Longhorn Issue 2: Buck Finds His Stride

If the first issue of Longhorn was Buck Callahan proving he could make a magazine, the second issue is Buck proving he could make a good one. Vol. 1, No. 2 (March/April 1973) is now online, and it's a step up in every way that matters.

The Girls

Darla Renee Calhoun from Odessa gets the cover and a six-page spread. Buck found her at a stock tank party and shot her at a windmill on the Permian Basin at sunset. She's twenty years old, works at a feed store, and has the kind of wild curly hair that catches the light like it's doing it on purpose. It's one of the best cover shots in the archive—simple, warm, and completely natural.

Lorraine Del Rio tends bar at the Crystal Pistol in San Marcos. She rebuilt a 1970 Plymouth Barracuda in her daddy's garage, which is the kind of detail that tells you everything about Buck's casting. He didn't want models. He wanted women with stories. Lorraine's honky-tonk set has real neon and a real jukebox, and she looks like she owns the place. Because she basically does.

Patsy Jo Honeycutt is a vet tech from Dripping Springs, shot in a barn hayloft with golden afternoon light. Shelly Anne Brandt is the Rodeo Queen—a twenty-two-year-old barrel racer from Fredericksburg who studies dental hygiene during the week and rides like the devil on weekends. She gets a single page, but she makes it count.

The Writing

Buck's publisher letter is twice as long as issue one and twice as good. He's found his voice now—folksy, funny, a little ornery, and completely impossible to stop reading. He talks about selling out the first issue ("my printer told me I was crazy, the bank told me I was crazy, and then they loaned me the money anyway"), about finding Darla at the stock tank party, and about his chicken fried steak crawl from Amarillo to Brownsville.

The letters page—"The Corral"—has five reader letters this time, all with Buck's responses. The best is from a man named Catfish Pickens in Lubbock whose wife found the magazine under his truck seat. "I'm sleeping in the barn," Catfish writes. "The magazine was worth it." Buck's reply: "Might as well lean into it."

The Articles

Earl Puckett road-tests a 1969 Chevy C-10 Stepside borrowed from a rancher named Virgil in Llano. It's a love letter to honest trucks and the men who drive them. Rating: four out of five longhorns, and Earl's judgment is not given lightly.

The chicken fried steak crawl is Buck's masterpiece—fourteen plates in ten days from Amarillo to Brownsville. The Stockyard Cafe in Amarillo serves a plate that "hangs over the edges by two inches in every direction." Garcia's in Brownsville puts green chile in the cream gravy, which Buck didn't know was legal. Both articles share their pages with editorial cartoons that feel authentically 1970s—pen-and-ink line art with cheeky captions.

The Ads

Lone Star Beer returns for the inside front cover. Big Earl's Ford Country is back pushing the 1973 F-100 ("If Big Earl can't make the deal, the deal can't be made"). The Mesquite Championship Rodeo gets a full page with a gorgeous bull-rider-at-sunset photo. Justin Boots takes the back cover. These ads are period-perfect—all typography and attitude, no focus groups.

Condition

This copy shows slightly more age than the first issue—some yellowing on the text pages, a bit of foxing near the spine, and the typical corner wear of a magazine that was actually read. The photos have the warm, faded Kodachrome look that tells you they've been sitting in Texas heat for fifty years. It adds character. This isn't a museum piece; it's a magazine that someone kept because they liked it.

What's Next

Issue 3 is next in the scanning queue. Sixty-five more to go. If they're all this good, this archive might be the best thing to come out of a Round Rock storage unit since the original Apple I prototype. Okay, that's a stretch. But not by much.

— Glenn