3 posts tagged “texas”
How many places have you lived in your life?
Hooah, it's like this one was made for me.
1976 - oh, 1983 or so: the Barn. Born and raised here, it was an actual barn that my dad rebuilt into a house. it was a pretty awesome job he did, but i went back there after i graduated high school, explained who i was and asked to walk around a little bit. totally wierd, but the homeowners accepted. bad idea. they had it all covered in japanese artwork that while cool totally skewed my memories in irreconcilable ways. not the best idea, trying to go home, sometimes.
1983 - 84 (dates will be very vague for the time being): ferndale lane, haverford, pa. i remember that it had a front yard well shaped for baseball variations, i learned to play hoop down the street, and i'm pretty sure it's where i first saw cable television.
1984 - 1987ish: indiana. first, the kessler boulevard monstrosity of astroturf, mirrored walls, spiral staircases and marble. not to mention a huge lawn, a troublesome pool, a grip of chipmunks and oh, the cold. then geist, which was a nice place with woods in the back and huge vaulted ceilings, where we once had a huge christmas tree. the last house i lived in regularly with papabean for more than a decade and a half.
1988-95: we moved back to haverford. i lived with my grandparents for a while, then pretty close to school for a few years, then to a street i don't remember, where the rents split up. from there i lived with my mom and little brother in various spots for a while, and from sophomore year or so on i lived with my dad and his fiancee. i moved over there because i knew my dad was better positioned to get me a car, not out of any sense of preference for either. neither one made much sense to me at the time.
August 1995 - December 1996: San Antonio, Texas, at Trinity University. An excellent place for people who wanted to go to college to learn what seemed like pretty generic stuff to me at the time and have no interest in fun. That summer, I lived in Newark, New Jersey. Just in case you thought Texas was bad.
January 1997 - June 1999: New London, CT, at Connecticut College. And a good time was had by all. Interspersed by spending the summer of 98 in Austin, Texas. I like Austin, and you would too if you could see past the fact that it's in Texas.
July 1999 - present: The People's Republic of California. In sequential order, Santa Cruz, Berkeley, Oakland/SF (the Camp NoJob days), San Diego, Monterey, SF, and back to Monterey. Interspersed by two big ones:
May 2002- March 2003: Costa Rica. I actually only lived there from August-March; I was travelling the rest of the time.
November 2004- June 2005: Bangkok, Thailand. Again, I was travelling around the region for a lot of this.
Anyway, Vox, I don't have time for all these questions.
here's a pretty cool verbal retelling of Charles Whitman's shooting spree from the top of the UT tower, forty years ago yesterday. among the most interesting elements of it, for me, was the fact that while this was happening (Whitman was up there for 96 minutes), students and citizens went and got guns and were firing back at the tower.
"BILL HELMER: I remember thinking, “All we need is a bunch of idiots running around with rifles.” But what they did turned out to be brilliant. Once he could no longer lean over the edge and fire, he was much more limited in what he could do. He had to shoot through those drain spouts, or he had to pop up real fast and then dive down again. That’s why he did most of his damage in the first twenty minutes."
What was the highlight of this past weekend?
Perfect time to ask, since I was about to write how I haven't been writing here because I was on vacation.
I went to Texas this weekend for the annual Mo Ranch getaway. My ex-girlfriend from high school and I are still pretty good friends, and in fact I'm pretty good friends with her whole family and another family they are friends with. To make a long story short, these two families used to be spread across the country, and so they decided that every year they would get together at Mo Ranch (with one exception, the year we all went to Cozumel) and make sure they saw each other at least that one time per year. Now, they all live in Texas, and all but two of them in Austin, so it's a little easier, but the tradition goes on.
I can't tell you how thankful I am that 11 years after Anna and I stopped dating (we, in fact, stopped dating almost immediately after the first Mo Ranch trip), I'm still invited on these outings. My family doesn't get together like this to hang out and enjoy each other's company, partly because I'm not sure we enjoy each other's company enough to do something like this. Three generations of two families, at a beautiful spot three hours west of Austin along the Guadalupe River. Plenty of food and drink and other entertainment, plenty of catching up and philosophising. The weekend was short, too short, but I am so thankful to have been able to go.
So what was the highlight? Other than the event as a whole, I'd have to say talking to Hannah, Anna's five-year-old niece. I have a four-year-old niece of my own and seeing Hannah is a glimpse into Celia's near future -- so I can only hope she is as smart and well-spoken as Hannah is (Celia is, no doubt). It's amazing to talk to kids always though, and see how they see things, and what's in their minds. I don't reallyt foresee myself having children, so I'm glad to have the experience of other people's.
