DANNY YOUNG

'Mayor of South Austin' Danny Young dies at 67

By Michael Corcoran
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Friday, August 22, 2008

"Just be nice" were the words painted at the entrance of the Texicalli Grille, the poster-plastered East Oltorf Street hangout where folks went as much to soak in Old Austin charm as for the tasty Texas cheesesteaks. With an Olympic personality, founder Danny Roy Young turned that simple front door request into an art form.

Dubbed the "Mayor of South Austin" during a fight over widening South Lamar Boulevard, Young was known for his community activism and a gregarious nature that permeated the 78704 ZIP code. He was famed for his ability to make someone's day with a hug, a handshake, encouraging words or a big, bright-eyed laugh.

Young, who also played rub board with Cornell Hurd and Ponty Bone, died of a heart attack Wednesday at South Austin Hospital. He was 67.

"What irony because Danny was all heart," U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Austin said in a statement Thursday. "He played a mean washboard and served a great chicken fried steak along with political advice on everything happening in South Austin. ... No doubt St. Peter greeted him with an original formula Dr Pepper." Young was known to drive all the way to Dublin, Texas, where they still make Dr Pepper with cane sugar, to stock up on his favorite drink.

Musician Ray Wylie Hubbard said that whenever he hosted newcomers to town, the first place he'd take them was the Texicalli Grille. "We'd walk in and Danny would just light up the place," Hubbard said. "He'd sit right down with us and talk about music or whatever, then go back to his business, and I'd say (to his guests), 'Now this is Austin.' "

Young was a big-hearted holdover from the days when sprawling conversations about music and baseball and local politics were considered time well spent, when personal connections meant more than business connections.

After retiring in 2006 and selling Texicalli Grille (which has been closed for about a year), Young took a part-time job as a driver for Enterprise Rent-a-Car. He was found Wednesday in a car in the back lot of Enterprise at 4210 S. Congress Ave., ashen and having difficulty breathing; co-workers called for an ambulance. He went into cardiac arrest in the South Austin Hospital emergency room, said his sister Dawne Young. The time of death was 4:42 p.m.

Writer John Morthland, who often took road trips with fellow baseball fanatic Young to Arlington and Houston to watch Major League games, called Texicalli "a refuge (where) you could walk in feeling bad and you'd always leave feeling good. Or you could walk in feeling good and you'd leave feeling great. That was Danny's power."

Born in Defiance, Ohio, where he idolized Cleveland Indians pitcher Bob Feller, Young moved with his family to Kingsville at age 10.

His father, Roy, was an auto mechanic and his mother, Margo, ran a root beer stand that evolved into a pizza parlor that's still operating in Kingsville.

After serving in the Coast Guard, Young and his wife, Lu, moved to Austin in 1975 with their young son and daughter, and opened the first location of Texicalli Grille (the signature Texicalli sandwich was named after Gene Autry's "Mexicali Rose") on South Lamar Boulevard.

He became known as the unofficial mayor of South Austin in the mid-1980s, when the city planned to widen South Lamar Boulevard and put in a continuous median, to make it more of a thoroughfare. Fearing how the expansion would change the neighborhood, Young organized other business owners, who gathered petitions, took their concerns to City Hall and eventually got the expansion project dropped.

"In South Austin, we do things the way we want, and we hope you like it," Young told former American-Statesman columnist Don McLeese in 1996. "But if you don't, we'll do it anyway."

A passionate music fan who was as well-versed in conjunto and zydeco as he was with the honky-tonk he played for more than 10 years in Hurd's band, Young set the trend for nonsanctioned South by Southwest Music Festival events by hosting such legends as Johnny Bush and Doug Sahm at Texicalli on the Saturday of the fest.

But unlike other adversarial "pirate" showcases, Young respected what SXSW did and would often surprise the late-working staff by delivering sandwiches to SXSW headquarters.

Young often tooled around town in Big Lu-Lu, a 1954 Chevy station wagon, waving at friends as if he were a campaigning politician. But Young's friendliness was without agenda, his friends say.

"When he asked you 'What's going on?' he'd really listen to what you had to say," Hubbard said. Like the late Clifford Antone, his brother in service to others, Young made time for everyone.

Brad Reed, the longtime former Jovita's booker, credits Young and Hurd for putting Jovita's on the map. "When they started (in the mid-1990s), there were sometimes more people on the stage than in the audience," Reed recalled. "But with Danny's word-of-mouth, they built the crowd up. His friends would all come, sometimes from other countries."

But Young was that rare musician seemingly without an ego. If another rub board player showed up and wanted to jam, Young would relinquish his "stomach Steinway," even in front of a capacity crowd, and cheer on his unscheduled replacement.

"I've never seen someone willing to give up the spotlight like that," Reed said.

His presence was so tied to Texicalli, part of the deal to sell the eatery in 2006 was that Young would still greet customers. The restaurant, which transformed an abandoned Taco Bell into a bastion of Old Austin charm in 1989, closed in July 2007 because of rising rents.

On Wednesday, a mighty whiff of that Old Austin spirit disappeared. When performing on stage with his metal washboard, Young kept the rhythm wearing leather gloves with Mercury dimes glued to the fingertips. But it was the pulse of Young's personality, his love of life and music and conversation, that once gave 78704 its beat.

Young is survived by his mother Margo, wife Lu, son Scott and daughter Holli Hegefeld, three sisters and a brother, plus three granddaughters. Funeral services will be at 3 p.m. Tuesday at the First United Methodist Church at 12th and Lavaca streets.

A reception will follow at Antone's, 213 W. Fifth St.

mcorcoran@statesman.com; 445-3652