[Austin-ghetto-list] jaxon's rant, part 10+

[jaxon41]

A STROLL DOWN MEMORY LANE WHEN THE SIDEWALKS WERE MADE OF GRASS

Ghetto People--

This was supposed to be my final rant installment, and I know that all of
you (at least the majority of you) have been eagerly awaiting for that time
to come.  But it ran longer than I'd planned, so I have to serve it up in
two parts.  We'll run to 11 instead of 10, okay?  If not, there's always
that delete button...  As I've suggested earlier on my WTC flareup, how's
this as a Motto for our new Delete Button Age?  Instead of "Use It or Lose
It," now it's "Use It AND Lose It."  BAP, BAP, BAP!  Informational Overload=
;
might be a song title fit for some Punk Band.

I need to get my kid a more comfortable chair for "his" computer.  This low
wobbly hardwood spine & kidney crusher he's got ain't gonna cut it.  My
neck's stiff, shoulders ache, and butt's sore from sitting here, pecking ou=
t
these long-winded rants with two fingers.  Glad It's Almost Over.

I haven't turned my historical "expertise" to an examination of all the pub=
s
in Texas that have been characterized by their written humor & use of
"funny" illustrations.  After all, this is the sort of thing people get MA =
&
PhD degrees for doing!  One guy named Joseph "Rusty" Witek has already got
his doctorate at Vanderbilt U. from writing about my lowbrow comics.  It wa=
s
published by (of all places) the University Press of Mississippi in 1989
under the title Comic Books as History: The Narrative Art of Yours Truly,
Art Spiegelman, and Harvey Pekar.  Then there's that Williams guy at TX Tec=
h
and God Nose how many others trying like him to get an easy/fun PhD.  Some
of you Listers already know a lot on this subject, Texas-wise, esp. for the
century just closed.  If so, feel free to fill me in.

Most of us cut our teeth on The Texas Ranger at UT, whether as students or
hangers-on.  That pub alone had a long tradition of hell-raising behind it,
one that we in the early Sixties tried to maintain & go-one-better.  We had
some good teachers, Bill Helmer being the most memorable "oldtimer" for me.
Bill was gone by the time I got there, but those who had been inspired by
his irreverence were still around.  Out of this venue came Gilbert & Tony's
WWH, my GN, and great illos by some of you Listers.  Here's where most of u=
s
met, as the Ranger parties were perks not to be missed.

But jaxon, this rant was supposed to be about what graphic
artists/cartoonists are facing TODAY on our stompin' ground--the place that
we call home whether we live here or not.  What's the deal?  Can't you stat=
e
things plain & simple and keep it short & sweet??  Really can't, even if I
wished I could.  I was raised in a rural, pre-teevee environment where my
elders sat around after dark on the front porch--listening to the frogs
merrily croak, cicadas saw monotonous tunes, owls hoot & screech, coyotes
yap hysterically & howl dolefully--while these Old Lobos of mine spat
tobacco or dipped snuff (women too) and leisurely spun out their tales abou=
t
life.  It's not only in my genes but in my upbringing.  Why fight it?  It's
a "Texan" trait, after all, and one that I dearly love.

My folks were common, salt-of-the-earth types--"pioneer stock" as I'm fond
of telling Samboy.  Most of the early ones couldn't even sign their names,
but one of them (on momma's side) cut a road from the Great Bend of the Red
River to Nacogdoches while Texas was still a possession of Spain.  You'll
still see "Trammell's Trace" on some Texas maps published in the 1830s &
40s.  I was the first in my family to go to college, cause I liked to read
books and that's what college students did for four years (if not longer).
My dear ol' uncle George Mills, Holy Bible in hand, told me this was foolis=
h
business: "If you start reading books, you'll find that there's always
another one to read after you finish the first, then another & another afte=
r
that.  Why waste your time when all books worth reading are in this one?"
Hefting the Holy Scriptures.  Yep, he was right, and it's even a more
bothersome habit if you write books as well as read them!  You can see my
uncle George in that strip I did for TxMo mentioned later on.  He, thru his
frugality & hard work rain-or-shine, managed to become a wealthy man on 250
acres of land back when it was still possible for "family" farmers to do so=
.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I was lucky--coming from such a
lowbrow environment--to be welcomed into the ghetto group once I got to
Austin.  Many of you had more impressive socio/eco & academic pedigrees tha=
n
me, yet I was embraced by all of you and my "commoner" background was not
held against me.  This old redneck boy will always be proud of his fellow
ghettoites, decent people one & all.  So what if some of you are consumed b=
y
PC agendas these days?  It's still a free country ain't it?  Everybody has
the right to express their looney opinion and still be respected by old
friends, correctomente?

So before I start in on the Austin Chron in part 11, I'd like to take you
guys & gals for a stroll down memory lane in this one and see if you can
help me plug in a few gaps--in the process tipping my hat to Three of the
Greatest.  Hope this doesn't mean you'll need a box of Kleenex tissues, but
I'm a sentimental sort myself & always wind up blubbering in dumbshit
action/SF fantasy movies--not to mention Real Life.

When I blew into Austin from Kingsville in the midsummer of 1962--driving m=
y
high school-vintage customized black '50 Ford with moon hubcaps and sportin=
g
a flattop with ducktails, a freshly minted degree in Accounting from A&I in
my pocket--one of first people on my list to look up was Joe Brown.  I'd
studied social psychology under his father, Joe E. Brown Sr., a tall,
imposing professor of distinction at A&I's Liberal Arts School and a snappy
dresser if there ever was one.  "Going to Austin, eh?  My son lives up
there; see if you can find him.  He runs with a wild crowd."

I found Joe, thru him meeting Gilbert and the rest of the Rangeroos.  My
entrada to the Ghetto scene came when I, puppie-like, followed Janis there
on foot one night from a Student Union folksing.  As I approached the
building, quart of beer in hand, there she sat alone on the doorstep playin=
g
her autoharp.  "Who are you, bub?  Oh, I remember you were at the
folksing--WALK RIGHT IN!"  In those days an okay from Janis was all the pas=
s
a geek like me needed to mix & mingle with the ghetto group.  Man, were the=
y
cool!  Surplus leather & longshoreman's jackets, bulky sweaters that made
you wonder what treasures were hidden beneath, leotards so tight you didn't
have to wonder, funny caps, berets, longish hair, and Beatnik Attitudes.
And some of you gals didn't even wear bras!  As Powell can affirm, we didn'=
t
see many jiggling tiddies down in south Texas back then.  Compared to
Kingsville, which had only one Get-Down black R&B club across the tracks
(that I became a regular fixture at), Austin was everything I expected &
more.

But you've got to earn a living, right?  That's why I got a degree in
bookkeeping instead of art or history.  I was gonna be like Spinoza,
grinding lenses in the daytime to support myself & writing ponderous
philosophical tracts (illustrated of course) at night.  So I got a job with
the State Comptroller's office.  They'd just hoodwinked us into putting in
the 2% sales tax, holding their breath that there wouldn't be a Common Man'=
s
Revolt because of it.  No slick, overweight but well-tailored politician
wants to be tarred, feathered, & run out of office by the Rustics back home
in Dime Box.  But, hey, California had pulled it off; maybe this newfangled
tax idea would fatten our state's bureaucratic coffers as well.

We were the New Kid in Town, stuck in the basement of the State Capitol
until Another Giant Building could be erected for us.  I worked there 2
years, and my only view of the daytime world was seeing people's ankles as
they walked by outside.  "Oops.  That person's wearing a black one & a red
one. Musta been frazzled & late to work this morning."  It was a straight
job, and the only thing that made it bearable was that my boss--an old
Ragin' Cajun named "EJ" Castille--learned I could draw comics.  He put me t=
o
work, overtime without pay as usual, doing morale-building cartoons for his
new Field Operations Division by making fun of the older "out of touch" tax
entities.  So when I started hanging with the Ranger/Ghetto group I couldn'=
t
feel comfortable using my real name on the cartoons that I drew.  If any of
those State people found out what I was up to afterhours, I'd have lost my
regular paycheck in a flash.  I had to pretend I was "straight" like them.
Yall know the story...

Gilbert Shelton solved my problem.  JAX, an "import" beer from Louisiana,
was popular at the time with us cosmopolitan sofisticuffs.  In the Ranger
War Room there was an assignment board for stuff needed in the next issue,
and Gilbert would post me notices: "JAXON, do this, JAXON, do that."  Thus
my penname, and I've been using it for 40 years now.  (Thanks Gilbert.)  I
signed some of my early Ranger illos "Jackson," but not after we began
taking psychedelics & my work started to reflect it--God Nose in particular=
.

When the comix scene later got rolling on the West Coast, certain
"authorities" started calling God Nose the FIRST underground.  Ain't so, an=
d
I'd be the first to admit it.  The inspiration for putting my GN strips int=
o
a "book" came from Frank Stack's "Adventures of J."  Gilbert xeroxed &
assembled ("edited" we call it nowdays) some of these strips into little
stapled booklets, and they circulated to the Ghetto crowd.  For a guy like
me, who was raised to be a Hard-Shell Baptist preacher (sorta like Osama in
his own way) before becoming an agnostic at a godless State school, they
were the Cat's Meow.  Frank Stack's creation--not my God Nose--should be
recognized as the first comix.  And not just in Texas either.  Mine--sold
around UT campus at the Fall '64 registration by me & some of you
Listers--was truly an "underground," however, for it was printed in the
basement of the Capitol on state-owned equipment.  HA!  What a jab at the
Establishment, eh?  This was just after I'd decided to quit but still had
friends working in the printshop; all done at night.

Help me out gang: what did we sell this book for?  Was it a buck or four
bits?  Must have been a dollar and--amazingly--it sold out, all 1000 copies=
.
Many of you took part in the release process, including the
collation/stapling keg party I threw at a house on 18th & Brazos (which I'l=
l
rant more about in a minute).  This house was only a couple of blocks from
The Jade Room on San Jacinto, where Roky & the Elevators played some of
their earliest Austin gigs--just north of Scholz's Beer Garten, same side o=
f
the street.  Don Taylor & other residents used to charge parking fees insid=
e
our complex to UT football fans for beer money...

The first edition GN is going for $1500 a whack now and is so rare it's not
even listed (I'm told by a collector) on eBay.  Even so, I can't bear to
part with my sole remaining copy.  This book was truly a "community" effort=
,
as well as an actual UG.  Lieuen Adkins wrote the lyrics for the songs
inside, and he was mostly responsible for the hillarious "List of
Contributors" on the backcover, framed within one of Pat Brown's delicate
lacewerk "windows."  Wayne Johnson did the fat-lady-from-behind "The End"
drawing.  The sales money from GN, plus my state severance pay, enabled me
to head to Europe with J. David Moriaty on a freezing-cold motocycle jaunt
that nearly killed us both.

I got back to NYC in May '65 with a giant bottle of soured Portuguese vino =
&
50 cents in my pocket.  Half I used to call Joe Brown and the other half fo=
r
a bus ride to his pad.  He took me under his wing & together we cruised the
Village coffeehouse scene, where I heard Dave Van Ronk & other great
pre-electric acts play.  Joe also introduced me to R. Crumb who was doing
pen&ink drawings of Harlem at the time and publishing them in some
short-lived  Harvey Kurtzman mag.  Harvey had dreamed up the concept for Ma=
d
Magazine (later to make his publisher Bill Gaines a rich man) but had left
EC Comics.  Joe, Crumb, & me even appeared in one of HK's fumettis shot for
the pub, HELP I think it was.  Then Joe & I got a drive-away car deal and
made it back to Austin.  Thanks, Joe Brown; in a time of need you literally
saved my BUTT & made it enjoyable to boot.

Joe liked to listen to "cowboy" country music, way back when it definitely
wasn't cool.  His sardonic, dark humor was in step with Beat Attitudes,
however, and completely different from Lieuen's goofy cheerful stuff.  Joe
was a funny guy whose bombastic rants never failed to produce a grin/smirk
on my mug, whereas Lieuen's humor had a happy face painted all over it & yo=
u
couldn't keep yourself from laughing/chortling at his puns & play on words.
In terms of a traditional "Texan" humorist, Joe was perhaps better grounded
than Lieuen.  When Joe told jokes, it was like listening to those Old Wolve=
s
on the front porch--if they had been partaking of booze, weed, & uppers.
Lieuen's gentle nature and wry sense of humor (limmericks his specialty &
he'd be sure to catch all my misspelled words) made him unique & one of a
kind.  Both guys loved to play poker, and neither liked to lose.

I fondly remember some of our Ghetto peyote/mescalin trips where it was
impossible to get bummed out with Lieuen holding forth in his inmitable
style.  You too, J. David.  Your Teutonic sense of humor & appreciation of
classical music added an extra dimension to these stoned-out sessions as we
knocked on & entered the Doors of Perception.  Ever wonder where Jim
Morrison got the name for his band?  Yep, ol' Aldous Huxley's book; they
went thru the same Doors as us Texas lads, even if a tad later.

And Ramsey, your words at Lieuen's funeral were much appreciated.  I
couldn't have uttered a word without completely choking up & making a fool
of myself before God & Everybody.  The only spirit-lifting thing connected
with this sad occasion was the party/wake that Doug & Judy threw at their
Clarksville house on what I recall as a sharply cold & sunlit but depressin=
g
winter day.  One of those days that give me a bad case of the "High
Lonesomes," when the windswept vault of the Texas sky makes me inescapably
aware that We're Alone on this planet, and our Existence is a fragile &
transitory thing.  Not the right kind of day for a funeral.  Even tho D&J's
house is a big spacious thing with lots of yard, we were pretty much oblige=
d
to stay inside for warmth.  But there was another kind of warmth being
generated that day, almost as important as physical warmth.  We draw
strength from our numbers, gang, and it's hard to be gloomy when you're
rubbing shoulders, butts, & bellies, surrounded by so many smiling faces
from the past.  Altho one of our greatest jokesters was gone, the morbid ga=
g
of the day was "Too bad it takes a funeral to get us all together again."
Seems like I wrote an obit for Lieuen in the Chron, the only way I could pa=
y
tribute to him.  I've never been much of a public speaker; writing/drawing
is my thing.

We miss you Lieuen & Joe--and you too T. Bell.  When God made you guys, he
broke the molds.  There'll never be anyone else that can fill the empty
spots you fellows left in my life.  Except for the memories, which I cheris=
h
in those vacant cubbyholes in lieu(en) of the Real Thing.

T. Bell, of course, was multitalented on a Renaissance-man level.  There wa=
s
NOTHING artistic Tony couldn't do, with seeming ease, once he turned his
hand to it: cartoons, watercolors, oils, sculptures, paper mach=E9s,
mechanical toys & models--you name it!  And who can ever forget T. &
Claire's croket parties at their Garner Street fossil-rock house?  Tony's
kettle of beans & fatback was an Austin Institution by itself.  And now I'm
told that Claire's house in Mason just burned to the ground.  As I write
this I'm unaware if T. Bell's artistic legacy perished in the flames along
with it.  Hopefully Claire had some of his stuff stored in the barn, or
maybe in a garage at one of her renthouses in town.  If not, I suppose it's
just more proof of dat ol' saying: Here Today and Gone Tomorrow.  I thought
about having these words chiseled on my tombstone, but decided instead to
use the slogan: "JAXON: He Never Knew What Hit Him."  You have to have a
Sense of Humor about life (and death);  otherwise, with all the shit that w=
e
have to face each & every day, we'll go off the Deep End.  Alas, Lieuen was
too high-strung (like an instrument too finely tuned for daily use) for tha=
t
to pull him through.  Told you that I was raised to be a preacher, didn't I=
?
Pass the Plate, somebody..

Speaking of food, think I'll take a break for a bowl of my famous chili tha=
t
I fix with petines or whatever HOT peppers I can rustle up.  That batch in
the frige is a specially good one: kills intestinal bugs and opens up the
ol' sinuses.  Mine drip constantly; hence the name of my character, God
"Nose."  Ace Reid, that Hill Country cartoonist who did the long-running
syndicated panel "Cowpokes" had the same problem.  Whenever given an award
at some banquet, he used to say: "Folks I don't deserve this award.  But I
got sinus trubble, and didn't deserve THAT either."  Wish I still had Joe
Brown's recipe for Frito Pie that he used to cook up when he & Gilbert--or
somebody--lived at that house on Waller Creek in back of the now-gone Kash
Karry (Checker Front?) store on 19th/MLK.  This place was where one of the
crowd (Plasky?) had built an elaborate maze for rats or hamsters to scrambl=
e
around on & do funny things.  Never had to worry about lines to the bathroo=
m
at parties with a creek in the backyard to pee in...

Anyway, when Joe and I got back to Austin we teamed up with the other guys
to put out several issues of The Austin Iconoclastic (shortened to THE) in
"magazine" format.  I have (or once had) copies of each of the 3 issues in
this enlarged format; the earlier ones had been little fold-up sheets.  I
did a regular "Austin Monuments to Bad Taste" illo for THE, but when we
switched to the mag I got to try my hand at strips like Gilbert.  These
things we usually sold on the streets or the coffeehouse scene, as was GN.
Putting these issues together was fun, with a lot of input from everybody i=
n
the creative stage.  Gilbert, since you & me are about the only ones left
from the team, you'll have to set me straight if I'm wrong on details.
Plus, with all my hectic moves in the last 40 years (some coast-to-coast) I
can't find my copies where I thought I'd put them.  Maybe I've still got
them salted away somewhere...mumble mumble

One of my strips was about a showdown on main street between Lyndon & Barry
at the time of the presidential election.  That's when I decided not to
become a "political" cartoonist, because of the short shelf-life of these
things.  Hot topic today but tomorrow who cares?  YAWN...  Another (I think
in the Virgin Mary cuddling baby Santa Claus issue) was a funny strip about
Austin's highrise mentality, where Gilbert and/or Joe suggested I ought to
have houses of Rednecks stacked on top of each other, skyscraper fashion,
all tuned in to the same teevee soap opera--Gunsmoke I believe it was.
These things were a hoot but cold, hard economic reality kept us from doing
more.  We were all in transition at the time anyway, people coming & going.

The neighborhood over around 18th & Brazos was a lively one at the tailend
of the Ranger period.  We assembled God Nose in one of these houses, either
the one on the SE corner or the place nextdoor to it, just south.  I've
still got a photo of Julie Sheppperd (sp?) standing in the stairwell of thi=
s
next-to-the-corner house, with a Phillip Trussell mural on the wall behind
her.  We'd thrown a big party, mostly Rangeroos & Ghettoites, asking the
crowd to paint/draw pictures on the walls.  Who took this picture, you
Simmons?  Too bad I don't have a scanner set-up, so I could send such
pictures & artwerk to you guys.  Where is Julie these days?  Anybody heard
from her lately?

This upstairs apt. was rat-infested, and there were raccoons residing in th=
e
attic as well.  Every once in awhile we'd see their faces, smiling down at
us from the defunct dumb-waiter.  At night we had to listen to their
scuttling about, fighting & fucking and doing what rats & raccoons do.  We
called them "scrabblers."  Steve Porterfield and I used to wonder if maybe
one of the two elderly spinsters who owned the building had  had an
illegitimate, horribly deformed child in their youth & consigned it to the
attic--then "forgotten" to take it with them when they moved to San Antonio=
.
Yeah, it was still up there, but we were too cowardly to go see..

My girlfriend from Kingsville had followed me to Austin.  Our love-making
sessions were always accompanied by the sounds of rats gnawing at the
ceiling or inside walls next to the bed, trying to get in.  Our passion
seemed to excite the bastards and make them more active.  Not even Bobby
Blue Bland or Solomon Burke played LOUD on the stereo could drown out their
racket, and one does have to sleep sometime.  (I've got a great story about
Tommie Hall, Solomon Burke, and Mick Jagger/TRS but will have to save it fo=
r
another time.)  SCUTTLE, SCUTTLE, GNAW, GNAW, SQUEEK, SQUEEK!!!  Gets on
your zonked-out nerves after a while...

Rats give me the creeps.  Don't want yall to think that my purpose here is
to direct slurs at the furry critter species.  I think rats have the same
"right to life" as the rest of us--long as they're not in my living space.
They'll probably be around long after we, in our folly, have wiped ourselve=
s
off the planet.  Them and cockroaches.  Right, Roger?  No, this is just to
warn you to never, EVER, place yourself in a mortal-combat situation with
rats without giving them an escape route.  This I foolishly did one night a=
t
the Brazos St house.  Seeing a big, hairy rat in the tile-covered bathroom,
I quietly stepped inside & closed the door behind me.  The rat tried to hid=
e
behind the toliet, but I kept poking at it with the wooden handle of a
metal, squeegy-topped mop.  You dirty bastard, you after-midnite raider of
our cereal boxes, I'm GONNA GIT YO ASS!  Finally the rat got tired of my
sadistic jabs.  It sprang at me, teeth bared, and only a lucky swing of my
mop saved me from being "gnawed by rats" & scarred for life.  Caught him
right behind the neck in mid-air & killed him dead.  The bloody mop-up job
was awful, as Steve & Julie can verify, but this one conquest didn't make a
dent in the scrabbler population.

I caught the plague while living in this house--the Honest-to-God Bubonic
Plague, like they have mostly in New Mexico, stateside.  Rats have fleas,
and fleas carry the stuff.  Our sweet kitty-kat had fleas too.  Either the
leaky roof, with water dripping down on us thru ratshit, or plain ol' flea
bites, got me infected.  It was a "light" case or I wouldn't be here today:
fever, weakness, swelling of the lymph glands hard as rocks.  Once the
hospital (there was only one then for welfare cases) made the diagnosis,
City/County Health Dept. kicked everybody out, shut the house down, and
nailed up the windows & doors.  The poor sisters who owned the place
couldn't afford to fix it up & felt terrible about their property being suc=
h
a health hazard for innocent UT "students."  State of Texas was buying up
all the land & houses between 15th & 19th anyway at the time, so this was
just another one slated for demolition.  I drove by there the other day &
could hardly recognize the area: all Big Government Buildings now, thanks t=
o
our tax dollars, Bob Bullock, et al.  His new "Texas History Museum" is jus=
t
down the street at Congress & MLK.  Ironically, the State Comptroller's hug=
e
building is a stone's throw from the site of our old revels...

About this time, once I'd recovered from the Plague, I packed up my fancy
1960 MG sportscar (white paint, black leather upholstry, wire wheels & hot
engine--man, what fun we had in that car, roaring around the Hills of
Austin!) and headed West, summer of '66.  Thus I missed almost a decade of
great stuff here in Austin: didn't see many Rags or Gilbert's strips that
ran in them as the Freak Brothers were emerging prior to his first Feds n
Heads comix book; didn't see the evolvement of UG City Hall into Oat
Willie's; didn't witness the rise & fall of the Vulcan, or go to the grand
opening of the Armadillo World HQ, etc.  You other Listers did, but not ol'
jaxon.  Oh sure, I checked out the scene a couple times a year on visits
home, crashing on different friends' couches at 33rd St, etc, but didn't
live it on a daily basis like you did.  Between Gilbert & Tony's poster
work, that of Jim Franklin & a host of other young talented artists, the
graphic arts/comix scene was ALIVE AND WELL--bustling in fact--even if they
could only afford to eat Frito Pies & Pinto Beans.

My strip for Eddie's Cookbook tries to capture the flavor of this creative
evolution as I've heard the story told from insiders who ought to know.  In
terms of what life was like for artists living-on-the-edge at the Vulcan or
the Dillo, I suppose we won't know till somebody like Franklin or Priest
decides to do a comic strip about it.  Excuse me for askin', but what's
taking you guys so long?  Couldn't be the low/no pay involved could it?
Couldn't have anything to do with the fact that we live in a city (a fuckin=
'
CULTURE even!) that makes a lot of noise about "supporting the arts," yet
never gives artists like us a thin dime??  No, I'm sure it's just because
you Ol' Hippies are just too damn lazy to quit sucking on that water pipe &
get out of your hammick--THAT must be the reason.  All I can say to you
musicians, who might think Austin is a hard place to make a living, is: try
being an artist here for awhile!

Somebody tell ol' Willie Nelson that people besides farmers need help to
survive in America--us downtrodden artistes who use pens & brushes instead
of guitars & plows to keep this country "fed."  And while you're at it,
please tell Don Henley that he's wasting his money by supporting lying
politicians that climb in bed with developers soon as they're elected.  It'=
s
none of my business how Don wants to spend his megabucks.  After all, he
(not me) earned it by pounding his drums and writing/singing a bunch of
terrific songs.  But, Don, I can GARR-ROON-TEE that your cash will be put t=
o
better use if given to JFKLN or Priest for a comic book about the
artistic/music scene in Austintacious.  NUFF SAID...

Next & final rant--How the Chron's 20-year track record measures up to our
Grand Tradition, in a Nutshell, sorta...