Peggy Harris offers a full-catering menu from her rural Cameron County on a farm-to-market road that still looks like the Rio Grande Valley of citrus groves and sorghum fields. A mother cow with its young calf munch in a pasture near the garage space-turned-commercial kitchen where Harris has set up her Peggy’s Cakes & More. She said her business has outgrown the compact and efficient kitchen from which she caters…
South Padre Island Police Chief Claudine O’Carroll didn’t know what to fully expect heading into March’s spring break 2022 and the following Easter holiday week in April. Both 2020 and 2021 were peculiar ones. Spring break traffic in 2020 was light to at times non-existent. A bit of a rebound occurred in 2021, with more families on the Island over the usual college-aged spring breakers who had their routines thrown…
For Steven Rodriguez, there’s streaming television viewing at home – and then there’s the movies. “The experience of the big screen is something you can’t get at home,” Rodriguez said recently at the Cinemark 16 in Harlingen. “Any big movie, a Marvel or DC, we make a date and we’re here. Let’s get our popcorn and watch it on a big screen.” It’s the movie-returning demographic that the Plano-based Cinemark…
Fred W. Rusteberg was known as a gentleman, a soft-spoken and persistent advocate for his banking company and community. Rusteberg could also bring it, when need be, a steely resolve emerging when he saw an injustice or inequity that required a challenge. One of those times occurred about 20 years ago when the chancellor of the University of Texas System visited Brownsville. It was to be a festive occasion in…
The Expressway 83 space near the Rio Grande Valley Premium Outlets will soon have a major restaurant and fueling stop development as a 12,000-square-foot travel center comes to Mercedes. Waxahachie-based Victron Energy Inc. has broken ground on the development, which will be located on the intersection of the expressway’s frontage road and Mile 2 E Road. The travel center will serve as the centerpiece of the development, which will also…
The Incredible Hulk towers over the entrance of The Comic Cave Sunrise Mall. Walk into the store and it’s a visual delight of historic comic books mixed in with newer versions along with an array of collectibles, figurines and playing cards. Stroll through the aisles and discover how superheroes like Batman, Superman and Spider-Man have changed over the years in the comic books of different eras. Go to one corner…
The Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation hosted its third annual StartUp Texas Pitch Summit on June 16 and selected one grand prize winner among nine competitors. Valley Tire Recycling took home the top honors and $25,000 in seed funding for their new venture in Brownsville. The other eight candidates will each receive six months of incubation and business support services from the BCIC. By design, the Pitch Summit recognizes emerging startup…
The Rio Grande Valley has increasingly developed and opened nature and wildlife parks that draw eco-tourists from around the country in their search for native and migrating birds. Many wildlife enthusiasts recognize the Valley as the top birding spot in the United States. The uniqueness of the region as a premier wildlife area is something many of the region’s parks and community birding centers are working to convey to local…
Richard Kline surveyed a patch of the Gulf of Mexico about 15 miles northeast of the South Padre Island jetties and found a mostly watery lifeless bottom. “There were almost no fish in that whole 2.5-square-mile area,” said Kline, a professor of marine sciences at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. “Now, there are hundreds of thousands or more.” The difference between back then – before 2015 – and…
In family photos, she is the proud little girl, standing by her father, the skillful fisherman. Diamond Hernandez beams in the photos, helping her Dad, Rick Martinez, hold up a big catch of fish bunched up at the end of a line. “I remember my dad winning contests and getting TVs,” Hernandez said of his dad’s prize-winning fishing. “I’d think, ‘I want to do that.’” The family that fishes together…