By the time I moved to Austin as a reporter in
1981, growth already had robbed it of much of its quirky charm and iconoclastic
college-town vibe.
On the day I got into town, the Armadillo
World Headquarters, a legendary music venue that launched the cosmic cowboy
scene and helped establish Austin as a music mecca, closed down.
It was demolished within days to prevent any
attempts by music fans and preservationists to save it as a cultural landmark.
Plans called for a bank to be built on the site, thus adding insult to injury.
But the land remained bleak and empty for the entire four years I lived there.
Austinites mourned the loss of the Armadillo
as if it were a cherished member of their family, which, I guess, in a way it
was. Even now, when you mention the Armadillo, long-time Austin residents nod
sadly and a shadow passes over their faces.
I never covered Texas state government, as
this elaborate ornament might suggest. But I covered everything else for the Austin
American-Statesman: the byzantine fuckery taking place at the University of
Texas, the occasional cop shop shift, the business beat and features – lots and
lots of features. CLFs (cute little features) were my specialty.
No, this ornament, which depicts the front of
the Texas Capitol, an Austin icon, gets a special place on our Christmas tree
because it represents a very happy time in my life.
I had loved Austin since the first time I
visited there as a college student in the early 1970s, so I jumped at the
chance to trade the tension-filled, high-pressure newsroom of the Dallas
Times Herald for the more laid-back environs of the American-Statesman.
Almost all my newspaper colleagues thought I was nuts.
But to Austin I went to join the lotus-eaters,
pot-heads and eccentric artists and clowns who I envisioned filled its streets.
I was mostly wrong about all that. But I still
fell under Austin’s seductive spell and surrendered to its siren call. If I’m
honest, I have to say I didn’t do my best work at the Statesman, never
giving it the attention and devotion it deserved.
I was too busy having a good time. I lived at
the edge of trendy Barton Hills, in a small apartment perched on a cliff
directly above peerless Barton Springs Pool in Zilker Park.
In the summer, I could open my sliding-glass
door and hear the merry chittering of the crowds at the spring-fed pool and the
squeals of shock when swimmers jumped into its ice-cold water.
Lake Austin was a short walk away, and across
the river, the rooftops of downtown could just be seen from the parking lot of
my complex. I was close to almost everything.
I discovered the oak-shaded patio at Scholz
Beer Garden, the sunset deck of the Oasis on Lake Travis, fajitas at Cisco’s,
chicken-fried steaks at Broken Spoke, live-music clubs like Antone’s, the
Continental Club and Hut’s Hamburgers. That’s right, a hamburger joint that
also featured live music – that’s the Austin I fell in thrall with.
And when you tired of the city’s charms, all
you had to do is jump in your car and in minutes be in the Texas Hill Country,
the very best part of Texas.
But the REAL reason Austin will forever have a
place in my heart and this nostalgia-imbued ornament a place on my tree is that
it’s where I met Marice – song of my heart, mother of my children, and the most
patient woman on earth, a fact she proves every day she stays married to me.
Thank God for that.
I met Marice the first day she arrived in the Statesman
newsroom, a beautiful, fresh-faced girl-next-door with a ready smile and a
confident attitude.
I wasted no time in making my way to her desk.
Newsroom lore insists that I stayed there a loooong time, a scurrilous
allegation I deny. Over the next few days, however, I did drop by regularly to
chat.
Eventually, Marice got tired of my
distractions and agreed to a date. The rest is history.
We left Austin together a year or so later,
made a short-lived detour to Missouri, and eventually returned to Texas, where
we both got jobs at The Dallas Morning News. When Marice decided it was
time – about damned time – to get married, Austin was the logical place to do
it.
We called our friends Jim and Karen
Pinkerton and asked to borrow the backyard of their South Austin home for the
ceremony. We spent our wedding night at the Driskill, partied the next
afternoon with friends and drove back to Dallas in time for work on Monday.
Some honeymoon.
From time to time over the years, Marice and I have discussed moving back to Austin. But the talk never leads anywhere. For better or worse, we’ve made our lives in the suburbs of Dallas and Fort Worth, cities neither of us particularly like but where our careers led us.
In our memories, Austin remains – rightfully –
as a time and place when the world was young and so were we.
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