the old neighborhood back home

It looks like the federal government will close down the VA hospital campus in Waco. Here's a Waco Tribune-Herald story about the potential effect of that closing.

I grew up in a neighborhood east of Beverly Hills and I was baptized in the church there when I was a child. Sad to read about the neighborhood dying up.

At the turn of the century in 1900, Waco was the second largest city in Texas, a thriving center of cotton farming and production.

The 20th century was hard on Waco. In the early part of the century, the government started building locks on the Brazos River to make it navigable to the Gulf of Mexico. The river changed its course, leaving the construction effort abandoned in a field.

In 1953, the worst tornado in Texas history hit downtown right at 5:00 pm, collapsing buildings and killing several people.

In the 1960s, the government shut down its Air Force base, James Connally. That's where presidents fly in and out of the city. Or they used to. I haven't been there since President Bush bought his his ranch outside the city.

Then the General Tire and Rubber Company factory closed down in the 1980s. And there was the Koresh debacle in the 90s.

The working class neighborhoods described in the article, part of my growing up, are in decline. They were all black dirt cotton fields before the soldiers came home from the War and the GI bill allowed loans for them to build small wooden houses, with a little front yard and a back yard.

And the VA hospital, a large campus built out of red brick with red roof tiles, was always an imposing presence. At night, there was enough light on the front to make it look like daylight. It was a mental hospital, and if patients escaped, a siren would ring.

There was always a rumor that one of the members of the bombing missions over Japan that dropped the atomic bomb was kept in the hospital.