The Capitol Oyster Bar

You talk about getting off-track. Five years after graduating from the University of Texas, I was still doing blue-collar work. There were reasons for this sad state of affairs, but we need not go into them now. In the summer of 1981, I answered an ad in the Austin newspaper. Carol “Cookie” Kelly, manager of the Capitol Oyster Bar, hired me as one of the restaurant’s dishwashers.

The OB, as we sometimes called it, was located at 219 West 15th Street, less than half a mile from the Texas Capitol—the seventh largest building in the world when it was completed in 1888. It should be no surprise that many of our customers were state employees, even members of the House of Representatives and Senate. To my knowledge, the governor (Bill Clements and Mark White in the early 1980s) never dined at the Oyster Bar, although Austin mayor Carole McClellan once came prancing through. There were lots of politicos, lobbyists and lawyers; the State Bar of Texas was right next door.

The fact that I was a college grad doing restaurant work did not seem so strange after I met my co-workers. Cooks, bartenders, dishwashers, waiters and waitresses, and busboys, most of us were in our 20s. Some were UT students, and others were unapologetically living the “slacker” lifestyle. Austin was a good place to do that. As I recall, we got along quite well. Of the women who worked there, I had relationships of varying lengths and degrees of intensity with a Patricia, an Ann, a Joanie, a Rebecca, a Mary and a Kristin.

I washed dishes, which few people would call a glamorous job. Nevertheless, I took pride in the work I did as Cookie, owner Bud Bates and others saw. Things were often hectic for long stretches of time, and I did my part in making the restaurant go. After I had been there a few months, I was occasionally asked to work both the day and night shifts. That is, I worked from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., came back three hours later and worked until we closed around midnight. What I most remember is the huge mess that awaited me at 5 p.m.—dirty dishes, pots, pans and kitchen utensils stacked almost to the ceiling. I did not let this faze me. On the contrary, I took it as a challenge. Just as the Egyptian pyramids were not built in a day, this did not disappear immediately. But I went at it with vigor and a smile on my face, even as more stuff came into my little dishwashing room. Sure enough, order was eventually restored and the Oyster Bar kept humming.

I did whatever Cookie or Bud asked me to do, but most of the time I just looked for ways to help. I took big loads of trash to the dumpster, I swept the sidewalk on Lavaca and 15th streets, I cleaned grease from kitchen vents. I even did a little trimming of some bushes between the OB and the State Bar. Bud’s brother Rick, owner of Rico’s Italian restaurant on the other side of Lavaca, was enamored of the diligence with which I attacked my job and sometimes offered me a plate of lasagna or pasta. Delizioso, squisito, prelibato! (English translation: Delicious, exquisite, tasty!)

I stayed at the Capitol Oyster Bar for 18 months, bisected by my May 1982 trip to Seattle. By that time, I was back at UT, moving into a journalism career that probably should have begun earlier. I sometimes think about the people with whom I worked. There was Charlie from Chicago, who got in a little trouble with the law. There was Brian—the subject of an earlier article—who later became a doctor. There was Robin, a talented and creative woman with red hair. There was Sandy, a person of Irish descent who was immersed in the politics and culture of the Emerald Isle. Then there was Clay, to whom I had loaned my highly valued copy of The Politics of Ecstasy, signed by Timothy Leary. I never got it back because Clay was killed in a car accident in Colorado soon thereafter.