Lorraine and I drove all the way from Boulder to Austin to look up my old buddy Ken Totzke, around Thanksgiving time frame in (I think) 1983. For me it was an exotic trip. Ken put us up in Austin and we kicked around there a bit. Texas, and Austin, had a very different look and feel from Boulder. (In Boulder, Ken was a totally normal guy. He got strange when he bolted to Texas for construction work, and kept getting stranger. Via corrospondance had alluded to living in his truck. He had a “place” and he put us up, but a “friend of his” kept coming through there to get his “stuff”. Things didn’t make sense, and Ken was very vague. I’m thick enough that it took me a while looking back to realize that Ken was still living in his truck, and that he borrowed this place just to put us up. Ken is a story all his own. A very sweet guy, started hitting the booze really heavy, and it was all downhill.)
If we thought Austin was different, Corpus Christi was another country. I remember a thin film of salt enveloped my truck ten miles from the ocean. We did some shopping in a mall, everything smell like mildew. The beaches were totally deserted, a distinct departure from Spring Break time, where Padre Island and Mustang Island share a fearsome reputation for debaucherous craziness. The weather cool, but a lot warmer than Colorado. Shelling on the beach was outstanding.
Ken came down and hung with us for a few days. Here’s a picture or two:
