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	Dry Creek Mount Bonnell Road (512) 453-9244

Dry Creek

By Moira Muldoon
Special to the American-Statesman
Thursday, March 14, 2002

Bring back your empties. No, really, I'm not kidding, bring your empty beer bottles back to the bar.

At least a half-a-dozen people told me that when I announced I was going to Dry Creek Cafe. And easily that many have written in and told me to check out this Mount Bonnell institution. And to bring back my empties. Otherwise, Sarah will yell at me.

Sarah is the owner of Dry Creek. I can't tell you what her last name is because she won't talk to writers. In fact, Raymond, who served me my bottle of beer and spoke for Sarah, told me that if I even so much as asked her about the bar, she'd yell at me. Apparently, Sarah does a lot of yelling.

Sarah smokes. A lot. She has been known to hold grudges for decades, and to remember favorite customers who return after decades-long absences. She's wizened. She's cranky. She's got the soul of an empress dowager. And she really doesn't give a flying flip what you think about her, the bar, or the smell in the bathroom. (Or so people say. Remember, she was going to yell at me if I talked to her.)

The bar itself is a cross between a huge ruined treehouse and the basement of your packrat grandmother's house if it was sublet by keg-happy college kids. Upstairs are broken chairs, waterlogged tables, graffiti, half-repaired walls, the remnants of what I think were speakers from the hard-drinking-Johnny-Cash era. People play dominoes on rickety tables, but never cards. (Cards, as one of the many forbidding signs will tell you, are strictly verboten.)

Downstairs is a vintage jukebox filled with Tammy Wynette and Conway Twitty 45s. Plus, a busted microwave sitting on a stool, an old Schlitz lamp, a pool table, stacks of junk and an air of desuetude. Wrappers from snack-size chip packets are folded and stacked. Quaker Oats and crackers are on top of the fridge. Beer is sold in bottles and only bottles, and a big ceramic-pig tip jar says Feed Me. Sarah sits at a table up front with Raymond, watching TV and smoking. Raymond smokes, watches TV, and discusses trucks with patrons. Koozies line the bar, waiting for the regulars who own them. This is not kitsch. Nothing about this place is kitsch. It's all honest-to-god and to blazes with what anyone thinks about it.

Dry Creek is the antithesis of its monied Mount Bonnell neighborhood, and yet the cell phone crowd turns out in droves. They, like many others, are drawn by the afternoon sun, the pleasure of sitting on a small deck with a cold beer. Rumor has it that the view of the river is great, but trees block it now; all you see is green. That's a huge part of the place's appeal, no doubt, as is the fact that this place was here before most of the people now living in Austin.

I loved the place myself. Sitting upstairs on the dilapidated deck at 6 o'clock on a Friday afternoon was as comfortable and relaxed as sitting on my front porch, except that the view was substantially more lush and beautiful than my neighbors' front yards. And it's so quiet. Granted, depending on the number of people there, you'll hear plenty of chatter, but there's no noise from the street, because Mount Bonnell Road is a sleepy, winding street.

There's something mythic about the way people speak of Sarah, and the fact that what you think of her rattletrap bar is a matter of supreme indifference to her. So many places work so hard at being cool or hip or alternative that it's tough not to feel a grudging respect for her attitude. Of course, I suspect some folks kowtow to Sarah (an empress dowager can be a scary thing, and heaven knows it's better to be in her favor than out of it), but others seem to hold real affection for her. I overhead a 40ish man introducing a friend of his from out of town to Sarah. He raised his voice slightly, as if she were hard of hearing (which she might well be), explained his friend was from the cold North and that he really wanted her to see Sarah's bar. His tone was deferential, warm, gentle, much as it might be with a crotchety aunt who had earned his affection simply by being a part of his life for so long. Or perhaps he just didn't want to get yelled at.

Contact Moira Muldoon at bargirl@covad.net

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