Pink Adobe Hacienda

Here’s what happened the night I met my husband fourteen years ago today.

My Sacred Heart classmates had flown into Houston to celebrate Labor Day weekend with me. I was working at the ranch that Friday (Lyndon B. Johnson Hospital). I knew that by the time I fought traffic on 59 South and made it to my apartment in the Upper Kirby Business District that it would be dinnertime. I left a key for them with the management. They sunned poolside until I showed up.

We were on a mission to get to the Mucky Duck by 7:00 p.m. A rockabilly band called the Hollisters was playing. I slammed on a pair of denim overalls and a T-shirt with the logo for a local bar, The Black Labrador. And in retrospect, let me just say, yuck. I didn't even have enough time to put on makeup.

The Mucky Duck was not just any venue. It was my home away from home. I was there most nights, getting inspired to write songs and play my guitar. The owners, Rusty and Therese, knew me by name. Their pub calendar was on my refrigerator.

The Hollisters were not just any band. They were my ex-boyfriend’s favorite band. He and I were always trying to get out to a Hollisters show, but somehow we never made it out to see them.

Susan and Suzanne were not just any friends. They were my best friends. They had endured Father Wagner’s impossible Friday vocabulary quizzes with me senior year of high school. One day in Fr. Wagner’s class they asked me to go to Florida with them over spring break. I am fairly certain the three of us failed the test Fr. Wagner gave us the week back after spring break for a novel (I do not even recall the name of the book) that none of us read. I know I failed that test. We were part of a group of teenagers that roamed Louisville with the original moniker, The Gang. Susan and I choreographed a dance to the Sugar Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” that we performed for certain graduates of a boy high school on the night of their graduation. Suzanne and I shared the coincidence that our fathers had graduated from another boy high school in the same class with Tom Cruise’s dad, whose last name was actually Mapother.

When we arrived at the Duck, we made a beeline to the bar. Three Aggies in starched shirts and khaki pants accosted us. We dismissed them. After all, my friends were married, and I wasn’t looking for a starched shirt.

We settled down at a long table just in front of the stage. I always have to be in the front row.

Now the Duck is an intimate venue that seats probably seventy-five max. It’s where I met Troy Campbell, Scrappy Jud Newcomb, Kelly Willis (who was my accomplice one night during a fight with the ex-boyfriend), Darden Smith, and Alejandro Escovedo, to name a few. It’s where I took potential boyfriends to test them to see if they liked music as much as I did.

I recall we were in high spirits at my table. The Hollisters, they rocked.

I had glanced over at another table and spotted a very handsome young man with long hair in a ponytail, and then just looked away. My girlfriends were going to get all of my attention.

So to my surprise, said ponytail man tapped me on the shoulder, apropos nothing, and asked if I would “care” to dance.

Wait, back up. I left out a big point about why our table was in such high spirits. The owner of the bar, Therese, was scheming with her decorator friend, and she sent a bottle of champagne to our table, and told us that it was from the men at the table where the guy with the long ponytail was sitting.

Okay, I would have danced with that guy even if I was perfectly sober. You see, on closer inspection, he was wearing the following:
A billiard ball motif silk shirt
A pair of jeans
A pair of suede clogs
A scrunchie (that a “girl’s mom” had made for him)

The man could shag. I had spent much time shagging in the basement of the Phi Delt house at Centre College. I had not mastered the Carolina shag, but I could fake it.

When silk shirt asked me to dance, his two friends asked my two friends to dance shortly thereafter. We all ended up on the very small area of floor in front of the stage that could accommodate dancing.

I think we danced to “Pink Adobe Hacienda." But, it could have been that we danced to “East Texas Pines” or “Better Slow Down.”

We only danced one song. They returned to their table, and we returned to ours.

At our table the discussion went like this: “Heather, he is doing all of that dancing in clogs!”

A song or two later, the three gentlemen reappeared and asked for another dance. We consented. My future husband and I left the dance floor holding hands and did not let go the rest of the night.

We moved to their table, and much sparring and Q&A ensued. My friends vetted silk shirt. And they bragged about my ability to throw a party. And they found out that he had thrown a party or two himself on his ranch in Texas.

The band packed up. We stepped out into the night sky, where silk shirt pointed out the moon, two days past full. He asked the designated Duck police officer for a pen, which he used to write my number on his hand. The number was something like 528-3869. At that point there was only one area code in Houston, and it was 713.

Silk shirt said he would like to see me again. I said that I would be busy with my girlfriends until Sunday. I asked him if he was laboring on Labor Day, and he said no. So I suggested that he call my apartment Sunday afternoon.

Susan, Suzanne and I climbed into my brown Volvo sedan. I cranked the moon roof open, and we drove back to my apartment.

I’ll tell you the rest on Labor Day.