1982

This shot was taken in my backyard in Austin, 1982 I think. Maybe 1983. Maybe 1981.



I'm not entirely sure what's going on here. My backyard was really big and full of strange stuff. I shared the yard with 3 other houses all built on the same huge lot, something that was not uncommon in the old parts of town. There had been a 4th house but it had burned down.

The kid with the spikey hair is Richard Mathers, soon-to-be-known as "Crowbar" after a group of rednecks chased him and his friends out of a fast-food joint and then attacked them in the parking lot of another -- a Shakey's Pizza, I think it was. Richard got smashed over the head with a crowbar. He ended up in the hospital for a month or so. He had to learn how to talk again.

The cops didn't press charges against the rednecks. They concluded the attack was justifiable, provoked merely by the victims' appearances. To be a punk in Texas in those days, even in a liberal town like Austin, was to invite tacitly sanctioned assault, sometimes of the nearly murderous variety.

Richard appeared to make a full recovery but I'm told about 8 years later he started to suffer from weird fits of violent rage in which he'd go completely berserk. Apparently these fits became so frequent and were so bad that eventually he became pretty much incapable of social interaction.