A story about Luckenbach, Texas, Hondo Crouch, and Jerry Jeff Walker in The Guardian sent me on a little spin down Memory Lane over coffee this morning.
Maybe it’s the Londonesque weather we’ve been enjoying:
Well, it’s cold over here, and I swear
I wish they’d turn the heat on. — Gary P. Nunn, “London Homesick Blues”
October could get chilly in the college cowtown of Greeley, Colo., too, which is where The Mombo Club-El Rancho Delux crew mostly played the mortal shit out of Jerry Jeff’s “¡Viva Terlingua!” album and once saw “Scamp” Walker Hisself perform live, loud, and knee-walking drunk at the University of Northern Colorado:
Sure does like his Falstaff beer
Likes to chase it down with that Wild Turkey liquor
Drives a ’57 GMC pickup truck
Got a gun rack
“Goat ropers need love too” sticker. — Ray Wylie Hubbard, “Up Against the Wall Redneck Mother”
Maybe it’s the sudden realization that it was 50 years ago when, after more than a few Falstaffs of my own, a 20-watt bulb blinked to sputtering life in my hairy head: “Holy hell, I think I’m gonna have enough credits to graduate come spring. …”
And before you could sing a verse of “Gettin’ By” I was off to the rat races. Cage-liners, bike mags, and blogs, O my!
Don’t matter how you do it
They say, “Just do it like you know it,”
And I’ve been down this road once or twice before. … — Jerry Jeff Walker, “Gettin’ By”
I’ve consumed a fair number of Shiner Bocks at the picnic tables there in Luckenbach. A bunch of use would go down to Fredericksburg to ride for a week of two early season. Our rides would always take us through there on the way back. Good times
Never made the pilgrimage myself. But we did play the life out of several editions of that album. Vinyl (still have one), cassette, digital. …
“Ridin’ High” is another keeper. Especially “Night Rider’s Lament” and “Jaded Lover.”
Most of these tunes are OK to play on the ol’ git-fiddle too, even for a thumb-fingered dolt like Your Humble Narrator.
It was Coors that people used to bring back by the caseload from geology field camps that we all lusted over in Rochester, where the Genny Cream Ale brewed locally was a tad….mediocre, if cheap.
Yep, come to think of it, it was August, 1976 when I finally got that last lab credit and they gave me the sheepskin. Or sheep dip. Or whatever it was. Then a year of working full time to get over the PTSD of going from academic probation to dean’s list when the department chair told me I should quit. And off to the races.
Now what the hell happened for the last fifty years?
We bought bottled Falstaff by the case and let the empties pile up in the kitchen until there were enough of ’em to turn in to the liquor store for the price of (wait for it) another case of Falstaff.
Now and again we’d wake up all hungover of a Sunday to realize that there wasn’t a single solitary bottle of beer left in the place. And we’d have to (shudder) buy a case of 3.2. That pisswater wouldn’t get a fly high and tasted like someone drank it already.
There was a Cold Spring Brewery in Minnesota near where I was doing my field work for my disssertation. So I would stock up on their 3.2 beer so I could drink beer in the evening while working on my maps and log books and still be sober. Worked out well. But yes, the stuff was definitely a little weak on taste as well as alcohol.