US midterms: Race narrows between a ‘radical Democrat’ and ‘the most corrupt politician in Texas’

The Irish Times · Keith Duggan · 2026-11-02 07:51 UTC

Senate seat battle between James Talarico and Ken Paxton is set to become the most expensive non-presidential political race in US history

Murn’s Cafe, directly across the street from The Spur Hotel, closes at three on Saturday and after that, Archer City is in wind-down mode for the weekend. Often, a forlorn wind comes whistling through its wide boulevard, dusty in summer, unforgivably cutting in winter but on this Halloween weekend, the afternoon is balmy.

For decades, the four-way traffic light suspended from a cable at the centre of the crossing point between Center and East Main was Archer City’s symbol of timelessness. It was one of the many artefacts and buildings immortalised on celluloid in 1971 when Peter Bogdanovich filmed The Last Picture Show, an account of small-town restlessness, hopes dashed and love mislaid, shot in magnificent noir, earning eight Oscar nominations and delivering to cinemas across the world a searing portrait of an obscure Texan town.

The Royal Theater – the picture house in the title – was later destroyed in a fire but its facade, across the street from the American Legion, has been restored. That film, half a century old now, conferred a kind of Hollywood immortality on what is a farming and oil heartland, while Archer City local Larry McMurtry, who wrote the novel on which the film is based, spent decades writing fictive accounts of Texas life that are beloved across the world. A booth in The Dairy Queen, on the edge of town, was his unofficial office.

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