Back on the campus of UT again. It smells just the same. My little backpack of pencils and notebooks makes me blend with the students again, and I feel like the years are rolling away.
Summer hours for the Center for American History have not been announced on their website. They are not open, so I am free to wander the campus for awhile. Looking up at the tower where Charles Whitman shot so many students that long ago August. (An Architectural student, but I did not know him.) Remembering the rowdy music at football games. They way live oak leaves crunch under your feet on the campus paths. And always, the wonderful remembered smells.
Then on to research. But it was too overwhelming. Too many collections. Too few staff to assist. Too archaic were the finding aids. Spent the whole time looking at box after box of Spanish translations of the Bexar Archives, records dating from about 1730 until 1836. Too soon it’s time for us to hit the road again.
We drive across Texas to Dewberry Farm and meet some of my favorite farmers! Texas is beautiful, but hot. We are following part of the old Runaway Scrape trail, so we are thinking of history all the way. And barbeque! Alas, settling into the little hotel in Sealy, we discover that one of our suitcases is still in Bertram. A small glitch in our evening, but soon resolved.
Did I say that it was unbearably hot?