybe…
The wine is flowing, the chips are dipping and the conversation is turning brazenly partisan. And why shouldn’t it? This is not some effete soiree that hopes to nudge funds out of its guests for an inoffensive but deserving charity. It’s not some wild frat party meant to raise blood-alcohol…
It’s not much of a place, really: a bland, one-story yellow brick building hoping to remain innocuous to the small-town traffic that drives by. Its sign–Corsicana Health Services–also doesn’t arouse much curiosity. It’s better to remain low-key, to blend in rather than let everyone in town know the clinic is…
Like flies to honey, they swarm into the Sonic Drive-In on Northwest Highway near Garland Road, revving their high-performance motorcycles as if to announce their “Hey, look at me” arrival. Some ride their sport bikes solo, others travel in packs, a few have passengers draped across their backs. No protective…
“Then there was the guy who loved his wife so much, he almost told her.” –Anonymous It seems a bit bizarre and a lot ironic that the Army, part of the mightiest military machine in history, is offering its troops a touchy-feely weekend workshop in romance. Yet eight soldiers and…
The specialty license tags issued by the Texas Department of Transportation are a benign bunch really, offering little to raise the hackles of citizens on either end of the political spectrum. After all, how much moral outrage can you muster over an “Animal Friendly” plate that features a childlike drawing…
There is something about the boy’s eyes–half-shut and lifeless–that may hold the clue to his truancy. They mirror a depression driven by emotions too big and confusing for the 17-year-old to manage. But ask Bobby Malone why he cuts class and he will tell you flat-out: He is ready to…
Hank Mishkoff tries hard to convince you he isn’t a chronic complainer–some high-minded crank who thrives on conflict and refuses to back down. But the 53-year-old Dallas computer consultant belies that characterization when he directs you to the string of gripe sites he’s created on the Web and the string…
The lawsuit reads more like a lesson in black history than it does a class action in federal court. Its pleadings tell the sad tale of Andrew Jackson Hurdle, a 10-year-old slave who was torn from his family in 1855 and sold to a Texas cotton farmer who purchased him…
It’s hard to know how to dress for the peace protest in Washington, D.C.: warm gloves, ski parka, sensible shoes, a gas mask. My wife has unwittingly packed some snacks into a Gap bag. I repackage them in a Whole Foods sack, unwilling to risk the ire of anti-globalization types…
It wasn’t just another obligatory holiday party, the kind of work-related seasonal gathering only made palatable by good liquor and plenty of it. On December 7, most of the guests who arrived at the far North Dallas home of lawyer Bruce Priddy actually wanted to be there. They shared something…
Ever since her daughter’s funeral, she had been stalked by the same nightmare: Nancy is in the Pizza Hut in Austin, stripped naked in the washroom, shoved to her knees on the cold, soiled floor by someone unseen. Sobbing, she begs for her life: “Please don’t hurt me. I have…
He knows it won’t be easy–coming out of the “smoky closet,” as one marijuana advocate puts it. After all, he has been a professional football player for 13 years, a five-time Pro-Bowler, a two-time Super Bowl champ, a Dallas Cowboy. He can almost hear the voices of those who would…
One morning in July he starts to cry and can’t stop. There is no money left; he has sold or hocked nearly everything he owns and is still $30,000 in debt. Gone are his two cars, his two boats, his 401(k) savings, his dignity. One layoff followed the next–first at…
Being a Democrat, a Latino, a woman, Sara Saldaña believed she had chosen the right election cycle to run for civil district judge in Dallas County. With George W. Bush off the ballot, there was no better time–or so said the Democratic Party regulars when they convinced her and 23…
The judge takes his seat behind the bench, wearing shirtsleeves, a striped tie and a bucketful of country-boy charm. “How y’all doing today?” “Fine…OK…good…,” respond the two dozen or so recovering addicts who remain seated in the gallery. “I could be doing better,” he tells them. “I just got back…
He grew anxious as he approached a customs official at the Ottawa airport, declaring that he had lost his fanny pack, which contained his drivers license and all his cash. It didn’t help that he had this thing about authority figures, a holdover from his time in prison that made…
Tom Gilley had been through it before: the termination, the humiliation, the uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach that something just wasn’t right. At 52, he was fired as regional marketing director for an employee benefits company, discarded like so much spoiled meat along with four other senior…
Sanchez: Photo by John Anderson
It’s not as though we didn’t already have the two most challenging kids in the world. Max is 5, a Harry Potter clone; he’s an exhausting, whirling dervish of a child, a cultural sponge who soaks up the latest media images–Spider-Man, Anakin Skywalker, Otto Rocket–assuming they can be reduced to…
You’d almost have to be stoned to mix pot and politics, particularly if you were running for prosecuting attorney. If elected, it would be your job to uphold the very law you had a fondness for breaking. But Stephen Hale doesn’t believe he’s being hypocritical when he stumps for district…
Almost without warning, she bursts into a flash flood of tears. All it takes is for you to gently scratch the surface of her memory of the time she spent behind bars for a crime she did not commit. Her soft eyes redden easily; her high-pitched voice at times grows…
