Desolation row and South Texas

[Thomas]

Originally Posted by Mark from Plano

I spent a month in Victoria one week. (...)

 

[rnoldh]

Originally Posted by Mark from Plano

I spent a month in Victoria one week. I agree with your description. I didn't see the beautiful women, but then I was married and couldn't have done anything about it if I had.



Billy Gibbons, right?

ZZ Top was the first concert I went to. Aged 14 in about 1975 at the Myriad Convention Center in OKC. A couple of memories came out of that one.


Yeah, it's Billy G.

he's really a great guy for a rock star'

I know Dusty too, but strangely enough I have never met Frank Beard (the one without the beard!).

I've known them since 1969! When you saw them in 1975, were they already zztop? When they started in the late 1960s they were a rock band called "American Something", and they had Blue Hair.

Dusty's brother Rocky Hill is quite a good blues man on his own and I'm closest to him. He married a girl I went out with in 1969!

What memories! Amazingly, I missed the Chicken Ranch ( a whole lotta training went on there) but I sure do remember Marvin Zindler and Sheriff Jim.

Heck, as far as I know Billy nor Dusty never visited the Balinese room, but they sure captured it's essence.

The Balinese as presented by the Boys.

 

[antirabbit]

When ever I drive in North West Indiana, I am overwhelmed with the desolation there.
Oddly, most of the land was at one time so amazingly beautiful.
Take the town of Gary, it is dead, I mean really dead.
You then go to the outskirt towns or burbs of Gary and you will see nothing but decay.

When I was in my early teens, my best friends parents built a summer home in Birch Bay WA, very close to the Cherry Point refinery.
We would spend our summers finding the deserted houses in the country side.
Often you would come on a farm where it seemed as though the people that lived there disappeared right at dinner.
Although the homes had suffered 30+ years of uninhabitence, you could still find their personal documents, clothing, jars of food, television sets, furniture.
Often it was ruined by holes in the roofs, but eerie none the less.
We would head to the out buildings, where there were still animal feeds in bags, and implements to farm with seemingly ready to work, but abandoned.

One time, we came upon a very strange outbuilding in a rather remote area of a remote farm (when we were 16), and we opened it and found tons of animal carcasses and other evidence of some kind of cult activity.
That spelled the end of our abandoned house expidetitons.

 

[rnoldh]

End result of the trip:

It wasn't that desolate

 

[truth4justice]

The person in the picture, Patrick Robinson, is the brother of the person who murdered my uncle, Tommy Bauer, in Victoria Texas, on October 9th, 1976. His brothers name was Hampton (Hamp) Robinson, the biggest lowlife, druggie, scumbag of the earth that ever lived!! Yeah, I can understand the term "desolation row" and how it pertains to that branch of the Robinson/Welder family!!

 

[truth4justice]

Hamp Robinson murdered my uncle Tommy Bauer in 1976. Yeah, they were druggies and murderers! Could very well write a book about them! The sad part is I am related to the Robinson/Welder branch of the family. Which means, YES, Hamp shot and killed a man, Tommy Bauer, my uncle, who was kin to him. But hell, Hamp murdered his own best man in his wedding in missouri city, so to Hamp Robinson, in his drug-addled mind, nothing was sacred!! A very sad, messed up family who had a horrible father and a mentally ill mother, Patricia Welder. Sad!!! Can't turn back the clock and bring my uncle back though!!! We still miss him!!

 

[rnoldh]

Hamp Robinson murdered my uncle Tommy Bauer in 1976. Yeah, they were druggies and murderers! Could very well write a book about them! The sad part is I am related to the Robinson/Welder branch of the family. Which means, YES, Hamp shot and killed a man, Tommy Bauer, my uncle, who was kin to him. But hell, Hamp murdered his own best man in his wedding in missouri city, so to Hamp Robinson, in his drug-addled mind, nothing was sacred!! A very sad, messed up family who had a horrible father and a mentally ill mother, Patricia Welder. Sad!!! Can't turn back the clock and bring my uncle back though!!! We still miss him!!


Damn, the internet is amazing! You must be from Victoria or familiar with South Texas. And somehow you saw this thread.

I knew Patrick very well and I was with Hamp ( and later his little brother Justin ) at his deathbed in the hospital, though I only knew Hamp through Patrick and by reputation.

Did you ever meet Hamp's buddy Charles Harrelson?

There could have definitely been a "Blood and Money" type book about the Robinson saga but none of them would have wanted that.

BTW: The "Doc" and his last wife Louise died a few years ago but there are still a few members of the family left.

 

[jr89]

Hi,

I'm curious to know more about the Welder/Robinson family, I'm part of it but only know a handful of the many stories and was curious to hear more.