Prologue:
My good friend, Pat Brown, is bravely battling a nefarious disease and has recently been accepted into a clinical trial in Austin. So I need you to do me a favor. It’s time to start rubbing those amulets, rocking those talismans and chanting those incantations. If you know any geniis, summon them. If you’re on speaking terms with benevolent gods, have a word. If you exert cosmic influence, wield it. There’s no time for fooling around. We’re not going to tolerate this outrage. Let the Fates deliver their bilious punishment on someone more worthy. We need Pat in our world.
Gilbert Shelton
In the summer of 1962, I was driving my 1950 Cadillac Superior Model Hearse across the country from Massachusetts to New Mexico when I was rudely interrupted. Somewhere in Oklahoma, my radiator developed a tiny leak. I was almost fundless, so there would be no new radiator. I found an old girlfriend from OSU named Rita Payton to stay with for a couple of days while the repair shop guys did what they could to keep it alive.
There would be no trip to Albuquerque, a thousand miles away. But I might be able to make it to Austin, 400 miles south. Gilbert Shelton had already invited me to stay at his apartment, sleep on his “hair couch” and help him put out The Ranger, the University of Texas humor magazine, the best in the country.
After a long and colorful trip, best described in a later episode, I reached Shelton’s apartment, just off the Interregional Expressway on Austin’s East Side. Gilbert lived there with his half-brother Steve, a straight-laced individual who had previously attended Texas A&M in College Station. Steve spent 90% of his time cleaning the apartment. My permanent image features Steve with a broom in his hands. But it was no use. Gilbert’s constant flow of Ranger staffers, amateur musicians and likeminded no-accounts left the apartment in constant disarray, leading to Steve’s eventual breakdown.
One day, we returned home to see Steve shoveling dirt into the place.
“Here! If this is how you want it, I’ll help you out!” he screamed at Gilbert. Shortly thereafter, Steve was gone, wending his way back to A&M, a more fitting environment.
Gilbert was our fearless leader, our post-beatnik era renaissance man. He could play the piano, guitar and banjo adequately but not well enough to satisfy him. He could write competently enough to be a magazine editor, but thought himself average. He was, above all, a great cartoonist, creating era comic favorites The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and Wonder Wart-Hog, which sold kajillions of copies throughout the country, but he eventually found someone else to draw them. When we played a fast-pitch softball game against the UT newspaper team, Shelton, having no experience, played catcher—with no mask. One thing Gilbert thought he was good at was driving. Perish the thought of driving if Shelton was elsewhere in the car. It was only a matter of time until he would be taking over.
Shelton’s best attribute, however, was almost passively coordinating a vast collection of magazine people, musicians, intellectuals, post-beatniks and hangers-on into a marvelous subculture. BS (Before Shelton), most of these people didn’t even know each other, but he helped to integrate their little communities into a sprawling network. In Shelton’s Austin, there was a party, somewhere, every night. As in Every. Night. You had to be there.
Gilbert moved to San Francisco shortly after his term as Ranger editor, and, eventually, to Paris, where he lives today. Those of us fortunate enough to be there in the good old days will never forget him.
Austin Days and The Great Waterballoon Wars of ‘62
The Fall term at the University of Texas was almost upon us and students were everywhere, bogging down traffic, filling up restaurants and coming by the Ranger office to “work on the magazine.” The Summer would not pass, however, without The Great Waterballoon Wars of ’62.
I returned to Shelton’s apartment one afternoon to discover Gilbert vibrating with delight. Earlier in the day, a dagger had been thrust in his door, affixed with a Declaration of War on “The East Side Boys.” Waterballoons would be the weaponry and the battle would be joined that very night. The note was signed by “The West Side Boys,” which Shelton knew to be the perverse hordes of Ranger writer Joe E. Brown.
“There’s no time to lose, Gilbert warned. “They’ll attack at dark. Notify the troops—even Lieuen Adkins! We must build a huge arsenal of waterballoons! We have the advantage here, men. The West Side Boys must transport their weapons and will be limited in what they can carry, while we can fortify ourselves with as many balloons as we can fill up by nightfall!”
The rest of the day was consumed with buying and filling up waterballoons. Kids all across Austin who had birthdays the next few days had them without balloons because all the balloons in town were confiscated by either the East or West Side Boys.
Shelton designated the empty apartment above his own to be the ammunition dump. In all sincerity, the volume of weapons stockpiled therein was truly awesome to behold. Lieuen Adkins was placed in charge of the room, largely to keep him out of the way. Gilbert was fearful that Adkins would, as was his wont, make some terrible error if he was committed to an important role in the battle. Lieuen whined, but succumbed to instructions. The East Side Boys were ready.
Precisely at nine o’clock, an enormous flare from the camp of The West Side Boys flooded the area with light. Ensconced safely behind walls of stone, we waited….Shelton, Karen Kirkland, brother Steve, magazine staffers Tony Bell, Lieuen and Hugh Lowe, myself and a loose assemblage of hangers-on, quivering with anticipation. It was very still, the light from the flare beginning to fade. Steve, moving stealthily from one hiding spot to another, was the first casualty.
SPLOSH! Went the waterballoon. “AAIIEEE!” went Steve, stricken in the chest with a massive shot. “Where the hell did that come from?”
I looked over in Steve’s direction and, seeing nothing, foolishly decided to advance.
SPLOOSH!
“YOWEE! That sucker’s COLD!”
“GODDAMIT, LIEUEN, YOU ASSHOLE, THAT’S OUR GUYS YOU’RE HITTING!” screamed Shelton, assaying the situation. Another balloon flew by his ear, blasting apart on the wall behind him.
“ADKINS HAS TURNED ON US, MEN!” yelled Gilbert. “PROTECT YOURSELVES FROM THE INFIDEL. I’M GOING AFTER HIM!”
Uh oh. Lieuen would be lucky to get out of this alive.
Some of the enemy troops were advancing now. The light had dimmed, but I saw someone to my rear and I ducked into an open doorway. Two West Side Boys slithered past. I leaped from the doorway and made two direct hits. They fell over one another and landed on their weapons, deactivating them all over themselves.
“AW SHEET, LOOKA THAT!” one of them cried as they ran off around the corner of the building. I advanced warily, peering around the corner of the building just as the door to the street side apartment closed and Hugh Lowe arrived from the other direction.
“HAW HAW!” thought we. Trapped in there with no weapons. This will be a massacre of deserved proportions! I knocked on the door, expecting nothing, for who would be so foolhardy as to bring doom down upon themselves?
Amazingly, though, the door slowly opened.
“EAT PIE, PIG!” screamed Hugh, unleashing the mightiest (and fullest) waterballoon of all. Then stood in horrified silence as the nice Japanese man who actually LIVED in that apartment and had just entered, took the full brunt of the blow.
“What the hell????....” gasped the half-drowned little man, stumbling around, dazed by the force of the attack.
Let’s face it, there’s not much you can say by way of explanation in such circumstances. We hurriedly—and a bit ashamedly—returned to the fray.
The action was incredible. Soaked warriors dashed hither and yon, firing their weapons, retreating for more and returning to fight again. Balloon bombs arced through the skies, raining terror on those below. All the nearby tenants had fled in haste, abandoning their homes to the advancing hordes.
Shelton, meanwhile, had reached the ammunition dump to discover Lieuen bound and gagged and all the ammo stolen or skwushed. Joe E. Brown had anticipated Shelton’s tactics, sneaked up from behind and surprised the hapless Adkins. With defensive weapons running low in the fortress of The East Side Boys, the West Siders were soon at the walls and fearsome hand-to-hand combat ensued. Our side was glorious in defeat, especially Steve, who single-handedly turned back half-a-dozen of the heathens with scary A&M jungle-fighting tactics. I was rolling on the watery porch, trying to maintain headlocks on two slippery invaders when I realized Joe E. Brown had crashed through our southern resistance forces and captured the flag, as well as Shelton’s hand-drawn sign featuring the sentimental and timeless battle cry, A Mighty Fortress Is Our Pod! It was, alas, over. The damp Fat Lady had sung.
The Great Waterballoon Wars of ’62: Part II
Word of The Great Waterballoon War echoed throughout Austin. Lieuen had performed yet another Boner For The Ages, and it grew in the retelling. Soon, small groups everywhere were staging insurrections and waterballoonery was the order of the day. Austin merchants began stocking all manner and make of balloons and tales of legendary confrontations proliferated. All of this would culminate in the epic Battle of Zilker Park. The East and West Side Boys would fight as one now, challenged by a consortium of pagan armies. In other words, it was the Ranger nation against the rest of the world. Outnumbered five to one, Gilbert and Joe plotted guerilla tactics to win the day. The mighty hearse was reactivated to serve as ultimate, indestructible, uncapturable, mobile ammunition-dump-for-the-ages. We rolled into battle with a confidence born of experience and a determination seldom seen.
The first exchanges were initiated on the periphery of Austin’s spacious Zilker Park in the late afternoon. It was a Saturday and picnickers abounded, suburbanites walked their dogs and little children played, oblivious to the menace around them.
The first guerilla band attacked before the unprepared enemy could so much as unload their enormous horde of weapons. We thoroughly drowned the ammokeepers and their vehicle alike before melting back into the woods. The counterattack was not long in coming. Vast numbers of soldiers congregated and, now armed, made their way toward the location they had last seen us. Giggling at their folly, we were elsewhere. As they entered the woods, we attacked from behind, scarcely wasting a single balloon and hightailing it back to cover. All except rookie Gerald Peacock, who had made an Adkinsesque blunder.
“I lost my WATCH” he wailed, chagrined.
Joe E. Brown was thunderstruck.
“You wore a goddam WATCH into combat? Oh, and don’t tell me, it was on your throwing hand?” Peacock admitted, alack, that it was all true and he would never live down his shame and ignominy.
“I’ll guarantee you that much,” Joe told him, as we busily set about to find the watch before we were discovered. Next thing we knew, four of the enemy pounced on us from the jungle.
"Whoa! Wait a minute,” I protested. “This poor fool here has just gone and lost his valuable watch, a family heirloom for generations. Being the reasonable men that you are, I’m sure you’ll want to help us find this small treasure. There is plenty of time for fighting later.”
Surprisingly, they agreed and we set about on hands and knees to find the timepiece, which I discovered almost immediately. I signaled Joe and put the watch in my pocket, nudging Peacock. We had no balloons now, but the enemy had laid their supply on the ground nearby. Appropriating them with great whooping and hollering, we blasted the good samaritans to smithereens and fled off into the underbrush.
“Gee, Joe,” I confessed, guiltily. “I feel less than honorable about that one.”
Joe looked over, serious and understanding. “That’s okay, boy,” he reassured, clapping me on the shoulder. “War is hell, you know.”
The Grand Finale
And now, one of the truly Great Moments of the Summer of ’62 would take place.
The enemy legions, prodigious in number, had need for beaucoup balloons and a method to transport them, thus had constructed a gigantic crate with two long poles lashed to the sides, which four healthy men could shoulder and carry along. Shelton discovered this fact and anticipated the route through the park which the walking arsenal would travel. No one who saw what happened next would soon forget it.
The redoubtable Gilbert, clad in white cotton underwear with a red bandanna tied around his forehead, charged from the woods and, with a mighty cry of “BOOGIEWAHH!” leaped INTO the monster crate of balloons, which he promptly and loudly stomped to jelly.
The horrorstruck weapons-handlers were immobilized. If they jumped into the box to apprehend Shelton, even more balloons would be destroyed. If they didn’t, well….
As they screamed and flailed about and finally started in after him, the intrepid editor dismounted the armory and ran for the picnic grounds with a bloodthirsty band of enraged lunatics in hot pursuit. The nice family outings broke up in seconds as terrorized gentlefolk fled to their automobiles. Granny ladies wailed and small children stood agape, pointing. The park was soon alive with the sounds of sirens as Austin’s Finest arrived in extravagant numbers, trying to figure out who to arrest.
By this time, of course, many of us were back at the hearse (capacity two-dozen in a pinch) and rolling. Shelton made it back to his little Renault 4CV unscathed and The Great Waterballoon Wars of ’62 sadly abated.
Racing Bulletin:
Crimson Streak is scheduled to run Thursday, August 26 and Crimson Song, Saturday, the 28th. You know how it is with these things, but if the races go and either horse performs well, we’ll post it.
Old College Magazine Joke (from 1966):
The proud father was viewing the latest addition to his family in the maternity ward of the local parochial hospital. While he was thus engaged, a kindly old priest happened by.
“Your first child?” asked the clergyman.
“No, Father, my fourteenth.”
“Oh, my my my,” clucked the priest. “I see you’re a man who sticks to your religious principles.”
“Well, as a matter of fact, sir, I profess no religion,” said the man.
The priest gave a startled look and hurried on down the hall. At the end of the corridor, he summoned a nurse.
“Young lady,” he whispered, fretfully, “watch that man down there. I think he might be a sex maniac.”
That’s all, folks.
