Remembering a Texas writer who never surrendered to pain or regret
AUSTIN — One weekend in April 1998, journalist and author Jan Reid and three of his Texas Monthly pals flew down to Mexico City to watch a prizefighter living in Austin who was making his Mexico ring debut. Jan had gotten to know the young fighter at an Austin gym where he did a little boxing himself. Out on the town the night after the fight, the four Texans climbed into a cab, whose driver led them into a trap set by two pistol-wielding robbers.
When the pistoleros ordered Jan and his friends out of the car in a dark and unfamiliar barrio, Jan was sure they were about to killed. As he exited the cab, he threw a hard left jab, the kind he’d perfected back at Richard Lord’s Boxing Gym. The punch fell inches short; the gunman fired. Smashing through Jan’s left arm at the wrist, the slug
entered his abdomen below the rib cage and came to rest in his spine. “I’m killed,” he cried out to his friends as he fell.
Jan didn’t die that harrowing night. He survived thanks to a skilled Mexico City emergency room surgeon; family
and friends who managed to get him on a flight back to the Texas Medical Center; and dedicated doctors, nurses and therapists (including the legendary Dr. Red Duke, with his bushy cowboy mustache), first at Hermann Hospital and then
at TIRR (The Institute for Research and Rehabilitation). After six months of dogged effort and intensive therapy, he was wobbly but back on his feet. For the next two decades he continued to write articles and books that made him one of the most revered writers in Texas. And now he’s gone.
Jan died Sept. 19, a few weeks after suffering a heart attack. He was 75 and had lost his beloved wife, Dorothy Browne, last Christmas Eve.
It’s unsettling to be writing about an old friend and then to suddenly realize that the man I’m trying to capture in a few words is no more. And yet words are all I have to convey something of the essence of a modest, decent, wonderfully talented human being.
Jan grew up in Wichita Falls, but his pronounced Texas drawl and his easy-going nature would make you think he was a country boy. And he was a country
boy when I met him, living in an old cabin with a cat and a collie in a broken-down little burg near Seguin called Geronimo. He was working as the sports editor for the New Braunfels Herald-Zeitung, trying to write a novel and just making the acquaintance of a new magazine called Texas Monthly.
Not long afterward, he published his first and arguably still best-known book. “The Improbable Rise of Redneck Rock” was a deeply reported, detailed account of the magical convergence of country, rock ’n’ roll, blues and folk musicians in Austin in the early 1970s. The book has never been out of print. In addition to scores of articles for Texas Monthly and other magazines, he wrote 12 books, including the definitive biography of Ann Richards and a boxing novel he finished shortly before his death. “Song Leader,” it’s called, to be published next year by TCU Press.
Austin writer Steve Harrigan, Jan’s Texas Monthly cohort, once observed that his old friend “writes with a scholar’s
reach, a novelist’s depth and a native son’s intuitive grasp.” On Texas Monthly’s website at the moment is a collection of his work. Scrolling down the list you’ll see that he wrote about six-man football; Darrell Royal; musicians Doug Sahm, Lyle Lovett, Robert Earl Keen and Willie Nelson; boxing; George Foreman; Cynthia Ann Parker; Roger Clemens; the Kickapoos; the Red River and the Devil’s; rabid coyotes — to mention just a few pieces that reflect his range and versatility. “I’m blessed with a restless curiosity and an appreciation of the ways that people and place shape each other,” he wrote in a collection of his magazine articles called “Close Calls: Jan Reid’s Texas” (Texas A&M Press, 2000).
His book “The Bullet Meant for Me,” a 2002 account of the shooting, not only recounts in harrowing detail what happened that dark night but also explores his fascination with boxing and his hard-won insights about violence, masculinity and relationships in times of crisis.
He worked as a freelancer for much of his life. “Financial security is not a characteristic of the trade,” he noted in “Close Calls.” “On the other hand, I have seldom been bored by my work, and I have come to know a great deal of Texas. I’ve complained at times that it’s a double whammy — not only do I live in Texas, but it’s all anybody ever wants me to write about. But for all my … moaning, and foreign wanderlust, I love the place.”
Complaining was not a trait associated with the man, even though the Mexico City shooting, the hinge point of his life, left him much to moan about. Paralyzed from the waist down for weeks after the shooting, he fought to regain the ability to walk, but he never fully recovered. He relied on a cane the rest of his life. He battled recurring infections, and years after the event would suddenly experience spasms of fiery pain shooting up and down his left leg. Always soft-spoken, his voice was weaker after the shooting. He may have complained, but not around me or anyone else I know.
“( Jan) was the bravest person I knew,” retired Texas Monthly editor Greg Curtis told Austin writer Kip Stratton in a tribute that appeared on the magazine’s website shortly after Jan died. “To have lived for so many years after his gunshot wound without complaint or self-pity. Sometimes you would see his face contort with pain, but he would never give in to it and never look for sympathy. He was a kind and gentle soul.”
Greg is absolutely right, but I suspect Jan would bridle at the bravery compliment. Yes, the shooting changed his life, but he didn’t dwell on what had happened to him that night. He and Dorothy traveled. They gave parties and stayed in touch with their wide circle of friends (including his old writing buddies, the Knuckleheads, who met regularly at the late, lamented Threadgills). He never stopped writing. Like someone keenly aware of life’s fragility, he lived.