We started today in Austin. I was planning on taking the whole day off but ended up doing a few hours of work before we left the hotel. I lost track of time and before I new it it was almost 9:30. Diane patiently waited for me to finish working.. She finally snapped me out of work mode and coaxed me out for a run. As soon as I was back we packed and hit the road.  I plugged in my boyhood address into the cars GPS and started driving.. It was like a drive back into my past.  We took Route 71 to I-10.. about 160 miles of flat, green, hot Texas. It hadn’t changed much in 30 years. Lots of cattle.. a few firework stands and lots of nothing. Coming into Houston was another thing. At about Katy things started getting built up… From there all the way into my old part of town was now quite built up. It was almost as if Houston had crawled out another 20 miles !. That stretch was full of new road and overpass construction. Strip malls, car dealerships… it was about as different from Vermont as one could get.  

The start of our journey.. find my old home address.

Ugh !

Wishfull thinking

Things were so built up that I almost didn’t recognize the turn off to my road. We pulled off the freeway and waited in traffic to make the turn down Echo lane.. the road to Memorial Senior High school where I went. I can honestly say this is the first time that I ever looked upon that school fondly.. It looked pretty much the same modulo a brand new front and prison like fences everywhere. We spent about 30 minutes walking around the place.. We found a few gates that had accidentally not been locked and even wondered around inside the compound.    It brought t back all sorts of memories..  I could really place myself back in that time..  I though of many folks.. friends, teacher.. I hadn’t thought of in probably 30 years.. it was pretty cool being there…  now at least.

In the cafeteria

My nrother drew this mural in 1978.. it’s been repainted, though

The interiar hallway.. the fences are new

The track’s named in honor of my dad’s friend Will, the track coach here forever.

I threw a SamStone on the roof in front of My Kozlozsky’s old chemestry class

Ms. Rae’s Chemestry II class

My old Calculus room <3 <3 <3

On the track that my dad and I used to run on. I foud out by goign through the superintendat’s office trash that this track cost $30,000 in 1976.. but they woudn’t give us $300 for a laser… I even petinitione them for it.. and never got it.. 🙁

World History Class

Mr. Saathoof’s old Physics’ Room “John… please be more attentive”

If Diane and I had met here

 

After leaving there, we made a quick stop at Spring Branch Middle School. Middle school was  not much fun for me so my memories from that place were pretty few..   My favorite memory from there was the time that my friend Phillip and I launched a very large homemade rocket from there with a fairly  large high explosive charge (Silver Azide as I recall)  as payload. It went off much closer to the ground than it was supposed to have. It scared us and we ran off just as the fire department was pulling up..  Ah  kids…

 

We then drove down Piney Point to Smithdale to See Memorial Drive Elementary… (I had forgotten that it was Memorial Drive  Elementary.. I remember it as Memorial Elementary. I found my Kindergarten class where Miss Mocha taught me.. I even got a shot inside.. I remember that was before we got air Conditioning in that school. I remember  it was unbearably hot sometimes. I remember the places I stood as part of the 5^th grade crossing cards. I remember being so proud of the white sash we  had to wear as a crossing guards.

The Bus stop

Ms. Mocha’s room

Mr. Eldridge. The Principal. he once made me squat for 20 minutes in a corner becasue I tripped Todd Mitchell

From there we drove past the church where I was in Cub and Boy Scouts then sanaked our way to Shady Glen where I grew up. Shady Glen used to be called ‘Scholars Hollow’ at one point because all of its residents were Rice professors. They changed the name when folks like us showed up

 

A tribute to our neighbor Bud

Our house looked great !. My folks moved from there up to Sherborn MA about 4 years ago. The guy who bought the house had put a bunch of work into spring up the place. It had new windows, a new fence, new landscaping and a new garage door. The essence of the place was not changed, though.  Knocked on the door, but no one was there. I walked around the place taking pictures. It was bitter sweet visiting there. I snuck around back and placed a SamStone in the bamboo that Sam like to play in when we visited here while he was little.  One big change was that the guy had cleared many of the trees from the  back yard so now it had healthy grass growing. Something we could never do with all of the shade.  It really looked great.  

 

Front View

The Garage which was my lab

‘Maggie’ , my favorite Magnolia tree (My friend Dari named her that)

Side view

The living room – this was where Xmas was

The front door

Our old mailbox

‘My’ firehydrant

Our old Thermometer (note the temp)

The kitchen

My old room

The new back yard

The patio

I put A SamStone in the Bamboo that Sam loved to play in

The back yard

The side door

Front of the house
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  It was hard for me to pull away from there.. but we had to get to my brother’s house. On the way., we made a quick stop at St. Francis Church which was across from our little road.  I used to go to nursary school there. Much later, my friends and I used to hang out there at night  and play music. I used to climb on the roof there and make tea… and I used to practice picking the locks on their doors. Those are strange memories. I left a SamStone in the capable hands of one of the statues of St. Francis who used to listen to me when I had problems to discuss.  (the statue I mean.. not the Saint)

Ms Holliday’s Nursary school room .. my first school experience

   From there we made the urban drive to my brother’s house. In the interest of time now. I’m going to write about our grate visit to my brother’s house tomorrow on the plane. Right now I need to go to sleep as we have to wake up at 4:45 to get to the airport.

This has been a really good trip so far.  More tomorrow. G’nite all !

 -jc