CELLAR DWELLERS
by George Rains© 2002
Editor's note: Notable Austin
Drummer George Rains is writing about
a time 5 or 6 years before the "Cellar Dwellers" band was formed.
After walking down the sagging concrete steps and into The Cellar, that
dark coffee house under the streets of downtown Fort Worth, the first thing I remember
seeing was the phrase: "You must be weird or you wouldn't be here" crudely
printed in runny white paint on a black wall. Against the wall, below that ambiguous
disclaimer, was the bandstand which wasn't a stand at all but just a clear space on the
floor. Covering the floor around the bandstand and for as far back into that dark hole as
you were willing to look, were little coffee tables and big cushions. - No chairs just
big, dusty, funky smelling cushions to sit on or wallow on or do whatever you could get
away with on.
Weekends my band started playing there at midnight and we kept playing
until the place closed. - Usually some time after dawn when everyone, customers included,
were too exhausted to go on. You had to be a hardcore night crawler to hang around The
Cellar till dawn. Not a pretty sight in the light. By early morning, all the squares and
the amateur weird had gone home. All of the trouble makers, during the course of the
night, had been escorted up the back stairs and into the ally where the living shit was
cheerfully beaten out of them by The Cellar's courteous, uniformed staff then left for
dead. And after the doors were closed and locked, The Celler, with practically no effort
at all, was transformed into a sort of homeless shelter for assorted loners, perverts,
small time hustlers, dope heads, drunks, carnival geeks and musicians plus a small army of
bouncers and a few half naked waitresses.
If, for whatever reason, you found yourself in The Cellar at six or
seven in the morning and they hadn't thrown you out, you were actually better off just
staying down there rather than face the humiliation of climbing up those steps into the
punishing sunlight. Suddenly, you're dodging traffic on shaky legs, trying to get your
bearings while people on the street dart around you with looks of horror as if you had an
ax buried in your head. Down in The Cellar, time stood still. Down in The Cellar, there
was an erotic atmosphere of late night danger as long as they kept the lights low and the
doors closed.
Dr. Nottingham was a part of that late night, closed-door fantasy. Even
at seven in the morning and after witnessing who knows how many depraved acts of pagan
debauchery, when others were projectile vomiting and making fools of themselves, Dr.
Nottingham looked like he was ready for church. The man stayed clean, sharp and
wide-awake. With his white hair, his well-tailored suits and reserved manner, the little
dentist had the style of a German aristocrat.
This particular Sunday morning the band was packed up and gone, the
place was officially closed and yet there I was still lurking about for no apparent
reason. No, that's wrong. I was there for one more drink and one last shot at hitting on a
waitress. But the girls were all huddled together, busy counting out their tip money and
none of them would talk to me. As I steered my way through the cushions and coffee tables,
dodging the occasional sleeping body, I saw Dr. Nottingham off in a corner, holding a
conversation with Dubber, one of the senior bouncers.
Dubber was an exact opposite of the kindly old Doctor. Dubber was a big
sweaty hillbilly with a stubbly beard, a burr haircut, dirty jeans, work boots and the
official uniform of The Cellar: A black T-shirt. Along with several other convicted felons
on The Cellar payroll, Dubber was assigned to Crowd Control. And anyone found guilty of
pissing off the staff in any way, any way at all, had better pray that the situation
didn't elevate to the level of "Dealing With Dubber". The man was notorious. He
could make grown men wet themselves. And I don't mean to suggest that Dubber was just some
callous, sadistic brute - Hell no! - Not at all. The guy would kill me if he thought I'd
said something like that. No, Dubber was just a guy trying to get by. Here's a man with a
limited education, very few marketable skills, an ugly wife and an ugly baby so, why
shouldn't he get paid for something that he's actually good at? And if that involves
stomping a few fellow human beings into the ground well, good for him!
At first, the sight of Dubber and Dr. Nottingham in a conversation that hadn't yet erupted
in spontaneous violence took me by surprise. But my concern that the Doctor was about to
be mauled at any second was just my own cynical view. In truth, nothing like that would
ever happen. Number one, Dr. Nottingham was part of the extended Cellar family and number
two, once the place was closed and the doors locked, Dubber's bad-ass attitude diminished
and a relatively reasonable person with sort of a sense of humor emerged. Dubber and the
rest of the bouncers at The Cellar were only scary to the customers. And especially scary
to those drunken, mean spirited, red neck farm boys who wrongly assumed that this dark
basement full of bohemians was "some queer joint."
As I approached, I could see Dubber and Dr. Nottingham inspecting a piece of metal pipe
Dubber had found on the floor under a cushion. It was a zip gun: A crude weapon made by
inserting a 410-shotgun shell into a short piece of pipe. Behind the shell, attached with
a spring, is a much shorter piece of pipe with a firing pen inside. You hold the gun
firmly in one hand then pull back the firing pen and let go - Which is exactly what
happened. The zip gun went off with a quick flash, a loud pop and the Doctor was hit in
the face.
Luckily, the Doctor managed to avoid a direct hit and was only wounded by a few shotgun
pellets and powder burns. But he didn't know that! Shocked, blinded in both eyes,
disoriented and in fear for his life, Dr. Nottingham thought Dubber or somebody had shot
him in the face. Still, no one expected the Doctor's bold reaction to all of this. He
pulled a small silver plated pistol out of his coat pocket and started firing into the
floor all around him. Later the Doctor explained that this was a reflex action, that he
wasn't trying to shoot anyone, he just wanted to keep everybody away from him. Well, it
worked. Everybody hauled ass in every direction!
About half the bullets fired harmlessly into the cushions but the others unfortunately
ricocheted off the concrete floor then ricocheted off the concrete walls and suddenly it
was like a Yosemite Sam cartoon in there. Here's this little white haired old guy in a
sharkskin suit blindly spinning around, shooting a gun into the floor. Jumpin' horny
toads! The waitresses were screaming, people were shouting, Dubber was hit in the leg by
one of the stray slugs and went hopping across the floor, yelping like a wounded dog.
Another ricochet buzzed my ear then took out a light bulb in the ceiling. Christ! I
realize that this was Fort Worth Texas, "Where the west begins" and all but I
was not ready for this OK Corral shit! I came down there to play music and meet women! Now
I have to worry about gittin' plugged by ornery ol' Doc Nottingham. Well, fuck that!
The Doctor finally did calm down. He ran out of ammo and had no choice. But they went
ahead and took away his pistol just in case. The whole thing had been a grisly mistake but
a hell of a show. The slug that hit Dubber came up off the floor, entered the back of his
upper thigh then exited his lower butt cheek hitting nothing but meat. Dr. Nottingham
suffered from several buckshot pellets lodged in the right side of his face and no
eyebrows. There was a lot of blood but no permanent damage. Fortunately for everyone
involved, Dr. Nottingham was a real doctor. Well, he was a dentist but the point is that
he had access to the medical community. He arranged to have his and Dubber's wounds
treated without any publicity or police. The man was a saint and the rest of us weren't
about to say anything either. And best of all, there were no bad feelings between Dubber
and the Doctor and no threats of retribution from anyone at The Cellar including the
owner, Pat Kirkwood. Kirkwood's only comment was, "Hey, the guy went berserk and shot
somebody. Shit happens."
Of course, none of this sort of thing ever discouraged me from returning to the scene of
the crime. Over the years, I had a free ringside seat at The Cellar for a variety of
sleaze-fests and sordid spectacles. And I was not about to let a mere narrow brush with
death force me to give up that seat. - No way! These people were like family to me. - A
very twisted, dysfunctional family. But at least they had the up-front honesty to paint a
sign on the wall admitting, "You must be weird or you wouldn't be here."