Taking a Walk on a Slippery Slope

Print this entry

I walked alone on the morning of Father’s Day, down a street in South Austin on which I lived more than three decades ago. My Beautiful Mystery Companion was still stoking up on caffeine and our teenage daughter, of course, was asleep. We were staying in a spotless condo I had rented using Airbnb, the website used by folks to rent lodging. I have become quite a fan of Airbnb, using it to find places to stay for less cost than a hotel — and with a lot more space.

The neighborhood was filled with rental units — mainly fourplexes and duplexes, with a few full-bore complexes. In 1981, I lived on Parker Lane while going to graduate school in photojournalism at the University of Texas. We had moved here after our first rent house, near the old Mueller Airport, was burglarized. I lost camera equipment and a stereo, if memory serves. The burglary left us feeling violated and unsafe, as burglaries do, and we quickly moved to the place on Parker Lane.

So on a Sunday morning sidewalk I trudged, dodging cracks and low-hanging branches laden with rain from the evening before. An orange tabby peered out from a vehicle up on blocks in a driveway. A terrier barked while sandwiched between a picture window and the drapes. A fat robin lolled in a yard, a worm wiggling in his beak. A few folks gathered at a bus stop, staring at their phones. I began walking in the bike lane after sliding on the mossy sidewalk and nearly tumbling to the concrete. I have not seen Austin this green in June in decades, if ever.

In my memory, always suspect, our place on Parker Lane was several blocks south of where we were staying on our weekend jaunt. I decided to see if I could find it.

The neighborhood has deteriorated somewhat since I lived here, although the complex where we stayed over the weekend was presentable, and the condo we rented nicely appointed. But for the first several blocks I walked, tall grass brushed the underside of junker cars, paint peeled from rotting eaves, and the sidewalk heaved upward every few panels.

Nothing looked familiar. Everything looked the same. I soon realized I had no chance of finding the duplex where we once lived. It might have been demolished by now, or three decades of tree growth had rendered it unrecognizable. I kept walking, enjoying the unusual coolness of a late June day in Austin.

We did not live on Parker Lane very long, because one day, after riding the bus home from UT, I discovered we had again been burglarized. There was less left to steal, but the thieves took what they could. Once again we moved, this time far north to the last house on Guadalupe Street, miles north of where it passes in front of campus, the stretch well-known as the Drag. We managed to keep hold of what was left of our possessions at this house until we returned to East Texas so I could run a weekly newspaper.

As we headed out of Austin Sunday afternoon, after a Father’s Day treat of barbecue from Stiles Switch, I drove up North Lamar — following the late Molly Ivins dictum: “The key to happiness in Austin is to never, ever drive on I-35.” Suddenly, as the clouds once again opened and brought a downpour, I turned off on a side street.

“I’m going to see if I can find our old house on Guadalupe,” I said.

The house has disappeared. Or it has been transformed into something I could not recognize. I went to where it used to be, the last house on Guadalupe, and a totally different but similarly rundown structure stood there. I gave up and got back on North Lamar, headed to a point where we could cut across the interstate and hit the toll road to make our escape back to the Piney Woods, to familiar territory.

Print this entry