Thursday, February 24, 2005
Vacation begins precisely at 4 in the afternoon as Lola and I settle into a 12th floor room at the Omni Hotel in downtown Austin, Texas. All the stuff during the earlier part of the day: driving to the airport as the radio plays “Stand by your Man”, pulling your damn belt off so the damn metal detector stops screaming, then killing time in the air with solitaire: all that stuff is travel. Vacation begins the moment we start making our own decisions about what to do next.
Casino el Camino is a dark bar on Sixth Street with black walls and Mayan decorations, for example, a patio mural of a priest, a corpse and a heart. Sixth Street is about night life and there is still daylight visible through the front wall of windows just below the ceiling. Lola plays the jukebox and I punch in “Invitation to the Blues” by Tom Waits which causes one of the twelve people present to grumble about unlistenable music. The bartender pours himself four shots as those front windows slowly get darker and then recommends we see the bats. The bats love the Austin nights.
A few blocks back towards Congress Avenue the Rasta boys and beggars are intermingling with the folks just waiting for the bus. In the bright windows of Buffalo Billiards I see the Wisconsin - Michigan State game on a monster screen and the Badgers are getting trounced. Lola chit-chats the locals and I concede defeat to a father and son dressed in green and cheering for State. It’s an early evening after work crowd that is standing in small groups around gaming tables, drinking beers, smacking balls, sliding pucks and paying with plastic. About this time I start looking around for any gold coins on the ground.
Lola says we need to have drinks at the Driskill Hotel which is all opulence and indulgence with bronze statues and light fixtures fashioned like handguns. Champagne and Brandy as the piano player plays to the room. Our young server says he wants a career in “health promotion” and I promptly question how bartending looks on a resume for that field. The discussion drifts into an analysis of prohibition and I caution him never to discount government overreaction to a legitimate problem. After all, this is the very place where Landslide Lyndon waited for the mystery votes that doomed poor Coke Stevenson.
It’s a cool night, the kind that’s good for walking and the Capital of Texas is literally up the street. Lola and I amble towards the dome until we hear singing. In a small room, an old black lady is playing keyboards while she sings with a distinctive voice. “Austin’s Own Legend” according to the table card. The audience is a guy wearing really bad drag, one K. D. Lange body double with entourage, assorted troubled youth and an 80 year old birthday girl. The Thompson machine gun on display means this is two bars in a row using firearms as decoration. On the way out after she finished, we tell Margaret Wright her singing stopped us and drew us in, which is true.
Friday, February 25, 2005
Lola insists that I get out of bed since it’s after 11 AM. The sun is slightly brighter through the cloud cover today and it’s time to eat. She takes us to an old building beside a deep gully that drains into the nearby Colorado River. The Iron Works was once a blacksmith shop in the frontier days of horse shoes and wrought iron fences. Workers on early lunch break keep the staff busy but the food is nothing special. No work calls us back today so when we finish the meal we just start walking down Chavez Street with no particular goal in mind. Upon reaching the Congress Avenue Bridge I coax Lola into walking across. To get to the other side is a legitimate, valid and time honored answer to the question why.
South of the river is a neighborhood retail area known simply as South Congress. In slow incremental stages, with frequent pauses to debate the wisdom of going forward, we eventually walk all the way to that six block cluster of small commercial buildings. Buying coffee at Jo’s we sit outside watching pedestrians dart through gaps in the arterial traffic flowing in and out of downtown. We glance around in stores of brightly painted imported Mexican objects and Lola points out the Continental Club for future reference.
At the end of the district we enter a small house remodeled as a gallery where a talkative young woman goes on in detail about what they have done and what they have for sale. Her husband emerges from a back room and we discuss all the advantages of abandoning cabinet doors and painting the walls red. We have browsed through the art shops and antique stores, plus the boot shop selling every color that can be dyed into leather, and Lola decides this is the place to buy something for herself. Politely declining to sign a guestbook we dash across traffic with our loot to catch the free bus ride back downtown.
As early evening settles in we walk to a section of downtown where old warehouses have been salvaged and transformed into restaurants. Friday night dinner crowds fill the streets and we feel fortunate to get quick seating at a small table in the front room of the Malaga Wine and Tapas Bar. I love brick walls all time worn and weathered and Lola loves being able to sample a variety of flavors, so the place suits us both. A plate of tiny roasted red peppers stuffed with goat cheese in olive oil with capers is among the seven Tapas tonight. We conclude with Flan and Port to maintain the Iberian consistency of the meal.
After dinner Lola walks us around the corner to Antone’s where Marcia Ball is playing a nine o’clock benefit. We already have tickets to see her at Luther’s in two weeks and I really want to explore something new. We walk around the block once and Lola agrees to head back to Sixth Street. I hear a blues band playing at the 311 Club so we settle into a back table to listen. The band is generically blues in the best sense. A bit raw and unpolished but when the guitar’s blend together just right, the sound is healing to the mind. Later on in the night a packed house at B. D. Riley’s Pub gets buzzed by the tighter more electric blues of the Eric Tessmer Band. Walking home I’m real happy.
Saturday, February 26, 2005
It’s a wet raining morning and Lola wants to venture outside for a Tex-Mex breakfast at Las Manitas on Congress Avenue. We hoist umbrellas and sally forth against the onslaught of the environment. Sloshing through the constant drizzle we end up at a crowded little hole in the wall restaurant and move into a freshly vacated booth. It’s all eggs and beans, salsa and juice, and we snarf it down until every last crumb has vanished.
With bellies loaded for the day we wander slowly back to the hotel, stopping in shops to seek refuge from the rain. Stores full of trinkets and junk and stores filled with objects of art, like toy cars made from Pepsi cans. Socialist realist ceramic Chairman Mao figurines are on sale while supplies last. We drink coffee in the lobby of the Frost Bank building so we can check it off a list of sites visited. All the time the rain keeps falling with no end in sight.
In the middle of the afternoon we grab a cab to the Continental Club for the afternoon matinee show. Redd Valkaert has a band playing and Billy Dee is onstage playing bass guitar. Billy used to tour with Dale Watson and I will forever remember the night Billy played the pillar of strength while Dale got blitz drunk on stage at the Club Tavern. The music twangs in the old small room and the waitress passes the hat around gathering offerings from the congregation. The people are giving freely in appreciation of the rapture.
At dark we manage to grab the last two seats at the end of La Traviata’s bar. Lola orders cold roasted beets and sweet red peppers and bresaola for an appetizer. The dried beef reminds her of the Wisconsin farmhouse dried beef Aunt Eileen made in winter from the fall slaughter. An orange labeled bottle of Seghesio Barbera proves fine as all the Seghesio vintages have been. After pasta with wild mushrooms Lola gets the staff talking about their excellent establishment and their recommendations for tomorrow.
Walking back under the cover of our two umbrellas the cold night rain has the buildings dark and the streets glistening. We spend a couple hours at The Vibe while a jam band plays under a covered deck in the open air of the back lot. The place ranks in the top two for worst restrooms in the district, however, the air is chilled and the beer is chilled and the band is playing slow harmonic twisted riffs to a backbeat of natural percussion. We make a few more stops on the way back home because the journey truly is part of the reward.
Sunday, February 27, 2005
It’s just another beautiful day in Austin and the sunshine illuminates the freshly washed city in celebration of Lola’s birthday. A gift of perfect weather is so thoughtful and sincerely appreciated. There is no rush to do anything and we leisurely get ready for the day before taking a taxi over to east Austin looking for Sunday Brunch. The driver goes through the neighborhoods of small houses east of the interstate and pulls into the parking lot of a closed and empty building. Plan A comes to a quick and total halt.
Plan B is nearby and we are dropped off at the front door of Hoover’s Cooking on Manor Road. The restaurant is mostly full and we get a table in a side room that we share with two large groups of black teens dressed in their Sunday go to church best. This place was recommended for authentic local food and we order barbecue chicken and sausage with sides of macaroni and cheese, fried okra and green beans. The beans taste exactly like my mother used to make and the meal is perfectly good home cooking.
When we finish we step outside, look around and decide to just start walking. Heading west we cross under the interstate and find ourselves on the University of Texas campus. The direction we are headed keeps sloping downhill as we pass stadiums and resident halls and bus stops and oil wells. Lola takes a homemade poster offering a reward for the return of a Salsa Dancing Squirrel off a street light. We want the picture to make sure we have the right critter before making any attempt to capture the varmint. Past the capital grounds and federal buildings we just keep walking in sunshine until we are back.
Taking only a few moments to refresh we grab a cab to go hear Dale Watson play the Chicken Shit Sunday show at Ginny’s Little Longhorn Saloon in north Austin. Ginny’s turns out to be a small white building standing alone on a small city lot. The front door and the back door are open to let the air in and Gene Kurtz, the bass player, is hanging around waiting for Dale to show up. In the meantime people are eating the free hotdogs set out on a table by the front door. At one table a group is playing dominos to pass the time.
Around five o’clock Dale rides up on an Indian motorcycle which he parks by the back door with the other cycles. People are beginning to spill outside, sipping on beers and waiting for the chicken. Lola and I inherit two seats at the bar and we take turns holding the space for each other. The music starts and the joint is packed and the lady tending bar is keeping real busy selling beers and set ups. Every now and then the band breaks and people line up for numbers corresponding to the grid floor of the wire mesh chicken cage. There is always a crowd around that cage waiting for that chicken to answer nature’s call.
The tip hat gets passed around and people chat intently with each other as if the band playing is nothing out of the ordinary. A camera crew from the cable channel A&E shows up and that is outside of the norm. Dale warns the crowd that attendance is consent but think twice if you should not been seen with the person on your arm. Ginny sits on a stool behind the bar and looks over a scene that is the epitomy of all that is good and authentic about real country music and the honky-tonk culture that nurtured the sound. I never did find any gold coins lying around but afterwards I’m thinking, this is as Texas as Texas gets and that’s good as gold any day.
