Where is Home?

Walking down the Drag in Austin one day, I came upon the house I used to live in, passing by on a flatbed truck, cut neatly in two pieces. I was surprised to see the interior doors I had painted in my nascent expressionist style.

It was a good house for me in my art school days. My guess is that it was built for servants, or maybe slaves, sometime in the 1800’s. There was no kitchen but there was a bathroom with a clawfoot tub. I rented it from a bank trust department for $25 a month. It had a large front room, a bedroom, bathroom and a room I worked to convert into a real kitchen. I parked my motorcycle out front. There was no yard, just a few feet between the front steps and the street. Across the street — this was 22nd and Pearl — there was a fraternity house.

The walls had no insulation, so it was dang cold in winter and sweltering in the summer. AC was a luxury in those days and this house had never dreamed so high. All my hippy friends kept trying to entice me to move; it was a coveted domicile. They wanted it.

So, I parked my motorcycle out front, a bumpy few feet between the house and the street. The UT art department was five minutes away to the other side of the campus. One day my brother called just as I was getting ready to leave for class, telling me to stay put. There was a guy on the tower shooting anything that moved. Several people had already been killed. I…