Done, and Undone

Pennybacker bridge, in a rare quiet moment.

We are in a constant state of done and undone. 

So it was with me when I arrived back in Austin to live, for the second time, on March 17, 1989. I returned because I had fallen under Austin’s spell. Many years before, when Cosmic Cowboys roped, roamed, and rodeoed here, I attended the University of Texas. Then, I left to see the world in the summer of 1974. It’s a big world to see, and I’m still in that process. Somehow or another, after college, I wound up back in the place of my birth, Houston, despite promising myself and everyone else that would never happen. In the 1980s Houston was an impossibly optimistic boomtown. Fortunes were made, lost, and schemed to be re-won—sometimes all in the same week. This was especially so in the oil-patch: everybody was somebody… until they weren’t. This was all so confusing and stressful for a young guy like me, just starting my career. When it all came to an end due to the simultaneous implosion of both the oil and financial/real estate industries, it felt like a good time to flee Houston. Like an old oil well in shallow shale, my deal there played out. When it did, I didn’t just come back to Austin—I ran. I was done with Houston.

Back then, perhaps more than now, the two cities could not be more different. Austin was the antithesis of Houston. Austin was laid back, cerebral, perhaps even a bit backward, in the best kind of way. It was the sort of place one could escape to, hide out for a while, and live off the land. When people asked me what I was going to do once I got to Austin, I would half-jokingly reply, “Start a goat farm.” I had no intention of actually doing that, and would not know how even if it were my intent. But the statement  felt like a weird, Austin-like thing to throw out there, so I did.

A well-used rope swing above Barton Creek.

However, I was not prepared for what I found once I arrived that March of 1989. We have become so used to Austin’s prosperity that we might have forgotten, or perhaps never even realized, that back then, there was serious trouble in this paradise. The Austin I ran to that spring of 1989 was completely undone—devastated by the same real estate bust affecting Houston and all of Texas. One afternoon, while driving down Highway 360 near the Pennybacker Bridge, no other car was in sight, either in front or behind me. I wondered why they built this big ol’ highway if there was nobody to drive on it. My, how times have changed! The first time I had dinner at a charming new restaurant in Clarksville called “Jeffrey’s,” mine was the only table occupied in the entire establishment for two hours, during prime dinnertime. It was clear—Austin had been brought to its knees, and there was no guarantee it would ever come back.  This was Austin, undone, in 1989.

1989 Austin was also “undone” in a different way—meaning it was not yet done. Consumer technology had not yet come to town. Michael Dell, recently out of the dorm, was assembling a few computers at a time and trying to compete with “established” brands, most of which are no longer around (though Michael, of course, still is). In 1989, you couldn’t give your house away—the market had completely collapsed. I was able to rent a marvelous four-bedroom home with a pool, right off Westlake Drive overlooking Lake Austin, for less than $2000 per month. Stevie Ray was finally starting to get good gigs which would pay him enough to live on. Lady Bird Lake was still Town Lake, and the foundation of the trail was still years away, so jogs were frequently interrupted by washed-out portions. The Zilker Lawn was not yet “great,” but the outdoor music festivals held there were. You couldn’t find a decent job, but it felt like you didn’t need much of one, because things were so cheap and Austin living was so bohemian. Why bother yourself with a small detail like gainful employment?

Austin was not yet done. It never has been. Same as it ever was, folks around here just had to go and do things differently (while, some old-timers say, ruining paradise in the process). Hardware, software, food, drink, new music that sounded old, old music that sounded new, clothes, art, everything thrown into a kitchen sink gumbo and done with that unique Austin twist—many of the Austin things we know and love today were just glimmers in our eyes in 1989. So it was with me as well. 

My life here is so different than I could ever have imagined it be in Houston. Where I was single in Houston, I have a happy family here now. Here, a house on the side of a hill instead of all the flatness I saw in Houston. I have started businesses based on ideas and things I previously knew nothing about. My friends and family back in Houston still don’t understand how I got into the airport cargo facilities development business, or why I think I can invest in early stage technology companies, yet these have been some of the career paths I followed since I came to Austin. This is a place of invention and re-invention, of possibilities, of giving in to the providence of the good fortune we all share for having ended up in this place. We are all continually in the process of “becoming.”

A stream of bubbles emerges from a hidden fissure in the floor of Barton Springs Pool beneath the springing dive board and quickly scampers to the surface like ducklings following their mother. Reaching the top, they disappear, to be followed by other streams of bubbles—just like them, but different.

Barton Springs Pool

Here in Austin, we’re in a constant state of done and undone. Austin will always be Austin, even though it may not always be the same one you found when you arrived.