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My wife and I bagged four sheepskins before we left the University of Texas, but there were times we would have traded them all just to live in Austin the rest of our lives.
We weren't the only UT students to fall in love with the Hill Country paradise. Gas stations and grocery stores all over town are staffed with graduates who've decided how they live is more important than what they accomplish. When push came to graduation, we didn't have the guts to follow that mellow path. That's probably one reason we stayed away for the next 25 years.
As part of a mid-life reassessment, Sweets and I are budgeting one long weekend a month to have an actual life together -- to go somewhere or do something that has nothing to do with professional or domestic responsibilities. (If you had told me in 1976 I would someday write the preceding sentence, I might have crawled into my bong and stayed there.)
So this month it was Austin. We chose a between-semesters window of opportunity, filled an ice chest with European and Kentucky delicacies, and headed off from Yuston in search of our youth.
Time for a quick flashback. My wife and I, high school sweethearts, were precocious in all things, including marriage. We tied the knot at 19, after our sophomore year, and nestled into the womb-like environs of Woodstock South. Texans say it takes five Austinites to screw in a light bulb -- one to install it and four to say how much brighter it would have been in the Sixties. But I think the high-water mark came in the Seventies, when the freaks kicked the mossbacks off the city council and elected a sheriff who passed out campaign matchbooks at the dope-smazed Armadillo.
UT tuition was four dollars an hour in those days. As married students, we were eligible for the plywood, WWII-surplus army barracks down by Town Lake. We lived in a two-bedroom duplex, surrounded by hippies and trees and music and vegetable gardens, for $41 a month, plus five bucks for utilities. Mexican weed, if you were too lazy to grow it for free, cost eight bucks a bag. Shuttle buses ran from the duplex to the campus every 15 minutes. And so on.
Eventually our career tracks pulled us out of town, and we later developed a passion for sailing and scuba that kept us pointed south and east most of the time. It's crucial to live on a coast if you're going to indulge a sailing addiction properly, so for the past quarter century Austin has hovered somewhere over our left shoulders.
Back to the future: Memorial Day weekend, 2002, on Texas 71. We approached River City with trepidation, having heard for decades that urban sprawl and designer-jean students had sucked the charm out of the place. Well, there's happy news: That's a total crock of shit.
Yes, there's a lot more Austin than there used to be, and our first stop was for an outskirts traffic jam on Ben White Blvd. But the places that matter most -- the campus and the beautiful hills to its west -- are still stunning, and it's possible even now to move around in them with ease.
Most of the students were gone, but the ones we saw looked much the way we did: all sunglasses, sandals, jiggling tanks and halters, and I'm-so-fucking-cool languor. The guys have a hideous fondness for below-the-knee Bermudas, but fortunately the short-short-wearing babes are still old school.
We drove through the hills, dotted now with high-tech firms in environmentally integrated structures, and were reminded of San Fran and Seattle. Then we spent our first evening at Lake Travis, one of LBJ's many beautiful central-Texas legacies. We stumbled onto The Oasis, a sprawling food-and-music venue clinging to the cliffs near Mansfield Dam. We'd never heard of it, because it's only been there 20 years.
Austin lovers can be assured that Mont Bonnell is still gorgeous, Scholz Beer Garden still smells like 19th Century yeast, they're still selling candles off The Drag near the Co-op, and Sixth Street is ten times more happenin' than when we saw B.B, Albert and the undiscovered Stevie Ray there.
We even took a side trip out to married student housing. The plywood barracks are gone, but they're replaced with nice-looking pre-fab units that serve the same purpose. We didn't see any lettuce, tomato or ganja plants, and none of the kids playing in the yards was naked. But they saved most of the trees, and now there are pocket parks sprinkled throughout.
In honor of our 28th anniversary -- and in violation of the counterculture ethos -- we splurged for two nights at the Driskill. Total tab: $450, which would have covered a year's rent back in our salad days. Oh well, we've got more jack than we ever dreamed of then -- and for perspective I always try to remember a conversation I overheard almost 30 years ago in the student union courtyard.
A guy who looked like Jerry Garcia was telling his friend he was changing majors. He'd finally decided he wanted to be a teacher.
"Whoa," his friend said. "Teachers only make $8,000 a year."
"I know" the guy said. "But I figure if eight grand isn't enough, then something is seriously wrong."
Sweet, sweet Austin. I've got one word for you.
Thanks.
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Austin, Tegsis, Returning to paradise after 25 years
May 30 2002, 04:31 AM
