Texas Holdout
In 1993, for the first time, I opened the screened door and walked into Threadgill’s, a down-home restaurant and longtime music hot spot housed in a former Gulf station in Austin, Texas. Pointing to this back entrance was a vintage neon arrow, hanging next to the words HOWDY STRANGER. I wouldn’t be a stranger for long.
The then-sixty-year-old joint’s wood floors had been trod by an evolving clientele, beginning with salt-of-the-earth beer drinkers who were then joined by college kids, beatniks, pickers, and protohippies in the late 1950s. Thanks to its original proprietor, Kenneth Threadgill, a spirit of inclusion overcame the era’s pervasive culture clash, an ethos handed down to its
