August 7 and 8, 1970 was the opening weekend of the Armadillo World Headquarters. That’ll be 40 years ago all too soon and I’m still several years behind on my promise to publish my version of what happened to cause it, sustain it and kill it. I’ve renewed my vow to finish it, or to at least let it go, hopefully by my birthday in the fall. Austin is at a crossroad and maybe there’s something to learn from searching our past to discover what ingredients were important to the great well-spring of joy our city is known for around the world. It’s been a tough task for many reasons, mainly because I’m having more fun now than I had then and it’s hard to postpone today’s fun and write about struggles and stupid mistakes I made in yesteryear. My personal tale is best described by a word I made up: MemNoir. I easily described the scars I wear from it. I had to shut my eyes, lean back and relax forlong spells in order to remember the fun. Now, at last I’m about done. Here is the prologue.
Armadillo World Headdquarters Then
Threadgills Armadillo World Headquarters Today
ARMADILLO WORLD HEADQUARTERS,
AUSTIN, TEXAS
I swore for years I’d never write the Armadillo book. For a lot of very good reasons, I didn’t think it could be done, not in one book and certainly not by me. There are too many points of view, differences of opinion and memory, too much information and too much of everything to cram into too few pages for one single person to pull it off. That was certainly the case with the running of the old joint itself. Well, it turns out none of that matters. What does matter is that so many people have asked over the years, I’ve decided to give it a go. If this causes someone to write another book to contradict me or to help fill in the blanks, glory hallelujah.
AWHQ Plaque sits in parking lot on S. 1st & Barton Springs
Once upon a time in the pretty little city of Austin, Texas, I was one among a bunch of folks who thought we could alter the way a community functions and how it treats its citizens. We thought we could prevail through the simple application of right over wrong accompanied by large doses of caring. We were silly beyond belief. And we were charmed. Beulah, my mother, raised me by often delivering a very short sermon about being able to do anything I set my mind to. Looking back, this adventure was exactly what she’d been preaching about. I was a community leader by acclamation in a community of people that may not have been very organized, but found unity in being threatened and paranoid, angry and stubborn, disgusted and fed up and scared. Conflicted? You betcha.
Early in the life of our armadillo playhouse, we felt the rush of joyful and energetic optimism that comes from realizing along with a bunch of struggling coworkers that the giant tug-of-war is beginning to shift in your favor. Voices begin to speak in unison. New power rushes from your fingers through your shoulders then down your back into your legs and suddenly we’ve got the bastards on the run. It is for all those people who tugged on the Armadillo’s end of the rope that I’m writing this book. We were a trade school and an army. We shared a kinship with the doomed defenders of the Alamo. We spent incredible amounts of energy shoring up our fortress and we desperately sent out for help. We didn’t know each other all that well but we served together hoping that our efforts would contribute toward a future in which we could be proud. We were split into several camps that disagreed about the proper course of action but share the common belief that the show must go on.