Wasting Away Again, Texas Monthly?
What a disappointment to see a cover with the title “Beyond the Beach,” only to be subjected to an article about the Margaritaville Beach Resort [“Where It’s Always Five O’Clock,” June 2024]. I can’t think of a more plastic and inauthentic beach setting on South Padre Island. I’ve travelled there for more than thirty years and could give you dozens of authentic places to stay and eat. I can even give you a review of Margaritaville. Last fall, when my family made our annual trip, we gave it a try. The food was canned and tasteless, the drinks were overpriced, and I felt like I was being conned to feed Jimmy Buffett’s legacy of success. It is truly wasting away in Margaritaville. Next time choose a real resort owned and operated by one of the locals rather than this crappy place.
Robert Breen, Rockwall
The Value of Pipelines
Russell Gold’s June 2024 article “When Is a Pipeline in the Public Interest?” uses residents of Van Horn to fearmonger about the Saguaro Connector Pipeline. Hydrocarbons delivered by pipeline safely reach their destination 99.99 percent of the time, and fifty miles of a twenty-inch pipeline can displace 1,650 tanker trucks—reducing congestion, pollution, road damage, and traffic accidents. The proposed Saguaro pipeline could displace more than twice that.
Texas pipeline construction and operation accounts for $60.5 billion in economic output, $34 billion in gross state product, $3.6 billion in state and local government revenues, and 234,000 jobs. To answer Gold’s query, building additional pipelines in Texas is indeed in the public interest.
Thure Cannon, Austin
Editors’ note: Cannon is president of the Texas Pipeline Association, the largest state trade group in the country that advocates solely for the intrastate pipeline industry.
On the Otter Hand
I enjoyed the article “River Otter” [June 2024], but believe me when I say that not all of them are playful. We have them in Montana, and they have attacked people floating down some of our rivers. A widely covered attack happened last summer on the Jefferson River. The theory is that the otters had young nearby and perceived the floaters on inner tubes as a threat.
John Summerhill, McAllister, Montana
The Feed Trough Was Adored Once, Too
Thank you for the story on Country Kitchen [“Lunching in Lampasas,” June 2024]. Whenever I visited my elderly aunts and uncle in Lampasas, we’d have lunch there. The food was very good. We also ate at the long-closed Feed Trough, where the salad bar sat in, yes, a feed trough. The Kitchen and Trough each had devoted customers, but I suppose the latter’s name contributed to its demise. Who would take a date to the Feed Trough? Yet, to paraphrase Shakespeare: What’s in a name? That which we call a feed trough by any other name would serve food just as good as the Country Kitchen.
John Thomas, Dallas
This article originally appeared in the August 2024 issue of Texas Monthly with the headline “Roar of the Crowd.” Subscribe today.
