Then and Now

We're still praying for our friends in Baytown and surrounding areas who are recovering from Hurricane Ike. We understand half of Baytown still has no power, and the clean-up process has a long way to go. Here are some pics our friend David Smith took of our old neighborhood:

Our old house. The blue tarp on the back corner (where Julia's room was) shows the house sustained damage in the same spot where a tree landed during Hurricane Rita in 2005.

Down the street from our house. These houses back up to what's known as "Slapout Gully" (which feeds into Burnet Bay) and sustained a lot of flooding.

A big tree down about five houses away from our old house.

A couple of blocks from our old house. I don't know how to describe how beautiful Baytown's neighborhood of Lakewood -- and our old street in particular -- used to be. We lived on North Burnet Drive, which is the last street before the bay. The houses across the street from us were waterfront houses. It was an older neighborhood with huge magnolias, vibrant azaleas and lush oleanders. We even once had wisteria that wound its way across our back fence. You can imagine what it was like for me to move from dry, drought-ridden Abilene into southeast Texas' very own Garden of Eden in 2001. I hope Baytown and Lakewood can eventually become what they once were.

And now on to Kemah. We lived about 30 minutes from the Kemah Boardwalk and we loved going there. It had restaurants, a midway, shops and a hotel.

Here's Jenna at Kemah in 2005 with a view of some of the shops over her right shoulder...





...and what the same area looks like now.











The midway area as it looked when Chad and I rode the ferris wheel on my birthday several years ago...






...and the midway now. There was also a carousel where we took some great pictures of Julia and my dad when she was a toddler. After Ike, horses from the carousel were found scattered throughout the park.







The Kemah Boardwalk entrance back in its glory days...







...and the entrance now.










The Saltgrass restaurant as it looked when our good friends Bill and Margaret Ehlig took us there a few days before we moved to Arkansas...






...and the Saltgrass now.







So please keep praying for everyone on the Gulf Coast who lost so much. The news media has basically moved on to other things, and it never gave Baytown much attention anyway, except for the refineries there. But there are still lots of people hurting and trying to figure out how to rebuild their lives.

Memories of the Coast

Because I've either lived on the Texas Gulf Coast or had relatives living there as long as I can remember, I have literally a lifetime of memories of that area...especially the beaches of Galveston and the Bolivar Peninsula. That photo is of the girls and me at Crystal Beach in 2005, when Julia was six and Jenna was not quite one. I have deadlines looming for now, but I'm planning on blogging my coastal memories when I get a chance.


We've also learned that Lakewood, our Baytown neighborhood, sustained some pretty major damage from the hurricane. Actually, we keep hearing the term "war zone." We're not even sure if our old house is still standing. Our friends the Springers lost most of their house to a giant oak tree during the storm, and we understand they are one of many families who has suffered that kind of loss. (The Springers visited us here in AR for a few days last January. That's a photo of Julia and Meagan's joyful reunion when we picked them up at the airport.) A few months ago I blogged about how much I loved Lakewood, and you can read it here.

On a happier note, I'm still working on a feature about gourmet shops in the area for the Nov. issue of Arkansas Life magazine. Thursday, to combine a lunch date with research, Chad and I went to the Boulevard Bread Company in the Heights. It is locally owned and they bake a jillion different kinds of bread fresh every day. There is no other place like it around here -- I may never go to Panera again! I ordered the hippiest thing on the menu, which was a vegan hummus sandwich. I know it sounds kinda gross, but it was SO yummy and I've been craving it ever since. I guess I'll be going back soon!

Bird's-Eye View

I was goofing around at TerraServer the other night and did a search for an aerial shot of our house in Baytown. The image is pretty grainy (which is why I didn't make it bigger), but something made me do a double-take. Our car is parked in the driveway. The photo was taken in January of 2002. We were still living there.

I think the car is our Taurus, which I drove until a drunk driver decided we didn't need it anymore in 2003. I stared at this blurred image for a long time -- trying to imagine what three-year-old Julia and I were doing that day. The image date is Jan. 27, which was a Sunday, but I'm not sure that's correct. I also found an aerial shot of our church supposedly taken on the same day, but the parking lot just has a few cars in it -- including one that looks like Chad's -- so the photo looks more like it was taken on a weekday instead of a Sunday.

At any rate, the picture made me think about how much I loved our neighborhood in Baytown. Lakewood was a beautiful, azalea- and magnolia-filled neighborhood that ran right up to the edge of Burnet Bay. David G. Burnet, who served as president of the Republic of Texas for a short time, purchased 17 acres in the area in 1831. Nathaniel Lynch, one of Stephen F. Austin's Old 300 colonists, owned a few hundred acres there, and Burnet ended up buying a lot of it from Lynch's descendants. Most of present-day Lakewood is contained within the land once owned by Burnet and Lynch. I loved living in such a beautiful, historic place. We could look between the waterfront houses across the street from us and see the San Jacinto monument against a gorgeous sunset just about every evening. David G. Burnet's wife Hannah is buried in an unmarked grave in what is now someone's front yard just down the street from where we lived.

Here are Julia and her best friend Meagan at the Lakewood neighborhood pool, which has been in continuous operation since the 1950s. Meagan's dad grew up in Lakewood, and she has grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins who live there. Lakewood residents (except us!) typically don't move away. We knew several families who have lived there for generations and who go to church, work and school in Lakewood -- almost never leaving the neighborhood.

Here's Julia in the LONG driveway in front of our house. It was perfect for sidewalk chalk!

We love our neighborhood here in Bryant, too. And, after the fixer-upper we had on North Burnet Drive in Lakewood, I was nothing less than jubilant to move into our current house, which is only a few years old and needed no work done to it at all. But I'll always miss Lakewood. Maybe I'll retire there someday.