There Are Places I Remember...

The house I grew up in

It's been a while since I posted, I've been super busy so my blogs are back-logged. Back-logged blogs... say that five times fast... Anyway, on September 13 my oldest and dearest friend Ashley sent me a text telling me to pack my bags because we were going on a surprise trip down memory lane for my birthday! I grew up in Victoria, Texas, which is (for most people) a pit stop on highway 59 between Houston and Corpus Christi. It's too large to be considered a small town, when I was living there the population was around 40,000. However, since it's pretty far removed from other cities it functions very much like a small town and has that small town siren call that keeps natives coming back.

My sister Katie holds our cat Abe

It may not seem like a fun trip to most people, even to Ashley because she lived there much longer than I did, but she knew that I would really like to go there, and she even arranged a meeting with our 4th grade teacher, Ms. Prince, in whose class we met in October of 1993!

I was born in the Calhoun County hospital in Port LaVaca because my parents had been living in Point Comfort until right before I was born and my mom's Obstetrician was there. I lived in Victoria at 504 Joplin Street from birth until just before my 13th birthday. To this day Victoria holds the record for my longest residency in any Texas city, although I suspect it will soon be outstripped by Austin in a couple of years.

My family moved to Victoria because my dad got a job at the Brown and Root plant there, and none of the rest of our family lived there, so when we moved away in the Fall of 1996 there wasn't much reason to visit. We did go back and forth periodically for the next three years because it took us that long to sell our house, and I went back every once in a while throughout high school and in to college to visit Ashley and her family, but now that they've moved to the Austin area, it has been at least six years since I went back.

Some of my old class mates (5th grade) play on a piece of
playground equipment that has since been removed

Ashley took me to visit my old landmarks, we went to Vickers Elementary School, and checked out my old house, which is three blocks away. I used to walk to and from school until I was old enough to ride my bike. We visited the Victoria Mall which is basically the only thing to do in town most days. We visited my old home church, Trinity Episcopal, where I also attended school for second grade, by a stroke of good fortune the organist was there and he let us in and we roamed around, breathing in my past. It was really odd because they have never moved around the class rooms, and the second grade class room is in exactly the same spot it was in when I was there. However, there is now a portable building where there used to be a small playground, and they turned the old library into a computer lab. C'est la vie.

Ashley and I climbed an old jungle gym - this was silver
when we were in school

I have never had the courage to go up to my old house and knock on the door and ask to come inside. I know it would be completely different if I did, new furniture, new smells... That's why I was so happy to be able to go back into my old church where not much has changed. I had Miranda Lambert's "The House That Built Me" stuck in my head all weekend though.

My 5th grade class

Ms. Prince was my 4th grade teacher at the beginning of the year, and due to large class sizes they had to hire a new teacher half way through the year and I was moved to her class. Her name was Mrs. Miller. Mrs. Miller and Ms. Prince were my favorite teachers from elementary school. Mrs. Miller moved from Vickers to Howell Middle School in 1995 but I didn't have her in sixth grade. At some point in time she must have moved away from Victoria, but Ms. Prince is still teaching 4th grade at Vickers, she's in her 37th year of teaching!

We thought this was the same slide, it's in roughly the same
place, but I'm not sure it is, you can tell the top is
different in the two pictures.

The kickball field!

The interior of the sanctuary, from my family's
usual pew, on the same side as the pulpit
of course

Trinity Episcopal Church front

My dad stands in the parking lot looking very Episcopalian

Me in second grade as a private school kid

This is probably 4th grade... hard to tell...
I look like Ashley's mom I'm so much taller. I still kinda do.

This is what I wrote in the margins of my year
book next to Ms. Prince's name, "The most cool,
sweet, Christian woman I've ever known" other
than my mom, obviously!

Ashley, Ms. Prince and I reunite at IHOP! She looks
exactly the same as she did twenty years ago!

Mrs. Miller - probably my favorite teacher. I had her for
5th grade as well as the second half of 4th grade.