The Great Psychedelic Armadillo Picnic: A "Walk" in Austin

The Barenaked Essentials

Like most other busy cities these days, Austin is not very effectively traversed by foot. Indeed, if you're crazy enough to try, you might very well find yourself getting T-boned by a shuttle bus. There are places you can walk, jog, loiter, or hop around angrily in a circle, and we will get to these momentarily. But you must understand that "a walk in Austin" is primarily a spiritual sort of thing. You're going to need a four-wheeled penis of some kind. If you want to fit in perfectly, I'd recommend a pickup truck with a "God Bless John Wayne" bumper sticker.

As long as we're on the subject, what, exactly is Austin? If you were to round up a flock of random Austinites from around the city and present them with that question, you would get such answers as "home of the University of Texas"; "the live music capital of the world"; "birthplace of Dell Computers." Oddly enough, it is unlikely that any of those Austinites would say that Austin is the capital of Texas, or that Austin used to be a settlement named Waterloo, or that a man with the unlikely name of Mirabeau B. Lamar led the fight to make Austin the Capital of the Republic of Texas over Waco and Houston. See, we Austinites don't know enough about the background of our fair city, but you, dear visitor, will not be so impaired. Read on for the barenaked essentials of Austin, intended to give you a bit of background on the town O. Henry nicknamed "The Violet Crown."

Once upon a time, when relations between cowboys and Indians were only slightly better than the level of violence in a modern American city, a man drank an entire bottle of mescal, ate the worm at the bottom, and got so high he needed a stepladder to scratch his ass. The man was named Mirabeau B. Lamar. The year was 1836. It was a good year for mescal. It was also a good year for Austin, in spite of the fact that it wasn't there yet.

Texas had just won her independence from Mexico. Eighty-four years later the future first female governor of Texas, "Ma" Ferguson, would say, "If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it's good enough for Texas!"

The new nation was christened the Republic of Texas, and with open arms she welcomed settlers to her ample bosom. In an area roughly located at the nipple of this bosom, a camp town named Waterloo grew. Among Waterloo's new citizens was former Georgian Mirabeau B. Lamar. Despite being from Georgia, Lamar was a true renaissance man who excelled at horseback riding and fencing, wrote poetry, painted in oils, read voraciously, and collected matchbooks from many restaurants. He became a senator for Georgia by the time he was thirty-one, and his career in Georgia politics looked promising until his wife, Tabitha, stricken with tuberculosis, was bugled to Jesus in 1830. Mirabeau was devastated by her death, and like any poet worth his iambic pentameter, he used his grief to write several of his best-known poems (among them An Evening on the Banks of the Chattahoochie and Thou Idol of My Soul). In the meantime his political career stagnated. Lamar's friend James Fannin had a home in the new Republic of Texas, and he invited Lamar to visit in hopes the trip would lift his pal out of despair.

Like a lot of people who visit Texas, Mirabeau fell in love with the state and decided to stay. He was in Georgia preparing for his move to Texas when he heard about the massacres at the Alamo, during which Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie were killed, and at Goliad, where his friend Fannin and 341 other Texas freedom fighters were taken prisoner and ordered executed by General Santa Anna.

The news spurred Lamar to immediately cut buns back to Texas to join the revolution as a private. He was soon commissioned a colonel on the field of San Jacinto just before the famous battle. The gentleman poet distinguished himself as a soldier on the battlefield by his bravery and quick actions. Texas came away from the battle victorious, and so did Lamar. With his political career back on track, he was made Secretary of War in the cabinet of ad interim President David G. Burnet. In the fall of 1836, in the Republic's first presidential election, Lamar became the vice-president of Texas. Sam Houston, a major general who led Lamar and other soldiers to victory at the Battle of San Jacinto, was elected president.

Sam Houston was one of the great characters in Austin's history. As an adolescent he ran away from home to live among the Cherokees, who adopted him and gave him the Indian name Colonneh, or "Raven." Young Sam viewed the chief of the band, Oolooteka, as his Indian father, and the tribe much as a surrogate family. He found peace living la vida Indian and he enjoyed it for several years before he decided it was time to hang up his tomahawk and strike out on his own.