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Don with Beer

Newton, Don

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Ginny met Don Kalmbach when he was on the other side of the bar. That was back when she worked nights, five to midnight. Back when Dick Setliff owned the Little Longhorn Saloon. Before he died and "dumped it all in my lap," she says.

Don was one of the regulars. He grew up in Austin, the son of a baker who later became a butcher. At 17, he got his parents' permission to join the Marine Corps. He served in the infantry and did tours in China, Japan and Korea.

These days Don can't imagine living anywhere but the Lone Star State, or drinking any place but the Little Longhorn.

"I've been coming here on and off since I got out of the military in '56," he says, his voice a tincture of nicotine and rye. His visits to the bar increased when he worked TV sales and service down the street.

"He'd get off work and come by and drink whiskey," Ginny says.

Don laughs, lights another Marlboro. "She'd close up and we'd go eat at Denny's at two in the morning."

They wed in November 1996.

"We get along real well together," Ginny says. "I don't know why. We just do."

Don knows why. He grins wide and points a thumb Ginny's way. "She takes care of the business. I take care of the beer.

Born in Los Angeles and raised in New York, photographer Rachel Newton first became interested in honky-tonks during her seven-year tenure with the Fort Worth-Dallas Ballet, where she learned to dance the two-step en pointe for a performance with the Dixie Chicks. Rachel holds her bachelor's in architecture from Pratt Institute, where she also concentrated on photography. She recently completed a photo essay on New York City's Fulton Street Fish Market, which is set to move from its historic location by the end of the year.

Writer-producer Mitch Baranowski is a fourth-generation Texan who, during this project, located the former site of Brazos River Hall, where his cotton-farming grandparents worked dances during the forties. With degrees in journalism and radio-television-film from the University of Texas, Mitch has written about music for Atomic, No Depression and Spirit, while recent TV projects have found him trailing street musicians, tracing the roots of break dancing and learning the moves of extreme inline skaters.

The husband-wife team recently collaborated on a photo-text essay about Texas honky-tonks for Texas Folklife Resources, an Austin-based organization dedicated to celebrating and perpetuating the living, traditional arts and culture of the Lone Star State. Entitled Honky-Tonkin' - A Journey Through Dim Lights, Thick Smoke, and Loud, Loud Music, the exhibit will be on view from September 5 to December 24, 2002. Mitch and Rachel live in Brooklyn and are working to expand this exhibit into book form.

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