The Summer of ‘62 was a broiler in Austin. At one point, 55 days went by without rain. The eventual cloudburst brought dancing in the streets, some of it by a teenager named Janis Joplin who decided the ritual was best performed wearing no clothing above the waist. The University of Texas turned its signature tower orange, a celebratory event usually reserved for winning football games. The air cooled, classes at UT started and life returned to normal.
Before all this, however, for a long two months, the city baked. Relief was sought in Austin’s lakes and river and springs. Gilbert Shelton decided one fine afternoon that boating around Lake Travis might be nice so a few of us jumped into Gilbert’s tiny Renault 4CV (capacity—4 in a crisis) and drove out to Lake Travis where Shelton knew a man with a boat. Nothing is ever that simple with Gilbert, however, and before long he and the rest of this jolly band of sailors were taking turns blasting floating detritus with a pistol. Eventually, they foolishly decided to give me a try. The closest I had ever been to a handgun was watching Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke. They didn’t let people in Massachusetts have weapons. We had the Red Sox, after all, and nobody wants an armed population full of despair. Anyway, after I terrified everyone with a few wildly errant rounds, Shelton retrieved his gun and we headed for shore. I was surprised but happy to see there were no angry representatives of law enforcement waiting on the banks.
A few days later, on returning from the Ranger office, Gilbert discovered a scary warning tacked to his apartment door. It was a Declaration of War against the East Side Boys (the denizens of Sheltonville and a few assorted friends). Waterballoons would be the weapons of the day, engagement to start the next evening at dark.
“This can only be the work of the West Side Boys,” said Gilbert. “We’ve got to gather up all the balloons we can find before the enemy gets to them. There’s not a minute to waste.”
Sufficiently alerted, the East Side Boys rampaged through Austin, buying up every available balloon. Children celebrating birthdays that week in Austin would be doing it without balloons because every last one of them was confiscated by either the East or West Side Boys. We felt we held a significant advantage over the enemy due to the fact we could store unlimited weaponry within our barracks while the invaders would be forced to carry theirs with them, an unwieldy proposition at best. Of course, we didn’t reckon with the fact we had Lieuen Adkins on our side.
Shelton decided to station Adkins in the upstairs ammunition dump, mainly to keep him out of the battle, which, if given the chance, he would somehow foul up. The apartment building Shelton lived in was a two-story proposition—picture a cheap motel, only worse—largely vacant due to its impending destruction in favor of a gleaming new post office. There was a small yard adjacent, which ran from front to back. The appointed hour passed with little fanfare, but just as darkness fell, a mighty flare soared into the sky, lighting up the entire area. Shelton’s half-brother, Steve, a wily combat-tested veteran with a Texas A&M background, immediately attempted to improve his hiding place and was struck with the first shot. SPLOSH! went the waterballoon. “AAIIEEE!” screamed Steve, now wetter and colder. “Where the hell did that come from?”
I looked over in Steve’s direction and, seeing nothing, decided to advance. SPLOOSH! “YOWIE! That sucker’s COLD! What are they doing, FREEZING the things?”
Shelton quickly assayed the situation. “GODDAMIT, LIEUEN—THAT’S OUR GUYS YOU’RE HITTING!” No sooner spoken than another missile flew by his ear, splattering on the wall behind.
“ADKINS HAS TURNED ON US, MEN!” yelled Gilbert. “PROTECT YOURSELVES. I’M GOING UP TO TAKE HIM OUT!”
Meanwhile, buoyed by confusion in the East Side camp, the enemy was advancing. It was darker now, but I saw someone to my rear and ducked into an open doorway. Two West Side boys slithered past and I leaped from my hiding place, delivering two direct hits. The clumsy opposition soldiers fell over one another in their attempts to escape, tripping to the ground and landing on their weapons, deactivating them all over themselves.
“AW SHEET, LOOKA THAT!” one of them wailed as they ran off around the corner of the building. I advanced warily, peering around the corner just as the nearest apartment door closed and Eastsider Hugh Lowe arrived from the other direction.
HAW HAW, thought we. Trapped in there with no weapons. This would be a massacre of deserved proportions. I knocked on the door, expecting nothing, for what fool would expose himself to our fearsome artillery? Amazingly, however, the door slowly opened.
‘”EAT PIE, PIG!!!” screamed Hugh, unleashing the mightiest (and fullest) waterballoon of all. And then standing in horrified silence as the nice Japanese man who actually still LIVED there 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. Hugh looked at me. I looked at Hugh. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he wisely decided, getting no argument from me. “There’s always some collateral damage in these affairs,” I offered, as we rushed off down the street.
Shelton made his way to the balcony, where he found the hapless Adkins bound and gagged, a victim of the clever Joe E. Bown, a master of warfare. Needless to say, all of our weapons were stolen or skwushed. It was only a matter of time until the well-armed foe crashed our defenses, resulting in fearsome hand-to-hand combat. Ultimately, Joe E. Brown slipped through our southern forces and captured the flag, not to mention Shelton’s hand-drawn sign proclaiming “A Mighty Fortress Is Our Pod!” The battle, alas, was over. The damp Fat Lady had sung. Lieuen had performed yet another Boner For The Ages and it grew in the telling. In such manner is History made.
And so it began. The first in a string of waterbattles which preoccupied a sweating Austin for weeks, first between the East and West Side Boys, later with those two groups as allies against a vast consortium of infidels in the Great Battle of Zilker Park, involving hundreds, where Shelton earned eternal fame by jumping into a mobile armory and stomping up and down on the entire armament supply of the enemy while miraculously avoiding capture. People still sing of the event today in the barrooms of Travis County. And record it in great detail in The Flying Pie of August 19, 2010. There was never a dull moment with Cap’n Shelton at the helm. Oh, and speak of the devil….
A letter From Abroad
I just remembered another adventure from that summer of ‘62. Included in the party were me, you, Steve Parker and some others.
Before they installed a gate with bars to prevent people from entering, you used to be able to go into the storm drain system of downtown Austin where the main tunnel opened under the Congress Avenue Bridge. One night, some of us decided to explore the underground maze of tunnels. The main drain underneath Congress Avenue was about six feet in diameter, just enough to make you have to crouch slightly to keep from hitting your head. The place was full of bats flying about. We whistled and made squeaking noises so they wouldn’t hit us. With our flashlights, we advanced several hundred yards up the main tunnel.
Suddenly, we heard a roaring noise in the distance. They had opened the fire hydrants on the streets above to clean the gutters! We realized what the noise was and we broke for the exit. The roaring wall of water was getting closer and closer. It caught us about a hundred feet from the exit.
Fortunately, the roaring wall of water was only about six inches high.
Gilbert
And Another….
Remember our softball game with the Bronze Bullets (Daily Texan newspaper staff)? It was supposed to be slow-pitch but when we fell behind you came in and started delivering blazing-fast pitches. They beat us anyway. We got our revenge when we defeated them in the College Bowl Quiz Show. Of course, we cheated.
Gilbert
Re the softball game, Shelton neglects to mention he caught the whole affair without wearing a catcher’s mask. Naturally, he made it through without a scratch.
Folksinger Arrives
I first saw Janis Joplin at a party outside the apartment of Neil Unterseher just off Guadalupe not far from the Nighthawk diner. Up until then, I had never been in a housing unit with a live tree growing up through the floor. Neil was an ex-tennis player at UT who had just relinquished an athletic scholarship which was cramping his style….cutting into academics, musical pursuits and fun time….thus making him an admired and popular fellow. Apparently, everything worked out for Neil as Shelton reports he is currently playing music professionally in the Latin Quarter of New Orleans.
As the party wore on, guests came and went. About an hour in, a young girl showed up carrying an autoharp. Black turtleneck (on a hot night), black pants, black shoes. A little disheveled-looking. There were a couple of people singing folky stuff and she joined in. Then, she did a couple of numbers by herself. Everybody stopped what they were doing and paid heed. Not just another country bumpkin here. Believe it or not from what you know now, she seemed a little shy. I began to talk to her, found out she was a newly-arrived freshman art major from Port Arthur. Rangeroo Lieuen Adkins came over and joined the conversation. Once Lieuen becomes involved in anything, shyness disappears and levity enters the room. As the party slowed, the three of us walked over to South Congress, strolled for awhile and hit a café to grab some food. A bat flew into the place, dispersing some diners and providing merry entertainment for the rest of us as it dive-bombed its pursuers. Lieuen eventually left, hewing to his parents midnight curfew and the two of us looked for a quiet spot to spend the night, settling for some landscaping around the State Capitol building. We were still there at sunup when a security guard discovered us and went catatonic. “C’mon, man!” Janis complained. “People gotta sleep somewhere!”
We hung out together for several days, essentially living at Shelton’s condemned apartment which had by then been abandoned by him and all others. Alas, one day the wrecking ball finally arrived. A workman walked in, shocked to discover us still in residence. “Jesus Christ,” he marveled, disparagingly, “how can anybody exist in a mess like this?” Janis answered him appropriately. “Well man,” she said, airily, “everybody can’t live in Pasadena.”
Try To Remember A Finer September….
With the start of classes, it was time to get to work on the finishing stages of the Texas Ranger, and all of us were hard at the task. People who have never worked for a publication cannot imagine the stress of an absolute deadline, the easily forgettable minutiae which must be included before the job is done, the very late nights and last-minute catastrophes. In later years, when I put together my own magazine almost entirely by myself, I usually slept on a table at the printer’s shop and often worked til dawn. With a newspaper, it’s pretty much expected that errors will go to press, the inevitable result of a daily edition. Magazines, however, are created by a crew with illusions to artistry, mistakes are inexcusable in the final product.
The light at the end of this tunnel was the infamous Ranger party. Reserved, supposedly, for the staff of the magazine and the legions of salesmen who helped sell it at little stands across the Texas campus; paid for by a kickback from those sales, funds used almost exclusively for the procurement of alcohol, beer and whiskey alike. Janis was thrilled to consider the possibilities and she diligently performed her salesgirl duties like the rest in anticipation of great rewards.
Trouble is, first there was a football game to attend. The night of the first Ranger party of 1962, the Texas Longhorns were playing the Oregon Ducks and we were going—we being myself, Janis, Gilbert and current girlfriend, Karen K. Kirkland. (Karen, dissatisfied with a mere 3 Ks for her initials, later married a man whose last name started with….well, you know. So now she is Karen Kay Kirkland Kervorkian or something.) Janis dressed up for the game, even wearing heels and decided to call her father and make him proud. Karen was a football snob but for the first half the girls were good sports about it. When halftime arrived, Janis asked, “Are we gonna stay for the whole thing?” Yes, Janis.
“But some unwelcome guest will get to all the liquor and all we’ll have left will be Lone Star.” Shelton assured her there would be plenty of liquor for all. For once in his life, he was wrong, though. Run out it did. This did not sit very well with Janis, who was quick to notice several wayfaring strangers helping themselves to the remnants of the liquor supply.
“Gimme that, you goddam unwelcome guest!” she demanded, in exactly those words. “I didn’t sit on my ass for four magazine-sellin’ hours to be drinkin’ Lone Star.” She cackled and scurried off, leaving confusion in her wake. The unwelcome guest was openmouthed and stricken.
“Who WAS that masked man?” he uttered, shivering at the experience. Lieuen Adkins looked him up and down, scoffing at his ignorance. “That, you poor fool,” advised Lieuen, looking off in the distance, “was The Lone Twanger. Consider yourself lucky you got off with a warning.”
A Touch Of Mexico
The Autumn days were long and fruitful, punctuated by Ranger work fueled by lunchtime visits to oases like the San Jacinto Café, provider of Mexican fare, sweet tea—sangria, if you wanted it—and Lone Star. The Mexican food in these places was unfailingly great, vastly superior to the cuisine in Mexico, itself. While Shelton’s old apartment was extant, we often walked at night to the nearby Mex section of town for a midnight dinner at the Mexican-operated Market Café which offered a giant 88-cent meal of tacos, enchiladas (2), refried beans and rice for a whopping 88 cents. We amused ourselves by competing to see who could find the most errors on the huge menu painted on the wall. I’m sure this place must have closed at some apocalyptic hour but if it did we were never there late enough to find out.
When you live only a couple hundred miles from the Mexican border, of course, it’s only a matter of time until you’ll want to visit. Shelton was well-versed in these matters, so one fine weekend he commandeered Karen K. Kirkland’s fine Land Rover, the better to negotiate Mexico’s edgy Highway System, and Gilbert, Karen, Janis and I took off for Nuevo Laredo. If you have never been to a Mexican border town, I can give you a brief description. They are teeming with little kids selling Chiclets, endless numbers of retail establishments purveying everything from pre-World War II outerwear to glow-in-the-dark Elvis portraits, more kids selling Chiclets, young women of dubious repute standing in front of ornery apartments, lights inside aimed at the beds, bars you wouldn’t take your biker gang to and kids selling shoelaces. Suffice to say, you won’t be taking Mother there. Unless you’re trying to sell her.
Gilbert paid a kid half-a-buck (a generous fee in those parts) to watch the car and we meandered off to a beer garden for lunch. Janis was fascinated by the place. “What do all these motherf*ck*rs DO all day?” she wanted to know, receiving a politically incorrect answer from Karen. “As little as possible,” she said. We enjoyed our lunch, a party of youngish twenty-year-olds across the room eyeballing the girls and eventually making snarky comments in Spanish, which Karen clearly understood.
“Specious asses!” she spit in their direction in a moderate tone. They weren’t too sure what “specious” meant but they pretty much got the “asses” part. Just as they rose for a visit, Shelton returned with a round of Carta Blancas, noticed our impending compadres and initiated merry conversation in their native tongue. He had no idea what was going on. Disarmed by the cordial gringo, they hesitated, answered Gilbert and returned to their seats. Janis, well aware of the impending threat, looked at me and flashed a relieved grin.
“The Lone Ranger ,” she giggled, “rides again!”
I made a mental note to leave Karen home on future foreign expeditions.
A Remembrance From Austinite Jim Baldauf
In the fall of 1962—and organized by Janis—several of us gathered together our old, seldom-worn, long sleeved white shirts with actual cuffs which we then cut off to present to Killeen as a birthday present. This was to compensate for the cuffs of his own white shirts which always appeared cuffless because he habitually wore them with the cuffs turned up but inside-out and under the sleeves.
I forget what happened after we assembled a good pile of these shirt cuffs….maybe Bill remembers receiving them. Or maybe we all got drunk and forgot to give them to him. Anyway, it seemed like a nice idea at the time.
Jim B.
See there, now. It’s like I’ve been telling you. Salt of the Earth, these folks from Austin. Where else can you find this kind of generosity of spirit? Who else will give you the shirts off their backs? In one form or another….
Bill Wearing A Baldauf Shirt, With Shelton And Jimmy Olsen
Next Week
Bill goes to Houston. Janis gets a house. And, if we’re lucky, we may REALLY get to the Ghetto this time.
That’s all, folks. Temporarily, of course….
