On the Road: The Hen Party

When last I wrote, we had just left Centerville, Texas, at around 3:30 in the afternoon on Saturday, June 5th, heading for Austin. We said our goodbyes to the Mercedes Benz gang, put on our baseball caps and rumbled out of the parking lot, convertible top down, (you gotta try to look cool), and the air-conditioner on (gotta try to get cool). Jim was falling asleep at the wheel in the hot sun, so we stopped, put up the top, and traded places. I managed to get behind every dawdling farmer or rancher with a pickup truck for the next hundred miles, turning a two-hour drive into three.

On Sunday, Robert and his girlfriend, Sarah, drove with us to Dripping Springs, a town about 25 miles southwest of Austin. That area of Texas Hill Country is home to several wineries, and we were headed to the Driftwood Winery tasting room. I had read that the owner, Gary Elliott, had been hired to fly for Continental Airlines some years back, and Jim was hoping to talk with him. He found Mr. Elliott hard at work installing a fan in his new pavilion. According to Elliott: “If you’re thinking of throwing everything away to go into the wine business—don’t.”

After sampling half-a-dozen wines in the tasting room, we each bought a glass of our favorite and then wandered out to a ledge overlooking the vineyards and a field of sheep grazing far below. There we found tables and chairs scattered under the trees where we could sit in the shade for a while, sip our wines, and enjoy the pastoral view.

The Anniversary Party.

Next it was a dash back to Austin so I could check off Number Four on the Texas Monthly "Bucket List: Play Chicken Shit Bingo at Ginny's Little Longhorn Saloon." Ginny’s was NOT one of those trendy, downtown Austin Sixth Street destinations. It wasn’t even downtown. The building looked rather like a little old country church plopped down in the middle of an industrial strip of Burnet Road on Austin’s north side.

Just inside the door was an empty chicken-wire cage sitting on a platform; the floor of the coop was covered in numbered squares. The place was packed. At the front of the bar a band played loud country western music, and judging by the bobbing heads a couple feet from the band, it appeared that people were dancing. Jim estimated that there were easily 200 people inside the tiny bar. We ordered some Lone Stars and huddled at the back of the place, a few feet from the cage.

The Texas Monthly “Bucket List” article had suggested that the place gets busy, so get there early to play bingo. Who knew that Sunday, June 6, 2010 was the 10-year anniversary of the Chicken Shit Bingo tradition?

How They “Doo” It.

When it’s time to start, everyone who wants to play lines up, pays $2.00, and gets a ticket with one of the numbers that’s printed on the floor of the chicken coop. Sissy, the hen, is delivered to the coop and fed a combination of chicken feed and dried bread. When Sissy stops and drops on a square, the ticket holder with that number wins the $114 purse. Because it was the 10th anniversary, the purse was doubled—and so was the crowd.

The Honky-Tonk Sauna.

The band welcomed everyone to their little “honky-tonk sauna” and announced the game would start at five o’clock. The place was stifling hot, there was hardly any room to move, and people were still coming in. At last we were told to line up if we wanted to play bingo, and a chicken appeared in the coop. There were so many people by then that I didn’t even see the owner arrive with the hen just a few feet away from us. Robert got in line for me, and I sat down in a suddenly empty chair next to a pretty blonde lady at a nearby table. I told her about my blog and that I was working my way through the bucket list from Texas Monthly.

“Oh,” she shouted over the noisy crowd. “You’re working on a bucket list?”

“Yes,” I shouted back. A few moments later, Robert returned with my two dollars.

“The tickets are all sold out,” he said, handing me my money. “Sorry, Mom!”

People are good.

The blond lady’s husband returned to the table with their two tickets, waving them proudly, and I gave him back his chair. A moment later, she was holding her tickets up before me shouting, “Pick one!” When I questioned why, she repeated that I should pick one and her husband agreed. I rationalized that I couldn’t check off number four on the bucket list if I didn’t play, so I said thanks and picked the ticket with number thirty-one on it. People were gathered around the coop, yelling and cheering, and cameras were flashing. Sissy, the hen, was on the move.

The couple was so nice to me. They made sure I could see the chicken and told me where she was strutting and what number she was pausing over. They even offered me one of their chairs. Suddenly it occurred to me: “They think I’m dying! They think I’m working on my own bucket list.” I kept wondering what would happen if number thirty-one was the winner.

When the hen finally dropped the doody, (on someone else’s number), I asked the nice couple if I could keep the ticket.

“Of course!” they both answered. About then they ordered another round of beers and I pressed a twenty into the woman’s hand.

“This is for your beers; enjoy!” I said. I thanked them for their kindness, and Robert, Sarah, Jim and I hurried back out into the sunlight and headed off for dinner.

Faith in our fellow humans can be confirmed in the most unusual places!

Donna