Round Rock

It seems unbelievable to me, that I have lived in the same town for 28 years. Well, 27, if you count the one year I lived in Georgetown, eight miles up the highway.

My parents must have been some sort of gypsies, because they sure moved around a lot, for people not in the military. I went to eight different schools. They finally lit somewhere when I was in the 8th grade, so I managed to go to the same high school all the way through. By the time that was over, I wanted to move and never see any of those people again.

So I did. After much peregrination, SSS and I decided that Austin, Texas was the place to settle down and raise a family. Unfortunately, the only house we could afford was way too close to the airport to allow for a baby to sleep through the night, so we started looking at the outlying areas.


The day that SSS got hired by the City of Round Rock, I started looking for a way to move here. It was such a nice little town, with nice people--very like the town in which my parents finally lit. Round Rock was bigger, with a better library, a drugstore that served the best chocolate malt I had ever had, and cheap housing. What more could a young family want?

It took some adjustment. For several years, I was Austin at home and Round Rock downtown. Sometimes I would forget, and wander into the library in harem pants and a halter top. Once, while I was asleep, Chandra's Godmother took her to the HEB dressed in nothing but a silk scarf (Chandra, that is), and when she started swimming lessons, and I was outside the fence with all the other mommies, I started shaving my legs. Sometime between Vanessa's birth and her first birthday, I cut off my long hair, having got tired of looking like Round Rock's resident hippie.

Round Rock sort of grew up out of my reach, and the town that had just under 12,000 people when we moved here in 1977 now has 83,000.

I think it may be time to move again. To Weir, or Walburg, or Granger, or Point-and-Shoot.

Somewhere with a current population of under 10,000, situated a bit further off the highway and away from Austin.