A Texas Sense of Place Editor’s note: In the spring of 2013, graduate Public History students in the Community and Local History class at Texas State University were asked to write about a personal sense of place—that area in memory where the mind wanders in times of deep reflection. They were instructed to explore connections to the local heritage of the site using both their research and interpretive skills as public historians. The purpose of the exercise was to learn how to develop layers of history that draw readers closer to the central story in experiential ways. The overarching consideration was that history can also be literature. Here are excerpts from two of those essays.
At the End of a Leash | Ann Landeros Raising a puppy will increase your appreciation of many things: paper towels, the stars at three o’clock in the morning, and a good and tiring walk in the park. During the past two decades, the need to diffuse canine energy led to my daily walks through the neighborhood park. To me, it still feels like the South Austin I chose as my home 25 years ago—unfashionable, quirky, and slightly derelict. Around 1913, real estate promoter “General” William H. Stacy took advantage of the introduction of streetcars south of the Colorado River to lure suburbanites to his new sub-
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division, Travis Heights. Marketing of the area included a catchy slogan (“Out of the noise zone and into the Ozone”); a promise of exclusiveness (“Travis Heights is restricted to good homes, good people, and strictly residential purposes”); and a claim that children raised in its wholesome atmosphere would not be tempted by “downtown attractions.” Stacy and his sons resided in the neighborhood, so the family had a personal as well as business interest in creating area amenities. Perhaps realizing that Austin’s Blunn Creek, which runs through the area, would not be a tame neighbor, they used the space as a selling point. Stacy Park is dumbbell-shaped, with a long narrow stretch linking Big Stacy on the south to Little Stacy on the north. The park was completed in 1929 when the city bought the nearly seven-acre plot at the creek’s horseshoe bend that became Little Stacy Park. Part of Blunn Creek’s charm is that for most of its length it can be glimpsed as it disappears behind tall trees and thick underbrush. This screen conceals the park’s narrowness and gives it depth, as the eye is drawn down the banks. Roots of elm, red oaks, and understory plants protrude from the higher banks, but the live oaks and pecans tend to stand back from the lower levels, which flood waters periodically scrape clean. The brushy banks conceal nocturnal animals that use the creek bed as a corridor from the 38-acre Blunn Creek
Nature Preserve upstream down to the Colorado River. Commonly sighted are coyote, fox, the ineradicable raccoon and possum, and the occasional armadillo. Not all creatures stay near the creek—an armadillo took up residence under my neighbor’s house last spring and mines my lawn regularly for grub worms. Despite rising costs of neighborhood real estate, the park remains much as it was 25 years ago. After a holiday weekend, the Little Stacy area still boasts plenty of beer cans and even less appealing trash. Invasive plants still threaten to dominate the creek bank’s understory. Homeless men still occasionally pass out under the bridge or on picnic ta-
bles. Mothers still dandle toddlers in the baby pool under the oak canopy. Dogs still sniff, mark territory, and lunge at inattentive squirrels. Yet, I know that the old middleclass neighborhood of modest cottages owned by modest white collar workers has already passed. In the park today, nannies push strollers while young men and women interrupt tennis games to conduct pressing business by cellphones, and expensive foreign cars line the streets. Despite the changes to the surrounding area, though, Stacy Park is still the destination of choice for my dogs, and that is where you can find me most mornings, at the other end of the leash.
Reflections of Dunbar Park | Alex Borger Every small town should have a park; the coastal Texas town where I grew up has several. While each has a place in my memory, T.J. Dunbar Memorial Park is special. As a boy, that was where I gathered pecans, hunted for Easter eggs, and learned to fish. As a teenager, it was where I held refuge from the tyranny of parents, listened to music, and met my friends. As a young adult, it was where I went to clear my head and recall warm memories. It has been years since I lived in Lake Jackson, but I still carry a bit of it in my mind, and occasionally, when I allow myself the chance to relax, my thoughts wander there to walk along Oyster Creek in Dunbar Park. A close look at both the constructed and natural landscapes of Lake Jackson reveals the sensibilities of a modern visionary. I hate the idea of war and distrust the militaryindustrial complex, but I must acknowledge that these were driving factors in the creation of my hometown. But for a wartime demand for magnesium, used to make airplanes lighter, Lake Jackson might still be a swamp. During World War II, Michigan-based Dow Chemical built a “mag” plant near the fishing village of Freeport, and the area around the former Abner Jackson Plantation became a unique Texas town, home for transplanted Midwesterners. Upon arriving in Texas, some of them must have felt like pioneers, battling mud and clouds of mosquitos. The clash between residents and nature still wages heavily there, and I remember vividly the smell of Malathion gas, used as an insecticide, sprayed from trucks all over town. Alden Dow, the architect son of Dow Chemical’s founder, designed the company town. As a devotee of Frank Lloyd Wright, he subscribed to an architectural philosophy that called for “harmony with nature.” By fusing Wrightian architectural principles and an unconventional street layout with a coastal Texas landscape, Dow created
a modernized small town in a quintessentially Southern setting. He detested the tyranny of grids and blocks, preferring curved roads to discourage speeding and allow for the conservation of giant, sprawling oaks. As I walk through Dunbar Park these days, I imagine the landscape is similar to what he first saw, and to his credit, Dow tried to preserve as much as possible. On a visit to the site in 2010, I crossed a patch of ground near Brazos Mall where, according to legend, there was a slave cemetery. In the 19th century the area was part of a sugar plantation not unlike others that once dotted the county. I wondered how those enslaved people must have viewed Oyster Creek and the grand oaks, how they survived, and if they gathered pecans [along the water’s edge]. Today, the area that once was the east end of Jackson Plantation is filled with shopping centers, but vestiges of “wilderness” like Dunbar Park serve as reminders of times past. My journeys back there are not the same these days. New layers inform my sense of place, and it’s no longer just a spot for recreation and fresh air or a habitat for gar and mosquitos. For me, it has deeper meaning as a home for memories, history, and serious reflection.
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