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	Ginny's Little Longhorn Saloon 5434 Burnet Road (512) 458-1813 Hours: 10 a.m.-midnight Mondays, 10 a.m.-2 a.m. Tuesdays-Saturdays, noon-9 p.m. Sundays.

Ginny's Little Longhorn Saloon

By Moira Muldoon
Special to the American-Statesman
Thursday, August 1, 2002

It's 9:30 in the morning. Do you know where your beer is? Seriously, if you ever have a hankering for a beer, some neighborly conversation and maybe a hunk of sausage early in the morning, the place you want is the Little Longhorn Saloon on Burnet Road.

Moira Muldoon

The Little Longhorn is more commonly known as Ginny's, because Ginny Kalmbach owns the bar; the sign on the building that says "Ginny's Little Longhorn Saloon" was a Christmas present from one of the regulars. Hints of Christmas are always present at Ginny's, with small white lights and bits of tinsel floating around, as if they'd gone up one Yuletide eve and just never come down.

Ginny's is small, very small -- I've seen efficiency apartments in San Francisco that were bigger. It's rundown. It's windowless and dark -- you lose all sense of time as soon as you step in. Ten in the morning? Maybe. Two in the afternoon? Sure. But it's not depressing. I've been in dark, beat-up bars where the regulars broke my heart and left me disconsolate. At Ginny's the regulars are just regular people, hanging out and passing the time of day, having a beer. It's the kind of place where the owner might fix some eggs at her house and bring them in for the early-morning customers. The kind of place where someone, a train engineer for example, will sit down next to you, introduce himself and offer to buy you a beer -- and you won't mind accepting. (Contrast that with a recent night at the Brown Bar, when a guy seriously commanded "Feel my bicep.") It's the kind of place where the bartender checks back with you frequently, because she's used to men who drink beer at a pace that's at least double, possibly triple, yours. The kind of place where someone will slide a Koozie down to you, unasked, because you're taking so unfathomably long with your beer that it's going to get warm. The kind of place where you, a girl who grew up in Texas, can't understand entire chunks of the conversation you're eavesdropping on because the guy talking sounds so much "King of the Hill's" Boomhauer. (Though you did manage to catch something about him going to Mexico City, just like the pope, and how he and the pope were therefore a veritable "song and dance team.") It's a place where you just might see a guy take a drag from a cigarette, a swig off his beer and a hit off his oxygen tank. In other words, it's a place with character.

Ginny's is also a serious honky-tonk. It's musician Dale Watson's home away from home; he plays there Sundays and Thursdays when he's in town -- and Ginny has been asked more than once if Dale is her son. He writes songs about the place, like "Turn on the Jukebox, Ginny," and his awards are displayed behind the bar, not far from the sign declaiming Ginny's rules, like "no cussin" and "no wresslin." There's music most nights, country usually, an occasional dash of Jerry Lee Lewis-style rock 'n' roll. And there's a jukebox, heavy with Merle and Patsy, that'll play seven songs for a dollar.

The Little Longhorn has been around for some 40 or 50 years. Before it was known as Ginny's, it was known simply as Dick's, because it's that kind of place. You drink beer when you go to Ginny's, partly because there's no whiskey, partly because it's the right thing to do. A Schlitz'll set you back only a buck and a quarter, a Lone Star two bucks. And best of all, it's almost always open. Sure, they may close down a little early on a slow night and the official opening hour might be only 10 a.m., but Ginny gets there early, will let you in, sit you down, talk to you about the news of the day -- and slide you a beer, if you're so inclined.

Contact Moira Muldoon at bargirl@covad.net

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