Goodbye to the Drum: Erwin Center Memories

I grew up in Austin and the Erwin Center was a fixture throughout my life. Though I have terrific memories of state high school basketball title games, Lance Blanks/Travis Mays/Joey Wright, TJ Ford, and Kevin Durant, for me the Drum was much more than just Texas sports.

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I’m experiencing nostalgia for the concerts, the events, the old school University class registrations before computers.

Built as a multi-purpose event center in 1977, The Drum, now seen as a dated 1970’s attempt at modern architecture, might as well have been a spaceship accompanying the release of that new Star Wars movie people were buzzing about. Austin was on the rise and here was the big city proof.

Mind you, while Austin was cool back then, it didn’t posture much about it. The best way I can describe the old Austin versus new is that the old Austin was not ironic. If someone wore a t-shirt that said Atari on it, it was because they liked Atari. And they hoped if you liked Atari, you would talk to them about Atari. Because of the t-shirt. Weird wasn’t a studied posture meant to draw attention. People were just weird and the non-weird were tolerant.

We were also simpler folk. One of the small joys of my childhood was riding the floor to ceiling glass elevators at the Hyatt. I lost sleep the eve before seeing Ralph the Swimming Pig at Aquarena Springs.

Yes, you read that right. THEY HAD A HONEST TO GOODNESS DIVING PIG, PEOPLE. LIKE TWENTY FEET. RIGHT UNDER THE GLASS BOTTOM BOAT.

Back to the Drum…

Sweet Georgia Brown

I can only dimly recall Texas basketball under Abe Lemons and the thrill of the new arena, but old hands will tell you that there was a brief magical window – between an improbable NIT title run and Mike Wacker’s knee injury – where there wasn’t a more exciting or coveted ticket in town.

But I don’t really remember it. My first memory of the Erwin Center was the Harlem Globetrotters. That was my golden ticket.

They’re still doing their thing today, but back then the Globetrotters were a big deal, featured on prime ABC Wide World of Sports telecasts with Howard Cosell doing color commentary. They had a Saturday morning cartoon and they were on the Love Boat. Only the biggest stars (for example, Potsy from Happy Days or Jan Michael Vincent from Airwolf) were on the Love Boat. In my mind, only the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders were more coveted guests.

I saw the Globetrotters that featured Geese Ausbie and Curly Neal. They gleefully terrorized the officials and the poor Washington Generals, chased kids with water buckets actually filled with confetti, made amazing mind-bending shots, got little kids to dance to Kool N The Gang at half court, returned children to the wrong parents, and ran their age old vaudevillian shtick that was part Jewish Catskills and part Harlem “dozens.” I think they taught me my first “Your mama” joke. I loved the Globetrotters. To my young brain, these were the funniest, most interesting men who had ever lived.

I have a distinct memory of Curly Neal during warm ups shooting half court hook shots that kept rimming out. Each time he’d build it up as if he needed the crowd’s support to make it happen, and then the crowd would lament with a collective “Aaaaahhhh” as he missed. As the whistle blew to start the “game”, he took one last seemingly disinterested half court shot without even looking at the basket while walking away…..swish. Nothing but net. Curly played us.

The Drum was the magical venue that made it happen. I always anticipated the Erwin Center’s touring dates sign on I-35 that would announce that the Globetrotters were coming, leading to a riot of excitement in my Mom’s Buick Park Avenue.

Mr. Perfect

15 years old. Free testosterone run amok. Mayhem. High school drama. Girls. Fight clubs in my friend’s garage.

WWF wrestling!

I went with my fellow idiot football friends with the money I’d saved mowing summer lawns. We decided that we’d pull for the heels (except the anti-American ones – even we had limits), as it was hilarious to do and inciting to the crowd around us. I won’t say that all wrestling fans are marks, but back in the late 80’s and early 90’s it wasn’t particularly clear to a portion of them that it was all fake. I’m not talking about the kids either. We all wore Mr. Perfect t-shirts and got into repeated dust ups with the adults around us who were wearing Hulk Hogan gear. Security would break up all of our fracases – no one got kicked out, different times – but I distinctly remember a 40 year old man in glasses passionately trying to reason with my crew of high school sophomores that we should support the Hulkster and the forces of good as Mr. Perfect represented narcissistic evil. We sneered at him and predicted that Hulk would probably die in a Perfect-Plex and that we would cheer his last breath. He was visibly shaken by our heelery and wept for our lost generation.

That title match was preceded by the ultimate tag team force of nature: The Road Warriors, who went through their opponents like pit bulls through a field of squeaky toys. The juice we got from hearing the Black Sabbath intro and the subsequent emergence of two mutant steroid-addled life forms who proceeded to feed their opponents the turnbuckle and several collapsing tables in incredibly violent fashion is hard to communicate. We also saw Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, who dispatched his opponent with a top rope coup de grace that saw him suspended in the air for what seemed an eternity.

Then the main event. Predictably, Mr. Perfect beat Hulk Hogan’s *** for several minutes until Hulk channeled the energy of the crowd and children everywhere taking their vitamins and saying their prayers to reverse the unbeatable Perfect-Plex (no one can reverse the Perfect-Plex! How did he do it?!) and Hulk rose from the canvas like a sweaty, hound dog’s red rocket despite Mr. Perfect’s now useless blows and utter disbelief at what he was witnessing. How? How, I ask you? Atomic Leg Drops ensued and Mr. Perfect was vanquished. As the Hulkster staggered around with his hands on his head in disbelief at what he’d overcome, we were rained in plastic cups, partially eaten corn dogs, and sodas for supporting Mr. Perfect. The waterfalls of soft drinks tasted like sweet nectar and we wore the plastic cups and mustard like they were our laurels. We walked out with our heads held high, heel role fulfilled.

The Erwin Center faces its own final count as a venue soon and I hope the memories were as sweet for all of you.