Welcome to the award-winning The Hill Country Authors Podcast. In this podcast, Hill Country resident Tom Fox visits with authors who live and write up the Texas Hill Country. In this episode, I visit with newspaper columnist John Moore. John Moore is a columnist across Texas and is featured in Kerrville Times. In this podcast, John talks with Tom Fox about his upbringing in Ashdown, Arkansas, in the Southwest corner of the state. John shares experiences in East Texas and its ecosystem and explains why the Razorbacks are very important due to the lack of professional sports teams. He covers his work in trading and liquidating antique cars and how his high school English teacher sparked his passion for writing. His most recent column is about television channels and movable antennas.

Key Takeaways:

●      The Ecological, Cultural, and Economic Impact of Oil Drilling in East Texas

●       The Impact of the Arkansas Razorbacks on Sports in the State

●       Reclaiming Childhood Memories with Antique Cars and Tractors

●       Pursuing a Passion for Writing, Encouraged by a Teacher

●       The Work of a Texas Native Newspaper Columnist

Notable Quotes:

“He would buy things, and he would bring them home, and he would fix them up, and he would sell them. And he brought home a black and white television set. And I remember the first thing I saw on that television set was Alfred Hitchcock Presents. And I was hooked. I mean, I was just hooked. I was just fascinated by the stories, the suspense, the mystery, and the horror. And I just loved it.”

“East Texas is unique just as Texas is unique. People have a hard time understanding when they’re not from Texas when you tell them you’re going to say, Del Rio or El Paso, and it’s going to take a couple of days to get there in a car. They have no sense of how big this state of Texas is.”

“And I thought, if it’s in the paper, maybe my dad will think it’s a big deal. So I did it. Then the next thing I knew, I got a letter from a lady who said she and her husband wanted to buy my books. Well, I didn’t have any books. So I thought, well, I’ll write a book. So I wrote a book.”

“People asked me all the time. What’s it like in Texas? And I say, well, it’s no different where I live in Texas. It looks the same as where I grew up in Southwest Arkansas; the people are essentially the same. The morals are the same. People are very much people of faith here, just like they are where I grew up

 Resources

John Moore, The Country Writer