Counter Culture Texas

If you've never been to Texas, you'll want to come the minute you open this nostalgic book--and if you're lucky enough to live here, you know the authors got it right. Counter Culture Texas is about those old drugstores, diners, and honky-tonks that are the center of small-town communal life. It's about counters and the folks who prop their elbows on them while they sip coffee or a beer and complain about the weather or the election. It's about culture and conversation and friendships that connect. Sadly, some of these old landmarks are disappearing, but they'll live on in Susie Flatau's lively descriptions and Mark Dean's stunning black-and-white photographs. No doubt about it, this is the essence of Texas, distilled along back roads and in the far corners of the state. But more, it's the essence of the past for every woman who remembers perching on a twirly stool, sipping a cherry coke, and sneaking peeks at her ten-year-old self in the mirror over that Formica counter. by Susan Wittig Albert for Story Circle Book Reviews www.storycirclebookreviewsorg reviewing books by, for, and about women

We think things will stay the same for a long time--and some things do. In these pages nostalgia reigns as well as an existential awareness of the present, and perhaps a foreboding. The photographs capture the scenes of what may soon pass away. We hope, of course, that this will not happen...that there will always be a quaint soda fountain, a small cross-roads grill, a checkered-cloth-covered table at which to sit and gaze at a chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes, green beans, iceberg lettuce salad with jello, banana pudding and assorted fresh fruit pies all waiting for one's poised fork. And the coffee--country coffee. Susie Kelly Flatau and Mark Dean have done us all a favor in capturing these living museums of food and drink. There are thousands more within the confines of that "whole other country." I have visited several, but I realize how many of these doors I haven't walked through. This would be a great book to serve as a guide for a great series of trips. Go before they go. I went back to a cross roads store once to buy another hunk of rat cheese as a snack while taking a trip on my bicycle. The building was still there, but a small sign said, "Closed for good." Not good to my way of thinking. Buy Susie's book and start your pilgrimage.

I bought this book for my mother and brother-in-law and now I think I'll get me a copy. Dean's photographs capture some of the counters that I grew up at, but I've only been to one of the places represented in the book. The wonderful thing about this book is that, even if your local drug store of cafe is not in it, there's a place just like it. The thesis, that there is a distinct culture around the counters of Texas, is interesting and well developed. A hardcover version would earn the 5th star.