Paddlers along the trail can expect plentiful wildlife, rugged landscapes and historic settings as they travel on one of Texas’ most storied rivers. Paddlers can take one section at a time or paddle the entire length for an adventure at every turn. © Brazos County Parks Department

Pickup truck drivers are one of the groups with lower overall seat belt use than the state average. Teenagers are another group this year’s ‘Click It or Ticket’ campaign is hoping to help convince to buckle up. (Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service photo)

A clean public restroom was the Holy Grail for Mama, and it was just about as elusive. Her reactions were horrified breathing, bugged-out eyes with eyebrows yanked up to her hairline, and a voice that gasped, “Merciful Heavens!”

It tickles my funny bone when gourmet chefs “discover” a primitive method of cooking and proclaim it marvelous. So I laughed out loud when the New York Times published a feature article recently on baking beans in a pit dug in your backyard.

The end of spring is just around the corner, unofficially marked by the Memorial Day weekend, even though it’s officially spring until June 21. Family and friends get together and enjoy the great outdoors before the never ending Texas summer heat sets in. This means lots of grilling at our Texas lakes and rivers and in our Texas backyards.

1946 – death of Booth Tarkington, American novelist. Booth Tarkington (July 29, 1869 – May 19, 1946) was an American novelist and dramatist best known for his novels The Magnificent Ambersons and Alice Adams. He is one of only three novelists (the others being William Faulkner and John Updike) to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once. Tarkington was a close friend of Bonham native Harry Peyton Steger and wrote the eulogy on Steger's gravestone in Willow Wild Cemetery in Bonham.