Deep in the Heart of Texas, or, A Book Dealer Travels to Austin

A while back, I wrote about a trip that we took with our daughter to St. Louis to look at Washington University. As I noted at the end of the piece, after much deliberation, she decided to attend graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin instead. Naturally, my wife and I were curious to see why Austin won out over St. Louis, so one Friday in early October we hopped a JetBlue flight and headed for Austin, a city that everyone says is as far from Texan as you can get but still be in Texas.

My previous foray into the state that gave us George W. was limited to two days in downtown Dallas, which is not so much a city as a giant office park that empties out as soon as the sun begins to set. Before leaving home this time, I read Kinky Friedman’s The Great Psychedelic Armadillo, so I expected that Austin would be as different from Dallas, as say, San Francisco is from Los Angeles.

Our first evening was spent in the trendy, funky area known as SoCo for South Congress Avenue. There are shops where you can buy cowboy boots in all colors of the rainbow, as well as such necessities as stick-on boot shaped sideburns for those without the time to grow their own. There was not a bookshop in sight, though if one was desperate for reading matter there were one or two thrift stores that had a few ten year old bestsellers. We had an excellent Tex-Mex dinner at Bill Clinton’s favorite Austin restaurant Guero’s Taco Bar and headed over to the Broken Spoke, the most famous two-step dance hall in town. In my case it was more like two and one-half or three step, since I had difficulty adjusting to that country twang instead of a beat. It got a little easier after a few bourbons, but with my Strand Bookstore football shirt and “Jesus boots” (Kinky Friedman’s slang for sandals), no one would mistake me for a native. One of the important lessons I learned in Dallas was never to order red wine (my usual drink of choice) in a Texas saloon.

Kinky Friedman in another book, Texas Hold ‘Em, lists the Ten Commandments if they were written by Texans, and the second is “Thou shalt worship the shape of the Lone Star State and thou shalt make everything in its shape.” Sure enough, on our first morning we went to the hotel breakfast buffet, and ate Texas-shaped Belgian waffles.

We then headed down to San Antonio, which is about an hour drive south of Austin. Our first stop was the Alamo which has changed considerably since the John Wayne movie I still remember vividly from my childhood. It is now surrounded by an ever-expanding modern metropolis. It is regarded as a shrine among Texans, and is the number one tourist attraction in the state. We stood in line for almost half an hour to get in, paid our respects to the memories of Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and John Wayne, and then walked across town to the market district. One of the stalls sold a variety of Texas hot sauces. I actually needed some to bring home for a Southwestern stew I make occasionally, so we walked over and the friendly proprietor offered us some samples. The sauce came in Mild, Medium, Hot and Hottest, the latter billed as the hottest hot sauce in Texas. My daughter and I are pretty intrepid when it comes to spicy food, and we both know that Texans are prone to exaggeration, so we had to try the hottest sauce. He handed us each a taco chip with one small daub of sauce, and instantly our mouths caught on fire. The burning sensation continued for at least half an hour, and nothing except time could cure it. I did buy one jar of sauce, but opted for the Medium instead of the Hot. Hottest was out of the question, unless one wants to serve it to frequent guests who outstay their welcomes.

We walked by the cottage that the writer O. Henry lived in during a brief sojourn in San Antonio, where he founded a humorous magazine he called The Rolling Stone. Unfortunately, the cottage was closed and all we could do was peek through the windows, so we headed to the most beautiful part of the city, the River Walk. This is a long promenade on both sides of a narrow winding river that was built in the 1930s as a federal works project. There are tall shady trees, arched bridges, and fine restaurants and shops. There was an accordion world music festival that day, so we had the chance to listen to several groups, including Blues, Zydeco, and Gypsy bands. At the end of the Gypsy set there was a request for Klezmer music, and I have photos of my wife and daughter doing the Hora in conga line fashion wearing cowboy hats. After an excellent dinner on the River Walk, we headed back to Austin.

Sunday was to be devoted to sightseeing in Austin. My wife needed a sun hat, so our first stop was the University of Texas bookstore, which is unlike any other college bookstore that I have ever seen. It is a modern multi-story building about the size of a small department store. In fact if it weren’t for the absence of all of those cosmetic counters, one could mistake this for a Macy’s branch. All of the floors above ground were filled with U of Texas logo merchandise. You can buy anything from Christmas tree lights to a kitchen sink drain with “Bevo”—the Longhorn insignia.

“Where are the books?” I asked my daughter. She led us down a flight of stairs to a windowless basement which contained rows of metal shelving. Each shelf had a sign with the course number, and above the sign were all of the required text books for that particular course. There was not one book that was not course-related, not even a rack of best selling paperbacks. I guess the thinking is that no student in college would ever read a book unless it was assigned for course work.

We left the shop with some T-shirts, coffee mugs, a beer can holder that plays the U of T fight song and a refrigerator magnet, but not one book.

The rest of the day was spent enjoying the city. We saw the botanical garden, and went swimming in Barton Springs, a natural swimming pool constructed by damming up a river. We dried off in the sun and perused the Sunday New York Times. (Thank heavens it is available everywhere in the U.S. at the ubiquitous Starbucks.)

Our daughter lives in a vegetarian cooperative, and we were invited to dine with her and her two dozen assorted housemates. I am not sure what was served, but I certainly have a better understanding of the phrase from Garcia Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude “the lean and hungry look of a vegetarian.”

After dinner, while the co-op had its bi-monthly officer meeting, my wife and I raced down to the river to see the number one tourist attraction in Austin, the flight of the bats. Austin is a city bisected by a river, and the largest urban community of bats in the world lives under the main bridge that connects the two parts of the city. Generally, just after dinner and about 30 minutes before sunset, the Homo sapiens population of Austin, both carnivore and vegetarian alike, begins to emerge and stake claims along the river banks near the bridge. About 30 minutes after sunset the bat population begins to come out from its roost to search for their dinner. To the dismay of the mosquito population, bats are definitely not vegetarian.

Monday was set aside for book buying. There were only three places on my list, but each in its own way was a bibliophile’s delight. Our first stop was a branch of the southern chain store called Half Price Books. Austin has two of them, and this was the larger one, at the northwest corner of the city. I was told the stores tend to be on the outskirts, rather than downtown. This was one of the largest used bookstores I have ever been in. It looks like it was once a Kmart or a supermarket, with wide aisles filled with books organized by subject. Maybe ten percent are remainders, the rest are mostly used hard covers in varying conditions. At the back of the store is a collectible section which has been partitioned off to look more like a traditional bookstore.

The staff was friendly, and I was told that as a dealer I would receive a 10% discount, and there would only be a modest charge to ship the books media mail to New York. They also have an interesting pricing policy on their collectibles. If the book does not sell within a set period of time they keep lowering the price until it sells. Needless to say, in short order I had such a large armful of items that a saleswoman who was stocking shelves took one look at me and came running over to graciously bring me a supermarket type shopping cart.

I met an interesting older gentleman, who was impressed by the number of books I had in my cart. We started talking and I learned that he had the rather difficult job being a Democratic organizer/fundraiser for all South Texas. He gave me his card and asked me to encourage my liberal daughter to become a volunteer. I imagine that raising money for Democrats in Texas is not very lucrative, since he guided me over to the one dollar clearance section and told me that is where he bought most his books. Unlike the Strand Annex in NYC, they don’t stamp the dollar books, so I was able to find a few items there as well.

I even managed to learn a little about the history of this book chain. It was started by business people who made a lot of money mass marketing jewelry. They decided to use this retail model to sell a product that they loved—books. Since it is a product that I love also, by the time I reached the register, my cart was as full as that of a mother of four teenaged boys in a supermarket.

My second stop was Book People, the largest independent new bookshop in Austin, and one of the most well-known bookstores in Texas. This beautiful multi-leveled shop is where the visiting authors come to read and sign their books, and there was a large selection of signed books from both regional and nationally known writers. One can even join a “signed first edition club,” where for the list price of the book plus a five dollar surcharge one will receive a carefully selected book each month in the mail. Whole Foods, the upscale supermarket chain, originated in Austin, and there is a very large branch right next door to Book People. It is a great spot for a healthy lunch.

My last stop of the day was 12th Street Books, which true to its name is in a strip mall on 12th Street. This is a true old-fashioned used and rare bookshop. What it lacks in quantity it makes up for in quality. The books are well selected and well organized. I managed to pick up a very nice signed Joseph Mitchell, as well as a few less expensive items. The proprietor was very friendly and gave me a generous dealer discount.

I had now exhausted the major book venues in Austin, so we had time for a tour of the U of Texas campus, which is one of the most beautiful state university campuses that I have ever seen. Up North, the state universities are step-children in the shadow of the older, prestigious private universities, but down here most of the successful natives are U of T alumni who remain closely connected to the school. They fill the immense stadium during football season and contribute generously to building and beautification projects. Even the library is impressive. It contains one of the largest repositories of literary manuscripts in the U.S.

For my last dinner in Austin I wanted Texas beef, so we stopped at a place called Ranch 616 famous for Texas cuisine. There is a big sign in front announcing this is Laura Bush’s favorite Austin restaurant, which is far from a selling point for me, but we took a chance and the food was first rate. After finishing a large plate of mixed grill containing everything from squab to Texas tenderloin, I left with the plump, sated look of a carnivore.

The next morning as we boarded the plane back to New York, I thought to myself, yes, Austin is a far cry from Dallas, but I still don’t think I am quite ready to sell some of my first edition Cormac McCarthys to buy a pair of cowboy boots, or trade Long Island for the land of the Longhorns.

Joe Perlman operates Mostly Useful Fictions out of East Northport, NY and can be contacted at http://www.mostlyusefulfictions.com.