Lessons

Austin | Aug '80

It was the minors so I must've been around eleven or twelve. Took a hard grounder to the mouth at second and it laid me out flat. Right after it happened my mom pulled up and saw the coaches hovering over some poor kid sprawled on the dirt. She asked, "what happened and who is that?" Someone said, "Ground ball. I think it split his lip. And 'that' is yours." 

"........ well," she said, "did he make the play?"   

Mom worked harder than anyone I know but she never missed a game. My biggest fan even though my God-given yet limited talents would take me only a couple more years into organized sports. Then there were girls and stolen cigarettes and basement beers to distract me from the otherwise motherly-approved pursuits. I didn't know it at the time but those distractions likely kept her awake more nights than not. 

Always made curfew but I used to sneak out to go write the next chapter in the tales of my misspent youth. Sneaking back in I'd put the Jeep in neutral and coast into the driveway, sleuthing around the side of the yard smug as a skunk and safely into bed. 

In college I'd sporadically come clean, ultimately of most of it, over long inquisitions dinners, and with each reveal mom would waste no time in abusing me of  the notion that these victimless indiscretions were news to her. Then with big eyes, menacingly... "Mother's know all."

Thanks for the lessons. 

Cinco de Derby (round II)

Saturday, May 4th (230-630p)

1115 S. Alamo Street (poolside at St Benedict's in King William)

$40 all in gets you live music, cold beer, good eats, strong drinks. All the while helping to raise a little cheddar for the San Antonio Public Library Foundation. Kids gots to read.  

Pay here. See you there. 

Back Looking Ahead

We grabbed one of the round tables near the back at Cisco's, near the Jody Conradt Room. Older couple sitting beside us asked each other, "who's Jody Conradt?" I'll admit, there aren't many women's basketball coaches whose names just roll off the tongue - that may be why restaurants name back rooms after them - but on a Saturday morning at this East Austin institution, old enough itself to collect social security, might want to keep an eye on your migas and hold the questions for later. 

No one sits in front and I can't figure out why. Only one ever there is the owner, who from his perch welcomes all comers without breaking away from his seat or his Statesman. So I'm sitting at that round table, son in my lap, and it occurs to me that tradition was being extended; as a boy my dad and I would eat there early on weekends. He'd have coffee and eggs, sausage and bacon. I'd have biscuits, squeeze bottle butter, honey and jam. Sweet tooth of a child I always find again when I go back. 

Afterwards the men broke away to indulge one of the few indulgences we men can, at least while the sun's up... a straight razor shave, my first, at Luis' Corner Barber Shop. Coffee still hot from the restaurant though no wait this morning. I landed in Gabriel's chair and he got right to work. 

Gabriel landed in Austin from Houston by way of Brooklyn. At the far end of the arc he graphic-designed and navigated corporate life long enough to see an industry change and drive into irrelevancy the very ones who built it. The irony - new way laments passing of old way that new way caused to pass - I get it, but the man holding a blade to my throat seemed a sincere nostalgist. 

He changed course and headed back south towards a vocation that is, his words, recession proof. "Hair always grows." Until it doesn't I guess but that's not an issue I'm facing quite yet.  Watching his grandfather raise a family and put kids through school as a barber led him here to build something... this life, this skill, it spoke to him, and he's taken right to it. 

Squeezing butter onto hot biscuits isn't something you want to do too often and I'd say the same for going horizontal under a man with an open razor positioned above your Adam's apple. But it'll make your ass hair stand on end and I walked out with the best damned shave I've ever had. Here's to a new tradition... 

LUIS' CORNER BARBER SHOP

6807 Guadalupe St | Austin, TX 78752 

512/323-0602

Insta @74gramz

All American Rear Engine

Fort Valley, GA-based Blue Bird.   

Into the Belly

photo credit: KUTX

South-by-Southwest, now seven days in to its 10 day bender, is roaring into the weekend at full-throated-scream. There are many a more sane individual who take this opportunity to run from the chaos, but once again I am drawn to its siren song. The song of folk and bluegrass, metal, hip-hop, punk, electronic, maybe I'll try and hunt down a little gospel music, who knows. I just roll with it, no agenda, yet I stay true to a fairly strict regimen implemented years ago that seems to work pretty well...  

1. FSO - free shows only. It keeps you modest, and one, with the people. And if the lines are too long just go to the east side to find some conjunto music. They neither know its SXSW nor care about you;
2. Dedicate yourself to a couple shows, make those happen, and spread them out just enough such that the time-in-fill adds some flavor; 
3. FBO - free beer only. Drink whatever's in front of you and never pay for it (ever). Tip well;
4. As the sun begins to fade west over the Texas Hill Country, find a patio to catch up with friends and have a few micheladas. Pay for those; 
5. Retreat home, leaving the night chaos for those who don't abide by rule #1. Download the freebies from whatever band is gathering steam (which you've never heard of, and you didn't see), eat Chinese food with the all the delicacy of a horse at a feed trough; 
6. Rinse (... lightly. It's 90-degrees out there, so the act is more symbolic than effective) and Repeat.

A Book Fiesta

This year the Alamo City will play host to the Texas Book Festival's inaugural San Antonio edition... a Book Fiesta.  April 12th @ the Big Enchilada.

Author lineup to be announced this coming Thursday. Come down and nerd out w/ the rest of us who still love turning pages.   

Markers

Saturday morning. Thanksgiving last. A young man lay in bed and let the cancer steal his final breath. End of a battle fought courageously for five years, now over, just six months past his wedding… just a month past his 33^rd. His brother is my friend.

Now January, we bound out of San Antonio early on a Saturday morning, northward into the Hill Country. The natural order of life sometimes has a way of getting a little too fucked for comfort and trips like this are born of a need to escape. It's from these trips that spring a level of realness, sieving out the noise and lending comfort through simplicity. That with the help of only the finest coming out of Cuba and Kentucky.  

We stopped in Marble Falls at the Bluebonnet Cafe for mid-morning breakfast. Chicky fried-steak and eggs-over-easy, as one does. "Crackles when you cut into it, bleeds upon the plate, melts in your mouth." Coffee was burnt and bitter and we had a taste for the day to come. 

The ranch was still as we walked through the north pasture looking for cotton tails. Jolie scared up a couple jackrabbits that shot out from the brush faster than any one of us could hope to shoulder a gun much less get off a round (lest we want to boil up puppy tails). On a late-afternoon walk, styros filled with a mind-erasing amount of brown, we came on one hiding out near an old barn. Too far from the .22 and a striking near miss from a knife toss that would've impressed Bill the Butcher, we had little choice but to try and lead it just enough with a 12 gauge to not saw it in half...

... I won't call it a total failure though when I plate this one it'll need to come with a side ramekin for lead shot.        

Robert Frost died 50 years ago, just last month. As we walked along the fence line I thought of his poem... “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” he wrote; indeed, that which will take us all… time. Shame it has to be, though it's times like this that force us to simplify, take stock, and appreciate the time we have… left.