Tuesday Night in Luckenbach

May 13, 2009, 9:00 a.m.

Tuesday night in Luckenbach is special for reasons no one has been able to explain to me. But everyone does understand that Tuesday night in Luckenbach is special. Really fine musicians and singers tend to show up then to join the circle outside the General Store to sing and play into the night.


This business of musicians sitting down in a circle and each in turn playing a selection recurs again and again down here. I have been studying that phenomenon, and I think I will have more to say about it soon.


This is the circle of musicians and singers that formed up outside the General Store on Tuesday night, May 12. The two seated women are singers. The guy in the foreground to the right in profile with the cigarette hanging out of his mouth can cover George Strait tunes so skillfully that he sounds more like George Strait than George Strait does. The guy in the extreme left foreground is a fiddler in addition to being a great guitarist. You can see his bow sticking up in the air.

Without any rehearsal this group ripped off some incredibly emotionally affecting songs. I have paid $80.00 per ticket for some shows that I enjoyed far, far less than I did this one. I spent $2.00 American grand total here for two cokes.

Cockfighting

Here is the situation with the chickens in Luckenbach as I have assessed it. I am not new to chickens, believe me. On the farm in its heyday there were usually about 70 layers at a minimum producing eggs. I would gather the eggs. My mother would candle the eggs in the basement of the house, and she and I would haul them to Marion and sell them. I will explain candling some other time.

But those were locked up hens. As soon as the young cocks started to approximate adulthood, my mother would have their heads. We ate them. And they were gone. They were absolutely nothing like these colorful roosters strutting around Luckenbach anyway. These roosters at Luckenbach are a nuisance.



First of all, these Luckenbach roosters are way juiced up on chicken testosterone. They are cocky, no pun intended. Moreover, I count seven of them. There are only three hens as I count them. Now those three hens' eyes are glazed over with pleasure, but that is not the point here. The fact that there are only three hens makes these roosters more competitive than usual. They are continually staring each other down, flapping their wings, profiling, and crowing—crowing constantly. It's noisy. One of the singers might be singing I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry by Hank Williams, and a couple of these roosters will sound off at precisely the wrong moment. Ruins the whole effect of the tune.



I suggested to Danny, one of the bartenders who also happens to be a great musician and a better song writer, that we ought to kill and eat at least three of these roosters. It would cut down the ruckus. Danny thought that this idea was perfectly brilliant. He indicated he was going to take it up with Virgil, and I think that he did. But here we go again with these delightful southerners. I have encountered this in the Army and in other contexts with southerners, whom everybody knows I love, so let's not get testy here. But they will declare an idea wonderful, adamantly declare that this idea must immediately be put into effect. Then they wander off to something else, and nothing, nothing, nothing ever comes of the great idea. I mean, goddamnit, it is not my place to start slaughtering the roosters of Luckenbach. These guys have to do it. And these guys have already forgotten about the whole idea. I need to mention this to a couple of their wives. I will bet we get some action then.




Which brings me to another subject. While sitting around listening to music or chatting, I watch these roosters. And I have come to understand how cockfighting got started. I really have. Now I detest cockfighting as much as anyone. I am not off on one of those “to understand all is to forgive all” deals. In fact many times to understand only provides better reasons to condemn something and do battle with it. So all that aside. . . . . .

One watches these roosters strut around and challenge each other over the three hens, and you cannot help but speculate as to whether, say, the red one could whip the green one's ass. You start to size them up, make some judgments about the assets and liabilities of each—size, musculature, spurs, attitude, heart--and you start to pit them against each other in your mind. I would think then that it is a very small step from that speculation to fencing off a little circular pit and putting two of those roosters in it to have at each other and settle the whole question.

I am not saying I want to do that. I am not saying that anybody should do that. I am saying that I understand how such a thing, so silly on the surface at first blush, came to happen. The fact is that it did not just come to happen. It became an overriding passion of a great number of people in this world. There are probably thousands of cockfights going on in the world as I write this. . . . . . . .Okay, maybe 73 cockfights going on in the world as I write this.

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Scott and Spike, here's what we are working with, assuming the burn ban does not go into effect. This is the Sam Lewis Camp Fire right in the middle of the Armadillo Farm Campground. As you can see, some wood splitting needs to be done.









I am booked back in here for Memorial Day weekend not in any way in reliance upon you two—I know better than that--but rather because I wanted to. Today Cigar Box Steve and I are pulling the camper up to the Pickin' in the Pines bluegrass and acoustic music festival where he will be playing. Cigar Box Steve is pitching in on the gasoline. I do not know exactly when I will get back to Luckenbach, but obviously, it will be some time before Memorial Day Weekend.

It will be a relief to get away from chickens crowing for awhile.

I will keep you and all else posted.

Wrangler Jeans

I had to concede to local usage Monday and purchase two pair of Wrangler blue jeans. I am proud of the fact that I am not usually a slave to the finery of the flock. I do not feel overly compelled to dress in conformity with others in a group unlike some who will go unmentioned, that is, motorcycle hobbyists. For example I do not mind at all wearing a tie. There have been many occasions on which I have been the only man in the room wearing a tie. This is because of my own ideosyncratic feeling that in general Americans dress in a slovenly fashion in these times. So I really do make an effort at some moderate nonconformism in that regard. But there are limits to nonconformism in dress. I have never walked into church wearing only my Speedo's and flipflops. Similarly, you should not come to Texas wearing Levi Strauss blue jeans.

Levi Strauss and I have been just like this for years. When I go in to purchase a new set of Levi Strauss blue jeans, I don't even need to try them on. I know how the various cuts hang. I know that when Levi Strauss says 30 X 32, he means it. Levi 501 button flies have been my choice of poison for many years now. I can pay for them and wear them out of the store if they are the prewashed variety. Little did I appreciate, however, that Levi Strauss had been gradually turning me into an effete little knucklehead over those years. I had forgotten what real denim, not lightweight denim, is like. I had forgotten about the satisfaction to be derived from breaking in a pair of jeans yourself instead of some poor Mexican woman doing it for you.

Now you will not be run out of the Hill Country in Texas if you are wearing Levi Strauss jeans obviously. It is just that a large segment of the population will not talk to you. This is because your Levi Strauss blue jeans mark you—not to put too fine a point on it—as a northern dipshit. So therefore, leave them up north. Do not wear blue jeans at all rather than wear Levi Strauss jeans and you will be better off. Wear slacks. Wear those silly fuckin' cargo shorts. Anything except Levi Strauss jeans. If you are paying attention, you will see what I mean when you get here. Let me hasten to add that if you show up in Land's End blue jeans, however, you will most certainly be run out of here. On a rail.

I am only talking to the gentlemen here. You ladies can wear any brand of jeans you wish as long as they work with your particular ass. Check your ass in the mirror before you leave. (Did I really need to tell you to do that?) Nobody in central Texas will give a hoot nor holler whether they are Deisel's or Sear's house brand as long as I could play the drum solo from In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida on the denim stretched across your cheeks.

So then, the beauty of my life right now is that I could devote all of my daylight hours yesterday to a crash program of breaking in my new Wrangler jeans. I wanted to wear a pair into town last night. These are the Official Pro Rodeo Competition Jeans. The Original Cowboy Cut Jean. 100% Cotton Heavyweight Denim. 13 MWZ Original Fit. A Full One Year Warranty covering defective workmanship or materials. Una Garantía Total Por Un Año. When they came out of the store these jeans were so stiff that they could stand up by themselves. Incredible! I grew up with this kind of denim, but I had forgotten what it is to deal with it brand new.

First, I washed the rascals twice and dried them twice with everything--the washer, the dryer--set as hot as it would go. I worked on my tan while I waited. Then I went over them looking for excess threads hanging off the seams. You burn those off with a match. That's an old Army trick. Then I tied them onto the bumper hitch of the pickup and drug them around on the gravel drive of the campground. I took them back to the laundry room and washed and dried them again. I ran into a little gal in the laundry room offloading a dryer while I was loading these into a washer again. She offered that she had heard that if you put a couple of stones in the washer with them, that will speed up the process. I told her that I had no doubt that would work, but I did not want to give Miss Jenkins the opportunity to catch me putting stones in one of her heavy duty washers. (More about Miss Jenkins later.)

This time I got them out of the dryer while they were still a bit damp. I straightened them out and laid them on the hood of my black GMC pickup in the Texas afternoon sun. This is a serviceable, makeshift way to press them. I worked on my tan some more.

Finally as the sun was getting low and after I had showered, I pulled on a pair and decided to go with the brown boots for the evening. This pair of Wrangler blue jeans was by no means broken in yet, but I could bend a bit at the knees. I set my mirrow down on the table and checked my ass. My ass looked pretty damned good. Cute. I pulled on my high end Tommy Bahama tee and headed into town for music.

Sure enough, later in the evening at the music venue, a fairly attractive late forty-something, early fifty-something Texas woman spoke to me. She wanted to know whether I have accepted Jesus Christ as my personal savior.


Photos of my Wrangler jeans to come.

Musical Interlude II

Musical Interlude II from Uncle Steve on Vimeo.

Lyrics | - Ain’t Misbehavin’ lyrics

As far as I'm concerned, this woman is free to save her love for somebody else.

Spending Money

One of the efforts that I have been undertaking on this sojourn is to focus on the good things in life—to accentuate the positive, as I said in an entry of some weeks back. I need to count my blessings, and here is a blessing that I included in the count as I was having coffee this morning on my back porch watching the NASCAR drivers on the blacktop out front drive to work.

Walking Tour of Luckenbach with No Rants

My previous blog entry entitle The Motorcycle Hobbyists of Central Texas was an ill humored and ill advised rant. The beauty of this blog endeavor is that if one regrets something one wrote or said, one can just tear that entry down, which is exactly what I have done with that entry about the motorcycle hobbyists.

Last evening I cranked up the webcam on the laptop and with the artists' permission set it in front of them so that my daughter, Sarah, could watch and listen for awhile from Cedar Rapids. It worked fairly well. Afterward, Candace Kunz Miller, the young lady who sings with her husband in the duet known as T&C Miller suggested that I do a walking video tour for Sarah. I did not tell her that I had already done a drive through shooting. Instead I did the walk through as she suggested.

By the way, I recommend you sample "Cabin Fever" at T&C Miller's myspace site.

For those of you who are sick of touring Luckenbach, skip this. For others this one has a bit more easy going ambience than the one that degenerated into a general denegration of the Texan motorcycle hobbyists.

Luckenbach Walking Tour from Uncle Steve on Vimeo.

Motorcycle Hobbyists in Texas

The intended purpose of this video is to give you a better visual feel for the environs in which I find myself now, and particularly, that strange place called Luckenbach, Texas.

There is an unintended import to this video, however. It serves to demonstrate how far I have to go in the development of my tolerance for my fellow man. I continue to work on this diligently.

Motorcycle Hobbyists in Texas from Uncle Steve on Vimeo.

It was said of Voltaire, I believe it was, that while he detested mankind generally, he loved individual men.

In a neat little statement of the converse, it was said of somebody else whom I cannot recall that while he hated individual men, he loved mankind generally. I am not up to researching all that right now. Perhaps someone could help me in the comments section.

Back to Voltaire, I think it was. Similarly, it can be said of me that although I detest motorcycle fucks generally, if I were to meet an individual motorcycle fuck, I might grow fond of him. I do not know how we are going to test this proposition when I adamantly refuse to talk to any of them, but still, I'm just saying. . . . . .

I continue to work on this tolerance thing diligently.

But here is the positive thing that those motorcycle fucks do for me. They make me so thankful for my sons-in-law, Ed, John, and Chuck. I do not know what I would have done if one of my daughters had gotten wound around the axle with one of those motorcycle fucks. At the end of every day during which I have encountered a bunch of those motorcycle fucks--and that seems like every day now--I take a quiet moment to give thanks for Ed, John, and Chuck. I know I speak for my son, Matt, too, when I say what a wonderful thing it is to have them married to these young women of mine.

After giving thanks I always ask that continued strength be granted to Ed, John, and Chuck so that they can continue on in marriage to these young women. Even though I love them more than life itself, I am not blind to the faults of my daughters. God knows, I have had my ups and downs with them myself. And so I live in some moderate but constant dread that Ed or John or Chuck will weaken at some point and start to crave the company of a quiet, dull, submissive, doting, unintelligent, totally uninteresting woman who is very easy to live with. I just hope that if this occurs with one of them, he will come to me so that we can discuss what needs to be done to keep him in the fold. Because if one of my guys throws up his hands and leaves, that particular daughter might very well get involved with one of those motorcycle fucks, in which case I wouldn't know what to do.

Musical Interlude

I apologize sincerely for the sniffling in this video. It has absolutely nothing to do with cocaine and everything to do with something floating around in the air right now here in central Texas that is attacking my throat, my sinuses, and my eyes. The reason this is a third take is that I coughed in the middle of the first two takes.

I will reshoot this musical interlude as soon as I am able to eliminate the sniffling. There should be no sniffling whatsoever in any musical interlude. There are opening and closing episodes of sniffling in this one.

Musical Interlude from Uncle Steve on Vimeo.

Postscript:

Thank you to those who have tactfully refrained from berating me. This is not a Fats Waller tune. Ain't Misbehavin' is, of course. I have made this mistake before.

I did know I was switching the "blue" and "true" lines while I was singing. I just couldn't stop myself.

Harry Connick, Jr. - It Had to be You lyrics