(birds chirping) (wind howling softly) (intense instrumental music) To try to write about things that are often overlooked.

It does not match with what you're hearing in the media.

Those are the kinds of people I like to do stories on.

It's hopes and dreams on four wheels.

INTERVIEWEE 1: She understood who we were losing and who this town was losing.

INTERVIEWEE 2: We will have to close this place.

I was like, I have to write about this.

NARRATOR: Major funding for this program was provided by...

COMMENTATOR 1: At HEB, we're proud to offer over 6,000 products grown, harvested, or made by our fellow Texans.

♪ I saw miles and miles ♪ It's all part of our commitment to preserving the future of Texas and supporting our Texas Neighbors.

(upbeat instrumental music) COMMENTATOR 2: Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation is dedicated to conserving the wild things in wild places in Texas.

Learn more at tpwf.org.

(suspenseful instrumental music) The negative things that are in the media about the border, crime, drug cartels, militias, spillover violence.

You know that story.

In my bones, I had another story.

Some part of me felt like I needed to give my children that other story.

My name is Oscar Casares and I wrote postcards from the border for Texas monthly.

(soft instrumental music) Growing up on the border gave me my sense of identity.

As I moved away from there, I had this greater sense of urgency to hold on to that piece of myself.

I remember hearing this story from my Tio Nico.

It's grapefruit season and my father, he's loading grapefruits under the back of this truck and he sees this one girl walk by, and he grabs the grapefruit and goes and gives the grapefruit to the girl, and the girl is my mother.

And that's how my parents meet.

(soft instrumental music continues) I would hear the story countless times, as I would hear a lot of the family stories.

It was how we made sense of who we were, how we stayed connected to those family members who had passed away.

If we don't make an effort to tell our children these stories, it just disappears.

It goes away.

At some point, I understood that my kids are growing up hearing in the media a very skewed and quite negative version of the border.

That people who live down there live these hopeless, desperate lives, and that couldn't be any further from the truth.

I began taking them to visit their grandparents.

I took 'em to the little house where I grew up and it's different.

Living down there and visiting are are two different things, but I keep wanting to give them some semblance of what it was like to live down there, and I'm having a really difficult time.

My daughter, Elena, tells me I'm obsessed with the border.

I won't stop talking about the border.

I actually don't remember saying that, but I mean, I stand by it.

I think he's pretty obsessed, but I feel like it's pretty natural to wanna like defend where you come from.

I'm telling them these stories, but my stories has no semblance to their lives in Austin.

It takes a while for this to dawn on me.

There's a difference between telling somebody and showing them.

(instrumental music continues) This friend of mine, Joel, aside from being an incredibly talented photographer, had grown up in El Paso.

I grew up in Brownsville and I thought, what if we made this epic road trip and we go all the way from his hometown to my hometown, and along the way we cross from El Paso to San Juarez, all the way back and forth to the plazas, to the parks and cafes.

The idea was that we would take his images and my words and put them together.

At various points, I would write postcard or two to Elena.

Two or three turned into four or five and then six and seven and then nine and ten, and so, maybe I was a little obsessed, but it was something that I had to get across to her.

(whimsical instrumental tune) We set out with this idea that we're going to fill in that other part of the story.

How we're going to find that?

Neither one of us really knows.

Dear, Elena, It was raining this morning in El Paso and the clouds hung heavy over the Franklin Mountains.

We parked next to a convenience store in Segundo Barrio, a historic part of the city where so many immigrants from Mexico used to pass through in the 1800s.

So we just sort of go and we just talk to people.

A few minutes later, a bearded man came hobbling down the street.

He was from El Segundo Barrio, but all his life, he had crossed back and forth to Juarez.

It wasn't too much later that the sun finally came out.

When you get down there, it does not match with what you're hearing in the media.

People who are from the border are not walking around looking over their shoulder.

(speaking in Spanish) Photographed a young woman, a singer who sometimes performs as a woman and other times as a man.

They sing in English and Spanish and perform across the border too in Juarez.

Either way, she's lucky 'cause no matter what side she's on, she knows who she is.

(speaking in Spanish) Dad.

What we saw were in many cases stories about families, a father and son waiting for their time to be able to cross into the US.

The father cleaned windshields at an intersection and his little boy stood on the sidewalk asking people for... (speaking in Spanish) This young woman who has a history that reflects much of the border, she lives in Ojinaga because a year ago she married a guy originally from Vera Cruz and he isn't allowed to live in the US.

She doesn't mind it though, she's in love.

I don't believe these are stories that would have made it onto the news.

It gets drowned out by all the rest.

We're crossing the bridge between Presidio and Ojinaga and we look and there's this family in the middle of the Rio Grande, and we look over and the immigration cars are looking at them.

(suspenseful tune) It's this moment where it's like, what's gonna go down here?

We're just waiting to see what's going to happen.

Are these people are gonna be arrested?

They gonna be apprehended?

What's gonna happen to the children?

We are seeing glimpses of that other story, that other ugly negative story, and we keep watching and the kids have these buckets and they take the bucket and they pour it on their dad's head and he laughs and he falls down and they pour another bucket on his head, and they just spend the afternoon playing in the river.

They have no intention of going to the US side.

They don't want to go to the US side.

They're just having an afternoon with their dad.

That type of scene seemed to keep playing out from El Paso all the way down to Brownsville.

(soft instrumental music) Hola, Elena, this is my last postcard.

We finally made it to the Upper Valley, not far from where I grew up.

(school bell ringing) Yesterday we heard about a teacher in Los Resesnos who shows his kids how to play conjunto music.

It's the old fashioned music your grandparents used to listen to way back when they traveled up north to work in the fields.

In the fields this morning, men and women picked melons.

It's hard work, but this is the melon season and someone needs to gather the fruit for the rest of us to eat.

These are the people who do the work, the ones no one sees.

See you soon, dad.

(instrumental music continues) It was something that I felt I had to get across to her.

To understand a piece of herself and her family, she needs to know these stories.

They're glimpses and they're moments in time and they're fleeting.

All of this is incredibly fleeting.

I really want to believe that having that sense of place of understanding there's a larger history that you're connected to is gonna be something special for her.

(wind howling softly) (birds chirping) (instrumental tune) Food doesn't just give you sustenance, it gives you the power to reconnect with family and it connects you to the people you miss.

My name is Jose Ralat, I am the Texas' Monthly taco editor and I wrote a profile on El Paso Flauta in Austin.

Arturo Reyes serves El Paso food to Austin with his food truck, El Paso Flauta.

Throughout his life, Art was encouraged to open a food truck based on his special chili con queso recipe, which his friends and family called "kickass".

I've been making this since I was a kid.

I never had a recipe before.

It would taste different every single time.

I would add something new and I'd go, "Oh, I like this.

I don't like that."

Cheeses, tomatoes, and then the secret really would be Anaheim, which is pretty close to hatch chilies, which are used abundantly in El Paso.

ART: These are the roasted Anaheim from (indistinct).

His family, his daughter, Stephanie Reyes, and Art's best friend, Mark Rubio were relentless in trying to get him to open a food truck, but Art blew them off.

That wasn't his thing.

It was too flashy and Art's not a flashy guy.

He grew up in this poor neighborhood, El Segundo Barrio, one of the first neighborhoods of El Paso.

He and his family lived in public housing and were on welfare.

We would line up for government cheese, literally.

They would give us these big blocks.

They look exactly like the blocks that I use now, which is ironic.

We used to run outta stuff to make with them, so I started adding all these chilies my mom had left over.

Art graduated high school in the mid eighties, came to Austin, and spent a lot of time with his best friend, Mark.

He was at my house every weekend and I would cook and he'd tell me each and every time, you need to sell this food.

(Jose laughing) We were in Las Vegas when he talked me into doing this, coming out of a concert and not even a Nature Concert, out of all things.

His nephew calls, puts me on a speaker phone, and goes, "Hey, Tio, does Art still make that kickass queso?"

They signed him up to compete in The Austin Queso Off in 2019.

Art and Mark made Art's "Kickass Queso", as they called it.

Surprising to everyone, his queso won.

It was pretty cool.

They handed me my little trophy, my cheese trophy.

There was something about winning this competition with a humble everyday food that led a spark.

He started to save money with Mark to open up their own food truck.

It was gonna be amazing.

Then later in 2019, Mark was diagnosed with cancer.

That December we found out he had pancreatic cancer.

Everything stopped.

There would be no food truck.

We did everything that we could.

My dad drove him to his chemotherapy.

Every other week he was driving him out to MD Anderson in Houston.

The following year, he passed away.

Still hurts.

(soft instrumental music) JOSE: Art spiraled into a deep depression.

STEPHANIE: It was really devastating to my dad.

ART: He was my family.

JOSE: Stephanie knew the only thing that would get Art back and moving was the food truck that he and Mark had been planning.

Stephanie is the one that said, "Hey dad, you know, let's do the food truck."

STEPHANIE: I was trying to get him into the kitchen because I know that's where he is happiest.

She told him to get up.

Stephanie kind of pushed me, you know, into doing this so that I could do something, not just be at home, not doing nothing.

We started getting all the recipes together.

Stephanie worked alongside Art, encouraging him, pushing him to perfect recipes, to add dishes that were reminiscent of home to connect him with everything that he loved, and in 2022 they rolled out El Paso Flauta.

(upbeat instrumental music) The most popular item would be the flautas.

They're almost 12 inches, drizzled with red salsa, green salsa, and cream.

They're beautiful and so tasty, but my heart belongs to number two, three taquitos ahogados.

Small rolled tacos, a light tomato sauce, cheddar cheese, then green salsa that adds the spice.

There's a place back home called Chicos Tacos, so this is my homage to their tacos.

We grew up on them.

I loved them when I was a kid.

I love them still.

You're supposed to eat it with a fork, I know, I know.

Mark tried them there at Chicos.

He said mine were better.

(Art laughing) And then you have the burritos, which are so El Paso, it's ridiculous.

The Chile Colorado, this reminds me of my mom.

I still can't make it as good as she did.

Thank you.

Call me if you need anything.

All the food has a memory.

The Chile Colorado, my mom.

My sister-in-law with the flautas.

The queso.

The queso is all Mark's.

(Art laughing) The food can only be inspired by family.

I mean, that's where I learned it.

For Art, this food is not just a business.

This a way for him to honor his best friend, to follow through on their vision, to keep his families cooking alive, and honestly, to keep Mark alive.

These dishes connect us to our living family members and the ones that passed on.

Food is family.

(suspenseful instrumental music) I learned so many things writing this story.

Writing the story and learning more about equestrian drill, getting a glimpse of this life that my mom lived, it made me feel so much closer to her.

I'm Jennifer Young Perlman, I wrote the piece "Inside the World of Equestrian Drill" for Texas Monthly Magazine.

INTERVIEWER: How did this story come about?

The origin story.

So my husband had been bugging me for months to clean out the garage.

(instrumental music) So finally, one rainy Saturday, I started looking through a whole bunch of boxes and found a number of photographs that had belonged to my mom.

My mother passed away in 2010.

I knew she loved horses.

She would drag me to rodeos and we would go to the stock show in Fort Worth and I could tell she was trying to like get me excited about it, but it just was not my thing.

It was her thing, not my thing.

Then I found this photograph of her riding in Arlington Stadium before the Texas Rangers played the Detroit Tigers that night, and I had not known anything about it before she died.

(audience cheering) All you see are seven horses and my mom's carrying the American flag and she is leading the group around the stadium, and on the scoreboard it says "Texas Ranger Belles National Champions".

Texas Ranger Belles, I had never heard that name before and started doing research and I found a few old members of the team on Facebook and reached out to them and learned that the Texas Ranger Belles was an equestrian drill team.

No idea what that was.

And so I started researching the sport of equestrian drill.

(audience member yelling indistinctly) (commentator speaking indistinctly) (whistle blowing) (suspenseful music) Essentially with drill, you have a group of women who ride out into an arena and perform a series of synchronized maneuvers with varying degree of difficulty.

It actually has its roots in the calvary, but today it is very much about its competition.

It is fast, it is dangerous, and it is breathtaking to watch.

We're riding thousand pound animals with brains of their own, running very fast.

It could be disastrous in 10 seconds or less.

INTERVIEWER: What was it like to realize all this?

I mean, can I say badass?

When I was younger, I thought my mom and I were complete opposites, and now learning more about her, I mean she had this like adventurous streak to her.

Now I can understand where I got that impulse.

(whimsical instrumental tune) Most Texans don't know about this sport.

Even Texans who are part of the rodeo circuit probably don't know about this sport.

One of the coolest things I found as I started researching, even within one team, you can have a rider as young as 10 years old and a rider as old as 80 years old.

And then I've also met a lot of mother and daughter pairs in the sport too.

So Roxy and Jasmine Vasquez are a mother and daughter duo who are co-captains of the equestrian drill team in Bulverde, Texas.

What I love about them, when Jasmine got started riding equestrian drill, Roxy, she wanted to learn how to ride too.

Mom has been there for my entire horse journey, so even if she wasn't riding horses yet, she was always sitting at the side of the arena while I was getting my lessons, and every show that I've ever been to.

Everything I've done on horseback, she's been there.

And so it was really fun when she started riding and then we got to do this together.

It just makes it that much more special.

Most people don't get to spend that much time with their mom, and if they do, it's not really getting to share the hobby that they have devoted so much of their life into, and we get to share that together.

I think it's so incredible that they get to ride together and in some ways I wish I had had that opportunity with my mother.

Learning about this part of my mom's life completely changed how I thought about my own relationship with my mom.

(instrumental music) My mom and I had never talked about her being on a drill team.

We didn't have deep conversations about what really motivated her and what drove her in life and why she made the decisions she did.

And I wish I had had just the foresight or presence of mind to ask her about that.

I just wish I had been more curious, you know?

And then you look back years later after they're no longer with you and you're just kicking yourself.

It's fun to think about her, you know, all those years ago performing, but I wish I had been there.

I wish I had been there.

(commentator speaking indistinctly) (whistle blowing) (audience cheering) Family is powerful.

It gives you the power to reconnect with home, to reconnect with memories, to the culture that you miss.

It's everything.

Family is understanding there's a larger history that you're connected to.

It was how we made sense of who we were.

JENNIFER: Part of connecting with each other is sharing your hopes, your dreams, your fears, and being able to build that bond that's deep and meaningful.

(instrumental music continues) (audience cheering) (commentator speaking indistinctly) (upbeat instrumental music) INTERVIEWEE: Try to write about things that are often overlooked.

Everything was different down there.

All the rules were different.

These people are often forgotten, and that building is the most like hit you over the head metaphor.

It's forcing us to focus on something that maybe people have never really given much thought to.

INTERVIEWEE 2: You're in this other universe.

♪ I love it ♪ We're on the precipice of a great discovery.

(upbeat music) ♪ I love it ♪ Fasten your seatbelt.

[Speaker Off Screen 1] As long as we're together, it's perfect.

[Speaker Off Screen 2] Love is not as simple as you seem to think.

[Speaker Off Screen 3] We're so close to cracking the case.

Dreams do come through.

NARRATOR: Major funding for this program was provided by...

COMMENTATOR 1: At HEB, we're proud to offer over 6,000 products grown, harvested, or made by our fellow Texans.

♪ I saw miles and miles ♪ It's all part of our commitment to preserving the future of Texas and supporting our Texas Neighbors.

(soft instrumental music) COMMENTATOR 2: Texas Parks and Wildlife Foundation is dedicated to conserving the wild things and wild places in Texas.

Learn more at tpwf.org.