The Cathedral of Junk in Austin isn’t the easiest tourist attraction to see. For completely understandable reasons, since it’s in someone’s back yard, and the householder and creator of the pile, one Vince Hannemann, doesn’t want people just showing up. You have to call first, and hope he picks up to let you make a reservation, which he does only when he feels like it.

How do I know that? When I called, I heard the message on his answering machine, which said all that the likelihood of him answering in person was a “lottery” — and not to bother leaving a message about visiting, since he would not reply. He didn’t say it, but I also got the sense that he really was trying to avoid having the thing take over his life.

So Tom and I didn’t see the Cathedral of Junk on March 5. We did other things, such as walk along Lady Bird Lake. After dinner that night, I expressed my desire to see an Austin moon tower, also known as a moonlight tower. See one again, since I’d seen one at least 30 years ago during a visit. I don’t remember which tower that was, but it might have been the very one he took me to this time around, at the corner of Speedway and 41st in the Hyde Park neighborhood of Austin, to look up at the lighted hexagon in the night sky.

A couple of the six lights were out. What’s up with that, Austin Energy?
The moon towers have a long and well-known history, at least to Austinites and non-Austinites who care about such oddities. Before modern street lights were developed, there was a late 19th-century vogue for tall towers that illuminated their surroundings at night via carbon arc lights: moonlight towers, or moon towers. When there was no natural moonlight, the hand of man could provide it.

A Machine Age notion if there ever was one. A number of municipalities had them; Detroit reportedly had a lot. The only survivors now are in Austin, which acquired its towers in the 1890s.

Apparently carbon arc lights are very bright, but also high maintenance, so the moon tower lights were replaced with incandescent lights in the early 20th century. Currently there are 17 Austin moon towers, each 165 feet tall. The towers were restored in the early 1990s and a simulation of one figures in Dazed and Confused, a movie I’ve never gotten around to. In this image, a barely visible bilingual sign warns one and all not to be a tower-climbing moron.
I don’t think the towers count as Austin weird, but they are odd. That might make a better slogan: Keep Austin Odd. Just the kind of thing I like to see anyway: unusual, unpretentious, with an interesting back story, and easy to see. Here’s an excellent podcast at the usually excellent 99% Invisible series about the Austin moon towers.