No one will ever convince me that Austin, Texas was not the best place in the world in 1962. The city's natural charms were abundant---large verdant parks, a smattering of hills, the beautiful University of Texas campus with its Spanish Mediterranean and Spanish Renaissance architecture styles, quaint Mexican restaurants with better food than those in Acapulco, and the other Colorado river running right through the middle of it all. And that's without mentioning the best comedy club in the world, the Texas State Senate and House of Representatives.
This was a time when the last vestiges of the beatnik era had faded and before the core ideas of the beats had morphed into the larger counterculture phenomenon of the hippies. It was before marijuana became widely available and LSD was barely heard of. Searchers for Truth and Meaning were relegated to the harsh test of peyote and its stomach-churning charms. Austin was filled with brilliant explorers in these days, young people who had fled the intellectual backwaters of a stifling, conservative state to look for allies, brothers-in-unacceptable behavior, rag-tag soldiers to fight back-to-back within their own liberal Alamo. Such people often congregate around maverick student publications and eschew the stodgy dorm life for the rustic pleasures of insect-ridden antique houses, flophouse apartments or to-be condemned barracks like Austin's infamous Ghetto. These were my best friends in the Summer of 1962.
The Early Days; Wine & Warfare
I bounced down the dirt alley to Gilbert Shelton's ramshackle apartment, arriving in a cloud of smoke as my radiator finally gave way after 388 miles of huffing and puffing. The new editor of the Texas Ranger humor magazine came out to greet me. "You sure know how to make an entrance, Killeen!" he commented above the noise. "Let your car settle down a while. Come on in and have a beer." I walked into a large room, its walls painted with all manner of cartoonery by the celebrants of a painting party held there the previous night. A familiar friend, Wonder Wart Hog looked down at me from above, a fine rendering proffered by Ranger Art Director Tony Bell. On the stereo, the Greenbriar Boys were singing "We Need a Whole Lot More of Jesus and a Lot Less Rock and Roll." The apartment consisted of the main room, a small kitchen, a bathroom and Shelton's bedroom. It would be razed in two months to make way for a new post office, alleviating any need for a security deposit. I would eventually become the last person to live there, fleeing only when the giant wrecking ball came smashing through the wall. Janis Joplin, visiting at the time, looked up from the rubble at the surprised offenders. "RUDE!" she admonished. "Very, very rude!"
The concluding days of summer before the apartment fell were full of wine and roses. Almost immediately after my arrival, we came home one day to find a note tacked to the front door. It was a challenge to a massive water-balloon fight two nights hence from the West Side Boys, a nefarious band of trolls headed by Rangeroo Joe E. Brown. We went out and bought up all the balloons we could find and stashed them in an abandoned upstairs apartment to be guarded by antihero Lieuen Adkins, amiable writer/poet/punster on the magazine staff. Lieuen was a very straight looking guy with glasses and a permanent grin, who still lived with his parents and had an eleven o'clock curfew. If the terms "nerd" and "geek" had been invented at the time, Adkins would have qualified. Lieuen constantly earned Shelton's enmity by screwing up whatever task he was given, so this time he was posted upstairs and out of the way as balloon monitor to prevent him from innocently abetting the enemy.
Precisely at 9 pm, a giant flare flew skyward from the surly encampment of the West Side Boys, and the battle was on. Ensconced behind sturdy walls of stone, we waited...me, Shelton, brother Steve, Ranger staffers Tony Bell, Hugh Lowe and a loose assemblage of hangers-on, quivering with anticipation. All was still, the lingering light from the flare beginning to fade. Steve, moving stealthily from one hiding spot to another, was the first casualty.
SPLOOSH! goes the waterballoon. "AAIIEEE!!!" goes Steve, stricken in the chest with a massive shot. "Where the hell did that come from?" I looked over in Steve's direction, saw nothing and foolishly decided to advance. SPLOOSH! again. "YOWEE, THAT SUCKER'S COLD!"
Gilbert's angry voice knifed through the smoky night air: "LIEUEN, YOU IDIOT, THAT'S OUR GUYS YOU'RE HITTING!" Then, "ADKINS HAS TURNED ON US, MEN, I'M GOING AFTER HIM!"
Some of the enemy troops were advancing now. The light had dimmed considerably, but I saw someone behind me and ducked into a doorway recess. Two West Side Boys slithered past and turned the corner of the building. I advanced warily and peered around the corner just as a nearby door closed and ally Hugh Lowe arrived from the other direction. HAW HAW! thought we...two enemies trapped inside with no weapons. This would be a massacre of mighty proportions! I knocked on the door, expecting nothing and amazed when it slowly opened. "EAT PIE, PIG!" screamed Lowe, unleashing his heaviest weapon. Then we both stood in silent horror as the nice half-drowned Japanese man who still lived in the condemned apartment gasped and stumbled around, dazed by the strength of the blow. "WHAT THE HELL GOING ON HERE YOU CRAZY BASTARDS...?"
We decided discretion was indeed the better part of valor and fled before the Samurai Warriors showed up. The action around us was incredible, soaked soldiers dashing hither and yon firing weapons, then retreating to reload. Balloon bombs arced through the sky raining terror on those below. Shelton, meanwhile, had reached the ammunition dump to discover Lieuen Adkins bound and gagged, with all the ammo stolen or skwushed. The brilliant General 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 invaders were soon inside the walls where fearsome hand-to-hand combat ensued. Eventually, Brown's raiders crashed through our southern resistance forces and captured the flag, as well as Gilbert's hand-drawn sign bearing our tireless battle cry, "A Mighty Fortress Is Our Pod!" The damp Fat Lady had sung. One war was over but a greater one had only begun.
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| Zilker Park, home of the Great Waterballoon War |
Oh, The Humanity!
Word of the Great Waterballoon War echoed throughout Austin. Lieuen had performed another boner for the ages and the story grew in the retelling. Soon, small groups of balloon bearers were sloshing it out all over town and waterballoonery became the order of the day. Austin merchants began stocking all manner and make of ammunition and tales of legendary confrontations proliferated. All of this would culminate in the epic Battle of Zilker Park, where the East and West Side Boys would fight as one, challenged by a consortium of pagan armies. Outnumbered by at least five to one, Gilbert and Joe plotted guerilla tactics to win the day. The mighty hearse was reactivated to serve as the ultimate indestructible, uncapturable mobile ammunition dump for the ages. We rolled into battle with sneers on our faces and towels in our belts.
It was a bright and peaceful Saturday in lovely Zilker Park. Young mothers pushed baby carriages down verdant paths, picnickers spread towels on the lawn, little children played, urban gentlefolk walked their dogs, all oblivious to the bubbling menace all 'round them. Then out of nowhere, our guerilla band attacked an unprepared enemy column blithely wending its way through the Zilker playground, drowning several poor rookies before melting back into the woods. The counterattack was not long in coming as vast numbers of armed insurgents hustled in rage to the scene of the atrocities. The enemy legions, prodigious in number, had need for thousands of balloons and a method to transport them, thus had constructed a gigantic crate with two long poles lashed to the sides, which four mighty men could shoulder and carry along.
General Shelton, however, had cleverly implanted a half-dozen imitation girly-girls in the enemy ranks and they would soon expose the ammunition carriers' route through the park. No one who was there will soon forget what happened next. The redoubtable leader of the E/W Forces leaped from the bushes clad only in white cotton underwear with a scarlet bandana around his forehead, charged the ammunition crate, and with a mighty cry of "BOOGIEWAHH!" jumped into the vulnerable box of balloons and stomped them to jelly. The horrorstruck weapons handlers were immobilized by shock and awe. As they screamed and flailed about, the agile editor dismounted the sopping container and ran for the hearse, a bloodthirsty band of enraged lunatics in hot pursuit.
What stated out as a Chamber of Commerce Saturday in the park turned stormy as angry troops galloped through the picnic grounds, displacing Aunt Fanny's chicken brisket and Mom's razzleberry pie. Terrorized gentlefolk fled in all directions to their automobiles, grannies wailed in distress and tiny tots stood agape, pointing. Soon enough, Zilker Park was 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, most of Our Gang was back in the hearse, capacity two-dozen in a pinch, and rolling toward Gloryland. Gilbert Shelton, of course, was never captured but Wanted posters persist in Austin post offices to this day. Alas and alack, balloons were temporarily removed from retailers' inventories at the request of law enforcement and the Great Waterballoon Wars of 1962 sadly abated.
What kind of a day was it? A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times. And you were there.
Scrabble me up an urban eden better than Austin 1962. I'm waiting.
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| Gilbert Shelton, Bill & Jimmy Olson after the Incomparable Ranger Bike Race of 1962 |
That's all, folks....
bill.killeen094@gmail.com
There will be subsequent Austin chapters on November 19 and December 3.
