Austin receives no such shout-out in "Truckin'," the Grateful Dead's highest-charting single of the Seventies. The psychedelic shamans also toasted Tejas via frequent covers of Marty Robbins' western ballad "El Paso," captured gloriously on 1976's double live LP Steal Your Face, and gave mention to the Lone Star State in live favorite "New Minglewood Blues." Yet in all of Jerry Garcia and company's southwestern lyrical trails, the hippie headquarters of Texas never gets name-checked.

Perhaps our capital city lacks obvious connections to the Grateful Dead, who played here just eight times in 30 years of near-constant touring: 1970, 1971, and 1972 at Austin's Municipal Auditorium, a long-demolished structure where the Palmer now stands; and 1977, 1981, 1982, 1983, and 1985 at horse-racing track Manor Downs.

All were before my time – birth and relocation from Michigan – but there's no shortage of rose-crowned skeletons in my closet. My parents aren't casual fans. They're tie-dyed-in-the-wool Grateful Dead acolytes with closets full of bootleg cassettes. My earliest travel and concert experiences were attending Dead shows, often several in a row, as is customary for GD cultists.

That Deadhead DNA amounts to my primeval memories: mom waking me up and pulling the cotton out of my ears when the band played "The Wheel," the time I became separated from my family and got lost and disoriented in a sea of hippie women in twirling skirts, and seeing the Dead for the last time in Detroit, 1994. I recall Jerry lit up by spotlight while singing "Stella Blue," his white hair and beard making him look like God – except wearing sweatpants. A year later, he was deceased.

As the surviving members of the Grateful Dead cash in on their 50th anniversary with three final concerts in Chicago this Fourth of July weekend, we offer a mostly oral history of their intersection with Austin. Prior to this exercise, all I knew about the GD's local history was a vague recollection about a botched skydiving stunt. After this immersion, I understand the "Scarlet Begonias" lyric: "Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right."