My friend says if you stand at night at the bottom of the east steps to Reed Hall and look down the walk, between the Memorial Columns, across University Drive and straight east down Lowden Street, the lights from the Library make beautiful golden slashes on the lawn that stretches between Lowden and the north side of the Library. My friend says he would like to paint that.
Having faith in my friend’s vision, I went in daytime to his spot to conjure his view. I could see the library’s basement windows, from which, he said, the light in his night-picture was sharpest, and I could just see, from my angle of sight, the first-floor window of my library office which looks out on Lowden. I saw his lights–and also the lights of a Lowden Street of another time, and I wondered how many canvasses it would take to bring back those scenes, and who would care if I did.
Reed Hall was there then, too, but, unnamed officially, it was the “Ad Building” and nearly all of the business of the University was carried on there, for it housed not only the President’s Office, the Business Office, and Registrar, but also classrooms, faculty offices, the only auditorium on campus, and, in the basement, the post office and cafeteria.
The Memorial Columns were there too, although the ones of my time were bridged by an arch and were dedicated to only one war’s dead heroes; the original archway was torn down to accommodate a wider University Drive, and by the time the present columns were erected, there had been another war and more dead heroes, so it was dedicated to them both. And the Fallis house is still in its old place at 29– Lowden, though Dr. Fallis and his family long ago left it, and it now serves as the TCU Nursery School. And the house on the northeast corner of the 2900 block is still there in a remodeled version to quarter campus housekeeping services. I can’t recall who lived there, but I do know that the neighbors to the west of that house were the Samuel P. Zieglers. I do know, too, that that land on the north side of the 2900 block across from the Library and all that could be seen from there, was pretty nearly my entire universe until I was six.
Ours was the second house east from University Drive, although we were situated about midway the block. There were always, as I recall, two or three vacant lots at the west end of the street where it connected with University Drive. The first house was a duplex, in one side of which Lorraine Sherley lived for a time. To our east, set far back on the lot, was my grandmother’s house; next to her was Sterling Cottage, a two-story frame house which belonged to TCU and housed female Home Economics students. Then came a little house in which a schoolmate of mine, Eugene Peden, lived, and then came the Fallis home, the Ziegler home, and that house on the corner. Eugene’s and the corner house were the only “non-TCU” ones.
TCU and Lowden Street, then, were the sum and substance of my world. I could watch my father and grandmother walk west in the mornings, up Lowden to their jobs, he to the basement of old Clark Hall (now Sadler Hall) to his Biology Department office, and she to her work as Head Dietitian in the basement of the Ad Building. I suppose that Bruce Fallis and the Ziegler children waved their fathers across University Drive, too, to the Speech and Art Departments in the Ad Building. If anyone watched Miss Sherley off to her English office, it was surely only with hidden glances. Born painfully shy, I was, and I assumed everybody else was, terrified of her and always thought if she caught me looking, she could if she wanted, turn me to stone, so powerful was her presence. The best part of a day was waiting on the front steps in the evening, trying to beat my sister in spotting Daddy on his way home, then racing to the corner to meet him and tell him our day.
Mostly we played in our backyards or skated or rode our tricycles up and down the sidewalk on our side of the street, but sometimes Mother would let us go across to the Library side of our Lowden Street and play on the long front steps, or slide down the long concrete banisters of the Library, or skate on the wide concrete surface that was laid from the base of the steps west to the concrete railing bordering the eastern limit of the Library’s lily pond. We took great delight in clacking over the several marble plaques with all the engraved names that had been placed in the concrete as commemoratives by senior classes at TCU.
On rare occasions, we were allowed to go down the small grassy slope to the red-bricked edge of the pond itself and watch the bright yellow, orange, and white goldfish that swam beneath and among the lily pads. All of this area was visible from our front door, and I’m sure that was the only reason we were allowed that far away. I recall one time when the pond and I became one.
Mother had gotten my sister and me dressed in our “Sunday best” for Sunday School and had consented to us running across to the pond to watch the fish, while she and Daddy were dressing for church. Of course, the warning, “Don’t get dirty, girls,” followed us out the door as we headed for the pond. And I remember that I was wearing a ruffled yellow taffeta dress and black patent Mary Janes, and I think it was that that makes the memory of falling into the pond so sharp all these years. I’ve never really known whether I just fell or was pushed by my sister (I always claimed she pushed me; she was certainly given to meanness where I was concerned), but I know of the horror of that moment when the yellow taffeta hit the water. The pond was so shallow that I doubt if my life was in the balance, but I rose from it with wailing, more for the ruined taffeta than the indignity done me.
The pond and the beautiful facade of the original Mary Couts Burnett Library exist now only in pictures and the memories of those who knew them. The pond eventually became a maintenance problem and was filled in and over with dirt and turf, and the building itself has been so expanded and altered that there is only one outside wall along the south side that retains the grace of the first structure. Even the western main entrance was moved so that it now faces south. Curiously one marble plaque remains, I believe in the same place on the west-running walk, crossed daily now by unknowing feet and ignored by unseeing eyes.
There are other memories, too, of rose trellises and trumpet vines, and sandboxes and puppy dogs, of backyard swings and porch swings, and the smell of boiling water and hot starch in our kitchen on wash-day morning. And the good talk and laughter from the faculty-student gatherings in our backyard coming in on the summer air through our shaded bedroom window, and, sometimes, if the wind was right, the mellow sounds of Mr. Ziegler’s cello floating out his front door and westward toward the campus and beyond. My friend was right. There are golden slashes of light along Lowden Street to the east.
©1986 Joan Hewatt Swaim