12 Legs Travel

One of the beauties of unhurried road-tripping is that some days, when you don’t know where to go, you can spread out your atlas like a Ouija board and let the tip of your finger find its way to your next destination. Maybe you gravitate to a place because its name is strange or it exists in a polygon of shaded green on the map. Maybe you’re drawn to a city because it figured prominently in a book you’ve read, or you remember it as the hometown of a favorite athlete or actor.

Or, in the case of Luckenbach, Texas, maybe you pick your next stop because it is the title of a classic country song.

“Luckenbach, Texas (Back to the Basics of Love)” was a No. 1 hit for Waylon Jennings in the summer of 1977. It’s a song that slides easily into your mind and then, like a sleepy drunk at last call, refuses to leave. I began humming its chorus immediately after spotting Luckenbach on the map, a faint blip southwest of Fredericksburg and nearly smack-dab in the center of the Lone Star State.

We took our sweet Texas time driving to Luckenbach from Marfa. We stopped at a ramshackle roadside attraction in Fort Davis that claims (believably) to house the largest exhibit of live rattlesnakes in the world. And we checked out a spring-fed swimming pool at Balmorhea State Park that’s 25 feet deep and has aquatic critters swimming in it. (The Balmorhea pool is yet one more fascinating attraction we’ve encountered that was built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps. I’m thinking of ordering a bumper sticker that reads “God Bless the CCC.”)

By the time we pulled into the Armadillo Farm Campground in Luckenbach, the sun had set and our bellies were groaning. Gay, the friendly proprietor of Armadillo Farm, suggested a secluded campsite where the dogs could roam and told us the best bet for food at the late hour was the Luckenbach dance hall, just across the pasture.

Now is probably a good time to explain that Luckenbach isn’t actually a proper town. When Waylon Jennings sings, “Let’s go to Luckenbach, Texas,” what he’s referring to is the old dance hall. Little else exists in Luckenbach, other than a post office, general store and saloon — all three of which are housed in a small wooden building that looks like it was preserved from the set of Gunsmoke.

Local legend holds that a larger-than-life Texan (is that redundant?) named Hondo Crouch was thirsting for a beer while driving through Luckenbach in the early 1970s. He stopped for a drink at the saloon, but it was closed. It was also for sale — along with the general store and dancehall — and Crouch decided to buy the whole town. Another account suggests Crouch purchased Luckenbach after seeing an advertisement in an Austin newspaper that read “Town For Sale — Population 3.”

I don’t know how tall those tales are, but the Texas State Historical Association confirms that Crouch — a humorist, writer and All-American swimmer at the University of Texas — bought Luckenbach in 1971. He then proclaimed himself mayor and installed a single parking meter.

Crouch took advantage of the town’s status as a municipality to govern it as he saw fit. The historical association writes that Crouch “declared Luckenbach ‘a free state … of mind’ and successfully turned the small community into a foil of the nearby ‘Texas White House’ — Lyndon Johnson’s place down the Pedernales River at the LBJ Ranch.”

Crouch died in 1976, a year before Jennings’ hit song forever burned Luckenbach into popular music’s hide. But Texans who love outlaw country will tell you the place was put on the musical map in 1973, when Jerry Jeff Walker recorded his album Viva Terlingua at the dance hall. And Texans who love state history will tell you Luckenbach almost ascended to worldwide fame in 1865, when the local schoolmaster tested a flying machine 17 years before the Wright Brothers’ successful flight in Kitty Hawk, N.C.

Alas, the schoolmaster crashed.

That schoolmaster might have been the first person to crash in Luckenbach, but he was definitely not the last. The Armadillo Farm Campground actually advertises itself as a “secure place to ‘sleep it off’ after over-indulging at the latest concert event over at the Luckenbach Town Dance Hall.” Thanks to Jerry Jeff and Waylon — and countless other country musicians cut from the same ragged cloth — the dance hall has a reputation for hard drinking and caterwauling. (If you read “dance hall” and envision a grand room with chandeliers, please take note that Texas dance halls are built for two-stepping and swigging beer. For a layman’s introduction to them, check out this NPR story.)

I must admit that Jill and I found our Friday-night visit to Luckenbach pretty tame. A middle-aged songstress performed a set of mostly covers, and the audience in the half-full hall applauded politely at the end of each number. A few folks two-stepped, but most simply sat at long tables drinking bottled beer and munching on snacks.

A hot dog and BBQ pork sandwich satisfied my and Jill’s hunger, but we were surprised to find the bar only served beer — no whiskey. Did Waylon and Willie and the boys really come down here and not drink whiskey? Say it ain’t so.

Underwhelmed, we walked the dogs back to the campground, where we noticed the communal campfire was ringed by several people — two of whom wore cowboy hats and held guitars across their laps. We were encouraged. I found a stump to sit on, and Jill fetched the flask.

Fittingly, the first campfire song we heard in full was “Luckenbach, Texas.” In the firelight it was hard to gauge the age of the fellow playing it, but his voice — raspy and fragile — suggested he was at least 70. We learned he lived just over the hill and was an Armadillo Farm regular. I suspect he had performed “Luckenbach, Texas” a thousand times since 1977, and the arrival of Jill and me prompted what was probably his third or fourth rendition of the night. His arrangement included changing the lyric “firm-feelin’ women” to “firm-breasted women.” I silently wondered how long it had been since he’d felt a firm breast. Probably years. But one can never underestimate the sex appeal of a six-string and a cowboy hat.

The other guitarist, who I’ll call Slim, was a bandy rooster of a man who sported the standard boot-scooting uniform: wide-brimmed hat, Wrangler jeans, pressed Western shirt, colossal belt buckle. He was 6 feet tall but couldn’t have weighed more than 140 pounds soaked in Shiner Bock. When he wasn’t singing, a grin never left his face, but you could only spot it in his eyes and facial creases due to the presence of a mustache that would make Sam Elliott blush.

Slim at first seemed fabulously drunk: He spoke and sang with a lisp, and when he rose from his seat he teetered forward and backward, as though his spindly legs could not support the weight of his hat and mustache. But in apologizing for the quality of his picking and singing, Slim revealed (with a grin) that he had recently recovered from his sixth stroke. He then began strumming the first chords to an old Mickey Newberry song called “Sweet Memories.”

I would like to tell you the campfire cowboys at Armadillo Farm were wonderful musicians and interesting company, and that Jill and I passed our flask and listened to their crooning deep into the night. I would like to tell you they knew the Townes Van Zandt song I requested and that I joined in during the chorus. I would like to tell you we weren’t sitting next to a guy wearing a plush flamingo hat who implored the cowboys to favor him with a rendition of “Margaritaville.”

But I’d be embellishing our Texas tale.

In truth, the guitar pickers weren’t very good and I kept waiting, in vain, for our Luckenbach experience to feel authentic. When the old fella broke into “Luckenbach, Texas” yet again, Jill and I said our polite goodbyes and walked the dogs toward camp. Still, we sang the chorus all the way back to the tent, and it danced in my head for hours as I lay on my back, sleeplessly staring at a Hill Country sky heavy with stars.

But that ain’t a bad thing. It really is a hell of a song.
      

      
— Scott