I'm an Old Timer......

You know you may have been living in Austin a little too long if:*

When you hear GM, you think of the old greasy spoon/steakhouse chain, not the auto manufacturer.

You think the bats under the Congress Avenue Bridge are swell, but you miss the downtown cricket infestations of the late '70s.

You try to remember to call it Cesar Chavez, but you just can't stop calling it First Street.

You were here in Austin when beer joints outnumbered nail salons.

You know at least two dozen people who can tell you what they were doing when Charles Whitman started shooting.

It may be Academy to everybody else, but to you it's still Academy Surplus.

You were here when the hippies stopped picking on developer Gary Bradley so they could pick on developer Jim Bob Moffett.

You still miss the chicken-fried steak at Truck City on Ben White Boulevard.

Whenever some yuppie honks in traffic, you mutter, "Must have just moved here from New Jersey."

You can remember when instead of labeling them condominiums, they just called them apartments. You know the difference between a condo and an apartment? About $500,000.

You can remember when all the hippies in town were carping about the South Texas Nuclear Project instead of carping about toll roads.

You can remember when you could actually get into Austin City Limits without knowing some bigshot like Michael Dell.

You still think that 52nd Street is halfway to Dallas.

You can remember when the Warehouse District actually had a few warehouses.

You can remember when Williamson County didn't have a law and order reputation because there was nobody there for the cops to stop but a few farmers.

You were around when the richest guy living in the 78704 ZIP code was probably some dude who had a regular job with the state.

You can recall people who weren't connected with the rodeo wearing cowboy hats downtown.

You were here when you could actually find a parking spot on Congress Avenue without circling the block three or four times.

You remember when you could see the Capitol while standing downtown on the ground flat-footed.

You can remember when people were arguing over the Edwards Aquifer instead of the location of the next Wal-Mart.

You can remember when Bee Cave Road was so far out in the country that you had to pack a lunch.

You were around when the biggest ham in town was Willie Kocurek instead of Marc Katz.

You really don't care about the loss of the Armadillo World Headquarters anymore because you can't stay awake that late these days anyway.

You were around back before they invented the chicken fajita, which you still think is pretty silly, since there's no such thing as a chicken fajita.

You can remember a day when nobody could name the tallest building downtown, because none of them were all that tall.

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*Article by John Kelso that I cut and pasted from the Austin American Statesman. Damn it's so true.....

those wacky college days.

I was always glad I never had to live in Jester Dorm on the University of Texas Campus when I was in college. Granted I spent alot of time there, as my lifelong bud Julia lived there, and my freshman year of college my boyfriend lived there as well, but it always felt ramshackle and GodDAMN it was noisy. Not to mention the piss in the elevators and stairwells. (WHY can't boys just hold it like girls do?)

I was assigned to an all girl's dorm (Blanton) which I protested vociferously at first (WHAT? NO BOYS?), but then came to realize I really liked. After the mayhem of Jester it always felt so peaceful and safe. Kind of like going back in time to the 50's. No boys = clean bathrooms, a semblance of silence, and best of all, the ability to walk back to your room from the bathroom clad in just a towel. Which I did daily. There was also the occasional "sneaking in of the boy" which we all did at some time or another, but we all also pretended to not know when others did it. I love the Girl Code.

Anyhow, here are some reasons why I am glad I did not live in Jester. Greg sorta brought it all home to me in his nostalgic (?) post.

I did, however, enjoy the fried chicken station at Jester cafeteria...I'd have that with mashies and brown gravy and a little teeny salad, just to keep up appearances. That way I could tell my mom I had a salad for dinner.....