History Lesson 
Old-Fashioned Texas
Our state may be changing at warp speed, but pockets of the past are everywhere—if you just look around. We’ve waltzed at dance halls and skated at roller rinks, sipped homemade root beer and even had our hair cut in search of the places and pleasures on the following pages. So slow down, turn off your cell phone, and come along on a trip to days gone by.
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ROLLER RINK
When I told my mother that I was going to visit a roller rink in SAN BENITO that was built in 1947, she immediately declared it to be the same one she had gone to when she was a little girl. The adobe-brick-and-wood building, which was the venue for a performance by a young Johnny Cash in 1958, still has the original wood floor (give or take a few boards). The new stuff? Flashing disco lights instead of flags hanging from the ceiling and, since 1985, air conditioning. Cynthia and David Cook bought the rink three years ago from Cynthia’s parents, who had taken over from the original owner back in 1971. The Cooks have kept things simple. Admission is $4.50, which includes quad-skate rentals (kids can bring in their own quad or in-line skates). A bag of popcorn or a one-ounce cup of frozen pickle juice—a new item—is 25 cents. Of course, the action is on the rink, where kids still do the hokey pokey and the chicken dance. David has prerecorded most of the pop music, but you can request a tune at no charge, and for 50 cents you can dedicate a song to that special someone. Skate Center of San Benito, 944 E. Stenger, San Benito (956-399-6500). Patricia Busa McConnico
BAR
There are no last names at the DEEP EDDY CABARET, a friendly tavern just south of Austin’s well-heeled Tarrytown neighborhood. Most nights the line between friends and strangers, customers and employees starts to blur. Becky, Inger, Ralphie, Jack. Some customers have been coming in for close to thirty years and can justify the “Cabaret” in the Eddy’s name by recalling the two-week topless experiment in the seventies that ended when the regulars complained that their old ladies were going to make them stop swinging by. Others don’t know if the bar opened in ‘51 or ‘91 (the former) or who the pretty lady is in the photograph behind the bar (the Eddy’s late matriarch, Mickey) or why the place banned cell phones for so long (because of Andy’s pacemaker). On a recent evening the Monday bartender played dominoes with a couple of regulars while the Sunday bartender kept score and W. C. Fields fell down on TV. “We give some people names to show how they’ve chosen to waste their lives away from the Eddy,” said Yuri. “UT Jerry, Motorola Bob ” “That’s ‘ex-Motorola Bob!’” said Bob as he slammed down a double five. “Gimme a dime, Susan.” The more things change, the more the Eddy stays the same. Deep Eddy Cabaret, 2315 Lake Austin Boulevard, Austin (512-472-0961). John Spong
CATFISH PARLOR
Build a friendly, family-run restaurant, put down-home Southern-fried catfish on the menu, and you’ll have customers hooked for generations. That’s certainly true of CATFISH HILL, a little bare-bones place off a country road in GARFIELD, just east of Austin. It was opened in the late sixties by Clarence Washington, a sharecropper’s son who was born in Bastrop in 1913. When Washington died, in 1987, his son Alvin took over. Today Alvin, his wife, Barbara, and their daughter Vanessa still serve just-caught catfish (from one of the little ponds on the premises) every weekend, fried whole (but headless) in a delicate cornmeal crust, with standard sides like coleslaw and hush puppies ($8.50). “Some people have been coming here for thirty years,” says Alvin. “And they come from all over.” Handwritten entries in a notebook on the counter attest to that. Austin’s notable, quotable J. J. “Jake” Pickle is a longtime fan. In a letter congratulating the elder Washington on his seventieth birthday, the then-congressman wrote, “May the Lord keep and bless you both and may the catfish farm go on forever.” Amen to that. Catfish Hill, 5100 Wolf Lane, Garfield (512-247-2528). Open Friday and Saturday nights from 6 to 10. Eileen Schwartz
DANCE HALL
Texas has no shortage of venerable dance halls with that classic honky-tonk look and good live music. The special appeal of PORT ARTHUR’S RODAIR CLUB is authentic Cajun music in a genuinely funky, no-frills setting—the kind big-city folks find so endearingly quaint. A waitress named Dolores serves you a beer with a smile, while the other customers make it clear that you’re among friends. The Rodair takes pride in its Texas Cajun culture, handed down by local descendants of French Canadians who originally settled in Louisiana. Sadly, the Cajun culture in Texas has begun to fade. “When I tell people I’m Cajun, they say, ‘I thought that was a spice,’” says Kara McCaw, a 24-year-old bartender at the Rodair whose grandparents Joe and Dioris Thibodeaux began holding Cajun dances at the little club on a rural highway in 1965 (it was originally built as a rock and roll venue in 1957). Live bands play that distinctive, spirited Cajun sound (typically accented by an accordion and a fiddle) on Saturday nights. Couples waltz and two-step on the beautiful oak floor, and everyone dances with the little kids. The Rodair Club, from U.S. 287 near the Jefferson County Airport in Port Arthur, take FM 365 southwest for about six miles (409-736-1721); $4 cover charge. E.S.
HARDWARE STORE
Randy Carter leads the way through the CARTER-IVY HARDWARE COMPANY, the store his great-grandfather, T. S. Carter, founded in WEATHERFORD in 1902. A fourth-generation Carter, he began working in the store forty years ago, when he was five. “My granddaddy had me down here marking prices on hoe handles with a grease pencil,” he recalls. The two-story brick building, with its high wood-slat ceiling, pine floors, and jammed shelves, is a true hardware store. Old Winchester shell boxes line the long shelves and hold assorted clamps. Revolving wooden storage bins, also original fixtures, hold screws, bolts, nuts, and washers. Name an obscure part—for a windmill, water well, treadle sewing machine—and chances are Carter can go right to it. In addition to hardware, he stocks crockery dishes, weather vanes, butter churns, chicken feeders, oil lamps, and iron cookware to round out the product line. And although he sells popular modern tools, like Makita power drills, he also still offers “people-powered tools” like reel lawn mowers. But you won’t see a computer. The store keeps track of its sales the old-fashioned way. Money goes into a 1910 cash register. Receipts are handwritten. Charges are recorded by hand on ledger cards. Says Carter: “We’ve had ranchers whose families have had accounts here for almost one hundred years.” Carter-Ivy Hardware Company, 120 N. Main, Weatherford (817-594-2216). K. J.
HOMEMADE ROOT BEER
The best deal in Texas for a dollar is a mug of freshly made root beer at SCHILO’S in SAN ANTONIO. Sweeter than a stolen kiss, this dark amber brew comes to your table in a frosted mug with an inch of foam on top. The first sip puts you in mind of Norman Rockwell, Little League teams, and oompah bands in the park on Sunday afternoons. Should you happen to visit Schilo’s on a Friday or Saturday night and work up an appetite listening to the lederhosen-clad accordionist sing “Ghost Riders in the Sky” in German, supplement your root beer with one of the deli’s sausage plates and a cup of its nonpareil split-pea soup, which it has been serving since it opened in 1917. Schilo’s, 424 E. Commerce, San Antonio (210-223-6692). Patricia Sharpe
FARMERS’ MARKET
The season’s colorful harvest is piled high on simple wooden tables inside this open-air market. When I visited in June, I couldn’t resist the fat, juicy blackberries just brought in that morning, baskets of ripe red tomatoes, and Parker County’s famous peaches (the annual peach festival in July draws thousands), not to mention the locally grown watermelons, which were featured at the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. In WEATHERFORD, located about thirty miles west of Fort Worth, buying and selling the bounty from nearby fields and orchards has been a central part of life for decades. At first farmers brought their wares in horse-drawn wagons to the courthouse square. Then, in 1940, the federal Works Progress Administration built the town’s simple but striking Public Market building, with its arched doorways and stucco facade. Nowadays the Public Market is operated by Dunn Produce and buys mostly from wholesalers. That arrangement drove the local farmers to raise about $45,000 in 1988 to build a separate farmers’ market—almost exclusively for produce grown in Parker County—on the other side of the parking lot. About twenty farmers regularly sell at the market, which is open daily and, with prices like $5 for three big, perfectly ripe cantaloupes, is a buyer’s market too. Weatherford Farmers Market, 217 Fort Worth (U.S. 180), Weatherford (817-594-1273). K.J.
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