Moving to South Austin

In Where Love Once Lived, one character lives in the Clarksville area of Austin, Texas. There are references to my own experience living next to the neighborhood that was restricted to blacks only back when I was there. I lived on a white street, but our backyard was adjacent to the backyard of a black family. I don't remember anything about the parents of that family, but I remember talking to the children. We would often meet at the wire fence and stare at each for a while until we finally got into a normal childhood conversation. I'm not sure how old I was, but since my family moved from there in 1946, I had to be about nine years old.

World War II had ended and the economy was improving. We moved to a nice neighborhood with a modern house on Josephine Street south of the Colorado River. South Austin seemed far away then. I bought my girlfriend Lajuana Jolly a necklace and told her goodbye. I thought I'd never see her again, but we met up again when we got to the one white high school in town. However, the spark was never reignited. We had grown apart.

After the move, we only ventured north of the river to go downtown where Dad worked or to see a movie. There was one movie theater in South Austin, but it was way over on South Congress Avenue. Checking Google Maps today, I see that it was only 2.3 miles from where we lived at West 9 1/2 Street to the South Austin address on Josephine Street. Today, I regularly walk further than that for exercise.

The nearest grocery store to the Josephine house was on Kinney Avenue and it was the size of a current day two-car garage. Maybe smaller. Mother would send me to the store nearly every day to get groceries. We had a charge account there. The grocer would give me what ever was on the shopping list and then Dad would go in on Saturday to pay for the week's purchases. I would often sneak in a candy bar that wasn't on the list so I didn't mind doing the shopping.

One day, a neighborhood friend went with me and he showed me a shortcut to the grocery store through a wooded area. Right in the middle of the forest he stopped and pulled out a knife. I didn't know what was going on and thought I better get out of there. But before I could move, he grabbed a piece of dried grapevine and cut off a few inches of it, stuck it in his mouth and lit the other end just like adults did with cigarettes. He took a few puffs, coughed, and passed it to me. I tried it and started taking that shortcut every time I went to the store

Other memories from the time I lived at the Josephine house include the day the house caught on fire, renting out my room, learning to drive. I'll write about these adventures and others later.