TPPM Barthelme: "This Good Old Dairy Queen Regular"

[Kris Williams]

I remember my Texas high school football coach calling us 'Dairy Queeners' 
all the time.  Lazy, good for nothing, the kind of kids who smoke grass and 
stay out after ten on weeknights.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Dave Monroe" <monropolitan at yahoo.com>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: 23 November, 2004 17:05
Subject: TPPM Barthelme: "This Good Old Dairy Queen Regular"


>   "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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