|
It was with an eye
jaundiced to a bilious golden hue that Paul B, the most junior senior
member of the Austin Golf Club, surveyed Hancock Shopping
Center.
He was wont to regard all shopping centers with at least an ocher eye,
but these
stores sit on land that was once the back nine holes of the original
Austin
Golf Club. That such sacred ground was now the home of franchise food
troughs
and flat parking lots where once were tree-lined doglegs with swales
and ponds
galled him no end. Number 7, on the extant front nine, a seemingly easy
short
par 4 whose only defense was a view of the shopping center, was Paul
B’s
nemesis. He either pulled his drive to the adjoining fairway where he
couldn’t
see the travesty or pushed it into the
right rough, or even OB into the
street that
divided the two parcels of land, a doubly infuriating jaundicizer.
The
center could also be seen from the 19th hole balcony, where
Paul B,
as was his habit, caressed a Falstaff, pondering ways to return Hancock Shopping Center to its glory.
The
obvious was to formally request the AGC board try to buy the land, but
even in
the shattered economy of Austin,
it would be millions more than the club could afford. The area’s broken
workforce
led to much hobolike traveling, and the shopping center used its
position next to
Interstate 35 and railroad tracks to become a low-rent transients’
mall:
fast-food, tire repair, temp agencies, self-storage units, cash-only
doctors.
Hideous, depressing, profitable.
After
purchasing, the choices for reacquiring the land became limited. City
funds
were obviously nonexistent. A petition drive of the nearby citizenry
requesting
(although in the inevitable language of citizen petitions, it would be
a
“demand”)? The shopping center owners would chuckle. An earmark slipped
in
federal legislation? The general anarchistic nature of the AGC
constituency
didn’t sit well with Congresswoman Bovinia Eohippus, whose district ran
from
the south suburbs of Waco to the groin
of
Rockport on the coast, with a casual arm reaching out to embrace a
swath of
central Austin.
Nothing could be expected from the state of Texas, which viewed private property
ownership as that white light that dying people see, proof of the
existence of
heaven.
Thus
Paul B’s troubled thoughts turned down darker avenues. He returned to
his study from the local weather bureau of
historic
wind patterns.
* * *
The
odds of five separate deep-fat fryers in five separate fast-food
franchises
catching fire in the middle of the same night are millions to one. The
odds of
the resulting fiery oil flow igniting a porn shop, a casket rental
agency, and a
drive-through barbershop are incalculable.
What was easy to grasp was the odor from this
conflagration. The back room of the Hands-Free
Adult Megaplexxx and the burnt-orange silk lining from a reusable
plywood casket
and smoldering hair that were all sautéed and flambéed in
aged palm oil used to fry
durian-and-clam flautas created an emanation notable to those to the
east of
Hancock Shopping Center for miles. In fact, the highways were clogged
with
fleeing citizens, driving one hand on the wheel, one hand on the nose.
To the west, a
mild version of the stench suggested itself to the AGC balcony, but it
was
easily masked by lighting a cheroot and opening a Falstaff.
* * *
A month later,
Paul B’s jaundiced eye had become the color of the bottom of a divot.
He had
had to stop playing at the 6th hole; he could not face the
view of Hancock Shopping Center from the 7th, seeing the new
manufactured homes that had moved in
where the burnt-out stores had been. One was a puppy mill, another
sold refurbished false teeth, but the capper was a dealer in used golf
balls,
ones Paul B knew were retrieved from his very own course. From his
perch on the
veranda he accidently cut his finger opening a Falstaff and took a
blood oath
to reclaim the back nine.
Red Wassenich
March 2008
Back Nine:
The Austin Golf Club Stories
Web site founded April 2008
All stories copyright of the authors. May not be reproduced without
permission (the stories, not the authors).
|
