Bottlecaps

A long time ago

 

Who is that guy on the left? What is that guy in the middle fixin' to do? 

This image, recently unearthed on Facebook, shows a young Aggie about to "dunk" his ring in a pitcher of beer. The guy on the left is going to time the precise number of seconds (or, rather, minutes) it takes the fellow to drink the beer (by himself) and retrieve the ring.

A few numbers:

A full-size pitcher of beer contains 60 ounces, or five beers. (The guy in the photo above may or may not be dunking his ring in a 32-ounce mini-pitcher, it's hard for me to make that call.)

The Aggie tradition (when I was in school) was that you dunk the ring, then consume the beer in the number of seconds corresponding to your class year. For me, that was 93 seconds.

Now that's 5 beers at 18.6 seconds per clip. It doesn't usually happen that way. The foam builds up, reverses course, bad thangs happen.

Of my Corps buddies, the dozen of us, only one person (as I recall) managed to down that pitcher of beer in 93 seconds.

But the unlikelihood of that happening DOES NOT STOP Aggies from trying. (Although, I don't know what they do now. 110 seconds? 10 seconds?)

In fact, if you have a particular aversion to, say, puke, ring-dunking night at the Dixie Chicken is one of the most disgusting spectacles you will ever encounter, unless you take up a career in some field like Decapitations R Us.

Now, it's true, Aggieland does have more than its share of grizzled beer bums who consider 5 beers to be, well, breakfast (we'll get to me in a second), but there are also plenty of sorority girls who get giggly off one wine cooler who get their magic Aggie-power rings and suddenly think they are going to guzzle down five beers.

PUKE! BARF!

Yuck.

Although some are more civilized. One young lady I knew opted to dunk her ring in 94 minutes rather than seconds. This is because: A. she is smart. B. she did not care to puke.

Me neither. I dunked my ring in a pitcher of Lone Star and guzzled until the foam started to rise (I was on pace until about halfway). Then I finished it up at the leisurely time of 3 minutes and 58 seconds.

Now if that doesn't seem to be a time worthy of a serious beer drinker (and it is 5 beers at less than a minute a piece), keep in mind that I kept my empty pitcher, caught a ride back to the dorm to store the pitcher in my room, caught a ride back to Northgate, and KEPT ON PARTYING. All night.

Anyway, back to the original questions.

That guy on the left is me. Yeah, I'll be damned. Was I ever that skinny? Did I think I was fat back then? Look at that hair!

That guy in the middle is a fellow named Mark, whom I worked with at the Aggie newspaper, The Battalion. We were friendly, but not best buds or anything. Why I'm the one next to him with the watch, I do not know.

Well, I do know.

He probably walked into the office and said "Hey, who wants to go have beer with me?"

And there I am.

He was born … in Oklahoma

So, Ray Wylie Hubbard has a new album out, and it's time for the Austin publications to rush out an interview with the guy they suddenly remembered is really interesting.

My own publication was focused, oddly, more on the movie Ray Wylie just worked on. The article, revealingly, made reference to the "gritty, dusty Westerns of John Ford and Sam Peckinpah." Well, the writer was half right.

Anyway, the articles generally come out the same. Ray Wylie always recounts the saga of "Redneck Mother." He talks about getting sober. And he remarks upon his new status as elder statesman and guru to the young, hip Texas Music crowd.

And generally, he'll use the same quotes in each interview. It's not a criticism, really. The quotes are generally awesome and wise, but if he finds something he thinks sounds good, he doesn't like to give up on it.

I recall in the early 2000s (I can say that now), I saw about a half-dozen Ray Wylie performances over a relatively short period of time. By the fourth or fifth show, I could have gone on stage and done his between-song banter for him. (But, it's important to note, I kept going to the shows.)

I was prepared to call out the Austin Chronicle for not joining the cavalcade of feature stories this week, but then I stumbled across this excellent story from 2006, and I figured that'll last 'em another year or two.

I don't get to interview Ray Wylie anymore, which is a shame. I think it would be a neat challenge to come up with questions that would demand new answers.

Here a few I would ask him:

In "Redneck Mother" — and I have at least a half-dozen different recordings of this song — the guy is always 34 years old. Why 34? From song to song, his bumper sticker is open to interpretation. Why not his age?

You are quick to disparage your early albums. Was it just the production, or did you dislike the songs themselves? What are your favorite songs from those early days — you've redone "Portales" and "Dallas After Midnight" … any others?

You describe yourself as spiritual now, does this mean we won't hear a new version of "Gypsies got the Right to Steal?" And what's the deal with "Texas is a State of Mind"?

Did you hear about the time I saved your wife from a vicious aquatic varmint?

Yes, it is time to tell that story.

So, on July 3, 2000. I was in Luckenbach that morning, preparing to go meet my friends in Austin that afternoon. We were gonna get a little advance beer drinking in before Willie's Picnic in Southpark Meadows the next day.

VelAnne, the Luckenbach mayor, says to me, "Ray Wylie Hubbard is having a pool party, why don't you follow me to Wimberley, then you can go on to Austin."

I was in my truck and following her down the road before it crossed my mind that this wasn't a particularly good idea. I was still a part-time music journalist at the time, and the last thing that seemed proper to me was to show up at a private party uninvited.

Well, I didn't have a cell phone and I didn't want to run her off the road, so I pretty much had to follow VelAnne to Ray Wylie's house before I could voice my concerns. At which point, curiosity got the best of me, and I had to at least go look at his house.

VelAnne is a good friend and all. And I'm not going to talk ill of her. But she is given to distraction from time to time, I'll admit. It turns out that the pool party that Ray Wylie was going to was a birthday party that he was taking his son Lucas to. That's right. Ray Wylie was not home.

But his wife, Judy, was there and she wouldn't hear of turning us away without taking a dip in their pool. She insisted, and I agreed.

So there I was, a little short of 30 years old, leaning back in Ray Wylie Hubbard's pool, catching a little sun, listening to VelAnne and Judy gossip and wondering what in the hell I was doing.

"If I leave now," I thought, "I can still catch the crew for Happy Minutes at the Showdown."

I was getting ready to leave, when I saw a wriggling dark shape at the far end of the pool. I thought immediately that it was a snake.

So I stealthily moved toward it to investigate. I was hoping to take care of the situation before the women realized it was there.

I had just gotten close enough to realize it was either a really big mouse or a small rat when VelAnne screamed at top volume: "JUDY!!!! THERE'S A RAT IN YOUR POOL!!!!"

And, to my dying day, I will say this is what happened, though I know it is not possible: The two women got out of the pool so fast that it seemed as though they jumped to the top of the water and scampered, Bugs Bunny-style across the top of the water until they reached a varmint-free spot of dry land.

I got out, a little more elegantly, and retrieved the net hanging on the fence. I fished out the mouse/rat and freed him into the tall grass on the other side of the fence. (I knew Ray Wylie would not approve of me killing the critter.)

And with that being as good an excuse to leave as I could think of, I said farewell to the Hubbard abode and drove on in to Austin.

The Austin crew was already sitting at a table in the Showdown's beer garden. 

"Guess what, guys," I told them. "I just saved the mayor of Luckenbach and Ray Wylie Hubbard's wife from a vicious aquatic varmint!"

And so I've told the tale sporadically since then. But I know it hasn't reached Ray Wylie's ears.

Because surely, if it had, he would have written a song about me.

Cat Scratch Fever*

The latest Texas Monthly has an article about Ted Nugent. I don't recall who wrote it, and I'm sure as hell not going to go downstairs and check, but he/she includes this fantastic line:

"Ted Nugent isn't an asshole. He just plays one in real life."

Come to think of it, the whole article is excellent. Why? Because the author resisted the easy temptation of just stringing together a bunch of quotes from Nugent and calling it a day.

And, trust me, any writer can write a good story about Nugent. You just have to get him on the phone, tape record what he says, play it back at half speed so you can type it into your Microsoft Word document, edit out what your publication won't allow, throw in a few half-hearted transitions and you have a very interesting article.

I know because A) love him or, more likely, hate him, Ted Nugent speaks in run-on sentences and rambling thoughts that are so outlandish that you can hardly stop reading and B) I have done this exact thing.

This was back in my San Angelo days in 1996. Nugent was playing our RiverStage for whatever reason I still can't imagine, and I volunteered for the story. My interview was at 8 a.m. (back in these days, I usually drank at the bar until closing time and slept until past noon).

I dragged my ass out of bed at 7:45 and called the number at the given hour, not really knowing what to expect. Back then, the Internet was really just kind of a novelty to me, and I had done my research with the Tom Green Public Library's most recent books, which were a decade out of date at least.

Nugent sounded like he had been awake for hours and killing things the whole time. He didn't wait for questions, he started talking 100 miles an hour and kept at it for 30 minutes. You couldn't really ask him questions, but a sentence fragment would at least get him speeding off in a different verbal direction.

I don't remember the story all that well but I do remember — when I asked what this Detroit man knew about Texas — him screaming "Texas! I AM Texas!" And I remember him personally blaming Ann Richards for the Luby's massacre in Killeen (that part was later edited out of the story).

But I do remember that the story was good. Not excellent. I didn't have any analysis or thoughtful commentary of my own, but I managed to pull those quotes together in a cohesive and entertaining way.

Sadly, though, my story was completely upstaged by the star local television reporter. I can't remember his name (let's call him Chris), but he was a rather smarmy and effeminate guy. On live TV before the concert, he asked Nugent something that didn't sit right with ol' Ted, and he said "Well, Chris. How about I kick your ass right here?"

So now, of course, every time we mention how Ted Nugent came to San Angelo, everybody remembers the TV guy and no one remembers my story.

Of course that same TV guy was later run out of town for something sleazy that I can't remember, either. (You know, I don't remember a lot of this story.) We all agreed, though, it was a shame that Ted Nugent didn't kick his ass on live TV.

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I talked about guns some months ago. Here's pretty much how my stand on automatic weapons breaks down:

Would I like to shoot a fully automatic weapon? You bet. Tommy gun, .50-caliber, Gatling gun, M-60, Uzi, whatever. I would love to. Damn shame I never got to.

Would I like to own a fully automatic weapon? Well, if I were wealthy enough to buy access to a place where I could shoot one and wealthy enough to buy ammuniton to shoot it … it might be fun. But I can't see any reason why I really need one.

Do I think the idiot down the street should have a legal right to own an automatic weapon? Fuck no. I wouldn't trust him with a slingshot.

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* I have actually had cat scratch fever. It actually was nothing like Ted Nugent says it is.

Four damned-est things I've seen in a bar: Part IV

I was driving through Cut and Shoot, Texas, when I saw the wood building on the side of the road. It was a bar called "Bubba's."

In those days, when I saw a bar on the side of the road that looked interesting, I stopped and had a beer.

Inside, it was sparse. It looked like someone was reworking the interior — it was mostly just unpainted plywood. There was a big, bald Cajun guy behind the bar and two old men sitting at the closest table to the bar. The bartender was happy to give me a beer, but the old guys didn't even nod my way.

I sat down at a table farther from the bar and decided that this place was pretty dead and I would have my beer and go.

But the lighting in there ... it was incredible. I was in my photography phase — my camera was in the truck — and I was much more sensitive to the light than I would be ordinarily. Foggy gray light spilled in through a big window by the door, but didn't reach as far as the back of the bar where the four of us were sitting. In the shadows back there, there was a blue neon sign over one old guy, a red neon sign over the other. And a single low-watt lightbulb was blocked by the bartender's bald head, giving him a shiny halo of light over his crown, but leaving his face concealed in shadow.

The old men's cigarettes gave the whole place a foggy feel, like in those old-time boxing photographs, except much darker. I was considering going to get my camera when the first old guy began to talk.

He told a lengthy story about serving in World War II, coming across a cache of American money, a fortune, swiping it, but then being forced to throw it overboard on the ship ride home because the officers were inspecting for stolen artifacts, treasures and whatnot.

I don't know how much of it was true, and how much was embellished, but clearly he was missing that money now. "I had to throw it all away," he said, sadly.

I went and got another beer and sat back down.

Then the next guy told his story.

And it was the saddest thing I'd ever heard.

Not some long-ago loss, but in the here-and-now. He told how he had taken his daughter in, let her and her family live in his simple trailer out in the country, how she had taken advantage of him, robbed him all but blind and when he finally had to turn in his own daughter she lied and ended up getting him thrown out of his own home.

Here he was, drinking Natural Light in a roadside bar, cigarette smoke spiraling to the ceiling, highlighted in neon and sharing his tale of woe with us. "My own daughter," he said as sadly as an old man can.

And I don't know, maybe these guys sat there and practiced these stories over and over to fool whoever happened to stop by. But I doubt it.

To me, the entire scene breathed an authenticity that couldn't be imitated. It was a slice of life that is no longer seen, at least not where the old roadside bars have vanished.

After hearing their stories, I could no more go out and get my camera than I could ask them to tell me more. I felt my just being there was invasion of privacy enough. I guess that's why I can't be a photojournalist.

I guess my story doesn't do justice to the scene. So much of it was visual, beyond my power to describe all these years later. But it was compelling, no doubt. The damned-est thing I've seen a bar to date.

I went back outside and drove on back toward Beaumont.

Four damned-est things I've seen in a bar: Part III

OK, so this post is a little early, but I've got a dentist appointment Wednesday afternoon and might not get to blog.

(Why is it that the moment I commit to a four-part blog, I have all sorts of other things to blog about? Look for a bonus blog — SXSW pedestrian tips — later this week.)

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Friday night was THE time to go to Blaine's Pub. I guess. Anyway, the place was usually packed wall-to-wall on Friday night, so crowded that you could hardly see the sign on the wall that said "Occupancy: 99."

(How much does a fire marshal cost in San Angelo?)

Myself, I could hardly stand it. I seldom went there on Friday nights and usually only did if I had a reserved seat at a table to see a big-name act. I could tolerate the crowds with my back to the wall, but standing in a sea of humanity left me feeling a bit claustrophobic.

But it was tradition to stop by Blaine's Pub after Friday Night Football at the newspaper. We'd go to press about 1 a.m. after working ourselves silly, walk next door to the bar, climb into the madness, have a couple of beers and go home at 2 a.m.

No, Bret is not part of this story. He was always out covering a game.

For this story, it was sports editor Rick and I. We walked into the bar about 45 minutes until last call and I could tell that there was something odd in the air. The biggest warning? Blaine was still there.

Blaine could drink all right. He was something of a pro. I mean, he owned this bar. And during any afternoon or early evening, he was usually a happy and friendly guy. But when night turned to wee-of-the morning and when he got well into the "excess" part of "drinking in excess" he was truly a force of nature. And usually in a bad way.

The band, on the stage next to the door was going full-force, but Blaine had already commandeered the microphone when we walked in. "TEQUILA SHOTS FOR THE HOUSE!" he roared.

Scotty behind the bar went to dumping the cheapest tequila into plastic cups as fast as he could and it wasn't long before a waitress came by with a tray full of them.

I gave my tequila to Rick. This had hardly happened when Blaine roared again: "TEQUILA SHOTS FOR THE HOUSE!" And again the plastic cups went around.

Then again. And again.

In all, 7 rounds of tequila for a bar full of hundreds. We ducked some shots. I even had a couple. Rick soaked up no few of them. But the TABC law-breaking had not yet begun.

2 a.m. neared with no sign of the party winding down. Blaine had, mercifully, left the stage and was wandering the floor, looking like one hell of a bad day. We stayed in our corner and surveyed the madness. Next thing, I hear a commotion over by the door and there is Blaine at the foot of the stage with a good-looking brunette on his shoulders.

And she is topless.

Now, I don't know what bars YOU hang out at. But if you're not paying $9 for a beer at a "gentlemen's club" then there's a good chance that the only woman who is going to expose herself in a bar is the one you least want to do it.

At least, that's the way it happened in West Texas bars. I don't know about any of that Mardi Gras stuff.

Regardless, the woman sitting on Blaine's shoulders is beautiful. Not skanky. Not sleazy. Not enhanced. Just ... well, it was an odd sight. The beauty and the beast.

The beast begins to stagger up the stairs to the stage and makes it somehow.

He's dance-staggering around the stage with the band dodging him when the inevitable happens: He falls off the front of the stage, spilling the topless girl across the tables down in front.

She was all right. She got plenty of helping hands, in fact. Blaine was finally convinced to shut the party down. And the musician that night? It was either Brian Burns or Larry Joe Taylor, I can't recall which. Either way, neither of 'em ever came back to the bar after that night.

The crowd all staggered into the street. I was in better shape than most because I had wondered in at 1 a.m. and was sober when that hour-of-pandemonium began. The 7-tequila-shot-naked-girl-fall-of-the-stage night.

You know, that sort of thing just doesn't happen at, uh, Little Woodrow's.

Four damned-est things I've seen in a bar: Part II

So there we were, it was a slow, slow Sunday night at Blaine's Pub. I'm thinking maybe it was springtime 2000, because Steve the bartender was still there. It wasn't football season, that I'm sure of.

In fact, it was just Steve, Bret, me and one other group of people, maybe 3-4 older respectable-looking family folks.

Blaine comes in and sits down to have a drink with me and Bret. We're just there drinking draft beer and shooting the shit at one of the tables next to the bar. The other group is at a table closer to the door. Nobody is sitting at the bar, there's just Steve there washing glasses.

Well, in walks this short Mexican fellow, maybe about 5-foot-4 and probably barely 120 pounds. Just a small-framed fellow with a slightly wild look. Completely out of place for such a mellow evening.

I keep an eye on him as he walks up to the bar, scales the bar stool, and orders a beer. But soon, I'm back to talking to Blaine and Bret. Blaine is as sober as you can hope him to be and just kicked-back and happy, telling wild stories of his youth.

All of the sudden, Steve half-runs over to Blaine and whispers something urgent into his ear. Now, Steve was an Army Ranger who saw a little action in Somalia, so it's not like him to have a worried look. Blaine jumps up and strides over to where this little Mexican fellow is sitting and half-clubs him across the head with one swipe of a paw.

(At this point, you got to remember that Blaine was not a huge guy, he just seemed to be the biggest guy in the room...)

Then Blaine picks this guy up by the shirt around his neck and the back of his pants, carries the guy cartoon-style across the bar (maybe 20 yards), uses the guy's head to open the screen door and tosses him onto the sidewalk, again, cartoon-style. It all happened so fast I didn't have time to wonder how Blaine seemed to pull this off without even a grunt of effort.

Then Blaine goes outside, too.

Steve looks at us incredulously. He says in hushed tones that thee guy was sitting there at the bar when he pulled out a bag of cocaine and proceeded to snort it right off the bar.

This is all too much for the other group of people, who look like they should be drinking down at the golf clubhouse. They pay their tab and leave.

After about five minutes Blaine comes back in. He says something to the effect of "Jesus Christ, guy doing coke right on the bar when we've got the damn Waltons family sitting right over there, they'll never come back. I told that sumbitch that's why we have locks on the bathroom door!"

Well, a couple minutes after Blaine sits back down, that little guy comes back in the front door. For a minute I think he's going to pull out a pistol or something, but Blaine meets him more than halfway, grabs him by the neck and drags him back outside.

Steve educates us: If you kick someone out of a bar and they came back in, by TABC law, you have to call the cops. So he does.

Blaine is telling the little fellow the same thing outside. You better run, they're on the way. From Blaine's the cop station is a mile to the east and the county jail is less than a half-mile to the west.

Well, when the cops get there, not only do they find the confused guy still staggering around near the bar, but he's still got his drugs on him, too. They haul him off to jail.

Back in the bar, well, it was a slow Sunday night and we just kept drinking draft beer and shooting the shit.

Four damned-est things I've seen in a bar: Part I

I love bars. I'm not sure why: I didn't go to one until I was 21, really. I don't really like crowds. Or people that much, to be honest about it. If you're buying a regular old beer, you're paying $2 to $4 for something that would cost you about 80 cents at home, and you're expected to tip the bartender.

I can't explain the attraction, except that places like Luckenbach have a magic to them. Places like Blaine's Pub had a "anything goes" aura. And places like that dive on the side of the road have an air of danger … even if they're not really dangerous except on Saturday night when you know better than to go in there.

Between the summer of 1992 and the summer of 2006, I spent a lot of time and money in bars. If I had spent my time learning technology and investing money, well, I might have lost my ass in the Internet bust in '01 and in this year's recession.

Instead, what I have is a beer belly, a collection of Texana junk and some stories.

I thought this week I'd share the four damned-est things I've seen in a bar.

(That I remember, of course.)

PART ONE: MUSIC

I could describe how the German band showed up at Blaine's Pub on a random Tuesday. Or how I stumbled into the Hole in the Wall as the Gourds' frontman was doing "Gin and Juice" on a mandolin (it's old hat now, but at the time I had never heard the cover or the original: it was mind-blowing). Or talk about Shaver at Blaine's Pub or Todd Snider at the Luckenbach Laborfest.

But for damned-est ever, I'll have to go with the reincarnation of Hank Williams.

So, Bret and Carlos and I are at this pseudo-sports bar on Sixth Street in 1994, watching Don Walser yodel his ample ass off and drinking cheap beer (it was a Monday night).

Somebody who knows Bret comes over and tells him simply, "The reincarnation of Hank Williams is over at Emo's."

There's not much discussion about it. We have to check it out. I can't recall if Bret tried to warn me about Emo's or not. I'll assume since it was pretty early in our friendship and I was much more conservative in those days that he probably did.

Either way, a lifetime as an Army brat and a college education at Texas A&M did not prepare me for a bar where the most immediate feature was a mural of Betty and Wilma (from the Flintstones) wearing leather and engaged in various S&M poses.

They didn't have this in San Angelo. Not a bar where the kids looked like Addams Family rejects and the walls were painted in disturbing scenes.

I did not have much hope for the music. We got some beers and stepped out back to make a phone call (this was pre-cell-phone, at least for Bret and Dave). From the interior of the club, I heard what was obviously the jukebox. It was Hank Williams. (Don't even make me say "Senior.") There was no question.

Well, when we went back into the bar, up there on the stage was some guy who looked like Hank Williams, sang like Hank Williams and performed Hank Williams songs note-for-note.

I looked out in the crowd and there was a pair of women in leather and purple mohawks, dancing together to something like "Long Gone Lonesome Blues."

Well, when the music was this good, I wasn't one to judge. I got another beer and listened to song after song, expecting at some point for the "reincarnation" to break into a punk set.

Nope. Just "You're Cheatin' Heart," "Kawliga," "Lost Highway," "Jambalya," "I Saw the Light" and more. Note for note.

Heck, I could almost tell people I saw ol' Luke the Drifter in concert. In a punk club in Austin.

One of the damned-est things I've ever sen.