i have been having to drive back and forth from austin to beaumont for the last 2 months helping with hurricane relief efforts.  during the travel times one gets bored with the usual freeway driving (unless you in a hurry of course) so i sometimes take all the back roads..the two lane county roads.  these take you through the small towns and farm lands of the coastal plains of texas.

i was making such a trip last week on the way back to austin and for some strange reason i wound up in a small town that i had spent my childhood in.  wallis tx, not much on a map, not much to it period..but it had been home for 5 years.

as you drive into town you see the brand new high school, of course they had to combine three small towns and consolidate into a school district, raise taxes on all those farmers, and hock the towns to be able to afford it…but its there.  the mechanics shop that use to work on dads truck and farm equipment is gone, the metal roof flaps up and down with the wind and you can see the master lock on the front door is rusted shut.  jimmy’s corner store is also deceased, as is jimmy.  jimmy use to buy the eggs that he sold from an old farmer who lived next door to our farm.  he was around 75 or so when i lived there and he was crippled from a farm accident that happened when he was in his 20s, he lived with his brother and his wife who had taken care of him since the accident..every morning he would get up at 5 and go out to the barn and by himself hook up his old mule to a flatbed trailer..then he would go and collect the morning eggs from the hen house, load them all up on the flatbed and drive them into town and sell them to jimmy.  that was his way of helping to support the family and the farm.  hes gone now so is the mule.  i drove by the house and out by the barn is the flatbed trailer with 4 flat tires.

the movie theater is boarded over as is most of the buildings downtown. there is a new metal building that is now the new “city meat market”…the grocery store and service station.  most of the houses looked run down and wore out from years of neglect.  there was a new mobile home park on the outskirts of town and i thought i caught a glimps of a small apartment building behind it.

as i past the city or wallis sign headed out highway 36 i thought of all the memories that i had of this town and the people in it.  wondered if anyone would remember me.  and headed home to austin.

i thought of change..the passing of time..the passing of friends and family.  i thought about me.

would my new life bring me new memories, would i be trapped in the past like an old wooden building or would i be the new “city meat market”