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So, when a friend and I drove down to a black section of Houston one Bastille Day, I was in for an horizon-broadening experience. Our destination was the Continental Lounge and Zydeco Ballroom where Wayne Thibodeaux and his Zydeco Rascals were slated to perform. Immediately upon entering, the owner introduced herself--Doris--and recognized my voice from the phone that afternoon when I'd called for directions. Doris chaperoned us for much of the night, bringing us newspaper clippings about the Continental Lounge and ensuring we'd return for a big upcoming bash. Making us feel welcome. As she commented, "Oh sure, we get lots of whites in here."
Wayne T. and the Zydeco Rascals were swinging, you bet. Finally, when we'd gotten our zydeco quota and were preparing to leave, Doris's husband walked us out to our car.
Being in the minority like that reminded me of my high school days in the late '60s, early '70s--when long hair instantly marked you as a "freak" (a term that hippies eventually took over as their own) to conservative, flag-decal-pasting, Barry Goldwater-loving individuals. One look at your hair and you were immediately a target for hatred, derision and even violence. As I would walk down the street people would call from their cars: "Get a fucking haircut," "Hey, Beatle!," "Who do you think you are, Jesus?!" One guy threatened to cut my hair with a knife at school, but was scared out of it by a football player friend of mine. Rick Paige--now rock star lead singer for Mister Mister--wasn't so lucky. He had the tar beaten out of him and his hair cut by some crackers near Casa Grande, AZ.
Those confrontations with raging intolerance taught me a little of what it must be like to be black or Latino or Asian or gay in U.S. culture. It taught me what it means to be judged on appearance, to be categorized according to superficial attributes. It's a lesson that every member of Reagan/Bush's America seems to have skipped.
But who put that soap box under me? This is a vacation chronicle, not an ideological exegesis.
The rest of my week in Houston was nearly as educational as my trip to the Continental Lounge. Watched a good bit of public access cable TV--got to see a segue from an avant-garde theater piece in which naked women poured red paint on themselves to a Texas Agricultural Extension Service program called "Family Nutrition." Ah public access, fulfilling television's true promise of populist communication.
Took a field trip to the Houston Coca-Cola Bottling plant, where I fell in with a tour group of youngsters. I guess school groups would be the main customers for this tour. When I called up to reserve a spot the PR woman warned me three times that there would be a lot of kids. When we arrived there I overheard her saying, mostly to herself, "We have so many kids through here, I see them in my sleep."
Although we did get free pencils out of it, the tour was pretty disappointing. The main bottling line wasn't operating. Oh yes, I also learned that Mr. Joe (see ELsong, above) illegally bottled Coca-Cola. Apparently, he didn't bother to get licensed by Coca-Cola.
Laissez-faire, bub, laissez-faire.
Took other educational field trips, too. Went to the Water Wall,
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and both the Houston Art Museum and the Contemporary Museum. Attended a docent's tour at the latter. A young guy showed five or six wandering art lovers around an exhibit that consisted of strands of yarn tacked to the walls in geometrical shapes. The guy couldn't think of anything to say about them except that they made him feel heavy and spiritually transcendent. The art patrons weren't impressed and drifted off one by one. I felt sorry for the guy and tried to engaged him in conversation: "Sooooo, these make you conscious of your volume, eh?"
At the main museum (free-admission Thursday) a self-appointed docent, an unshaven art bum carrying a Grahame Greene book, lectured me on art appreciation: "You should never be intimidated by anything in a museum. Don't be afraid of your own opinions!" Okay, okay...
The museum's holdings include a cool Frida Kahlo painting ("Roots"), a self-portrait with all kind of vines growing out of her (broken) spine. Close by was Diego Rivera's "Self-Portrait: Ravages of Time"--which prompted an elderly woman next to me to comment, "He should have had a face-lift." Wonder if she would have been so jocular if she'd known he was a communist.
My final educational experience was the Houston Police Museum--almost too new to be interesting, but they had some old explanatory tags left over from when the museum was in the back room of some precinct house somewhere. E.g., an exhibit of homemade weapons (including "homemade numb-chucks [sic]") featured a primitive shotgun and the explanation: "...the Robbery would have been completed but the store owner had a larger Gun. The Hi-Jacker went to meet his maker."
One of my favorite exhibits--next to the showcase of illegal drugs explaining all of their slang terms (hooch, reefer, Mary Jane; acid, blotter, goofies)--was the property log from the 1920s, pre-Miranda. One entry read, "One Garden Hoe (broken) from 2522 Stevens Street. Used by Charlie Bell and Laura Bell to chop Mary Michaelson's arm off. 8-1-28." Innocent until proven guilty? Not in 1928.
Not long after the Police Museum visit it was time to return to Tuscaloosa. One can overdose on this education thing, you know. Took the standard route back, stopping at the Boudin King in Jennings, LA, for a too-tasty shrimp po'boy and then hit Weidman's--Meridian, MS--for dinner. Weidman's has been serving since 1870, and it looks like they've been collecting photos for the walls since about that time. Probably a couple of Matthew Brady's in there.
Ate frog legs for the first time ever. They were big. Meaty. And yes, tasted a whole lot like chicken. Really.
A couple of days after my return, Naomi the marine biologist
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phoned from Dauphin Island Sea Lab (where she is now living, working on her masters), down near Mobile.
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She insisted that I come down and visit that weekend. So, I left Flipper
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to play in a wastebasket and headed south.
Had to miss out on a few Gulf activities. Didn't get to dine at the "None in Hell" Sno Ball stand or sip a cognac at the Club Wide Awake (Mobile). But still, I had plenty of fun that weekend. Naomi's pal Laurie made alcoholic drinks called "Skip and Go Naked." Plenty tasty. Got to play in the Gulf and explore Mobile a bit.
Visited the U.S.S. Alabama battleship,
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which is plenty strange. Most of these ship tours are very strictly confined, but not the Alabama.
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You want to climb up in that turret?
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Well, sure, go ahead. There was even a troop of Boy Scouts preparing to spend the night on board, setting up their stuff on the crew's bunks. Apparently you can RENT it for parties. What a concept!
Anyway, it was a fittingly militaristic conclusion (cf. MS War Memorial and Vicksburg) to my
summer excursions and an appropriately hyperreal simulacrum (or was it? is it still a
battleship, or is it just a sliding signifier of one?) to put an end to my tour of postmodern
America.