“Some days are diamonds, some days are stones.”---John Denver
Most are somewhere in the middle, not polished enough to qualify as gemstones but a cut above mere igneous rock. Seven hours of classes, 30 minutes of flirting, two hours of tossing around the old horsehide. Eight hours of toting the jackhammer, 60 minutes at Mory’s taproom, a nice dinner with the wife and kids. The stones arrive less often, the diamonds are rarer still. That long-ago trip to Papeete. The wedding on the shores of Anastasia Island. The incandescent day Ralph Jr. was born. That fabled road trip with a singular pal.
Most of our diamonds are shared experiences, pleasures taken in the company of others….best friends, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters. It’s an added benefit to experience these diamonds twice, first via our own senses then through another pair of eyes. We prize the companionship, enjoy the discussion, consider the different perspectives. We value the occasional nap while someone else does the driving. When we reconsider our diamond days, most of them are spent as half of a couple, part of a group, a speck at a Springsteen concert. The diamonds are polished by the attendance of friends. It’s part and parcel of the human condition.
The solitary adventure is a road less traveled. People fret over the loneliness of the long-distance runner, the lack of a navigator in Captain Noonan’s passenger seat, a pair of ears to receive and appreciate our pearls of wisdom. “I’m alright through the day, but the day fades away and the long, lonely night takes its place.” After all, how many of us want to end up down at the end of Lonely Street at Heartbreak Hotel? But consider the positives. The opportunity to travel at your own speed to places of your own choosing, the master of your mobile domain, no compromises to be made, no superfluous stops to be considered. You have the unqualified freedom to howl an out-of-tune “Silver Threads And Golden Needles” out the open window of your vehicle without recrimination. You’re allowed to stop at the Sonic Drive-In and ingest atrocious menu offerings. Nobody will scold you for urinating at the side of the road or stopping off at the Super-X Adult Emporium of Nasty Things. If you’re really lucky, you might even pick up a smiling hitchhiker recently escaped from the women’s state prison. Wow, when do we leave? How about November 19, 2017?
Bill at the Capitol building. Plaza of Texas Tower. Easy parking.
The Road To Austin
Most of our days on Earth are taken up with obligations, self-imposed and otherwise, with attending to the requirements for survival, with the maintenance of body and soul. We have friends and relatives to attend to, pets to manage, schedules to draw up and adhere to. Even when we soar off on vacations, most of our days are carefully planned to take advantage of all that we might see and do in the small amount of time available. There rarely comes a day when we climb out of bed, peer through the window at the dawning sun and think This day is mine, I own it, sunrise to sunset, I can do anything I desire. What I desired on November 19th was to drive from San Antonio to Austin, Texas, about a ninety-minute journey, to inspect the setting of my adolescence, visit what old haunts remain 55 years later, revel in nostalgia and lament the hateful changes Time inevitably delivers to these sacristies of our youth.
I left at 8:30 a.m., jacketed against chilly temperatures in the mid-forties, camera in hand to record the proceedings. In no time, I was on Interstate 35, a straight shot to the Capitol over open Texas Hill Country, gently rolling land visible for miles in all directions. Unlike most places, Texas highways are not lined by trees or buildings, leaving a broad unobstructed view of the hinterlands in the distance. I-35 has contiguous commercial real estate much of the way between San Antonio and rapidly-growing San Marcos but a driver can easily see beyond the shoestring of concrete on both sides of the 6-lane roadway to the green fields beyond, a pleasant vision which extends for vast distances. At various points, I counted three, sometimes four water towers at once in the far-off towns. It beats driving down Collins Avenue in Miami Beach looking for some sign, any indication, of the Atlantic Ocean successfully covered up by the unending corridor of tall hotels. Texas is different, ever open, always available for inspection, seldom boring. Montana owns the rights to Big Sky Country but there is no bigger, more prevalent sky than the one over Texas. If you want land, lots of land, ‘neath the starry skies above, it’s waiting for you in the Lone Star State. Count me as a big fan.
The front door and inside beer garden at Scholz’, established 1866.
Austin City Limits
In 1962, my first visit, Austin enclosed 201,762 people with an annualized growth rate of 3.5. It was a sprawling city, but most of it walkable and I trekked daily from Gilbert Shelton’s 9th street apartment past the Capitol grounds over to Guadalupe, the main street bordering the University of Texas campus, then on to the Texas Ranger magazine office in UT’s Publications Building just off the strip. It was a colorful and informative walk past small businesses and the open apartment windows of lessees not shy about sharing their conversations with strangers, a perambulation filled with the sights and smells and sounds of the city, a daily examination of its soul. I loved Austin, its wide river and sprawling parks, its rolling terrain and gentle weather, its busy campus streets. I loved Scholz Beer Garten, hard by the state capitol, where politicians mingled with students, blue-collar workers and church-league softball teams in for a few beers and a basket of fried chicken. I liked old man Threadgill’s spartan bar west of town, a converted gas-station where, on a good night, you might get a decent slice of cheese to go along with your Lone Star and an unknown phenom like Janis Joplin might jump up on the tiny stage to join Ken Threadgill as he yodeled some country classic. I liked the University’s Wednesday night “folksings,” where amateur individuals and groups invaded the student union to display their sometimes strange wares to an appreciative audience. I admired the intelligence of the place, the creativity of the people, the spirit of adventure, the easy trips to Mexican border towns, the amity and good looks of the Austin women. I was never so financially destitute in my life as I was in Austin 1962, and rarely so intellectually gratified. I know You Can’t Go Home Again but was there still some semblance of the Austin of old, some scrap of available memorabilia to send me back to the good old days? Who knows? Anything’s possible, it’s Austin. You can erect giant buildings, cover up the funky ancient spots with concrete, quadruple the population and hide the silver, but a true detective will inevitably unearth its hidden treasures. Right, Bill?
Sixth street sights, Austin, Texas.
Austin, 2017
In most college towns, there is a typical dearth of parking, a plethora of hungry meters and expensive lots and garages. It’s indigenous to the landscape. Austin, however, has taken things to the max, with parking meters stretching over a half-mile from the UT campus in all directions, niggling signs with one eyebrow cocked tsk-tsking anyone who might consider deviating from some fuehrer’s orders, threats of having one’s vehicle hauled off to the far corners of the universe, where it will be callously assassinated, dismembered and placed in The Giant Skwusher, with cruel photographs mailed back to the grieving owner. There might be more warning signs in Austin than there are people to read them, and this is hardly genteel, certainly not welcoming and actually downright scary.
Even if a person is willing to pay the piper his ugly fee, however, there is still nowhere to insert a car. Every space is occupied and would-be parkers circle like vultures around any prospect thought to be on the verge of debarking, diving headlong for the abandoned space like terrified seamen deserting a fast-sinking ship. Frustrated by all this nonsense, I drove defiantly through immensely forbidden areas with death warnings posted hither and yon, down one-way lanes heretofore explored only by golf carts, and finally arrived at the sacred Texas Tower to get a few photos. A lone Hispanic groundskeeper timidly eyed me as I walked past after parking comfortably a few feet from the Tower. I strode by him brusquely, no time for small talk. “Dallas Morning News,” I advised, to assuage his pedestrian worries. He nodded respectfully and went back to work.
Threadgill’s: the original facade and the current bar.
You Can’t Get There From Here
By early afternoon, the traffic had picked up but not to the worrisome degree decribed by most residents. I gave the credit to Sunday, made my way over to I-35 and headed out to Threadgill’s for lunch. The lanes heading north were unencumbered but I noticed the southbound traffic was slow, then very slow, then stopped. I made a mental note, to consider returning via Lamar Boulevard, a long, slow alternative, then turned into the restaurant’s busy parking lot, thrilled by the lack of meters.
Threadgill’s started out as a Gulf filling-station in 1933. Young Kenneth Threadgill worked there, eventually saving enough money to buy the place when Prohibition ended. He bought the first post-Prohibition beer license in Austin and reopened the old gas station as Threadgill’s Tavern. The proprietor, himself a singer-yodeler, implanted a fine jukebox near the front door which contained exclusively records by Jimmy Rogers, whom Threadgill had befriended several years prior. By the early sixties, amateur musicians, including professors from UT, began congregating at the tavern to play country music. In 1962, a very young art student named Janis Joplin discovered the place and a smitten Ken Threadgill gave her carte blanche, even yodeling along with his new discovery on a few numbers. Threadgill’s, primarily due to Ken’s kind but tough demeanor, became that rare place where rednecks, straights and hippies could mix with a minimum of conflict. A new culture tolerance emanated from the tavern, profoundly affecting the patrons who gathered there and the music which arose.
Threadgill’s is much larger now, more of a southern food outpost, but retains its musical inclinations. The stage at one end of the restaurant is more sizeable and a list of upcoming performers is posted at the door. Pictures of Ken Threadgill and Janis Joplin, exceptional relics of a colorful past, are prominently displayed on the old walls. Customers, some appreciative of the place’s past and some oblivious to it, ramble through the restaurant with giant plates of sustenance. I described the layout of the past to the current young manager, who listened intently and asked several questions. I answered most of them but a few things were hard to recall. “You got me on that one,” I told him after a real poser. “This is the first time I’ve been here in 55 years.” The kid smiled his appreciation. “Welcome back, then” he said, kindly. “We always like repeat business.”
Server in waiting. In full uniform.
Exodus
Foolishly neglecting my earlier plan, I motored back to I-35 to head south and back to San Antone. All lanes were impossibly glutted. When Austinites had described their terrible traffic, I always supposed they referred to the internal logjam, never imagining a daily interstate crush of this magnitude. It reminded me of northern Virginia in late afternoon, a virtual parking lot where vehicles count their progress in inches rather than miles. And it was Sunday, for God’s sake. After a solid hour, I had migrated only from one side of town to the other, a preposterous advance. The ride was slightly better thereafter but only became reasonable by the time we reached the little town of Buda, miles hence. Things tightened again at busy San Marcos, then eased the rest of the way to San Antonio. This is not a journey I plan to repeat. I don’t like the beat and it’s hard to dance to. So here’s my plan for the next time I visit Austin, Texas: fly in and call Uber. You’ll have to talk about the Longhorns a bit but it will do so much for your fidgety temperament.
Southeast Culture Center. Note the wall of fame, left, lower photo.
Summary
A good day, a very good day, in fact, perhaps one which alters and illuminates my time. It is good to know that the real Austin is still there, buried beneath a thin veneer---or sometimes a thick veneer---of asphalt, glass and chrome. The freewheeling city that we loved and rambled about so freely in is, alas, hamstrung by a population too large for its infrastructure (a burgeoning 947,890), by congestion that makes a man weary, by the continuing incursion of gentrification and compromise with big business. But the Colorado is still there, as is the lush Zilker Park and refreshing Barton Springs. It’s harder to get to Scholtz’ Beer Garten on one-way San Jacinto, but at least it’s still extant, much the same as it always was, and in no danger of extinction. Threadgill’s remains, in a different form, perhaps, but still capable of regenerating memories of our stellar past.
Out on South Lamar, adjacent to the Planet K head shop is the Southeast Culture Center, with regular musical performances by local artists old and new, performing on a stage with a backdrop of painted Gilbert Shelton characters. To the side of the stage and extending a good distance to the street is a pictorial wall of fame featuring Texas icons, many from long ago like Rangeroo artist and local bar owner Tony Bell, ex-governor Ann Richards, legendary football coach Darrell Royal, musicians Willie Nelson, Janis, Johnny Winter and a hundred others, all of whom walked these streets, lit up these stages, dropped their contributions into the Austin collection box. It is an impressive pantheon, but perhaps the most impressive thing about it is that it is there at all, expansive, unvandalized, welcoming pilgrims night and day, no charge, thank you. All because, despite the rude imposition of an often-surly present, Austin is wise enough to celebrate and remember the wonders of its past.
That’s all, folks….
