DMAGZ041987 — 014

were all better looking than the women. No scuffed boots, no work shirts, no frayed jeans pockets. These cowboys were groomed at Toni & Guy’s and outfitted at Stephenson Motors. Some of them could even dance, a little bit, but this wasn’t really the place. This was Confetti-on-the-Range, a veneer of western shellac dreamed up by a vice president of marketing in some boom town like Phoenix. I emptied my three complimentary Coors cups and left.

Belle Starr was different, as I knew it would be. The first time I heard of the place was in 1984, when a wide-eyed guitarist in Bandera, Texas, played for me his only composition-it was called “Yankees in Houston” and he had chart hopes-and then spoke fondly of the day he would be a big enough star to play at Belle Starr. Real bands play Belle Starr, the with-it contempo crossover new-sound wait-till-you-hear-this cowboy swinger kind of bands, the ones with names like Stallion and Mesa and Canyon and, this night’s whing-ding up-tempo country band, Southern Reign. You could hear the beat as soon as you stepped into the smoky, low-slung cavern where couples bunch around the dance floor so they can whip into two-steps and schottisches as soon as the first two bars sound danceable. Belle Starr’s famous mirrored saddle, forever turning, flashing sparks into the dark corners of the room, was the innovation of Ira Zack, the star-crossed owner who committed suicide last year, writing the latest tragic chapter in the long, sad history of the Longhorn Ballroom, the Industrial Boulevard landmark that had built up massive debts after he took over its lease. Although the managers have instituted standard Greenville Avenue-type come-ons, such as Bodybuilder Nights, a game in which stud cowboys ripped off their shirts and strutted around the dance floor for a hundred-dollar prize. Belle Starr is still mostly a place where true western music lovers go, usually in pairs, to dance themselves silly. Why, then, did I feel oddly out of place? Maybe it was the glitzy gift shop next to the entrance, where they sell studded and beaded belts and those pretty-boy hats. Maybe it was the valet parking. Maybe it was the sidewalk vendor selling Coney Island hot dogs outside the front door. Whatever it was, I felt this was a closed society-perhaps the married couples who used to hang out at the Longhorn, perhaps a club of back-to-lhe-ranch Dallas professionals. But it wasn’t quite the real thing.

So I headed for the Debonair.

The Debonair Danceland, sticking straight up in the air like the back side of an abandoned chest-of-drawers. looms as the principal landmark of the 1-30 redneck strip, once a proud main street of the best honky-tonks, motels, diners, and working-class bars the city had to offer. Like the Debonair, most of the strip is peeling and down-at-the-heels, victim of the decaying process that began when 1-30 construction knocked out half the Keller’s parking lot and routed traffic thirty feet off ground level. Today the strip is the place you go when you want to disappear, You can disappear into a pool-hall bar with a wood-paneled front. You can disappear into one of the four or five motels that ask no questions. You can disappear into a booth at Brownies, where they might let you sit for hours and drink coffee. Or. if you’re like most of the people who pour in from Pleasant Grove or Mesquite or Kaufman or Terrell, you can disappear into the mind-boggling huge small town of the Debonair.

The music starts at one in the afternoon for the “Crackpot Crowd,” women who put their man’s dinner on low heat and head for the dance floor. Stories of the sexual exploits of these women, hunting for quick thrills, are legion and mostly legendary (most of them settle for a little hugging and conversation), but the “regulars” at the place proudly boast of its licentiousness, ’if you can’t get laid at the Debonair,” their favorite saying goes, “you can’t get laid ” Interestingly enough, though, the ballroom has very little of the sexual tension you find at No Whar But Texas. Most people dance with dozens of partners on any given night- except for the truly expert dancing partners, who remain glued together like Siamese twins-and so most of the action is on the dance floor. Fight stories are legion, too, but most of those are “catfight” stories, about two women quarrelling over one man. They still understand western swing at the Debonair, although the quality of their bands lately has been pitiful, and it’s the first bar 1 think I’ve ever visited where women sometimes outnumber men. No dudes here, no frilly shirts, and the first sign of a true western bar-at least fifteen girls dancing alone, doing the Four Corners and the other dances designed for the foot-happy but partner-poor single woman. There’s no free beer till ten on a Thursday night, cither, because the Debonair starts thinning out at ten on a Thursday night. These are working people. They have to be up at 6:30 or else somebody’s liable to repossess their truck. It takes three or four visits to the Debonair to become a regular, but you’ll be accepted as soon as you take the trouble to say hi. With no pretense and no frills, with frayed carpet and creaky pool tables, the Debonair is a poor stepsister among the high-tech cowboy bars of the Eighties. But it still lacked the essential character I was looking for. It looked faded, like maybe once it had it but had forgotten what it was. I went back twice, hoping to catch it again, but somewhere along the way the Debonair had become a caricature of itself, the kind of place that would purposely add cigarette and beer stains simply to look more invitingly seedy.

And then I found the Top Rail.

The Top Rail Ballroom, built in 1935 ona lonely strip of pasture land between Dallasand Irving, is the oldest ballroom in Dallasbut doesn’t have any of the pizazz of, say, theLonghorn, where Bob Wills once made hishome, or Billy Bob’s, where the stars play.The Top Rail is almost too typical to be real.from the stark warehouse exterior to thecorral-railing dividers inside, to the vinyl-backed chairs and long, skinny bandstand.At the door you can hear the wail of a steelguitar (where did they all go?), and the clean,traditional sound of a group of guys calledthe Duane Medlin Band. (No girl singershere, and no electronics, just the standardvocal-and-strings swing band with the instinctive Bob Wills beat.) But, once inside,you’re in the world of a continual family reunion. Girls in shirttails dancing with theirsisters. Couples who have done the sametwo-step together for so long that they hardlymove at all from the waist up as they glidecounterclockwise in accordance with someinner gyroscope that keeps them on the onetrue path. Waitresses who stop and talk.Favorite house songs. And. oddest of all.many of the people here aren’t dressed inwestern clothes at all. They’re here, notbecause they want to be western, but becausethey are western. And that, finally, wassomething I could understand.