Day 25 - Fortuitous History Rediscovered

"We won the lottery," said a man I met several months ago at an auto parts store in East Austin.

As is my personality, I have had the tendency to strike up conversations with people whether standing in line at the grocery store, at the airport while waiting for my seat, or while sitting idly at the park amongst parents watching their kids.

At the auto parts store, I spoke with a man who mentioned that he lived not too far from the store throughout his life. He talked fondly about this time growing up over the years in East Austin.

From behind prescription sun glasses, the older Latino American man stood under my hood installing a new battery into my car.  He told me the story about how he lived in East Austin, especially, during the times when it was hard.  Though he did not go into the details, the lottery winner talked about one the biggest things to happen on the East side.

Back in the 1900s, Austin was referenced to as the City of the Violet Crown. It's a reference starting in 1890, where an atmospheric phenomenon known as the Belt of Venus created at sunrise or sunset that forms a pinkish or antitwilight arch.

Belt of Venus, antitwilight arch

During Congressman Lyndon Baines Johnson's ambitious early career, he referred to the slums in the East Austin area in a radio address called the "Tarnish of the Violet Crown" on January 23, 1938.

"(T)here I found people living in such squalor that Christmas Day was to them just one more day of filth and misery.  Forty families on one lot, using one water faucet.  Living in barren one-room huts, they were deprived of the glory of sunshine in the daytime, and were so poor they could not even at night use the electricity that is to be generated by our great river (Colorado River).  Here the men and women did not play at Santa Claus.  Here the children were so much in need of the very essentials of life they scarcely missed the added pleasures of our Christian celebration."

As the result of the Housing Act of 1937, Santa Rita, Rosewood, and Chalmers Courts, the first public housing residences, were built, which were the first of their kind in the United States. Public housing remained segregated so Santa Rita was for Mexican Americans, Rosewood for African Americans, and Chalmers was reserved for White Americans.

When the man at the auto parts store said that they won the lottery, he explained that the Santa Rita Courts was a huge improvement over the housing they had prior.  The aforementioned excerpt from LBJ's radio address illustrated the deplorable conditions people lived in the East Austin slums from slum lord owners unwilling to maintain reasonable accommodations.

Although public housing (commonly known as the Projects) may be considered a sore spot for many in Austin because of drugs, crime and other difficulties, it is a huge improvement over the slum conditions of the past.

I recalled this conversation with the man at the auto parts store after attending the Austin African American Community Heritage Festival at Huston-Tillotson University.  I made the kids come on a short East Austin bike tour started at HTU.  However resistant at first to go the morning bike tour, the kids ended up having a great time riding with nearly thirty other cyclists around the East Austin area.

For me, it was a great opportunity for exercise, communion with cyclists, time with the kids, and opportunistic time to learn more about East Austin. From the bike tour, I also learned about the start of public housing in Austin, the first celebration on private lands of Juneteenth, which is the oldest celebration of slavery's end, at Emancipation Park in Austin.  There also was the existence of Gregorytown, the third freedman's community based in East Austin.

The importance of Gregorytown was that the school preceding the historic African American elementary school in East Austin named Blackshear Elementary replaced an older slum like school called Gregorytown School.  The school served African American children in surrounding community along with Olive Street School, Robertson Hill School, and the old E. H. Anderson High School.

E.H. Anderson was renamed L.C. Anderson High School for E.H. Anderson's brother and eventually moved to the last East Austin location at 900 Thompson Street, which was closed as result of court order in 1972 due to school desegregation.  Old Anderson High School's mascot was the Yellow Jackets, which is the name of the pee wee football team who practices at the current Boys and Girls Club located in the old L.C. Anderson building.

My kids enjoyed themselves riding and learning what they could.  I was way too excited after the ride since it was also an opportunity to engage so many people and learn more rich information about East Austin.

For the next blog entry, I'll talk more about Major Taylor group, another piece I learned during the tour.

As far as everything else, I did not drink my water until the end of the day.  Dehydrated, I slipped and drank a full mouth's worth of soda, root beer to be exact.  I do not feel guilty about it. Rather, I know why and how to avoid it in the future. I'm not immune to the temptations. However, after having the soda, I definitely did not enjoy it as I had in the past. It was a real disappointment actually. Drinking a tall glass of water was very rewarding.

What a change of events in one day!

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Day 19 - Don't Need No Teeth to Eat

If someone told me that I had been blogging everyday and writing about the small nuances of each day while swearing off sweets at the same time, I'd tell them that they were crazier than horse shit.

The day before entering my first string of entries I watched the movie Contagion where a character said blogging is just graffiti with comas and periods.   The statement could be a discouraging statement.  However, for me, graffiti is a honorable art form.  So, anything that I could do to add of the urban cyber art, I am all for it.


Sunday morning . . . I woke up from a deep slumber earlier than expected after staying up well past a reasonable time.

I felt refreshed and a bit enthusiastic.  Almost immediately I knew what was the greatest priority for me: Visiting the historical spots in East Austin with my kids. My only concern was whether the kids would be willing to appease me for a moment.

Although most occasions as a parent, I am not so much concerned about having my kids buy-in.  Let's not confuse this situation with them having a choice in the matter. Rather, I would like that they enjoyed this planned excursion instead of being a couple of grumpy bugs passively and aggressively ignoring my efforts to teach and expose them to something.

We had breakfast and made our way to a few historical spots, starting with Robertson Hill, Olive Street School, Curve, Lydia, and Waller Streets.  We followed up with Oakwood Cemetery and the Swede Hill neighborhood.  With tired feet and weighed down attention spans, I tried to ask more questions and less lecturing to them.  On occasion, I checked in with them to ensure some of what was being said stuck in their expanding brains.

By the time we finished our Black History Tour del East End, the excursion was a limited success. It was also great to see these sites during the day with full sun shining.  The early morning darkness before made it difficult to see everything well.

For some reason, I still felt like a tourist, distant and a bit removed after the tour.  It wasn't like I was going to go door to door, conduct interviews for a qualitative investigation into the cultural mores of the local townspeople.  Of course, it is possible.  I've participated in at least two or three graduate student based investigations on the East Austin community.

On a whim, I took the kids with me to Sam's BBQ.  Since I do not eat red meat, barbeque generally has not been a big priority for me. I'd seen Sam's innumerable times over the years.  Never have I had the inclination to stop and see what it was like.  Impulsively, I've gone to Pokey Joe's and had Ruby's Barbeque at department get togethers in the past .

Truthfully, I thought they were lame as hell.  Tasteless, one time the chicken was cold, and the sauce was more like spicy sweet ketchup.  And, I do not like ketchup.  So, any suggestion to drive out thirty or more minutes to Lockhardt, Lulling, or West Hell, Texas, to eat at Salt Lick was totally out of the question.

For today, Sam's seemed to be the best opportunity to experience East Austin, talk to real people, and eat some good food.  All the reviews about Sam's were positive.  All the photos I saw reminded me of any whole-in-the-wall place I'd grown up with in anywhere across the South.

The kids and I arrived and I could not remember what took me so long to visit the spot. I felt a bit embarrassed that I had not been there earlier. I tried to read the menu, but Willie Mays, Sam's BBQ owner, asked me to tell him what I wanted.  I ordered and . . . BAM!  Mr. Mays served me my whole chicken, hot, a side of potato salad, and four slices of wheat bread.

I laughed inside as my son asked me what the bread was for.  As we ate, Willie sat during a slow period to chat me up as he watched my reaction to eating his food.  The small, friendly spot reminded me of a small town genuineness not oftentimes found in a large city.  The great thing about East Austin has been the ability of people to keep to their roots as much of the city seems to change around them.

I do not want to suggest that East Austinites are stuck in the past. I'm reminded that not every part of Austin is a recovering hippie enclave or WASP retreat primarily concerned with the latest IPad innovations, downloaded apps, the latest bar tips found on Foursquare, loyalties to a local indie band, and online Facebook gossip. There is nothing wrong with these things in themselves, but there is more in the world.

It's hard to describe how it felt to go to Sam's with my kids.  My kids probably did not care.  However, I was glad to be there with them.  Maybe it felt familiar to me because it reminded me of the many times my mother took me out on "country drives" through Oakland, California, or Fort Worth, Texas, when visiting friends or family.  It was like she'd search for the smallest, rankest spot on the map, stop to smell the air, and know we'd come to the right place to break bread and dine with kings.

After finishing some chores, touring East Austin, and lounging, I accomplished my intended goal to stay on track, drank my water, stayed sufficiently distracted from eating sweets, and spent quality time with the kiddos.  Not a bad day.