First news of the March Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers’ convention sounded preposterous. The report reached Mertzon that the hollow horn leaders wanted the Sheep and Goat Raisers Association to meet in Austin to merge into one organization. Sounded as likely as the Swiss Alps Ski Lift Association merging with the Fraternal Order of French Beachcombers to cover working condition from sea level to above the timberline.
My place was hard to find as up until this year the Sheep and Goat Herders based membership dues on the sale of wool. I had two clips stored in the wool house. Not much could be coming in from any producer as the biggest user of domestic wool for the past two seasons was what’s known as "the avian demand" to line the nests of the Chihuahua Raven and the Eastern Phoebe.
The subscription base of the Cattleman’s was also way down from the weather failure and market spirals severe enough to registered five on the Richter scale. After talking to the lady running the Sheep and Goat Herders, I realized the associations weren’t going to merge. All that was going to happen was the cattlemen invited the sheepmen to come to their meetings at the Austin convention. The Sheep and Goat Herders leaders accepted and planned their quarterly meeting at the same time.
Next, I wrote the hollow horn president a serious postcard, testing his intentions by asking whether, if I attended both meetings, should I pledge future government payment on wool to support lamb and beef? A winter-fat mole dead asleep 40 feet under ground could have read through his reply.
"Come on, ol' pal," he wrote, "bring your wool money and join the fun." (Under light, the pen pressure showed the word "money" to cut deeper into the paper of his postcard. Understand please, Mr. President is also a reknowned jugkeeper and potent financier of enough power and might to make the bars of the tellers’ cages of the most powerful banks in Angelo rattle from his mere presence in the lobby.)
The handbook proclaimed the meeting to be the 124th convention of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers. Hanging heavy over the cattle herders and the woolie operators was the dreadnought of mad cow and hoof and mouth disease. The gloom seeped into the big trade show in the convention hall. The biggest action on the floor centered on rocking chairs and magic fingers massage beds.
I sure ran out of influence fast trying to arrange for four tickets to take a friend and one of my sons and his wife to the dance at The Broken Spoke honky tonk. The benefit dance for the Cattleman’s Museum sold out three weeks before the convention. Twice, I had three tickets promised and failed to receive them. For 50 bucks a head, the dance included dinner and cocktails. On regular nights at The Broken Spoke, the cover costs $4 a person for an ink stamp on your thumb guaranteed to last through church the next day. And the cocktails and dinner are six-bit sacks of Fritos and two dollar a bottle Texas beer.
In the final hour before the party, I was down to the one ticket from the press kit and short two guests. (My son and daughter-in-law.) Desperate, I called the president. Told him he was going to have to issue an end of the term, last-minute executive order to admit me to the dance. I glossed up the deal by telling him I didn’t need to borrow a coat or a tie. He came through with a written order at the door.
The best western band in Austin started out playing just like they do on public nights. However, the band leader became so self-conscious fiddling in front of real cowboys instead of the usual "Coca Cola cowboys" that he wasted a lot of time testing his sound system. He’d say "chish-chish-check." After about four intermissions and more tests, dancers picked up his beat and began doing a two-step to the "chish-chish-check."
The owner wasted more time making a spiel about the cowboy troubadour, Ernest Tubbs, telling him to keep The Broken Spoke western. What Mr. Tubbs should have told him was to put up a piece of new sheetrock every 30 or 40 years. The "no-smoking" sign was the only airtight space in the floor or ceiling. Once I thought I saw a genie rise from a beer bottle, the blue smoke swirled so thick from the holes in the roof sucking air. However, seeing mysterious things in Austin at midnight isn’t unusual. Twice last winter, David Crockett was spotted outside Schultz Beer Garden at closing time. No doubt a reaction to the debate over whether Crockett died fighting at the Alamo or had a sun stroke plowing a widow woman’s garden on a cost share basis in East Texas.
The two organizations are on friendly terms. We have joint interests. One hundred twenty-four years is a long line of conventions. The Broken Spoke looked the worse for wear. But it sure is a genuine Texas honky tonk…
April 12, 2001