Stirring It Up with Molly Ivins (37 page)

Marg Elliston, Molly's high school chum and fellow Salmonette, might have merited mention in
Burnt Offerings
had the book materialized. She has her own smoky story.

“I was visiting Molly in New York sometime in 1980 or '81, after our trip on the Salmon River,” Marg said. “Molly planned a dinner party for me and some of our river-trip buddies, including Ellen [Fleysher]. At the time Molly was really into a book about cooking with the seasons. She planned some sort of elegant and seasonal lamb stew. My assignment was to put the stew in the oven and have it bake while Molly went to her job at the
Times
.

“Something happened with me and her oven, and the stew ended up broiling and charring instead. I was mortified, but at Molly's suggestion we went to Zabar's for replacements. That fine New York City institution of epicurean delights, on Manhattan's Upper West Side at the northwest corner of Broadway and 80th Street, boasts foods from around the world in addition to an impressive cookware collection. The trip to the store's opulent delicatessen was quite an experience for someone from the boonies of Albuquerque. The resulting banquet was wonderful, with lots of laughter, good wine, and not-quite-so-seasonal food.”

And yes, it was Marg Elliston who invited Molly to the Corrales community chicken slaughter, a tradition of ambiguous provenance. Oh, please. You're only allowed to recoil in horror if you've never eaten fried chicken.

Corrales is a hamlet in New Mexico situated on the Rio Grande between Albuquerque and Rio Rancho. Anyway, the Corrales chicken slaughter, regionally referred to as the “gang pluck,” almost—but not quite—made it into one of Molly's news reports during her time as chief of the
Times
's Rocky Mountain bureau.

Editors, weary of Molly's epigrammatic insouciance, hauled her before the big guys in an attempt to rein her in, but by then both Molly and the
Times
realized the Old Grey Lady was too dull for the Ivins way with words (although a senior
New York Times
editor is said to have had a wonderful time at one of Molly's parties at which a guest emerged from Molly's bedroom after dinner, dressed as, um, a female personal care product. Okay—a dancing tampon).

Rather than leave you with an image of dead, headless chickens, I encourage you to savor this instead: when Molly celebrated Hanukkah with Marg, frying latkes was not going too well. Ivins to the rescue, passing on a recipe that had been passed on to her, which Marg now passes on to y'all, as Molly might say in one of her all-Texas, most-of-the-time moments.

35

SINCE WE LIVE IN A LUDICROUSLY LITIGIOUS SOCIETY
, names will be omitted here, but two sources have verified the event attended by a
New York Times
editor, hereafter known as NYTED. So since there are differing memories of which
New York Times
editor was present, I'll just skip the name and tell the story. In Texas only the story and the telling of it matter. Story first, details later. What is not at issue is that the event did indeed transpire. Time, scotch, bourbon, beer, and wine have a way of clouding details. So here's what can be agreed upon:

One evening Molly and several friends attended a dinner party for NYTED, who was doing a grand-rounds tour for his newly released book. It is not clear whether he asked Molly to make introductions for him or she offered—by that time Molly was long past holding a grudge against the
Times
for firing her. After all, she had become successful beyond her wildest dreams. Probably theirs too, but never mind.

Molly consulted Ann Richards about organizing a dinner for NYTED that would be an authentic Austin social gathering. She wanted him to meet “true” Austinites. Ann, who was still married to Dave Richards at the time, had just been elected a Travis County commissioner.

“We decided we should invite Jap Cartwright, Bud Shrake, and Mike and Sue Sharlot,” Dave Richards said. “He was dean of the UT law school and she was just plain cool. They were Jewish and had grown up in New York, so we figured we'd have a nice balance.”

A bit of background is called for here. Shrake, Dave Richards, and Cart-wright were part of Mad Dog, a mostly male group of writers, musicians, artists, and sundry rebellious types who lived and worked in Austin in the '60s and '70s. Its unofficial anthem was Jerry Jeff Walker's interpretation of Ray Wylie Hubbard's “Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother.” Membership in this exclusive oddball organization included Willie Nelson, actors Dennis Hopper and Peter Boyle, sculptor Fletcher Boone, and Dave Richards, whose wife managed to get elected governor in spite of it all.

Mad Dog actually became an incorporated entity, with a start-up “investment” from Shrake. Mad Dog's corporate divisions included Mad Doggeral Vanity Press, the Institute for Augmented Reality, the All-Night General Store, the Mad Dog Foundation for Depressed Greyhounds, and the Freak Nursery. Cartwright and Shrake, an Austin literary lion who died in 2009, were cofounders.

Back to the dinner.

According to Dave Richards's recollection of NYTED's dinner party, Shrake and Cartwright arrived, having clearly been doing a lot of something illegal, and they were absolutely off the wall. At some point, Dave, who stands six foot three, ended up wearing a big purple Afro wig.

“Then Shrake put it on and Jap starts treating Shrake like he's Dr. J, the basketball player,” Dave said. “Jap holds up a big spoon to Bud like it's a microphone and NYTED jumps in, also pretending to hold a microphone and says, ‘So, Dr. J, what can I do to be like you?' and without missing a beat, Shrake says, ‘Learn to jump, white boy!' NYTED was really getting into it. It was the funniest damn thing, this buttoned-down
New York Times
editor being part of this craziness.

“By now things are getting completely out of control, and—I can't remember who was wearing it now—but somebody emerged wearing a costume that was a giant tampon. It was an evening beyond all measure. A couple of years later, I swear, he wrote an op-ed column in the
Times
about how people with imagination can have a great time without spending a lot of money. He even alluded to the possibility that recreational drug use might have played a part in the success of the evening.”

There were, of course, a number of more sedate Molly meals: simple, elegant, and skillfully assembled. A simple lunch of salad, a baguette, and carrot soup could be more than just satisfactory. Just ask Juli Bunting and Marie
McCaffrey. Juli formerly worked in radio news and Marie was the widow of Seattle's Walt Crowley—a Democrat activist and the cofounder of HistoryLink.org. The two women came to Austin to join the Mouton Hunt.

The provenance for this particular event resides in Kaye Northcott's well-stocked memory bank. It is a curious moniker for a gathering with even curiouser beginnings; it came into being almost forty years ago as a diversion for wives of journalists whose husbands were off gallivanting with lobbyists who wined and dined them on hunting and fishing expeditions.

Over time the gathering came to include only a handful of female reporters. Molly and Kaye were early participants as the only female Capitol reporters. As more women infiltrated the Capitol Press Corps, the group morphed into an informal gathering of women reporters who assembled at Gumbert's Ranch near Wimberley, Texas. This testosterone-free zone had no purpose other than conversation and camaraderie.

The Hunt began in the early '70s as Wives Weekend. Former huntresses still remember the weekend a husband was so overwhelmed with the burdens of child care for two whole days that he brought the kids to the retreat—and never lived it down.

Gradually the group expanded to include new young reporters around the state. One evening, conversation turned to who had done what before going off to college. It transpired that the group included a Guinness World Record hula hoop performer, a national junior twirling champion, and a former governor of Girls State.

At some point talk shifted to clothes and what participants had worn as adolescents. When Kaye, who stands barely five feet tall and weighs in at maybe 120 pounds soaking wet, said she never had a mouton coat because they didn't come in her size, reporter Jackie Calmes, now a congressional reporter for the
New York Times
, asked what a mouton was. Older retreaters were able to fill her in on the luxuriant shaved sheep coats that were all the rage in the '40s and '50s.

Kaye continued: “Those of us who still had them or who could find them at garage or estate sales would wear them every year. People in the Cypress Creek Cafe in Wimberley probably muttered to each other as we ambled in, ‘Who are the broads in the tatty furs?' For the most part we dined in Wimberley or just snacked on an amazing variety of unhealthy food and, of course, beer. I mainly remember Molly for her cases of beer. She never cooked anything remarkable at the Mouton Hunt. She was too busy drinking and talking.”

The annual Mouton Hunt continued until women became an increasing presence in both the legislature and the media. Only on the last few retreats did the group go gourmet, when one of the members, Saralee Tiede, orchestrated a great paella supper. Appetizers featured smoked salmon that Juli brought from Seattle. In fact, it was Juli's husband, Ken Bunting, former senior editor at the
Star-Telegram
, who hired Molly to write for his publication.

Before its unfortunate demise, Molly's previous employer, the
Dallas Times Herald
, gave Molly free rein to write. One of her more memorable political characterizations focused on ultraconservative US representative James Collins (R-Dallas), who suggested that the energy crisis could be avoided if the nation didn't spend so much money on gasoline for school busing. Molly's response included a suspicion that “if his IQ slips any lower we'll have to water him twice a day.” The notion that his intellectual capabilities might be found somewhere between asparagus and zinnias provoked a storm of protests from Collins supporters, one of whom plaintively asked, “Molly Ivins can't say that, can she?” It was the perfect title for a compilation of her columns, which eventually spent twenty-nine weeks on the
New York Times
's best-seller list.