Charley’s adventures in Austin started when he was found paddling around the Littlefield Fountain one warm April morning. His presence was presumed to be a fraternity prank, but none of the Greeks came forward to claim credit. The incident left the chief of police with two problems. The first he solved by ordering the city dog catcher to fish the alligator out of the fountain while a hundred or so students heckled from the sidewalk. Probably the same bastards who put him in the fountain the night before.
The second issue facing the chief was what to do with the freshly captured alligator in his police station. That problem was solved unexpectedly when a local restaurateur came in requesting custody of the beast to use as an attraction at the Holiday House. The chief told a reporter for the Statesman that he planned to turn the reptile over to a zoo, but that was before he knew there was a local fellow willing to pick it up, sparing him the trouble of finding a zoo.
After a shaking of hands, Charley was sent to live with the businessman at his restaurant on Barton Springs Road. He dug a moat around the joint, and Charley paddled around while patrons gawked on their way in and out of the place. They were mostly happy memories, but there was the unfortunate time Charley let a chicken peck around the edge of the moat until the exact moment a children’s birthday party stopped to point and wave. Some of those children grew up to be very troubled adults, and Charley always felt guilty about that.
As he grew into his full eight-foot stature, Charley occasionally escaped the moat and wandered the surrounding streets, surprising neighbors and sending them scrambling for safety. On other occasions, pranksters would liberate Charley and leave him in surprising locations. The restaurateur would be called and take him back to the moat. The chicken incident aside, Charley was a model mascot and managed to avoid any of the uncomfortable situations that might be anticipated by mixing a loosely confined alligator with children’s birthday parties.
It was the humans who turned violent. Charley was found bludgeoned to death in his moat one morning. It was a despicable act that the restaurateur blamed on a disgruntled patron, but there were so many he couldn’t produce a suspect list. Not to be deterred, he took Charley to a taxidermist and had the stuffed alligator mounted above the cash register at his Airport Boulevard location. He was disappointed with humanity, but not willing to call it quits on alligators. He called some Cajun buddies and had Charlie II delivered to take up residence in the moat—this time with a mesh covering creating separation between the reptile and the devious humans.
Charlie II was an adequate, if lethargic, mascot. He lounged on the edge of the moat and rarely so much as blinked an eye, regardless of how hard the humans worked for a reaction, and trying to evoke a reaction was a hobby for a micro-generation of Austinites. During the city’s economic boom of the early eighties, the restaurateur concluded it was time to capitalize on the money flooding into Austin and converted the kitschy burger joint to an upscale establishment. The greasy burgers were replaced on the menu by yuppy-friendly foods like seafood salad and the waitresses traded their casual attire for tacky orange jumpsuits. There was no room for alligators in the new world and Charlie II was shipped off to a farm in Rockport, where he met a saucy female and lived out his days in harmony.
That was the end of the era for live alligators patrolling restaurants in Austin, but it wasn’t the end of Charley’s story yet. The yuppy-geared revamp didn’t catch on and eventually the restaurateur admitted defeat and went back to a menu of cheap burgers and chicken fried steak. He pulled the Holiday House sign back out and stuck it up front. Then, he pulled Charley out of storage and mounted him above the register. The children who had watched him glide around the moat were adults now, and brought their own children to point at the stuffed alligator as they recounted their memories of wild old Austin. All things considered, it’s probably the best outcome you could hope for from a half-witted fraternity prank.
