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October 28, 2004
the homebody
Just before my midterm exams in my first year at law school, during, I believe, my Civil Procedure class, I was reclined on one of my favorite couches on the fifth floor of the UT law library. The fifth floor of the law library was, in fact, on the opposite end of the school from my Civil Procedure class, but on that day, as on many days, I determined that diligent self-study would benefit me more than class. As I began to fall asleep, I looked out across the treetops and saw the top of St. David’s hospital, where I had been born almost 23 years earlier. I thought of exams, and the academic and personal apocalypse they would bring, and found it strangely comforting that the sites of my birth and apparent, rapidly-approaching death would only be a few blocks apart.
It’s with a mixed sense of pride, accomplishment, and embarrassment that I admit to being one of the three or so non-institutionalized people in Austin that were actually born here, and who have never lived elsewhere. Most people react with the same sort of shock reserved for, say, walking up on a healthy Californian condor buying lottery tickets and a Schlitz at 7-11. There are those people, though, the type that would more likely frown on the fact that the condor plays the lottery, that apparently feel I’m an incomplete and intractably dull human being for having stayed here all my life.
Fortunately, I don’t really hang out with people like that, and they don’t hang with me. In 34 years, Austin has yet to exhaust itself as a character in my life. I feel I’ve lived multiple lifetimes here. Scenery and people tend to repeat and recycle themselves. And, because of my mother’s experiences, I’ve always had the sense of being fortunate to even be here.
My mother had come to the United States from Korea in 1967, armed only with a 3-pound bag of peanut M&M’s, that she purchased in Hawaii, clutching it and metering out the security it held as she soared over the Pacific. In Seattle, she disembarked, then realized she had left the bag on board. Her frantic efforts to re-board the plane were thwarted by burly stewardesses. She had, like so many, reached America, and was now completely alone.
Somehow, for reasons I now realize I’ve never adequately explored, she came to Austin, which hardly seems like it would have been the shining city on the hill beckoning to people abroad in 1967. At any rate, she started over, without money or any safety net within several thousand miles. She went to school, worked at Burger King, worked at the old Texas theatre on the Drag, which has since metamorphosed into an Eckerd’s, like a caterpillar changing into something far less interesting. She worked as a janitor, bookkeeper, whatever would keep me fed, all while maintaining a 4.0 at the University of Texas. In 1975, she applied for a job as a file clerk for a state agency, offering to work for free to prove herself.
She got the job. She worked hard, as did my dad. She moved up and on. She made enough money to eventually become a Republican with strong views on limiting immigration. Last year, Mom was able to slap down cash for a Hummer H2, having seen one on a magazine cover. I’m at once proud of her, and fearful for everyone else. If you see a Hummer bearing down on you, with just a straw hat and huge, Miami retiree sunglasses barely glinting over the steering wheel, remain calm, pull onto the shoulder, and let her pass.
I know that my mother was so driven all these years largely because she remembers the pain of not being able to give me more. I remember walking with her in the long-gone KMart off of Anderson Lane. It was Christmastime, somewhere back in the very early Seventies, back when the blue-light special meant something, and Martha Stewart was knee-high to Michael Milken. I remember the Icee sign, the feeling of safety, amazed at the wonder of the tall shelves of food and things. And I remember Whoppers.
I know mom fears I remember hunger and hopelessness and wanting. She fears I knew she couldn’t afford to give me much that Christmas. But all I remember is her reaching for and handing me a cardboard carton of Whoppers. I remember walking back across the street to our apartment, the cool feel of the chocolate giving way slowly to the malted milk center melting on my tongue, and the sure feel of her hand around mine.
A decade later, the Kim Family exodus continued. Korean aunts, uncles, and grandparents who had never seen Austin on a map moved here, no doubt encouraged by my mother’s growing success and the sophisticated and dignified Texan culture as seen on “Dallas” in the early 80’s.
Watching the city change has been both exciting and painful. As a child, I remember riding down 360, looking at the small patch of light to the East. I asked my Dad every time if Austin would ever get bigger. Clearly, it would be one of the dumbest questions I ever asked. Over the years, I saw the light begin to creep outward, saw little fuzzy patches of it pop up to the north and south. Then, about 10 to 15 years ago, it’s like the earth just belched forth halogen lamps and mercury-vapor streetlights. Buildings erupted upward like shoots in the cool time-lapse movies they showed in elementary school to try to interest us in science.
My life changed in pace with the city. From 1975 through 1981, I lived on 52 acres my family leased from a friend of my dad’s for some ridiculously small pittance. I had a barn, an endless flow of stray dogs, and exposure to people who were the templates for characters on “King of the Hill”. One day, I will successfully steal from my mother’s photo albums and destroy a picture of me at about 10 years old. I’m in blue gym shorts, an orange shirt with Bevo’s caricatured buttocks on the front, and cowboy boots, holding a .22 rifle in one hand and the unfortunate grackle that flew within its range in the other.
In the last decade or so, Barnes and Nobles, Chili’ses, Bed Baths and Beyonds, Best Buys, and other stores were cloned in secret corporate labs in Montana, airlifted in by flying saucers, and dropped like cluster bombs, cratering the Austin landscape. Cars multiplied. Bold new road expansions were begun, their completion carefully timed to coincide with the points at which the traffic growth made them inadequate.
Today, I eye the Target Greatland at Mopac and Southwest Parkway warily. Late one night in the 1990’s, it was quietly airlifted in and unceremoniously dumped precisely on top of my childhood country home. I’ve stopped there and tried to find the tremendous oaks I used to clamber around in and chase my dog around. I enjoy stomping through the lingerie department, glaring at the customers and asking them to get out of my room.
Later, I would move to Westlake, where I went from learning to avoid rattlesnakes to learning about Polo shirts, Porsche’s, and white flight. For the sake of brevity and taste, that period of time will not be discussed.
I went to UT for undergrad and law school, considering no other schools. Actually, I had my SAT scores sent to UT and the University of Tel Aviv, but I never got an admissions catalogue or letter of invitation from the latter. I thought my scores were pretty good, but I guess they’re picky.
I’ve worked a number of jobs in the years since I got my law degree. A year with an entertainment lawyer that was one of the founders of the Armadillo World Headquarters. A year with the Commission on Human Rights. Today, I work as a hearing officer in a state agency, in a division that amounts to a penal colony for lawyers.
Only a couple of my friends actually hail from Austin. By and large, the people that infuse and shape my life and who I am today came from Beaumont, Dallas, Houston, El Paso, Corpus Christi. As many came from oddball places like New York, Wisconsin, Long Beach, and Buffalo. Many came, only intending to go to school here or work here awhile, and most have stayed.
Like my own mother, enough of the rest of the world seems to have found reasons to flow through Austin, and therefore my life. Clearly, there’s a diverse world out there with a lot to teach me. But the world has been kind enough and intrigued enough by this town to come to me, to give me the lessons and materials to grow, to learn, to figure out who I am and what my best destiny is. A dead guy named Emerson said, “He who travels to be amused or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself… He carries ruins to ruins.” The sense of this home, of being a part of this home, is what I carry with me when I travel, through the world, and through life.
And if none of this logically or emotionally justifies being an Austinite for life, I can always say, “Hey, at least it’s not Waco.”
Posted by Rob at October 28, 2004 06:17 AM