Vidor: The Worst Beefcake East Texas Has to Offer

East Texas is just plain uncomfortable: the air is hot and damp as a sauna, it smells like oil all the time, every car is a red pickup truck with a confederate flag in the rear, and the people alternate between praising Jesus and hating. 

And Vidor, on the outskirts of Beaumont, may be the most uncomfortable town in all of East Texas.

It looks like a poverty-stricken inner-city neighborhood, all fast-food restaurants and railroad tracks. The high school is next to a building materials company. There are 14 churches (all Baptist, Pentecostal, or Nazarene) but no bookstores. museums, or taverns.

Here are some apartments for rent.  Dismal.

Vidor was once a sundown town, where blacks weren't allowed after dark.  An attempt to integrate public housing in 1991 resulted in a Ku Klux Klan rally.  It is still a Ku Klux Klan stronghold, 97% white.

 It is the home town of serial killer Dean Corli, who raped and murdered 28 teenage boys in Houston between 1970 and 1973, before being killed by an accomplice.   And the home town of several country-western musicians.

In the news:
"Threatening Graffiti Found at Vidor High School"
"Arizona Man Accidentally Shoots Himself in the Groin at a Vidor, Texas Wal-Mart"
"Jury Reaches Verdict in the Trial of a Man Who Killed a Vidor, Texas Teen"
"Billboards Outside Vidor, Texas Inspired Oscar-Winning Film"  (the billboards are maintained by local resident James Fulton, who believes that the Vidor Police Chief knows who murdered his daughter 27 years ago, but don't want to arrest him.)

Another billboard was put up in 2011 by a Vidor man named Clayt Kinard, who belonged to a group believing that Judgment Day would be May 21, 2011.  A reporter for the Beamont Enterprise interviewed several local pastors to see what they thought. Sounds like he was taking the issue seriously.





Vidor High School ("Believe and Achieve") is the home of the Pirates.  The student dress code specifies that boys may not wear earrings. 

The football team is photographed outside a horrifyingly decrepit structure.  Is that their school?







Here they're being escorted out of a monster's mouth.  Is the game plan to scare the opposing team to death?

















Well, they're not going to intimidate the opposing team with their buffed physiques.








Vidor High also has a swim team.  This is the only boy.   Cute, but he could use some time in the sun (maybe the oil smell makes it impossible).


















My quest to find actual beefcake in Vidor seems fruitless.  This guy has abs, but he could also use some sun.  In Vidor, white means white.




















I was reduced to searching through the Facebook public photos of Vidor residents. The top photo shows a pasty swimmer.

Finally I found someone with a tan and abs, but I couldn't tell if he was a teenager or child. 

And what kind of swamp monster has his friend caught?