TPPM Barthelme: "This Good Old Dairy Queen Regular"

[Dave Monroe]

   "But behind Barthelme's own slick city-sophisticate
disguise still lounged, alarmingly, this good old
Dairy Queen regular in some conspicuous hat, around in
whose backseat opened containers had been known to
roll, harboring the mischievous daydreams of a Texas
rounder, not to mention a lengthy stretch of DNA
dedicated just to locating and enjoying various highly
seasoned pork products. On the principle that you can
take the boy out of the country but not vice versa,
Houston, Texas, his hometown before New York, must
have caused Barthelme some lively internal discomfort
over the course of a love-hate affair with the place
that went on, it seems, for most of his life. From
what I remember of Houston at about that same time, it
could have provoked the one emotion just as easily as
the other, and in Texas-size quantities, too. The
Astrodome was brand new in those days. Air
conditioning in the city was ubiquitous. There were
schemes afoot to put a dome over part of downtown and
air-condition it, creating what today we would call a
mall. Entire boulevards were dedicated to churches,
side by side, one after another, allowing you to drop
the family car in low and actually cruise places of
worship. The nearest venue for dope, sex, and rock 'n'
roll, then as now, was Austin. The new NASA space
center out by Buffalo Bayou was hiring heavily, while
from the marshlands around it, mosquitoes were busy
spreading an encephalitis epidemic. Sir John
Barbirolli had fashioned of the Houston symphony an
exquisitely first-rate instrument, while teenage
musical heresy focused on California surf culture,
though the Gulf only had surf during hurricanes, all
kinds of kids could still be observed driving around
with some stick in some woody, flaunting boards that
never caught a wave, as if trying to make it all be
Califomia. Anyplace but what it was."

http://www.vheissu.org/bio/eng_barthelme.htm

http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/uncollected/barthelme.html

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_barthelme.htm


"good old Dairy Queen regular"

http://www.dairyqueen.com/en-US/default.htm

http://www.urinal.net/dairy_queen/


"a Texas rounder"

Main Entry: round·er 
Pronunciation: 'raun-d&r
Function: noun

[...]

2 : a dissolute person : WASTREL ...

http://m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary

Kenny Rogers, "No Good Texas Rounder"

Excuse me, ma´am
I´d like your daughter´s hand for the evening
There´s a new band in town
I´d like to take her down to see ´em
The fiddler player used to be my neighbor
And he never slept a day in his life
He plays the “Strawberry Roan”
When he gets going he can play all night
And her mama said:

He´s a no good Texas cowboy, child
He´ll love you up and he´ll drive you wild
Then he´ll leave you
He´s a no good Texas rounder, girl
Got a one-track mind
And he ain´t on true love and that´s for sure
She said I´ve met his kind before
I´ve met your kind before.

Excuse me, ma´m
I´d like your daughter´s hand for the evening
My intentions are good, a man of honor
Please, ignore any rumors that have blackened my name
I´m just an innocent boy
How could I be to blame?
We´ll be late for the show
And I took her hand and said let´s go
And her mama said:

He´s a no good ...

Excuse me, ma´m
I´d like your daughter´s hand for the evening
I think you know the band
I´d like to take her down to see ´em
I´d been led to understand the fiddler was your man
That´s why he never slept a day in his life
He plays the “Strawberry Roan”
Just to get you going then you play all night.

And the daughter said:
He was a no good Texas ...... 

http://www.123lyrics.net/k/kenny-rogers/no-good-texas-rounder.html


The Astrodome (1965 - )

http://www.ballparks.com/baseball/national/astrod.htm

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/buildingbig/wonder/structure/astro.html


"The new NASA space center"

http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/

http://www.spacecenter.org/


"encephalitis epidemic"

1967

January

Dr. Joseph Melnick of the Baylor Medical School
discovered that Buffalo Bayou contained a whole range
of viruses, including those causing encephalitis and
meningitis. He estimated that at the foot of Main
Street the Bayou carried sufficient viruses to infect
77,000 people an hour!

http://houstonhistory.com/decades/history5p.htm


Sir John Barbirolli (1899-1970)

http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/JBSoc/JBSoc.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/profiles/barbirolli.shtml


"teenage musical heresy"

Cf. Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys' "teenage
symphonies to God" on the aborted (though recently
completed and released nonetheless) Smile album ...

http://www.brianwilson.com/




		
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