The Fifty-Year Texas Road Trip Volume 2

Ride shotgun with writer-photographer Randy Mallory on his fifty-year road trip exploring the endlessly fascinating people and places of Texas. The fourth-generation Texan spent a five-decade career traveling every part of the Lone Star State on assignments for statewide magazines and tourism agencies. In more than two hundred photos and four reflective essays, his first photo retrospective offers what he found. At the turn of every page—just like the rounding of every bend—there are delightful and surprising places: a thunderhead billowing behind a spinning Ferris wheel, a Volkswagen Beetle hung from a giant oak, a steam-powered riverboat gliding through mossy swamps, and yard art of a pregnant woman playing electric guitar. Meet the proud and diverse people he encountered: an organic farmer with a UFO museum, rural church members at a foot-washing ceremony, an adventurer riding the highway in a wind-powered sail trike, and five US presidents sharing the same stage.

The Fifty-Year Texas Road Trip: On Assignment from Earth to Uncertain is drawn from thousands of images contained in the Randy Mallory Collection at the University of North Texas. The collection and this book serve as a colorful and telling record of one photographer’s attempt to capture Texas’s sense of place during an important and ever-changing half century. The breadth of his career (1972–2022) allows the book to showcase many aspects of Texas history and culture that are gone or are rapidly fading away. A foreword by Dan K. Utley, former chief historian for the Texas Historical Commission, places Mallory’s photography in perspective as a valuable resource in the necessary work of chronicling history as it evolves around us every day.

"The Fifty-Year Road Trip's delightful and touching photographs and beautifully written essays reveal the photographer's mature thinking about both Texas and himself. With humor, philosophy, and commentary that seem to reflect an original and generous way of seeing the people and places of mostly rural parts of Texas, the book's focus no doubt reflects Mallory's primary assignments from a rural electric co-op and Texas Highways Magazine, but his captions with dates add to the substance of the content, including the timelessness of the depictions."--Judith Garrett Segura, coauthor of Our Stories: Black Families in Early Dallas (UNT Press)

"It amazes me how photographers can go to the same place and bring back such different feelings and visions from them. Mallory has such a soft approach and creates rapport with all his subjects. I am envious of some of the photographs, wishing I had taken them."--J. Griffis Smith, author of On the Road with Texas Highways and former photo editor for Texas Highways Magazine

"Want to see Texas in all its cultural grandeur? Then jump in your truck and spend fifty years exploring the state's byways and backroads . . . or savor this tasty travelogue by Randy Mallory, who already did it for you."--Christopher Cook, author of Robbers and Tongues of Fire

"Randy Mallory knows well the art of both looking and seeing. This beautiful book portrays his exciting career of capturing Texas's varied landscapes of interesting people and inspiring places with wit, humor, and a keen eye. Come along. You'll enjoy what you see."--Jonathan K. Gerland, executive director of the History Center in Diboll, Texas, and author of Boggy Slough: A Forest, a Family, and a Foundation for Land Conservation

Randy Mallory is a fourth-generation Texan who spent fifty years as a travel writer and photographer for publications such as Texas Highways, Texas Monthly, and the Dallas Morning News and for agencies such as the Texas Historical Commission and the Texas Parks & Wildlife Department. Mallory donated his photography archive to UNT Special Collections in 2021. This is the first book of his work.

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