Why Is Austin a Party Town?

Because it always has been, as this blurb from several decades later explains, about the quality of life here in the Fall of 1840-Spring of 1841:

Times were too pregnant with excitement for grave pleasures such as stern sermons and political debates to take strong hold of the minds of the people, so the dancing master found favor instead of the philosopher. How could people sit often to listen to grave discourses when at every random shot of a gun their ears were on the alert for the cry of Indians. To be so situated as to have these quick vibrations of sound operate nervously on the brain predisposes the mind to seek relief in softer emotions of pleasures, but still one of excitement, consequently the dancing master found favor with the majority instead of the philosopher. Minds always on the alert will hardly calm themselves to a psychological condition suited to the solution of grave problems. So if a man deserved honor at the hands of the public, instead of dinners with a few invited guests, given with toasts and responses, filled with flashings of wit, or often heavy for the want of it, or gathering together to present a gold headed cane or a sword with ornamental hilt, given sometimes with speeches, filled with fulsome encomiums or grave with eruditions, the people – young and old – met and decorated the senate chamber and tendered him the honor of a ball.

Two necrophiliacs lying in bed, each one wishing that the other was dead.

Texas (Hempstead) Countryman

August 17, 1867

Horrible Outrage

D. Messer, keeper of a bar-room and boarding house about a block east of the 2nd ward market, died about 1 a.m. yesterday of Yellow Fever, and his wife died yesterday evening. Whilst the attendants were gone from the room in which the woman’s body was laid out, a man named Meyer, who was drunk, was caught, it is charged, committing an outrage which cannot be related. The report went out upon the street that such an outrage had been committed, and a crowd gathered and would have hung the drunken man from the nearest lamp-post had he not been arrested and carried to jail. He had been a friend of the deceased, and the policeman who saw him thought he was merely exhibiting his sorrow over the death of his friend. An examination will probably be had today, and the horrible charge substantiated or disproved. – Galveston News (Local)

Johnny Ringo Comes to Town

Austin Daily Statesman, May 3, 1881

Mr. John Ringo was in town early Sunday
morning and was passing his time down in a
house in the jungles. Along about 4 o’clock
he missed his purse, and stepping out in the
hall where some three or four of Austin’s
nice young men were seated, he came down
upon them with his little pistol and
commanded them to “up hands,” he quietly
searched the whole tea party. Not finding his
purse he smiled beamingly upon the young
men, and retired to his room while they
quietly slid out and reported the facts to the
police. Marshal Thompson in person went
down to the house, but was refused
admission to the room, whereupon he
cheerfully kicked open the door, and to the
infinite disgust of Mr. Ringo, scooped him in.
He was disarmed, and Officer Chenneville,
who had arrived, marched him to the station
and yesterday he was fined $5 and costs for
disturbing the peace, and $25 and costs for
carrying a pistol. He settled with the city and
left a wiser if not sadder man.