Red Naugahyde Booths

In the old days, and I mean old days, I could always depend on the Nighthawk when I wanted coffee and a piece of pie at midnight.

There were at least two locations in a much smaller Austin, including one by the University that never closed. The tall red naugahyde booths were brightly lit islands of security, the food “American,” with righteous breakfasts, burgers, and the like, and the waitresses would top off your coffee every 30 seconds—just my kind of place, in other words.

My longtime friend and associate Bob M., his wife, Bob B., and I made up a frequent Sunday morning foursome in the days when I was pretending to be a junior college instructor in Wharton, Texas, teaching remedial English (!), English Comp, and basic German to poor doomed goat-ropers and surfers in exchange for a draft deferment to keep me out of Vietnam. On weekends I would flee the flat, repressive environs of Wharton—where the sheriff parked outside my home and tried to peer through oiled rice paper windows with binoculars—for more amenable surroundings in incense-scented hippie ghettos of old Austin neighborhoods.

Sunday mornings started with smoking excellent dope at Bob M.’s house. Bob B. would come over, and then all four of us would head off for the Nighthawk or a similar venue to load up on waffles and coffee until the hot black liquid came running out our ears. After this, it was back to Bob M.’s place for yet another joint and our much-anticipated Sunday jam session.

I’m talking real jazz flute, standup bass, and my guitar, sometimes electrified. We didn’t play “tunes,” you understand, but freely improvised and played for hours. Each song would somehow magically end when all three players landed on the exact same note without expecting it, at which point we’d collapse in laughter and have another toke. The music was occasionally that good, and sometimes strangers would wander in off the street to sit and listen. (In the age of YouTube, we might have ruled the world.) I couldn’t imagine a better way to spend a Sunday afternoon and probably still can’t.

Flash forward now to earlier this month, when I was back in Austin visiting my dying sister (how glibly the phrase falls now, how great the pain behind the dam):

I needed a place to eat and didn’t feel like looking up old haunts, assuming they even still existed. But the southside Threadgill’s Restaurant, occupying the same hallowed ground once home to Armadillo World Headquarters, was 200 yards from my hotel, so off I went. After requesting seating in the bar—much quieter than the larger rooms—I found myself quite pleasantly situated in a space decorated with old commercial signs from defunct Austin landmarks. Not little placards, folks, but great huge things, hanging from a nice tall ceiling. For the most part, these were known to me and rang the big bell in my ancient heart where all the good things are: “Hey, I remember that place!”

And then something nudged me, a flicker of light from the corner of my eye, perhaps. Slowly I turned to look over my left shoulder, and behold: a NIGHTHAWK SIGN eight feet above my head, with the neon flying nighthawk flashing on and off! Well, that settles that, I realized, although it took me half a cheeseburger to avert my gaze. I hadn’t asked the question, but I got my answer, anyway.

O Nighthawk, o sister on my mind…

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