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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SADDLEMAKER
West Bros. Saddlery, about six miles west of Center in the East Texas Piney Woods, is a throwback to the days when saddlemakers did all their work by hand. Pattern pieces hang on the walls. A tree stump with holes carved into it holds tools for cutting leather. The smells of leather and saddle soap permeate the plain, utilitarian space. The small custom saddlery, in business since 1978, has had its share of fame recently. Last fall West Bros. won a “best of show” award at the annual Boot and Saddlemaker Round-Up in Brownwood. That caught the attention of the Texas Young Republican Federation, which in September commissioned a custom saddle as an inaugural present for George W. Bush. While it takes about six days to make a relatively plain saddle, the Bush saddle took nearly three hundred hours—and cost $12,000. Says Troy West: “We’re tickled to get to do it for a president.” Troy walked me through the painstaking process of making a saddle by hand. Brother Danny builds each saddle’s “tree,” as the underlying framework is called, by carving the shape out of a pine block. Then Troy cuts, stitches, and assembles the saddle’s leather pieces, tools it with intricate designs, and finishes it with silver that he engraves himself. “Most saddlemakers buy the trees and the silver,” Troy explains. “We do it so it’s all custom.” West Bros. Saddlery, 5536 Texas Highway 7 West, Center (936-598-2627; westbrossaddlery.com). K.J.
MOVIE THEATER
The things I do for this magazine—like sitting through the latest Sylvester Stallone machismo movie. But even the noisy and noisome Driven was dramatically improved by being screened in the charming little ODEON THEATRE, a fixture on MASON’S wonderful town square. The marquee’s curvy art deco lines, outlined in deep pink neon, and the claustrophobic ticket booth haven’t changed since 1928, when the theater was built. The world premiere of the Disney classic Old Yeller, based on the great dog story by Mason homeboy Fred Gipson, made the Odeon famous in 1957, and today a community volunteer group is restoring it bit by bit; there are water stains on the ceiling and plaster is missing from the walls, but the seats, screen, and sound system are all nice and new. Before the show, forty or so folks—about a fifth of the seating capacity—enjoyed affordable snacks from the tiny concession stand; some candies are only 75 cents, and the most expensive item is the $2 “double dog,” a bi-wienie treat. Odeon Theatre, 122 Moody, Mason (915-347-9010); Fridays at 7:30 p.m., Saturday through Monday at 7; $4. A.D.
BARBERSHOP
“You’ve got hair like Jason Robards,” Louis Ayala tells me shortly after I settle into his chair. Stepping into Ayala’s Fort Worth barbershop, you get the feeling it hasn’t changed since he first started cutting hair more than half a century ago. Whole families sit in the church pews against the wall, reading magazines or playing while they wait. A huge poster of Ayala’s nephew Paulie, the world champion boxer, adorns the wall along with photos of friends, family, and regulars. An older woman sitting inside the front door tends to a portable oven filled with homemade tamales. The 72-year-old Ayala works alongside Mary Moore and Floyd Rivera, his business partner, who started out as the shoeshine boy before Ayala sent him to barber school in 1955. As Ayala works on my hair, we exchange idle chitchat punctuated with laughs and yessirs; when he’s finished, he removes the chair cloth, shakes it out, and produces a mirror so I can inspect my $8 haircut. Then he pulls out a photo album with snapshots of himself with Robards, when he cut the actor’s hair during the filming of 1987’s Breaking Home Ties in Dallas. My cut is even better than his. Yessir. Ayala’s Barber Shop, 1537 North Main, Fort Worth (817-626-1672). Joe Nick Patoski
MINATURE-GOLF COURSE
Miniature golf may be the realm of windmills, concrete dinosaurs, and other gimmicks, but at Cool Crest, such accoutrements would just get in the way. It was all about the game for Harold Metzger, a trucker who built Texas’ oldest and best mini-golf course in 1937 after he’d played a round at the Wee Saint Andrews in Dallas (now long gone) at the height of the mini-golf craze. The two-course, 36-hole layout emphasizes skill. Metzger chose the hillside location—a chip shot from Interstate 10—to catch the summer breezes blowing in from the southeast. Before air conditioning, there wasn’t a cooler place in San Antonio this side of the neighborhood icehouse. Today it’s the retro look that draws the crowds. The immaculate grounds—a tropical oasis with ponds, fountains, babbling brooks, banana and papaya trees, palms, and exotic flowers—maintained by Metzger’s wife, Ria, live up to the course’s motto: “Always Cool and Shady.” Cool Crest Miniature Golf Course, 1400 Fredericksburg Road, at Louise (exit 567B off Interstate 10), 210-732-0222; $4 per round. J.N.P.
CAESAR SALAD
Today you can waltz into any restaurant, cafe, or diner in the state and order a so-called Caesar salad. But those of us who can remember back a dozen or more years ago know that a real Caesar salad is never prepared in advance and is never loaded down with grilled chicken, shrimp, pumpkin seeds, tortilla strips, carrot curls, polenta croutons, or other extraneous nonsense. To have a pure and properly theatrical Caesar salad, the way it might have been prepared at Caesar’s Palace in Tijuana, Mexico, where the celebrated dish was invented in 1924, you must visit the Old Warsaw in Dallas. Here such things are done right and have been since the restaurant opened in 1948. The ceremony begins when a tuxedo-clad waiter arrives at your table with a rolling cart bearing a wooden salad bowl, chilled romaine, small silver dishes filled with Parmesan cheese, a lemon half, an egg, croutons, garlic, and anchovies, plus Worcestershire sauce and black pepper. He mashes the anchovies and garlic and, with great panache, cracks the egg and squeezes the lemon into the salad bowl. Then, amid much clacking of wooden spoons, he performs various feats of prestidigitation with the lettuce and remaining ingredients and ceremoniously places in front of you and your companion chilled white plates of honest-to-god Caesar salad. For a mere $12 for two, you have witnessed one of our culture’s vanishing rituals—and you get to eat the results. Old Warsaw, 2610 Maple Avenue, Dallas (214-528-0032; theoldwarsaw.com). P.S.
FRIED CHICKEN
In 1959 my family (mother, father, two brothers, and I) made a special trip from Austin to San Antonio to visit the Alamo and see Ben-Hur, an overwrought biblical blockbuster that was the Titanic of its day. We stayed at the historic Menger Hotel (big attraction for us kids: an irascible talking parrot in the lobby), and we ate lunch at my parents’ favorite restaurant, Earl Abel’s. Its streamlined forties look made us feel ultrasophisticated, and its all-American menu was like cafeteria fare, only better. For dinner, we all ordered the restaurant’s famous fried chicken: tender, juicy meat with a crunchy batter coating and “crackling gravy” that included crisp, salty scrapings from the bottom of the pan. When I recently made a sentimental journey to try the chicken again, it had not changed one iota, and although at $5.75 to $7 a plate it cost more than it did 42 years ago, it was still an old-fashioned bargain. Earl Abel’s, 4210 Broadway, San Antonio (210-822-3358). P. S.
GENERAL STORE
With an art deco stucco facade that sports the name “Weinzapfel” in raised letters, the Windthorst General Store stands out in this small dairy community a few miles east of Archer City. Native son Joe Zotz, 57, who owns the store with his partner and son, Russell, told me that the name on the facade refers to the family that established the original store in 1892 on another site in town and built the current structure in 1921. Zotz bought the store more than eight years ago after it had become run-down. He cleaned it up but left the original pressed-tin ceiling, pine floor, wooden counter, old scales, and hand-operated elevator for lowering heavy merchandise into a storage cellar. “Mr. Weinzapfel told me he used to buy two hundred sacks of flour at a time,” Zotz explained.While the store sells everything from Levi’s jeans and Wolverine boots to food, farm implements, hardware, washboards, and vet supplies like Udder Butter, Zotz has had to make a few concessions to modern times. Instead of cutting red-rind cheese by hand, for instance, he stocks packaged cheese because it keeps longer. It seems like a small thing, though, in a store that’s one of the last of its kind. Windthorst General Store, intersection of U.S. 281 and FM 174, Windthorst (940-423-6205). K. J.
BURGER STAND WITH CARHOPS
Veteran carhops who call you “hon” while taking your order, heavenly hamburgers (a thin meat patty on a lightly grilled bun with tomatoes, onions, pickles, shredded lettuce, and mustard, $2.35), and sublime root beer made on the premises and served up in frosted mugs (85 cents) make you feel like a king at the Prince of Hamburgers, a twenties-era establishment on a commercial strip two blocks west of the Dallas North Tollway. Shaded by its red-and-white-striped canvas awning, you can dine in the comfort of your car on everything from chili to fried pies. Turn on your lights for service. Prince of Hamburgers, 5200 Lemmon Avenue, Dallas (214-526-9081). J. N. P.
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