C ity Hall shines bright this year, ushering us into “It’s a Wonderful Life in Mountain City!” A huge thank you to all who pitched in to pay for this centerpiece that will anchor Tour de Lights. Sponsors include Penny Moulder at Texas Home Team Realty, Christi Anderson – Realtor, Prosper Properties,...

H appy Thanksgiving! Thank you for reading this column. My husband deserves gratitude for spurring me on with this neighborly chit-chat. He lovingly clips each column and places it in a 3-ring binder. He reminds me of deadlines and shows me Mountain City-related tidbits as they happen. Thank you, Ro...

By Pauline Tom W estern soapberry trees ( Sapindus drummondii ) and chinaberry trees ( Melia azedarach ) grow in Mountain City. What’s the difference? That’s what I needed to know. We have a volunteer tree that’s producing berries that look, to the uneducated eye, like chinaberries. The “genuine” ch...

G od’s mercies are new every morning. I went to bed with an empty tidbit basket and a noon deadline. I awoke to a Facebook post from my Plum Creek friend, Jaclyn Pettigrew.  “I just want to throw out a perspective to all of you that hate the Christmas stuff already ... I have divorced parents. So, a...

No lukewarmness seeped into Mountain City’s Fire & Ice Festival. Hot salsa and burgers. Cold ice cream and drinks. Warm conversations. Cool time chillin’ to the music of Island Texas. Young and old and in between, each taster picked up a ballot for our famous Fire and Ice Tasteoff. Kameron Welma gar...

By Pauline Tom I t’ll be easy to find the 4 p.m. – 9 p.m. Fire & Ice Festival this Saturday. It takes place smack dab between the “Old City Hall” (the tiny building at the front of the City) and the City Hall (the two-story residential-looking house at the City’s entrance). Set your lawn chairs in t...

By Pauline Tom R ed and Yellow kill a fellow” is quite true when it comes to Central Texas snakes. For centipedes, it’s “Red and Yellow really hurt a fellow”. The Texas redheaded centipedes ( Scolopendra heros ) are one of the world’s largest centipede species, growing to about six inches. The one K...

M y apologies if you tried to find this column in last week’s paper. We quickly planned an “emergency” family trip during my dad’s stay in rehab in deep East Texas. (My dad, 93, is home now.) And, just when I reached the time I had set aside for putting together a column, my mom’s elderly dog died. ...

By Pauline Tom T he phone number to keep at hand for our Snake Rescue is (512) 393-1986. That’s Rick Thomas. Cover the snake and he’ll come by in the evening or on weekend to relocate the snake. Rick will provide snake ID from a texted photo too. He answered back to me, “Hog-nosed snake” after I one...

R onTom dug up some dirt last week - not dirt on somebody, but dirt in our compost pile. He summoned me and my iPhone camera. Neither of us knew the identity of the thumb-sized grubs he found. They looked like June bug grubs on steroids. Checking “giant grubs Texas”, I first read a post by a lawn ch...