Interview with Linda Tristan-Perez

Today is Tuesday, July 28, 2026. My name is Megan Poole, and I’m interviewing Linda G. Tristan-Perez. We’re here at her home on Govalle Avenue, is that right?

That's correct.

Thank you, Linda, for agreeing to this interview. My first question for you—I know you've grown up in different parts of East Austin. Tell me what you think makes East Austin so unique. What makes it home?

I think the feel of it and the environment in itself. Everything is close by. And the fact that I’ve lived here all my life—I know the ins and the outs of East Austin, and so do the people around me as well. I mean, I go to H-E-B on Seventh Street, I run across everybody. And my kids even say, “Mom, you can't go anywhere without people talking to you.” [Laughter]

So, that makes me feel comfortable. Just the people, my neighbors—they're really nice. Both my neighbors have been here a while. And the people behind us have been here a long time as well, ever since I’ve been here, at this location. So, I feel comfortable just being in East Austin. I don't think I would want to be any other place right now.

Of course, my daughter has asked me to move. She lives in Cedar Creek, and she wants [me to move]. She has a lot of property, and asked us to move there. And I’m like, “No, we’re not going anywhere. We’re staying.” [Laughter, cross talk]

Yeah. So I just feel like it’s just home.

Have you seen it change much over time? [Cross talk] Tell me about that.

A lot. Of course, it’s all gentrified. None of the…A lot of the houses are two and three stories now, and it’s really really hard to see it being so gentrified.

But… you just have to go with the times. And so, it’s kind of hard because you remember a lot of the things that were there that aren’t [anymore]. For instance, Mrs. Baird’s Bakery. I grew up with that smell of the fresh bread. And we had Bruce’s Pies as well. And we grew up going into those places and grabbing a piece of bread, fresh bread. They used to give you fresh bread and butter. And then you used to be able to walk in there and just ask: “Can I have a slice of bread?” “Yes.”

And then, Bruce’s Pies—oh, they were the best pies ever. There’s no more of that, you know.

What was your favorite pie?

Coconut. Coconut pie was my favorite. They did have pecan, coconut, and lemon pies…but the coconut was my favorite. [Laughter]

When do you remember noticing that things were changing?

Probably…in the 2000s more so than any other [era], or maybe…Well, maybe a little bit further back, maybe in late ‘90s. Maybe in the late ‘90s, when a lot of the things started changing.

Do you remember one of the first things you saw and thought, “Okay, this is going to change East Austin?” Like, was it the building? Was it the loss of the stores?

It was more of the loss of the stores, more of the loss of the things that you could do, cheaply do, or free things that people were willing to give or do for you. It wasn’t like you felt… like you walked in somewhere like a store. We had a lot of little community stores. And now they’ve been taken over by, I guess, bigger…I don’t know, other people [and corporations] that are big. They're not—they're not people like me, that if I owned a store, I would welcome you to my store because it’s my store. [Cross talk]

But this way, they work there, and that’s it, you know? They’re not able to tell you, “Hey, here you can have this.”

We used to have a community store right there where Buena Vista was, and that one was called Wimberly. And Wimberly gave you everything because he was the one running it, and he was the one giving it to you.

And Joe’s. It used to be the corner store here on Springdale Road and Bolm Road. It used to be Joe’s. And Joe still lives. He still lives around the corner here. But he sold the store, and so he’s gotten older. He said he couldn't do it anymore.

Now you walk in there and you don't have the same feel of coming into the store. That’s when you start to feel the changes—when you don’t have that same feel.

And the school…I told you I went to Johnston [High School] and when I went to Johnston they had “Johnston High School”—it was called “Johnston High School.” But when they started changing the name, they started changing everything about it. Then they made it some “science academy” or something, and so that totally changed the feel of the school. They still do a lot of the history with Johnston…Well, now, see they say that Johnston went to Eastside Memorial [High School], but Eastside Memorial is not at the same location as Johnston was.

Where was Johnston? [Cross talk]

It was on Gardner Street, Gardner.

Anyways, so that changed. And then Allan changed….Allan used to be a…First, it was a Junior High when I went. When my kids went, it was an elementary [school]. I worked out of there, and it was an office. And then, it was an ISS school. And then, it changed to different things, and now it’s not even there. Now they’ve knocked it down, and it’s not even there.

So those are all the changes that I’ve experienced, that are big changes and you can not feel what you used to feel [before the gentrification].

And it’s hard to explain feeling. When you say the feel of it, do you think you’re talking about something like culture or community or love?

All of the above, all of the above. Because the culture is different, way different. Now you see people walking with dogs. Before you saw people walking with kids, all over the place. Dogs running around, that’s no more. Cats all over the place, there’s no more. [Laughter]

Because of all of those things, people keep their dogs in the house now. When I was growing up, we had a dog, and his name was Blackie, and he was in our backyard all the time, you know? [Laughter]

And he had a little house outside. My brothers made a little house for him. He was in the backyard, and now, I mean, you don’t see any of that because you can’t do that anymore.

And then, and then you just felt, you know…My mom used to hang her clothes outside to dry. You don’t see any of that anymore. That’s changed a lot. And that, I mean, when she brought the clothes in, it smelled fresh, like summer breeze. Those kinds of things. [Cross talk]

When you walked into a store, you know, when we went to Wimberly, he was like, you know, “Hey! How are you?” You know, this and that. And “Come on in” and “What can I do? What are you looking for? What can I help you with?”

Any of these stores, like The Winds where I used to work at, we used to go to the customer and [talk to them]. Now, you walk into a store and you have to look for somebody to help you. [Laughter]

So it’s like those kinds of things. You used to feel the magnitude of people when they come in, and you don’t feel it anymore. There’s no partialness in me going to this corner store by my house. When it used to be, I was partial to going to that store because of the people that ran it, and now there’s none of that. Because they have different people, or they have somebody who is very rude or doesn’t care. You know, that kind of thing. So there’s no magnitude to that person or store or area.

Now, I don’t think I’ve gone into the little corner store in probably six months, just because it doesn’t draw me to that place. Before it drew me there, you know?

They have a little restaurant that we use right here. It’s also called Joe’s, and they’re very—that that’s a family-owned [restaurant], and so that’s very [welcoming], you know…We go there quite a bit, and because you feel the closeness and the love and the magnitude to that place, and they have good food.

But there's a lot of trailer trucks everywhere that we could use, but because we feel the partialness to them [Joe’s restaurant] as a family, we go there. So a lot of that has changed. [clock chiming]

If you could bring back one element or thing from that time that you think would benefit all of us now, for all of East Austin, what would you bring back?

Ah, Johnston High School, because I would have been so happy that my grandkids could [attend the same high school], or any of the schools that used to be there, because like Brooke [School] is closed. There’s nothing. I mean, the building is there, it’s been empty for probably eight years, something like that. They closed it down.

They brought the kids to Govalle [School]. Govalle was a really cute school, really nice school, an elementary school—it had the “smell” of elementary. But you walk in there now—it's a brand new building, they gentrified everything. Their desks are horrible. Their seating is horrible, they have no backs. There are no chairs for the kids to sit on. They’re little [stools].

When I’m talking about my granddaughter, she was in kindergarten, they had these little round stool kind of looking things that sit low to the ground, and the table is about not even three feet off the ground. No desks—there are no desks. There’s tables. There are little bitty tables all over the place.

And when I worked at an elementary school, they were the first ones, and I worked at [T. A. Brown] and they were the first ones to change to a modernized school. And I stayed there for two and a half years and worked after that. But their desks were horrible—nowhere to put their backpacks. They’d leave their backpacks in the hallway. Nowhere to hang them. Nowhere for anything.

So it’s very different. And I know we have to go with the times and change is hard, but I still feel that they should be a little bit more accommodating too. When you get old, your back starts hurting a lot. I mean, you know [the feeling] if you’ve worked. My husband is having that problem now. If you worked hard all your life doing a job, and then you have to go to school, and your back hurts because you’re not sitting properly or whatever, in years to come, they’re gonna have problems. And so, those are a lot of the changes that I’ve seen throughout my life.

Tell me about Johnston, because you said when you were there, more than half the students were Hispanic. There were only a few white students. What was it like to be in a high school like that?

Well, evidently I really loved it. I wasn’t as active as I wanted to be, because of money. My mother could not afford a lot of our things, and…I wish I could have been more active, but because of money [I wasn’t].

And back in the day they weren’t like it is now, where people donate, you know? We didn’t have those kinds of donations, we didn't. If you were going to be… I was in the dance team, and the only reason I got in the dance team is because my brother said “I’ll pay for you to be in the dance team,” because he worked. So he’s the one that paid for my dance team. If I hadn’t been in there, and I mean, if he hadn’t paid for it, I wouldn’t have been in it.

I wanted to be in baseball, because I was very into sports. I mean, I was very sports-minded. And I played street ball, but that’s it. I couldn’t play in the team, because we didn’t have any money. Only people with money [could be in the team]. I couldn’t be in the band because you had to have money to buy the instrument. Now, my grandson plays in the band, and [the school] gives it to him. I mean, you know, they have it there at the school.

And so, it was very different, very very different. A lot of the things that you could do, and a lot of people, you know, Hispanic people, and a lot of the whites were in the band. But it was more of the people with money that could be in it.

And you mentioned that your dad died when you were quite young, and your mom was just doing all she could to make ends meet. Do you remember noticing that before high school? Were you aware?

Yes, because she always did tell us that we didn’t have any money. And one of the biggest things that I do, or did when my kids were little, with my husband…Well, I've been very fortunate. Both my husbands have had very, very good jobs, both of them. And of course I worked, and so I had a good salary too when my kids were growing up. And my grandkids, I do a lot for them as well. [clears throat]

But when I was very young, my mom would buy five apples and five oranges, because there were five of us. And so she would always tell us, “If you eat yours today, just know that you’re not going to have another one. You're going to eat that one, and that’s all you're going to have until next month.”

Because every month she would get the Social Security [check] for us. And so we would have one apple, one orange, one of everything. Grapes, she would separate them in baggies, and she would put them in the fridge, and she’d say, and you’d had to ask, “Can I have an orange? Can I have an apple? Can I have whatever?” “Did you eat yours?” “No.” “If you didn't eat it, go get it. If you ate it, you already ate it. You can't have it.”

And you know it’s funny, one day I was talking to my sister, and my sister said, “Man, I eat all the fruit that I want now.” [Laughter]

And I said, “So do I!” Because we grew up being deprived of that. Not because my mother didn’t want to give it to us. It was because we didn’t have the money. And so, those kinds of things you learn to appreciate when you’re older. [Laughter]

And I mean, it may not seem very much to people, you know, but it was a lot to us. So my mom did tell us, you know, like all along, she would tell us that she didn’t have the money for it, that we didn’t have the money to do that.

I wanted to be in the military. My mom didn’t let me because at those times, it was only for men. Only men could go, and I wanted to go. And she said “no.” And at that time, she had to sign [for me to go], and she wouldn’t.

Do you remember what made you want to go?

My oldest brother was in the military, and he went to a bunch of places, and that’s what I wanted to do.

I wanted to travel, and I never got to. I never got to travel because again, my dad [being passed]. And so I didn’t get to go, I didn’t get to go to the places that my friends went.

My friends would go [on vacation] and I didn’t. My friend that I told you about–my next door neighbor–they would take me with them to Corpus [Christi] because they would go to Corpus to the beach all the time every summer.

This is the neighbor who taught you Spanish? [Sound of agreement]

And I would go with their family to the beach. And then my uncle and my aunt lived in San Antonio, and I would go there with them for a month every summer. I would go and stay with them because I wanted to go somewhere. I wanted to do something.

And the only way that I could do it is to go with my aunt and my uncle. And so I got to do that, and I got to get groceries. But that’s about it.

Is your mom still with us?

No, she’s not. She died in 2012.

What would you say is the greatest lesson she taught you?

To learn to appreciate what you have…She would always tell us, you know, when something [went wrong]…when we would get [something?], like when I would go with them, she would say: “You need to respect, you need to do what you’re told, and you need to help out.”

And [what she meant] by helping out is…I'm a pretty clean person, and she would say: “It's okay to be poor, never dirty.” So she would tell us that we have to clean up after ourselves. So, we would.

I’m not a cook, and the reason I’m not a cook is because I never cooked. She cooked. My sister helped her prep and I cleaned. We all had a job. And so I cleaned, and so I would clean the kitchen, and I can’t stand dirty dishes—I cannot stand it. I think that’s why I get out of my bed in the morning.cannot stand the bed not to be made because she taught me that. [Laughter]

What was your favorite dish she made?

Probably pork chops. She would make them, which is another reason we would only have it once a month.

Once a month. How would she prepare them?

(Cross talk) With [salsa], my mom was a very big salsa eater. And we are too. My siblings and I love salsa, and if it’s hot, it’s better. The hotter, the better. And so she would make it a la mexicana. I don’t know if you know what that is. It’s tomato, onion, and serrano pepper. And she fried it up, and then made it like a little gravy, and with the [pocha?]. That was, I remember, whenever Wizard of Oz was going to come on. She would plan it, and it was on a Sunday, always on a Sunday. Wizard of Oz would come on, and that was like maybe once every, I don’t know, three-four months? She would make fried chicken, and that was the best fried chicken ever, because we, you know, never had it. (Laughter)

So she found a way to make special moments for y'all. [Cross talk]

So we grew up on paella, conchitas, just rice, beans, tortillas. She would make tortillas every day, every day without fail. And I wish I had learned that, but darn it, I didn't! I didn't learn. [Laughter[

But yeah, my mom was a good mom. She tried her best. She did her best with us, and you know, I always appreciate the fact that she taught me my morals and…She taught me a lot of things.

You mentioned your grandma too, and you said y’all would have to cross Boggy Creek to get there. Who was she in your life, and how often would y'all make that trek?

She was my dad’s mom, and she had lots of grandkids. My dad had…there were nine of them [siblings], there were nine of them, so there were a lot of grandkids. So most of the time at her house, we spent with our cousins. She was there, but she was always busy in the kitchen, and she never had time to be with us. But we were there because of the cousins, and we were able to walk over there by ourselves with my oldest brother and my next-to-the-oldest brother.

The next-to-the-oldest [brother] was the one I was very close to, but because my oldest brother had gone to the military. But my oldest brother always sent money, and so how we got to do a lot of the things later in life was because of him.

And then like I said, my grandmother didn’t really play a big part in my life, but we spent a lot of time together, if that makes sense.

What role do you think nature and Boggy Creek…What was the environment like in East Austin when you were growing up?

It was fun playing in the creek. [Laughter]

What do you remember about that?

Well, whenever there was water, there were like those little toads going around in the water. It was never fish, you know. There were just those little toads that would go around in the water. And you know, it's funny now. I think about it…Where were the mosquitoes? Where were they, you know? I don’t remember all that. I don’t remember ever having to worry about a lot of mosquitoes and stuff.

That’s interesting.

When we were younger, yeah. But yeah, a lot of that, you know….We used to play a lot there. We used to play in the mud.

What do you remember about the soil or the…?

It was just black dirt and clay dirt. And so we used to play there quite a bit, and that was our, I guess, our favorite pastime. It was just to be outside and play over there. And then my mom kept us real close because she would always say: “Once it starts to get dark you need to come home.”

So we would, and we would go [back home]. If we weren’t back by the time that she told us to come back, then we would be punished and we would not be going out there anymore for a couple of days, and then we knew we had to [obey]. [Laughter]

"Getting dark"…Do you remember there being a lot more fireflies?

Yeah, yeah. We used to catch them! We used to catch the fly, and then we would write our names with their little tails. [Laughter]

So it would glow in the dark!

Yes, they were glowing in the dark.

I like that.

And we would catch them, write our names on our shirts. [Laughter]

It was just…those were things that we played with, because we played with the nature because we didn’t have money for toys. We had a few things, but my mom didn’t have money for all that.

Yeah, and the area of Boggy Creek that y'all used to play in…is it still a creek bed, or is it now part of what became the concrete channel?

It’s the concrete [channel], yeah.

Do you remember that project when they channeled?

Oh yeah, when they started it, I do remember.

How old were you?

I don’t really remember how old I was, really, to tell you the truth. I don’t remember how old I was, but I do remember when they first dug it up and all that. Now, I remember the floods.

Yeah, tell me about that.

I remember the floods. My uncles used to come and bail us out of it.

Would it ever get in your house?

Oh yeah, oh yeah. Before they…they dug up the street over on Lyons Road. They had to dig up the street. My mom’s house sat on a hill like that, and the hill was kind of steep. Our driveway was kind of steep too. When they dug it up, they had to dig it up further down, and then pave it so that the water would not get into our houses.

Now we sat a little bit higher, but our neighbor across the street, and theirs was on the floor on the ground. Their house was on the ground, and I remember my uncles coming and picking up our couches and putting chairs under them to lift our furniture.

Yeah, they would have to lift up everything off the floor. And there were a few times where they had to come and they had their rain gear on, boots, and everything to walk through and carry us out.

Where would y’all go?

We would go to their house. My uncle lived on Ninth Street, and he would take us to his house.

Do you remember being scared?

Yeah, I do remember being scared. I remember my mom telling us, you know, that it was going to be okay. My Uncle Albert was going to come and get us, and that if we, if my Uncle Albert didn’t come, my Uncle Mike would come, or my uncle…any of my uncles would come, and they would. They all…all of her brothers, my mother’s brothers, would come to get us and take us.

How often did that happen when you were growing up?

I remember a few…more than a few times, actually. I remember…every time we got like the storms that we had, they were more like flood storms that we had. They weren’t like they are now. It doesn’t really fill up like it used to. But I don't know, I want to say it once every….I don't know, maybe four or five years or something. Maybe I don’t really remember how long.

But I do remember when we were in at Castro [Street], I remember like three times that happened there, and I remember one of them. One of them was real bad, and it's because the creek went all the way up, and it went to our house, and we had to get rid of a lot of things. My mom had to throw away a lot of things because they got water [in them].

What was the aftermath like? Were y’all out of school for a while? Was there a lot of cleanup? What do you remember? (Cross talk)

There was. I just remember that there was a lot of cleanup.

Now, my mom was very….How do I want to say [this]? She wanted us to have a full education, because my grandfather didn’t let her go to school. She went to school till the sixth grade, because her mom died when she was nine and she was the mother of all her siblings. She would be the one that had to do everything. So my mother, she just grew up being a mother, you know? She grew up being a mother and ended up being a mother and a grandmother.

So she did not let us miss school. If there was anything that we were gonna do, she was gonna do it. And her and her brothers and her sister in laws, they helped out. They helped her out.

So we weren't allowed to do any of that because we had to be in school. [Cross talk]

And she was very very strict on us going to school, and she wanted us to have a good education. And she said, even if it killed her, that we were all going to graduate. And at that time, graduation was the top thing to do, you know. And I always wanted to go to college. I never got to go to college because again: money. And there weren’t any grants. There wasn't any of that. Now there’s a lot of opportunity for [going to college]. [calls to son]

What do you think you would have studied?

I don’t really...I don’t really know. I love to…I love people. I love to be around people, and I like to teach people how to do different things. I love kids. I would have probably been a teacher.

Yeah, I could see that.

I would have probably been a teacher because, um…

And you raised teachers. [Laughter]

Yeah. My stepson, he is the Director of Transportation in Elgin. And then, my oldest son, he is a DJ at a radio station, and they’re all talkers. [Laughter]

And my daughter, she also graduated from UT—not UT, community college, from Austin Community College [ACC.] She went to ACC, and she is at Iris [Healthcare]. And she’s one of the bigwigs there, and so she's been there for seven years, I think. And she’s climbed up the ladder, so she’s done well for herself too. She’s the one with the four kids.

But yeah, I probably would say I would be a teacher or a director of a….You know, I always wanted to do this: to be a director of a senior citizen facility. I always wanted to do that, and why? I don’t know, I don’t know.

But I just, you know, as a matter of fact, today I’m going to go visit my friend, who’s 99 years old and knows everything that’s going on. She lives in Buda, and she calls me all the time. “When are you coming to see me? Why didn't you come to see me?” So I told her I would go today.

But anyway, she’s 99, and I love talking to her all the time. You know, we will sit on the phone, or I’ll go see her. And she gets around from here to there, you know, with her walker, but she’s still up and around.

Now you mentioned the floods, and you mentioned, you know, being concerned [about the floods]. Do you remember anyone being worried about water quality or pollution from the creek at all, or in general?

I just remember my mom telling us that for a while at the creek we couldn't go play after a flood. We couldn’t go play for a long time.

Do you remember why?

She never really went into any of that with us. She just said she didn’t want us there. And so she would tell us not to play.

And where we lived, there was this like land. It wasn’t our land, but there was a big area where you could walk through and play at. And that's what we played—in the back area. And all of the neighbors would, you know, come and play. My brothers would play a lot of cards at the house, at my mom’s house, they would play cards with their friends there, and just things like that. Like I said, we didn’t play with “toy” toys.

There was this [time]—I remembered this distinctly—my little brother had like a little fire engine truck that somebody gave my mom. My mom used to clean houses for people who had money, right? And so the ladies would always give her things, and they would give clothes for us, you know, because they knew that she was the only one [parent], and they would give her.

And so they gave him this big fire engine truck, and it was little, but you know, it was big for him. And he had this kind of a, you know, the dryer tube that's kind of, you know, spring? And he would put it in his arms, and we even had a picture of him, like a guy with his arms on his fire track. It was so cute. (Laughter) But I just remember that very distinctly. I don’t know why that stuck in my mind. I mean, he played with that all the time.

And then for me, you know, like my sister and I had to share our clothes, and we were about the same size. And one day, my sister and I were here, and she was sitting here, and her little granddaughter came over here—that's the sister of the one that had the baby. [Cross talk] She was here. Ronny was here, and my sister said, “I’m going to take off my shoes.” And I said, “Yeah, take off your shoes.”

So she takes off her shoes, and she’s got her toes sticking out, and I said, “Chris, why are you wearing that? Those are quitters.” (Laughter) And she goes, “Yeah, don't you remember? Mom used to sew our socks.” [Laughter] And I said, “Yeah, but you didn’t even sew your socks!” [Laughter]

And, I mean, those are the things that the ladies would give us, like the socks. They would buy underwear and socks for us. And then they would give them to my mom. And sometimes she would come with big bags of clothes, and we would go through them and get whatever fit us, and whatever didn’t fit us, she would give to the neighbor. So those are the things that we had to do while...

But going back to the creek, the only thing that I remember her saying was that we couldn’t play at that time, right afterwards [the flood]. And then, the only time that we could go is if, you know, we would have to ask. Everything back in the day was you ask before you do, and so we would have to ask her, “Can we go?”

Sometimes she would say yes, and sometimes she would say no, and the reason why was there was a reason behind it. (Cross talk) And I was the one saying: “Why not? Why can't I know?” I was the worst. [Laughter] And she always said, “You always used to ask me ‘why, why, why.'" [Laughter]

We talked about the culture of East Austin changing—the look, the schools, the buildings. Do you remember noticing in the span of your life the nature changing, the environment changing?

A lot of the environment, yeah….Just because, like now, there’s no backyards. Like here, I have a lot of backyard. I have a whole lot over there, and I have a backyard. If I were to sell this house, there would probably be twelve [house units] put here. Because there was a house here that had a lot like ours, and they put twelve houses in there, and they’re all, you know, right next to each other, like that, all the way around.

So here, I can see them doing twelve houses or more on this lot. But over there, we even drove in there when they were building it because we wanted to see it. So we went in there, and it was all the way back like ours, and you could drive all the way around from one to the other, like a U.

So building over the green space. [Cross talk, sound of agreement]

Do you think the concrete channel…like, it sounds like kids today don't have the Boggy Creek experience that you all had. Do you think that changed how kids who grew up in East Austin now engage with nature?

Yeah, a lot, a lot, and…you know, electronics have kept them from doing a lot of that outside stuff. Even us that we have, you know, the property where they can [go outside], they won't. And the reason why is because they’re into the electronic stuff. They either have a phone, an iPad, or their computers. You know, they don't go outside.

And us, we had to go outside because that was the only recreational thing that we had. Even the phone was stuck at the house. [Laughter, cross talk] We had to go into the house to use the phone.

[Clearing throat] And back when I was growing up, only the adults were the ones to use the phone. We couldn’t use the phone until I was a teenager. And even at that time, I had to ask, “Can I use the phone?”

And then we had these big old long cords to take it where you were sitting, and then big old long cord to take it back. And you know we had a rotary, you know, and then we had to push buttons in after that. But they were all on the wall, you know. And a recorder, and then there were the beepers, and then there was a cell phone. [Laughter] So you know, I'm telling my age now. [Laughter, cross talk]

But yeah, but a lot of that was… Oh, look at that [points to footage of flooding on tv news]. If you look back, I never saw anything like that [extreme weather] now, I never did see anything like that here. But that [flooding] I did.

The flooding?

The flooding…The flooding you could see at any time. But…

When you think about the challenges, the greatest challenges that East Austin has faced, do you look back and think it was Mother Nature, or it was always, you know, whatever drove gentrification?

I think a little of both, like the changing of the creek being dug up so that it won't flood. So that has changed in a good way.

The way they did the creek, putting…at the time when they were doing it, and like I said, change is hard. At the time when they were doing it, I remember talking to my mom about it, and my mom was fussing: “Oh, I don't know why they're doing that. You know, they're taking away the creek.” But she thought they were going to do something totally different at the time. But then afterward, she was okay with it.

Because her house wasn’t flooding.

Her house didn’t flood anymore. The neighbors that we had, you know, their houses were okay. Everybody was okay again, and we didn’t have that flood anymore.

But like you saw that flood…I did see a lot of that. Now I didn’t see things like things being knocked down. I didn’t see it. It wasn’t like…the floods that I lived in were just water, and you know of course it damaged a lot of stuff. But I didn’t see any poles knocked down and trees—you know, there were trees knocked down, but more like, you know it was just more water, and I think it’s because of the way it sits, and now it flows, you know? Now it flows with the way they did it. It flows, and I think that’s for the good, that’s for the good.

But at the time, you know, we were going to school. We would have to go. I would have to go from my house on Lyons Road. I would have to go all the way around Gonzales [Street] to the school.

To get around the creek?

Yeah, to get around the creek. And my mom used to walk us to school.

When it was flooded or always?

When it was flooded, when it had water. When it had water, we had to do that. But...

Then we worked on the PTA [Parent Teacher Association] with Geneva [Govea], my friend Geneva. Yeah, we got together and she fought for that bridge, and I was on PTA at that time. And so we did it as a group, but she pursued it and got it, and so they finally put the bridge, and that was amazing. Because we no longer had to [take a longer route]. My mom was taking my kids to school at that time.

Oh wow!

And she would take the kids to school while I was working, and she would cross the bridge to do that. She no longer had to go all the way around. So those things are good. Those were good changes. But like I said, at the time when they’re doing it, you’re thinking, “Okay, why are they doing this? This is not good.”

Yeah. I only have one more big question to ask. But before I do that, is there anything else you would want us to know about East Austin, or anything I didn’t ask you that I should have?

No, just things about…I mean, you asked me about what you know about things around the church and all that you know. I've always gone to St Julia’s, which is right here on Tillery Road, and you know, it’s changed a lot because of the people around it. We used to be able to walk into church and know everybody, and now it’s changed because we don't know everybody. But, we also go….Now we go to not only there, but we go to St Peter’s, and we, wherever we're at, we go. So that’s kind of changed, but I’m okay with that. But it’s still my home church, yeah. (Cross talk)

What role do you think faith played in your life?

My mom was very, very religious. She was very…We actually went to Catholic school. I was there until the third grade, and we went there until the third grade. Oh well, I went there until the third grade because she worked there, in the cafeteria. She worked the cafeteria for a long time, and so she…like I said, education was her biggest priority for us. And so, when she started to work there, she took us over there, and we were there for about two years until they closed it. Then we went back to public school.

But…she was very much into the church, and so we were. We did all our sacraments and everything at the church at Santa Julia’s, and…then we did the breakfast group, my husband, my first husband, we did breakfast group with the kids. They would go with us and they would clean tables and all of that, and they also did all their sacraments there too, and we were very involved with church. We did the hamaicas, the church bazaars…We did those, and we helped with them.

And so we, my children, my boys were alter servers. It’s funny because my second husband and the boys, my boys and his boys, they used to be the altar servers. My first husband was the head of the altar service, and his wife used to make cupcakes for them to sell after church, but we didn’t know each other. [Laughter] Isn’t that funny? We did not know each other at all. I never even [knew him then]. And I met him at church, I met my husband at church.

Well, this is going to be my last question for you because, you know, people will listen to this interview through the Austin Public Library years and years from now, should someone be listening? You know, you lost your dad at age three. You lost your first husband to pancreatic cancer. You struggled through, you know, early childhood, through, you know, your mom having to make ends meet. You've lived a….you’ve endured, and you have thrived in your lifetime. If somebody's listening to this years from now, what would you say? Like “if there's one thing you learned from my life, learn this.”

Learn to respect. You know, my mom always said, respect yourself, respect your environment, and always, always have faith. And that would be the things that I would say to do, because that's made me who I am.

Respect yourself, respect your environment, and always have faith. That's beautiful.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for today. This was lovely!