Proust was undone by a madeleine. For Sam Spade, it was all about the black bird. Willie Nelson sang about the family Bible. Georgia O’Keeffe coaxed art out of cow skulls and red poppies. Objects resonate. They conjure up a time and a place. Though mute, they tell stories. Certain items, brought to light, tell Austin’s stories.

This is the story of the capital city as told through objects and artifacts. It goes without saying that this collection is subjective—if not exactly arbitrary—and bound to start arguments. That’s OK. Austin’s story is complex, multifaceted, and ongoing. No single assembly of artifacts is going to cover every base and tell the whole tale. This is just one story.

Next time, we’ll tell another.

Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Guitar

As the 1970s gave way to the ’80s, the local progressive country scene that had caught the national media’s attention began to yield to a new creative momentum centered around the blues and R&B scene at Clifford Antone’s namesake club. No one embodied Austin’s new musical profile better than Stevie Ray Vaughan (1954-90), who (along with his brother Jimmie’s band, the Fabulous Thunderbirds) took Austin’s notoriety to international heights. This modified Stratocaster was so essential to Vaughan’s sound that he nicknamed it “Number One” and “First Wife.”

The Mexican Martini The exact origins of the Mexican Martini are lost in the haze of history. We do know this, however: It’s really just a slight variation on a classic margarita, only served straight up in a stemmed martini glass with a skewer of olives. It was born in Austin, specifically at the Cedar Door, the enduring watering hole at Second and Brazos streets. As the story goes, about 35 years ago, a waitress there had been served a margarita in a martini glass in Matamoros, Mexico, and imported the concept back to the Cedar Door. Today Mexican Martinis are ubiquitous in Austin and almost unknown elsewhere. Regardless, the drink remains perhaps the city’s proudest contribution to the Tex-Mex pantheon.

Willie Nelson’s Songbook

Muhammad Ali once remarked he could knock on any door anywhere and be instantly recognized. The same might be said of Willie Nelson. To many, the Texas troubadour embodies the platonic ideal of Austin: a musical free spirit and indomitable rebel, living life to his own soundtrack. By bringing Austin’s hippies and rednecks together in the mid-1970s, Nelson helped forge a cultural vision of the city that values inclusiveness (the aforementioned rednecks and hippies swapped beer for pot) and favors insouciance. Music is in Nelson’s DNA. The hand-written songbook pictured here, which is housed in the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University in San Marcos, was assembled when Willie was about 11 and living in the tiny town of Abbott.

Chalkboard at Saengerrunde Hall German immigrants to Texas and to Austin helped bring Old World culture to the raw frontier beginning in the 1820s, often in the form of singing societies. One early group, the Austin Männerchor, attended the state’s first Saengerfest, or singing contest, in 1853. In 1879, the Saengerrunde society, the oldest ethnic organization in the city, was formed and began to practice and perform in 1866-era Scholz Beer Garten on San Jacinto Boulevard. In 1908 the society purchased the property and erected Saengerrunde Hall adjacent to the beer garden. The society continues to meet and perform (and bowl, in the hall’s private alley) to this day. This chalkboard that today is used to list new members appears to have been around at least for a century, as it’s pictured in a 1919 photo of the space.

Paddle From Dazed and Confused

A maniac with a chainsaw. That, arguably, is who put Austin on the path to becoming one of the country’s film hotbeds. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), filmed just outside of town, was one of the first to make use of the local landscape. Gifted filmmakers followed suit, including (but not limited to) Terrence Malick, Robert Rodriguez, Elizabeth Avellan, Mike Judge, and, perhaps most consequential of all, Richard Linklater. From his 1991 breakout indie hit, Slacker, to his stunning 2014 tour-de-force Boyhood, Linklater (who also founded the Austin Film Society) has done more than perhaps anyone for the city’s film scene. This paddle, from Linklater’s beloved 1993 high school comedy Dazed and Confused, is a replica of the original prop, which was lost in a fire.

Pass to the First South by Southwest Writer Michael Corcoran famously referred to Austin as “The Little Town With the Big Guest List,” and it’s truer today than ever. The calendar is as stuffed as a Christmas goose with festivals celebrating artistic or cultural genres, from music (duh) to film to comedy, Cinco de Mayo, books, art, ice cream, gay pride, Formula 1 racing, Juneteenth, bats, motorcycles, kites (ABC Kite Fest in Zilker Park is the city’s oldest festival, dating back to 1929), and many, many more. The big dogs on the festival circuit remain South by Southwest and the Austin City Limits Music Festival. SXSW especially has made Austin an international destination since its inception in 1987. The Serta Trophy Austin has produced its share of sports heroes, but few have been more celebrated or accomplished than golfers Tom Kite and Ben Crenshaw. Both men, inductees of the World Golf Hall of Fame, played some of their earliest rounds at Lions Municipal Golf Course (affectionately known as “Muny”). Built in 1928, the course is historic in its own right, being one of the first—if not the first—golf courses in the South to integrate. Both Kite and Crenshaw are represented on the Serta Trophy in the clubhouse’s “History Wall.” The trophy is presented to the winner of the annual July 4 Firecracker Open, the oldest amateur golf tournament in the state. Kendra Scott Necklace Austin has been defined by artists, politicians, athletes, and the young. Yet it’s also been shaped by entrepreneurs and innovators who took a new idea or put a twist on an existing one and spun it off into a new and lucrative orbit. Think of Michael Dell designing computers in his dormitory room, or think of Kendra Scott, who, at 19, began her career in design by creating headwear for women undergoing chemotherapy. That endeavor evolved in 2002 into jewelry design and an ever-growing collection featured in stores across the U.S. Her initial $500 investment seeded a business that today is worth, according to a 2016 Fortune magazine story, more than $1 billion. This necklace, from Scott’s 2014 collection, is one of her favorites, incorporating a custom KS stone shape (the Elle) and abalone shell doublets. Projectile Point From Zilker Park Long before there was an “Austin,” there were Austinites, after a fashion. This chert projectile point, called a “Montell point,” was excavated at what is called the Vara Daniel site, which encompasses most of modern-day Zilker Park. The hunters and gatherers who frequented the site sometime between 1,000 BC and 200 AD might have used similar points in darts or small spears, which were thrown using an atlatl, or throwing stick. No doubt they, as we do now, disposed themselves on hot summer days by dipping into Barton Springs and the Colorado River. The Late Archaic people, as they are known, were not the first folks to call Austin home. According to associate director Jonathan Jarvis of the Texas Archeological Research Laboratory, “the site shows a sequence of occupation going back to the Paleoindian Period, perhaps as early as 10,000 BC.” The City Master Plan of 1928 In 1928, at the behest of the City Council, the consulting firm of Koch & Fowler came up with a plan that purposely concentrated Austin’s African-American population east of East Avenue (today’s Interstate 35), in part by making it more difficult for black residents to receive city services in other parts of town. The result was de facto segregation and opening up properties in previously mixed-race neighborhoods to more affluent white homeowners. The plan stated that “all the facilities and conveniences be provided the negroes in this district as an incentive to draw the negro population to this area.” Additionally, “undesirable industry” was also disproportionately pushed into East Side neighborhoods. The lingering effects of those policies still inform the racial, political, and economic tensions felt in the city to the present.

J. Frank Dobie's Cowboy Hat Today gifted Texas writers seem as numerous as armadillos. Hell, they’ve even got their own book festival. Before the rise of Larry McMurtry and his kinspeople, Texas letters were embodied by naturalist Roy Bedichek, historian Walter Prescott Webb, and folklorist and University of Texas professor J. Frank Dobie (I’d add Américo Paredes and John Graves to that list). For decades, Dobie (1888-1964) linked the oral tradition of the cowboys and vaqueros he grew up with to the increasingly urbanized Texas he inhabited. Today his two-story former house (where Dobie’s boots and hat may be viewed) across from the UT School of Law, appropriately enough, is the James A. Michener Center for Writers, home to UT’s well-regarded MFA writing program. “La Piedra De Dedicación” Statue What was once a city-owned street and maintenance yard adjacent to a lower-income Hispanic neighborhood along sleepy Rainey Street has become—after decades of civic efforts—home to the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center. Approved in a 1998 bond package, the center had its groundbreaking in 2005 and opened in 2007 (the MACC is preparing a big 10th-anniversary celebration this year on Sept. 15-16). Less noticeable than the dramatic white structure is a small sculpture across the hike-and-bike trail, alongside Lady Bird Lake. “La Piedra de Dedicación” by Austin artist Dave Santos, according to Gloria Espitia of MACC, is an aspirational symbol of the three-decades-long effort by the community to see the cultural center through to fruition. Santos deliberately placed the statue adjacent to the trail so people—not just MACC visitors—could see it and reflect. UT Tower Visitors’ Ledger The darkest day in Austin’s history set off reverberations that echo across the country to this day. On Aug. 1, 1966, a U.S. Marine veteran named Charles Whitman hauled a footlocker of weaponry to the top of the University of Texas Tower and opened fire. By the time he was killed by police some 96 minutes later, he had murdered 15 (including his wife and mother earlier that day) and wounded 31 more. The deranged act ushered in an ongoing era of the peculiarly American phenomenon of mass shootings. The blood visible on the tower’s ledger, open to the fateful date, almost certainly belonged to Edna Townsley, the receptionist whom Whitman bludgeoned to death before he began his rampage. Acorns From the Auction Oaks Republic of Texas President Mirabeau B. Lamar paused during a buffalo hunt one day and proclaimed the area between Shoal and Waller creeks would one day be “the seat of future empire.” In May 1839, Judge Edwin Waller set up shop on the site and laid out its initial design—a 1-square-mile plan for the new capital of the republic. On Aug. 1 of that year he held an auction for city lots in the shade of a copse of oak trees in what would come to be known as first Guadalupe, and later Republic, Square. Today the trees that witnessed Austin’s civic genesis are visible (but not accessible) behind construction barricades, as Republic Square undergoes a major renovation (it’s expected officially to reopen in November). Front Door of the Broken Spoke Most of the old-school beer joints and honky-tonks have disappeared from the landscape of today’s ATX. Adios, Big G’s, the Silver Dollar, the Split Rail, the Skyline Club, and more. Yet the Broken Spoke, which opened Nov. 10, 1964, on what was then the Old Fredericksburg Highway, remains a mecca for those who want to hear country music, dance counterclockwise, and eat one of the last chicken-fried steaks in town. It’s a monument to simpler pleasures and a less-hectic era, when a cold beer and a two-step to Ray Price or Ernest Tubb was the stuff of which Saturday night dreams were made. The juxtaposition of the Spoke with two ultramodern apartment blocks on either side is one of the most potent images of Old vs. New Austin.

Goddess of Liberty Since its completion in 1888, the Texas State Capitol has towered over the center of Austin, much in the same way that state politics has always been a central component of the city’s character. Crowning the Capitol (taller, as Texans never tire of pointing out, than its counterpoint in Washington, D.C.) is the Goddess of Liberty. The one up there now is the deity’s second incarnation, helicoptered onto her perch in 1986. The hatchet-faced original (designed with strongly exaggerated features to be recognizable from afar) is made of galvanized iron and zinc and was designed by contest winner Elijah E. Myers of Detroit. This one-and-only original Goddess resides at the Bullock Texas State History Museum, a few blocks north of her former abode. Perfume Bottle From Guy Town Like many cities in Texas, Austin experimented with a designated vice zone in the years between the Civil War and World War I. In Galveston, the red-light district was centered around Post Office Street. Fort Worth had “Hell’s Half Acre,” Dallas had “Frogtown,” and San Antonio had “The District.” Austin had Guy Town, a nexus for prostitution, drinking, and gambling that took up a big chunk of what today is the Warehouse and Second Street districts. Richard Zelade’s 2014 book, Guy Town by Gaslight, does an admirable job of recounting the colorful history of the city’s weirdest and most sordid area. This perfume bottle, from Guy Town excavations conducted between 1999 and 2001, may or may not have been part of a prostitute’s carnal ammunition, but it is certainly evocative of the area’s colorful past. Barbecue by Aaron Franklin Chefs are the new rock stars in Austin, and food trucks influence the city’s cuisine as much as four-star restaurants. Pitmaster Aaron Franklin embodies both trends. He’s just a guy who makes barbecue, but he’s also a James Beard Award–winning chef whose brisket and ribs inspire the legendary hours-long lines outside his East 11th Street joint. After starting out in a trailer in 2009, Franklin and his wife, Stacy, grew the business into an incredible Austin success story that has served everyone from humble writers such as myself to President Obama. Early Dell Computer What Spindletop was to Houston, pioneer tech companies like Tracor, IBM, and Texas Instruments were to Austin. From the 1950s to 1969, the trio established a beachhead in the capital city that laid the groundwork for decades of silicon-based boom and bust. Men like George Kozmetsky, a UT professor and founder of the Austin Technology Incubator, mentored young men and women who would launch the startups and make innovation the hallmark of millennial Austin. No one surfed Austin’s tech wave as astutely as Michael Dell, who in 1984 founded his namesake computer company with $1,000 when he was only 19. Today the company boasts annual revenue of $74 billion. Pictured is one of Dell’s earliest branded efforts, a PC’s Limited Series 200, which debuted in 1985 or ’86. Emancipation Day Pin Juneteenth, celebrating slavery’s end in Texas on June 19, 1865, has become a nationally recognized holiday. It was not always called Juneteenth, at least in Travis County. In the summer of 1904 a soliciting committee of African-American citizens was formed to raise money for and make preparations to hold an “Emancipation Day” celebration on June 19 of that year. “Many of the white citizens are responding cheerfully to the requests of the Committee,” reported the Austin Statesman that May, adding hopefully that “the observance…this year may not be behind that of last year in splendor and magnificence.” Juneteenth is still celebrated in Austin each year and has embedded itself in the city’s cultural fabric.