Light hearted Texas mixed with serious and heartbreaking are in Jerry Flemmons's Texas Siftings. The articles, written from 1836 to 1991, were "sifted" from many Texas publications. In his collection he put part of a letter from Davy Crockett, many cowboy poems, and included an article about The Killing of Judge Roy Bean's Pet Bear. There are also instructions on How to Skin a Buffalo and how to make baked possum and red eye gravy. In New London, Texas, approximately 194 students were killed when a gas line under the school exploded. Reported by Walter Cronkite, this tragedy is one remembered in Texas Siftings. I really liked this book for the great variety of stories about Texas.

This book is an unexpected treasure. It mixes musings about the majesty of the perfect chicken fried steak with stark rememberences of two profound Texas tragedies that the author witnessed first hand -- the Whitman shooting from the UT Tower in 1966 and the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas in 1963. These columns capture a part of Texas that gets lost in both the hype and the lore. It paints loving pictures of small town life -- of the weather extremes, the harsh land and the effect that those external forces have on the 18 million people that live there.

Two standout essays that will linger in the reader's mind for days after digesting them are one which describe the agrarian life of his grandparents, its quiet discipline and solitude -- and their astonishment at the size and pace of the world that they faced once their grandchildren were grown and far away from their west Texas home. The second is a Christmas story -- about an archetypal small town fixture -- the town drunk -- and the cruelty endured -- and the sweet redemption that lies beneath the jaundiced eyes and dirty clothes.

Don't let the jacket characterization of this gifted author as "veteran journalist" scare you away -- this is a work of quiet grace.