Three Questions for… Bob Phillips

Q: In the 25 years you’ve traveled throughout Texas interview-ing artisans, what’s the one thing you’ve found that you’d want with you on a desert island?

A: I can only name one thing? First, my steel bed made by Bill Richardson of Electra, made of welded steel, this incredible huge, heavy, beautifully decorated stuff. Then, to eat, a case of “Buck’s Hot Carrots,” made by Buck and Wilnia Fuquay from Navasota. They take carrots and put jalapenos in them and can them, and once you taste them you have to eat them all the time.



Q: Describe a place you d never go hack to.

A: I know that one immediately- about 20 years ago I did a story on a guy who called himself a hermit. I went out and spent a night with him in his tent on the Trinity River bottoms, just on the south edge of Dallas. It stunk and I got bitten by mosquitoes and people would walk by all night long.



Q: Where do you go on vacation?

A: A great vacation for me is on an island somewhere in the Caribbean, surrounded by a lot of water, no phone, a great book and no television.



Bob Phillips will celebrate 25 years of “8 Country Reporter” with an arts and crafts festival at Old City Park from noon to 4 p.m. on Oct. 6.