This is where Redneck Village once stood—Redneck Village, I named it, a collection of a half-dozen or so single-wide trailers fanned out along a circular driveway, on McCall Lane just off 183 South.
I lived here 1978, 1979, just after I moved to Austin. It wasn’t much, but I didn’t want much at the time! I was interested in having adventures, and Redneck Village was an adventure. I kind of liked it.
Austin Speed-o-Rama was down the road, and I got to enjoy going to the stock car races on Friday evenings before heading downtown to do young people things.
Bergstrom Air force Base was just across the road and those RF-4Cs were noisy. Woke me up a lot of mornings. One time I called the base and told them to turn down the noise! But they didn’t….
The landlord’s daughter kept a pack of angry little black dogs that yap-yap-yapped night and day. They were part Yorkie, maybe, but they looked like atomic mutants, so I called then the Atomic Mutant Dogs.
The landlord himself was an old drunk redneck with what appeared to be a serious case of psoriasis. He once asked me how old I thought he was. Like, he looked freaking 90! He looked like he was dead! I said, “Oh, fifty-five or so.” He laughed and laughed—said he was 57.
I lived here 1978, 1979, just after I moved to Austin. It wasn’t much, but I didn’t want much at the time! I was interested in having adventures, and Redneck Village was an adventure. I kind of liked it.
Austin Speed-o-Rama was down the road, and I got to enjoy going to the stock car races on Friday evenings before heading downtown to do young people things.
Bergstrom Air force Base was just across the road and those RF-4Cs were noisy. Woke me up a lot of mornings. One time I called the base and told them to turn down the noise! But they didn’t….
The landlord’s daughter kept a pack of angry little black dogs that yap-yap-yapped night and day. They were part Yorkie, maybe, but they looked like atomic mutants, so I called then the Atomic Mutant Dogs.
The landlord himself was an old drunk redneck with what appeared to be a serious case of psoriasis. He once asked me how old I thought he was. Like, he looked freaking 90! He looked like he was dead! I said, “Oh, fifty-five or so.” He laughed and laughed—said he was 57.
If you go straight through those trees in the photo—straight into the past, as well—you could see the screen for the Rebel Drive-In, the famous porno outdoor theater. I couldn’t see the screen myself—there was a trailer in the way—but if I went outside and walked around the other trailer, I could see giant phalli marching across the horizon. The landlord’s grandson, Little Kevin, was in middle school, and he set up folding chairs on the roof of one of the trailers and charged his classmates to climb up there and watch porn through binoculars….
The AC didn’t work very well and it was hot and those jets were noisy and the landlord thought I was a radical troublemaker and the Atomic Mutant Dogs were yapping nonstop and those kids on the roof were creepy and when I moved out I didn’t get my damage deposit back and it’s all gone now!
The AC didn’t work very well and it was hot and those jets were noisy and the landlord thought I was a radical troublemaker and the Atomic Mutant Dogs were yapping nonstop and those kids on the roof were creepy and when I moved out I didn’t get my damage deposit back and it’s all gone now!
 | You might be interested in my novel of Austin, That Demon Life....a novel of lust and laziness...full of drinking and sexing and various bad behaviors.... “That Demon Life has got Austin in its sway, or at least this novel's motley crew of characters. A horny judge, a defense attorney with an attitude, an entourage of petty criminals, a dating service maven, a self made internet porn star and a boy toy or two—they're all slouching toward Sixth Street and beyond. This is a fast-paced, hold-on-to-your-bar stool satire, a hilarious, stumbling romp through law and disorder, urban ennui and its after-hour antidotes, Texas-sized lust and doom.” —Alison Moore, author of The Middle of Elsewhere and Synonym for Love, |
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