My Wild Night at Gilley's

Country star Mickey Gilley died today. I know some basic facts about Gilley but I am no expert on his music.

I do know one thing though: I have visited Gilley’s Club, the nightclub in Pasadena, Texas, that was the setting for the 1980 John Travolta movie Urban Cowboy.

Back in 1987, I flew to Houston to visit Uncle Ed and Aunt Mary Jo. One night we headed to Gilley’s. I drank a few bottles of Lone Star beer and I wandered around taking photos, which seem to indicate that it was an off night at “world’s largest honky tonk.” Seven years down the line, the Urban Cowboy glow had faded.

There were signs projected on screens hanging from the ceiling, one of which read, “Ladies, ask these shitkickers to dance! They’re bashful.” But no ladies asked me to dance. They knew I was no shitkicker, but an east coast suburban college student, out for a wild night with his aunt and uncle.

A few Lone Stars into our visit, I think I posed on the photo-op mechanical bull, but I cannot find the photographic evidence that it happened.  I also drunk-dialed my mom from a pay phone to tell her “Hi!” from Gilley’s. That was a story she enjoyed telling for the rest of her life.

~217~