I Am This Woman

Thanks, Jette, Chip and esteemed panel. This entry is a Holidailies “Best of…”

In other blogs, at other times, I have always promised to write about Threadgill’s, and tonight’s the night.

Way way back in the 70s, when both my middle brother (four years older than me) and I lived at home, we became completely disenchanted grown-ups (20somethings), and decided to Go Out on Christmas Eve. The parental units were insisting on watching TV that night, instead of the usual candles and music, and besides, we pretty much knew the clockwork precision of how the evening (and the drinking) would go.

No, we were Big Kids now (albeit still living at home) and one of us could drive, so by god, we were Going Out. My brother and I never agreed on very much as kids or adults, but we did agree on one very important thing. If Threadgill’s is just a waystation on the road to Heaven, we are not going any farther because everything we could ever want from the Afterlife is on the menu at this Austin restaurant.

Given that this was back in the late 70s, we are talking about the North Lamar location. The REAL Threadgill’s. The one where Janice sang. The one where I have run into more old high school chums than I think attended my high school, the one where I have tucked into dozens of fried oysters, slabs of pot roast, buckets of jalapeno honey mustard dressing, countless nuggets of fried okra goodness, and gallons of Blue Bell vanilla a la mode on mountains of pies, cakes and brownies. There is nostalgia and comfy, spacious digs at the Barton Springs Road location, but it’s not the same.

But this Threadgill’s run was different. It was Christmas Eve, and it was my brother aka my bother. This is the person who saw me as the enemy. I was the baby sister who tagged along, who ruined all the fun of elaborate war games, who narc’d on his secret trips with buddies into the ditch to swill root beer from the Dairy Queen. I was the annoying whiner who bit him on the arm one night, through two t-shirts, a shirt and a sweater (always the clothes horse, even at age 11), and drew blood. (He’s never let me forget it. His kids probably have that story in their own childhood legends, painting me as the bloodthirsty Evil Aunt Queen.)

And this was the brother who, like Bartleby, preferred not to. The one who would sit in the family TV room (before the Great Proliferation of Idiot Boxes) with the remote in hand, eyes closed, commercials on Mute. He was on mute too. There would be no talking during commercials. If there was too much, he would decline, pass the remote over, and retreat to his bedroom, his headphones, his jazz and his book about some arcane aspect of … yes, war. The one who never did anything I thought he should, who “complimented” me by saying, “well, it doesn’t stink.”

After a bit of a costume drama – he was careful in selecting just the right white oxford cloth button-down from his 10 or 12 similar shirts – we headed out with admonitions from the folks to drive carefully, watch out for snakes and be home early. We promised the moon but both secretly sneered: parents, hyeah right.

(Warning, this is not a hugely dramatic story, with car crashes or barfing or even any romance with a hunky bartender. Just in case your mind is going in a different direction, go watch Grey’s Anatomy and get that out of your system, then come back and finish this quaint little slice of buttermilk pie and coffee.)

The restaurant was fairly empty, and I remember we got seated in the sidecar, back toward the back. Excellent seating. I of course being a true blue Texan ordered the chicken fried steak, fried okra, salad with blue cheese dressing (the jalapeno honey mustard love came much much later), along with a Shiner Bock. While munching on heavenly rolls and cornbread, I downed the beer and ordered another. I turned my brother on to Shiner Bock that night. My brother (if I remember correctly, and there’s no guarantee on this since it was the 70s and there were many more Shiner Bocks that night) ordered either meatloaf and mashed potatoes, or the pot roast and mashed potatoes.

Really, how could you order badly from Threadgill’s menu? It’s All Good. Even the liver and onions, so the liver and onions lovers report, is ta die for. My mother loved the gizzards (shudder), and she said they were great. Go figure. On their current menu, they have a number of fish fillets and a gazillion vegetable dishes. My dad always hemmed and hawed over the salmon or the trout. Occasionally, he’d have the roast pork loin. If I order something there that I like, it’s always good. If I order something like Brussels sprouts or stuffed bell peppers (not my faves and why would I do that), there’s usually something about the dish that I like, factoring out the offensive parts. And that is nothing short of miraculous.

Yes, Threadgill’s has its detractors. Too starchy, too greasy, too meaty, too crowded – crappy service, no table cloths, no french fries (that would be my son’s biggest complaint). But what’s not to love about a place where you can always get a piece of pecan pie or apple pie (or both!) warmed up, with Blue Bell, 365 days of the year?

Ok, back to my brother. As far as I can recall, it was all wonderful, filling, overwhelming and delicious. Our waiter was great – some hippie chick with tatts (exotic back then) and a trucker’s wheezy cough. For two hours, I wasn’t the annoying baby sister and he wasn’t the insufferable bookish introvert. We were siblings, all growed up, tucking into a good plate of chow, filling ourselves on the Milk of Human Kindness (and Shiner Bock), with no pushing, shoving or whining.

It was a rare moment in a lifetime of sibling rivalry and disdain. Back in the 70s, before the old stories were too old to tell, before the parents had become any kind of burden at all other than just being so uncool, and long before either of us suffered overmuch from hangovers. Back before Willie’s trouble with the IRS, before MoPac became a parking lot, back when the Main Library still had huge long wooden tables and incandescent light, back when there were topless girls at Barton Springs in the summer, and the Hole In The Wall was still my father’s watering hole. Back when we could eat chicken fried steak with cream gravy and impunity, back when we didn’t have to share a dessert, back when we didn’t have to stop and sternly request a child to eat their peas or there would be no Nintendo…

On that Christmas Eve, Threadgill’s did what nearly 25 years of growing up together could not do. My brother and I shared a holiday meal as equals, as family.

Last Christmas, after leaving my dad’s hospital room, my son and I limped into Threadgill’s on Barton Springs Road, and waited the 30 minutes for a table. We were disappointed to find a “limited” holiday menu, but soon were revived on mashed potatoes and gravy, chicken fried chicken and the glorious San Antonio squash. The Kid slathered his cornbread with butter, and all was right with the world. Despite all the forces of cancer, divorce and congestive heart failure, and the hideous Austin traffic, my son and I were a whole family for a couple of hours at a table in Threadgill’s on Christmas Day.

Please pass the Blue Bell.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 at 10:26 pm and is filed under holidays, stories, the kid. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.