Advances in Air Travel

Our friend Jackie snapped this at the airport (ABIA: Austin Bergstrom International Airport). A new way of getting around?

Giant Guitars Again...This Time at the AIrport

There are still a few around on the streets, but a bunch of the giant decorative guitars are now decorating a baggage carousel at the airport. My friend Jackie shot a couple of pictures the other day. I showed this one first because Janis Joplin is front and center. One of my favs. Hard to believe she's been dead forty years.

Mueller is Taking Off

In 1930 an airport opened in what was undoubtedly the far reaches of north Austin. When I moved to Austin, Robert Mueller Airport was practically in the heart of the city, circumscribed by 51st St./Airport/Manor and IH35. Planes were sort of low over our house as they approached the airport from the west (which they usually did) and so low over areas east of us that it depressed property values. There is a coffee shop on Duval St. and 51st called Flight Path to this day. Newly arrived college kids probably can't fathom why.

For the first almost quarter of a century that I lived in Austin the airport was convenient to our house if the access once there and the array of flights was not. In 1999 a reconfigured, decommissioned Air Force Base, Bergstrom, opened as our airport (Austin Bergstrom International Airport, ABIA, still AUS on your luggage). Mueller started the new millennium as a political redevelopment football among governmental agencies. Finally a plan for housing and retail plus some public facilities emerged. The centerpiece of the place today is the Dell Children's Medical Center of Central Texas. This tower with the colorful windows on the hospital evokes the old airport tower. (So, the patient reader finally knows what the picture represents! We love words here at Austin Daily Photo...go figure.)

Currently the area is only a small part of what it will be. The hospital and a Ronald McDonald House are in operation. A number of mid-range household and clothing stores and chain restaurants are operating. Some buildings that look like offices are up. Housing is under contract. Streets names after locally famous people like Kenneth Threadgill and Clifford Antone are planned. I figure the emergence of this dense, mixed used area near downtown will mean all us condo dwellers can easily take public transportation to shop at, say, Best Buy. The 'easily' will probably emerge some time in 2025 or after when oil is $1000 a gallon! Meanwhile the shopping didn't seem too busy on a Saturday and it is convenient to our house so FFP and I were able to dispose of a simple errand (a new tea kettle for his mom) without getting on a highway.

Barbara Watches Your Baggage

The passenger terminal at ABIA (Austin Bergstrom International Airport) is named for one of Texas' statespersons, Barbara Jordan. She was from Houston and represented that area in the Texas Senate and in the U.S. House of Representatives. She gave a famous, moving keynote speech at the 1976 Democratic Convention. I have labeled this entry with my 'iconic Austinites' label because Barbara moved here after retiring from politics due to illness. She taught at the LBJ school of affairs and became increasingly hobbled by illness. (During the time we saw her around Austin I never knew what her devastating illness was, but my WEB research indicates she suffered from MS and Leukemia.) I really believe that if she had not become ill, she would have made the U.S. grapple with our discrimination against women and blacks in a profound way. I didn't agree with all her political stands but I thought Barbara as President was a wonderful dream because she was honest, driven and knew how to move people. Fact is, she would have broken a third barrier, too. She was a Lesbian. In acknowledging what day it is, I thought that there could be no better photo than a great woman's statue at an airport.