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Armybrat

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Posts posted by Armybrat

  1. 23 hours ago, Wally Pryor said:

    A deeper dive in to the drag boats on Town Lake and related protests.  

     

    Hernandez was a real dipwad. He went to St. Edward's HS for a semester or two in the mid 1960s, then later described it to the reporters as a rich white boy  boy school. Ignoring the fact that plenty of East side & South Austin "Hispanic"  kids were there on scholarships, not to mention it had been fully integrated before WWII. One of our student body presidents was a popular black kid (1960). Most of the white boys were from the St. Ignatius & St. Louis Parishes - hardly upper crust. Even had a few cedar chopper types. Just a handful of kids from the west side of town.

    Austin cops learned to hate him though when he became a Chicano activist (in the '70s?). One time when the Klan came to town for a rally "parade", the counter demonstrators outnumbered them hugely and started the usual pushing & shoving shit. The cops zeroed in on Hernandez to separate him & his compadres from the kluckers. Somebody with a camcorder got video from an overhead window showing ol' Paul on the ground surrounded by a ring of cops all pounding on him with nightsticks. Looked exactly like a Mack Sennett Keystone Cop silent movie scene. All that was missing was a frantic piano soundtrack. lol (at least one of the cops was African-American).

    Anyway, the City Council eventually bought him off by putting him in charge of an East Austin housing renovation program for the poor, funded by a substantial federal grant. A couple of years later an AAS reporter discovered that hundreds of thousands of $$$ had disappeared from the program's funds, and only two or three old houses had been halfway fixed up. The feds then demanded that the city repay the money. Hernandez faded from the "activist" scene after that embarrassing episode.

    And so it went in nostalgic Austin. lmao

     

    • Like 1
  2. Damn, hate to see that old C47 bite the dust. Glad there were no fatalities, but they said one person suffered bad burns & was sent down to Brooke Army Hospital for treatment.

     My first flight ride (besides a family friend's Piper Cub & Beechcraft V-Tail Bonanza) was on one of those in 1958 - Civil Air Transport (CAT) from Taipei to Hong Kong's Kai Tak Airport.

    CAT was the Nationalist Chinese airline at the time, and it was taken over by the CIA later on. That old (even then) C47 was pretty ratted out. It had a long range fuel tank in the right side of the cabin across from my web seat. A Chinese coolie baggage handler laid on a straw mat on top of it smoking cigarettes while reading comic books all the way to Hong Kong.

  3. Started downsizing several years ago - gave both my ARs away along with about 2k rounds of ammo to my sons.

    Keep roughly 300-500 rounds per handgun still in the safe.  Maybe 3 or 4 boxes of .30-30 for the old M 1894 Winchester. Have 7 bricks of .22 LR left for 2 handguns & a couple of rifles. Couple of boxes of 00 for the Winchester Defender.

    One round of .44 Rimfire for the Henry rifle. :P

    Most of that is getting moved to the sons this weekend.

  4. After the original building (b&w photo) burned, the restaurant reopened in the "new" Mediterranean structure that currently occupies the lot. The reincarnation only lasted a few years and was vacant until converted to an office space. Am not sure when that happened.

    The very first Nighthawk was opened by Harry Akin before WWII. I don't know where that was, and never saw it. Didn't care much for the new one on the Drag, but the Holiday House next door was a favorite spot.

  5. 35 minutes ago, PatrickMcHorn said:
    45 minutes ago, Armybrat said:
    Loved the Top Chopt Rancher "steak" plate at the Nighthawk for $1.95 in the mid 1960s down at the old location (S. Congress & Riverside). The last one I ate was at the Frisco, which had it listed as the Texan.... for $13.95.
    Both places were real Austin icons. Sad to see them gone.

    Which corner of Congress and riverside? What is it now? Just curious.

    The NW corner where this building is now:

    https://www.google.com/maps/@30.2574085,-97.7468754,3a,75y,330.06h,83.94t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s9pIrAWxHNrhf_dJW42eelA!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

    That building replaced this original restaurant which burned on that spot sometime in the 1970s, IIRC.

    Dinner_at_the_Night_Hawk_Restaurant_tn.j

  6. Loved the Top Chopt Rancher "steak" plate at the Nighthawk for $1.95 in the mid 1960s down at the old location (S. Congress & Riverside). The last one I ate was at the Frisco, which had it listed as the Texan.... for $13.95.

    Both places were real Austin icons. Sad to see them gone.

  7. Getting it set up is causing major problems.

    Somehow the damn iPad is now connected to her iPhone5, and she does not want that. She can't get it to disconnect.

    Plus, it will not let her set up our two emails.

    I don't have a clue, just like I never figured out why my pictures always posted upside down at TOS.

  8. 9 hours ago, Celery Man said:

    That's cool, I get it.  I have a bachelor's degree in History and I'm software engineering manager.  I don't really care about specific crybabies who went off and got a phd in gender studies or shit history and can't figure out a way to hack it.  But if we're going to talk about generational stuff, and we're looking at a generation who was raised on "go to college no matter what and then you will achieve your dreams", and then they come out to no jobs and a fucking mountain of debt that they can't bankrupt out of and the boomers are going to eat through all of the social security and are pointing at them saying "shoulda been a plumber what were you thinking lol", that's a fucking raw deal.  Generationally.  The goal should be that average people making average choices with average talent can have pretty nice average middle class lives.

    Or - one could become a college football coach with a funny good ol' boy name and pull down serious coin from a bunch of cultish suckers.

  9. At last getting somewhere, the big three are entering the building, huge timbers that are crucial to the weight bearing strength of the frame.

    Basically I have built a frame surrounding the inner walls of the old barn which stands on long 6 inch X 6 inch legs which in turn support 8 inch by 6 inch beams that joists run into.

    These run in general to the central block work centre

    Also there will be a stair gallery and that is what the big three timbers will support cantilevered over the walls and sitting on arches

    We are now putting the big three in

    See photos and descriptions below
    image.jpeg image.jpeg image.jpeg image.jpeg image.jpeg image.jpeg image.jpeg image.jpeg image.jpeg
    Oak work is quite strenuous but rewarding

    The crates are essential and we made a run way of them with planks on top and used broom handles cut down as rollers to get them to the two tonne hoist

    • Hook 'Em 1
  10. 11 hours ago, BearSchlong said:
    13 hours ago, Armybrat said:
    My brother built a house there in 1971 - he just sold it earlier this year. Hope you weren't banging my niece.

    Is she named Jill? If so, it was her friend that I banged.

    No, but I'll ask if she had a friend named Jill.

    lulz

    • Like 1
  11. 10 hours ago, PencilPusher said:

    Balcones Country Club.......my old neighborhood area. And stuff like that never happened in that neighborhood..........😁

    My brother built a house there in 1971 - he just sold it earlier this year. Hope you weren't banging my niece.

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