Margaret Moser, Queen Of Austin, Is Dancing In The Light

June 18 was the beginning of a weeklong Open House at Tex Pop, the South Texas Museum of Popular Culture — a storefront wedged between a head shop and convenience store in an aging strip center at the corner of Margaret and Mulberry in San Antonio. Inside, in the largest of three rooms, museum founder and director Margaret Moser is seeing her first visitor of the day, Kathy Valentine. In an adjacent room, Moser's mother Phyllis Stegall and a niece greet arrivals as they wait their turns. The mood is somber, which on any other day could be attributed to it being a Sunday morning, except that everyone here knows Moser is living on borrowed time. The one exception to the caliginous vibe is the day's person of interest and honor — she's smiling, laughing, holding hands, hugging, listening to and telling stories. Having the time of her life.

While Moser was an aspiring, wiseass music writer and budding provocateur in her early twenties, Kathy Valentine — best known as a founding member of The Go-Gos and presently leading The Bluebonnets — remembers herself as a sixteen-year-old guitar-playing wannabe. Moser had recruited Valentine to join the all-female Geranium Cabbages, an offshoot of the satire project Sons of Uranium Savages. Both had been smitten with Suzi Quatro, the assertive female rocker from Detroit who'd become big in England. Valentine says she made it through two practices with the Cabbages before peeling away to start Austin's first punk band, The. "We wanted a real band," Valentine says, looking over and smiling affectionately at Moser. "[Geranium Cabbages] wanted to have fun." Margaret beams, listening.