New to Austin: Reflection 1988

I moved to Austin the summer after my 8th grade year.  My eldest sister, the first to attend college was accepted into St. Edward's University and that became where we'd all now go as a family.  We were halfway here anyway back in the 1980's, when the distribution of music in cassette form was what my father saw as what kept his fellow construction and labor workers connected to their families and culture back home.  My father spent his weekends driving into Austin from Houston to set-up shop at the local 'pulga' to cater to these working class folks where they'd spend their hard earned money on the few joys they had--music from their home country was one.

The timing worked out and my mother's stable income cleaning houses with the flea market weekend money and odd jobs during the week, saved enough to have a storefront in Austin, while my sister started college.  But for me, being a teen in full 'teen-dom' leaving my friends was a hard sell.  My father drove around and learned about a new school being built 20 minutes west across town.  That would be my new start in Austin.

I don't even know what the school was that I would've gone to in the apartment complex where we lived, but it wasn't even in the discussion or even questioned at home.  Our apartment complex was full of college students and young people, not families, so I guess I didn't even question or understand it at the time,