sweet hospitality

OVER THE YEARS I'VE HAD VARIOUS PEOPLE I'VE JUST MET OFFER TO give me all kinds of cool things. And this isn't the result of me walking around with my hat extended, looking for a handout. We're talking random acts of generosity.

Like the carpenter in Boston — Galway Johnny — who gave me his new acoustic guitar after he learned mine had recently been stolen. Like the mechanic in Oklahoma — Norman John — who insisted on giving me a free tune-up 2 days after my VW bus broke down near the El Reno Federal Penitentiary. Or the portly stranger who handed me a $100 bill after reading my old blog as we sat working on our Apple laptops at a San Antonio coffeehouse.

There've been many more and one day I'd like to jot down as many of these random acts of generosity as I can remember. But until I get around to doing this, my recollection of the most recent example will have to do.

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The day I got my cabbie job, one of the old-timers down at the taxi stand/home office laughed when I told him I was just starting out.

"Good luck," he chortled with a slight shake of the head. "You startin' out at the worst possible time of the year. School gettin' out. Weather gettin' hot. Whole town slow down when it get that kinda hot."

He was right. Making decent money driving a cab in a town that slows down in the summer — a town I just moved to — was not so easy. I'm on the hook for $440 a week in cab fees. Yes, that's $440 per week. Plus gas. Which means I need to earn over $500 bucks behind the wheel before I make a dime for myself.

The guy who trained me claimed he worked banker's hours and averaged $200 a day. Me, I didn't make squat working the day shift. My golden hours have been between 10, 10:30 at night and 3 in the morning. And the $200 days were few and far between.

Consequently, I've been looking forward to the start of football season since the day I got this job. Football season means school is back in session, UT football games and drunk fans at bars needing cab rides home.

Which is exactly what Austin Hank needed on the opening Saturday night of college football season a week and a half ago.

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"Early night, huh?"

I picked Hank up outside Dogwood on West 6th Street. It was a little before midnight and the joint was jumping, the streets were humming and I was trying to make small talk with my new customer.

"I don't need that from you right now," Hank answered defensively from the backseat. I only got a quick glance at him when he got into my cab, but he looked like he could've been a Marine at some point in his life. And I immediately seemed to be pissing him off.

"I just sent another guy home because he was talking shit," Hank said, fighting back a drunken slur.

"I wasn't talking sh-..."

"I just did 8 shots with this asshole," Hank interrupted, "and you know where he is right now?"

"Where?"

"At home," Hank said proudly. "In bed. 'Cause I fucked his shit up. He couldn't keep up with me. That's why I don't need this from you right now."

"I didn't mean anything by it," I said as we rolled down West 6th through the Clarksville neighborhood of Austin. "I was just noting that the place was hopping. So going home at midnight seems a little..."

"I don't need this shit right now from you," Hank snarled again. "I just sent a guy home for talking shit."

I kept my eyes on the road and laughed at the magnitude and absurdity of our booze-induced communication breakdown.

"Dude, trust me, I wasn't giving you shit. I was just pointing out that you were going home earlier than most people. And that's a good thing. You're missing the traffic, the late-night puking, the frustrating attempts to get a cab after last call. Man, checking out early is a wise choice. I admire your decision-making."

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I'm not sure if Hank was buying my bullshit. But before long we were talking football, which almost always greases the cabbie conversational wheels. Apparently, Hank had been drinking all day. Watching games at various bars. Getting hammered. When he told me he went to UT in the late '90s, I couldn't help but ask: "So, did you know Ricky Williams?"

Several weeks ago I saw this fascinating documentary on the legendary Longhorn running back. The film followed Williams during the sabbatical he took from football, a personal growth year during which soft-spoken Ricky was going to a holistic cooking school and teaching yoga. And smoking a lotta ganja.

"Ricky used to give us rides home when we'd get drunk on 6th Street!" Hank laughed. Then he made it clear that he's not the type to be impressed with fame and celebrity. Hank just saw the irony of the whole thing. "We'd be too drunk to drive," Hank recalled, "so Ricky would insist on being our designated driver back to campus. Thing is, he was probably high the whole time!"

We had a good laugh over that one. Before long, we were laughing at all kinds of things. Hank told me he had a crazy writer friend at Texas Monthly I had to meet. I apologized for infecting the hometown he loved so much with another Californian. He told me I didn't seem so bad for a guy from L.A.

By the time we got to his house off Bee Caves Road, Hank told me to pull up into his gravel driveway.

"Come inside," he insisted. "I've got something I want to give you."

Worked for me. I had to piss real bad and the stench of gas station mini-mart bathroom urine was getting old.

"Mind if I use your toilet?" I asked approaching the side door Hank had just walked through.

"Down the hall, make a left," Hank called out as he headed towards what I assumed was the kitchen.

It's always a strange feeling when a complete stranger invites you into their home. I always feel honored and humbled — after all, it's a pretty massive show of faith and trust. Then there's the part of me that's a little creeped out as I wonder if I've just walked into the home of a serial killer. But that's just the L.A. guy in me oozing out.

I glanced around the bachelor bathroom and noticed framed photos of Hank and what I later learned were his nephews and nieces. Like me, Hank is a single guy. With siblings who have kids. Unlike me, he lives alone.

"You ever see Lonesome Dove?" Hank asked as I walked out of the bathroom, the sound of a flushing toilet trumpeting my return.

"I was JUST talking about Lonesome Dove yesterday with my girlfriend!" I told Hank. "It's her favorite movie of all-time."

"So you've seen it?"

"No! I've never seen it," I said. "I've never read the book either. But my girlfriend keeps telling me I have to see the movie. She was just telling me that yesterday."

"Well, then, here you go," Hank said as he handed me a DVD case featuring the cowboy incarnations of Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones. "Your very own copy of Lonesome Dove."

I was stunned.

"What?...No...You're lending this to me, right? I'll watch it tomorrow and get it back to you."

"No," insisted Hank. "That's for you. I've got 7 copies of it."

I vigorously shook Hank's hand, my face engulfed in a grateful smile.

"See, THIS is the kind of thing that makes Austin such a great place!" I gushed. "It's the people. From what I can tell, you guys are about the friendliest fuckers in America."

We'd come a long way from Hank snarling at me when he got in my cab. All in the space of about 13 minutes.

As I floated back to my cab, Hank had one more thing to tell me.

"If you ever have a son," he said, his slow gait crunching across the gravel driveway, "lock him in a room with that movie. Everything he needs to know about being a man, he can learn it watchin' Lonesome Dove."

Thanks, Hank. We'll let you know how that works out.

I love Austin.

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cool brees on a hot hump day

JUST BEFORE MIDNIGHT ON ANOTHER STEAMY SUMMER NIGHT. It's Wednesday in Austin and I'm poaching me some free Wi-Fi outside the Hilton Gardens hotel on 5th Street, a Drew Brees heave from I-35.

Speaking of Drew Brees, I had a customer in my taxi last week — a spunky blonde born-and-raised in Austin — who said she made out with Drew Brees back when they were high school classmates.

How does this come up in the course of a 5-minute downtown cab ride, you ask?

Well, when Ms. O said she grew up here in Austin, I immediately asked what high school she went to. Upon learning she was a Westlake High grad, I asked if she knew Drew.

"Knew him?" piped up one of her 2 drunk male cohorts. "Dude, she made out with him. She knew him alright."

"C'mon!" I shot back, calling 'bullshit' without actually coming out and saying it.

"It's true," she confirmed. "I went to a dance with him."

"Really?" I said glancing into the rearview mirror to see if she was the kind of girl a future superstar quarterback might make out with in high school. (She was.) "What was he like? Was he a good guy? He seems like a good guy."

"Oh, he was a great guy," answered Ms. O. "Couldn't have been nicer."

"So...?"

This is where my sense of propriety fails me. Asking too many questions. Crossing the line. Probing too deeply.

What the hell, they were drunk.

"So why didn't it work out?" I continued. "What happened?"

"What happened was we were young, he was nice...but I couldn't get past the birthmark."

With this confession, the cab erupts into a peanut gallery of "C'mon!"..."So shallow!"..."Give the guy a break!"

As billions of football fans around the globe now know, Brees has an impossible-to-miss birthmark — or is it a mole? — shaped like New Jersey running north-south down his cheekbone.

"The guy was a star quarterback in high school," I reminded Ms. O. "You couldn't get past a little thing like a birthmark?"

"Have you seen it?" Ms. O asked. "It's not a little thing. And it had hair growing out of it!"

The cab once again erupted into fits of laughter, friendly derision and good-natured revulsion. As we silently, perhaps unknowingly, took comfort in the fact that even Super Bowl-winning quarterbacks have flaws and don't always get the girl.

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