Stirring It Up with Molly Ivins (13 page)

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OVER THE YEARS MOLLY REALIZED
she needed help managing her schedule, which, with the success of her first book, became ridiculously demanding. Riding to her rescue was a series of steady assistants. One was Nadine Eckhardt, to this day a bit of an Austin legend.

Think steel magnolia wrapped in C4. Or just let her tell it, which she pretty much does in her book,
The Duchess of Palms
. The title is taken from her reign as a high school beauty queen. She married Billy Lee Brammer, a talented but troubled soul who died of a drug overdose and with whom she had three children, Sidney, Shelby, and Willie. Brammer was best known for
The Gay Place
, a trilogy that has been described as one of the great political novels of all time.

Nadine then married Texas congressman Bob Eckhardt, with whom she had a daughter, Sarah, a lawyer who sits on the Travis County Commissioners Court. Bob, a labor lawyer who died in 2001, was another one of those hard-driving, hard-drinking, larger-than-life Texas mavericks Molly gravitated toward. A seven-term representative from Houston, he was known as a staunch proponent of civil liberties in general and civil rights in particular. Molly spoke at his funeral.

Nadine met Molly when Molly and Kaye Northcott were coediting the
Observer
. During periodic visits to the nation's capital, the two of them would drop into Bob's office, where the women would embark on an old-fashioned gabfest. Nadine would regale Molly and Kaye with the gossip that was currently circulating in the nation's capital, and in return Nadine would get the latest 4-1-1 from Austin. She eventually took over from Liz Faulk and was Molly's “mail mistress,” as she called herself, from 1992 to 2002. Her principal duties consisted of
opening, sorting, and assigning letters according to the columns they responded to, and holding her nose when the semiliterate vitriol rolled in.

The granddaughter of a farmer and a child of the Depression, Nadine Eckhardt came from a family that milked its own cows, made its own cheese and butter, and in general lived off the land. The Depression drove the family from Oklahoma to the Rio Grande Valley, where she grew up in an extended family of nine.

In the early 1980s, after two marriages and four children, she and her son, Willie, invested her life savings of $60,000 and opened a Sixth Street storefront restaurant in East Austin that promptly attracted Austin's political, creative, and intellectual renegades. Its booths and mismatched tables and chairs seated about thirty-five.

The eatery attracted a predominantly left-of-center clientele (and those who were just hungry and wanted a good, cheap meal). Because it was not a popular destination for most well-heeled white folks, the lefties had it pretty much to themselves. There was a food distributor down the street, so there were no transportation costs, and Eckhardt's hardscrabble upbringing kept her focused on fresh foods and away from processed stuff.

Nadine's was open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday. A mimeographed menu on plain white paper offered a limited menu that featured a $2.50 bowl of Nadine's beans—pintos with ground chuck, tomatoes, onions, celery, and chiles—with cornbread; your choice of a BLT or chicken sandwich for $3.25 or a club sandwich for $4.25; a pan-broiled fish and two sides for $6.50; or a veggie plate at 95 cents a pop. Beer was $1.25 and wine was $1.75.

Austin painter and sculptor Malou Flato had a salad named for her because it was all she ever ate. She's married to author and former
Newsweek
senior editor John Taliaferro, who also was a senior editor at
Texas Monthly
and was the founder of
Third Coast
. Malou's studio was on the East Side. She became a regular.

“Originally it was called ‘Missy's Salad,' named for Willie's girlfriend at the time,” she says. “Then they broke up and Missy left. Nadine was trying to think of a new name for it so I said, ‘Since I'm here all the time and this is all I eat, why not call it Malou's Salad?' And she did.”

Sure enough, an old yellowed mimeograph sheet lists “Melissa's Salad,” with green leaf lettuce, cabbage, carrots, Jack cheese, avocado, and chicken. For $3.95. A later, spiffier version of the menu lists “Malou's Salad” at $4.95. A bowl of Nadine's beans is $3.50 on the newer menu and the sandwich board had a vegetarian addition: a $3 avocado number with cheese and a homemade salsa.

“I tried to keep prices affordable and produce fresh,” Nadine said. “It helped to have a food distributor down the street. I would just walk down, see what was fresh, and buy it. Sometimes we got the same fish and meat much fancier restaurants got, but they didn't have to deliver to me; Willie and I would go get it ourselves.”

Guests sometimes bussed the tables, and the restaurant was cooled by a window unit. Decor came courtesy of deliberately spray-painted walls. Nobody was going to confuse this joint with Jeffrey's.

Nadine's staff consisted of Willie in the kitchen, with Nadine between the kitchen and meet 'n' greets. Ann Richards, who would go on to be governor, ate at Nadine's, as did workmen, politicians, lawyers, lobbyists, and their secretaries. Deals were struck; gossip was shared. Friends contributed recipes. Molly provided a recipe for garlic potatoes and spinach that became a restaurant favorite.

Malou Flato had a smile in her voice as she remembered her “salad” days, only with her it's a literal recollection. “What's really funny is for years after Nadine's was gone I'd run into people and when I'd tell them my name they'd say, ‘Are you the one that salad was named for?!'”