Old Industrial Elgin

We did some more exploratory biking yesterday. Matt wanted to check out the northside of town, where we found this rusted old complex. After some sleuthing, Matt identified it as an old cotton gin. See the metal tubes from which they sprayed the cotton into the waiting train cars below?


There's cotton waste sticking to everything in the compound--like the chain link fence below.


The clincher, evidence-wise, was this row of old tanks, neatly and helpfully labeled "COTTONSEED OIL." It's odd the way it seems to have shut down all of a sudden--ladders still leaning against tanks, hoses dangling, floor mats left drying by the door.


Across the way is this interestingly desolate operation, which actually appears to still be in business. The sign out front said "Nitrogen," and the scummy green puddles pullulating with algae seemed to confirm it. I suppose farmers come here for fertilizer?


I really liked this tank, every inch of which appears to be covered in varicolored rust. It makes me kind of nervous, mind you, (perhaps, for holding dangerous chemicals, a rust-proof metal might have been preferable?) but the colors are neat.

Cruisin' Elgin

I took a nice, long, exploratory bike ride today. I haven't been able to bike much lately, largely because the weather has not coordinated well with my schedule. But it was a nice, moody, overcast day today, in the 60s, all of which is terrific for me (I'm no great fan of sunshine, personally).

So. I wanted to break out of our usual biking patterns (10th St to Ave C to the duck pond or Main and back again) and see some new things, which totally worked out. I went down 2nd heading east of downtown and found myself on Ila, Bill, QS Goins[!], and Louise (streets, not people), where they have lots of rockin' yard bling and an adventurous, DIY approach to home construction and decoration.

Unfortunately, my camera card was full, so the only pix I could take were with my phone.

But here are some of the interesting things I saw.

This exceptionally gloomy abandoned house and derelict property.

I love old ruins--they're so pleasantly, tantalizingly melancholy

This woodcutter's cottage. His house is entirely fenced in firewood. Having been raised in the suburbs, I utterly do not know what to make of it. Is that how he heats his house? Does he sell firewood for a living? Answer comes there none.

The woodcutter's inexplicable cottage

Signs of spring. Daffodils, flowering quince, and pears were in bloom all over town.

A very big, old pear in bloom

And finally, one of the awesome things about living in a small town: goats! In town!

The tiny white dot in the back is a goat. He has another goat pal lurking behind the brush pile.

You want to know something weird? I like bike riding. I mean, I like it. It was always one of the more tolerable forms of exercise, but I never liked exercise in any form--it's always been a disagreeable but necessary means to some end or other. But this--this is fun. I didn't want to stop. I don't know what to make of this--some chemical change in my brain? Something to do with aging? Or maybe it's just the mild weather--moving around is fun when the great outdoors doesn't feel like a gigantic griddle. Who knows? I hope it's a long-lasting condition, though.

Early spring planting
A couple of weeks ago, we visited Barton Springs [or Creek? I always forget which it is] Nursery in Austin, just for a little looksee, and of course they were having a sale and had all sorts of lovely things in bloom to tempt our color-starved eyes.

Salvia vanhouttii 'Burgundy'

But then it was freezing, and wet, and snowy(!), so our purchases have been hanging out in Matt's greenhouse ever since. It's still a bit early, but I gambled and popped our burgundy Vanhouttii salvias in the ground, a 'Marilyn's Choice' abutilon, a 'New Dawn' abutilon, a garden mint, a cardoon (well, why the hell not?), and a couple of shrimp plants: dark red and firecracker orange.

'Marilyn's Choice' abutilon--you can see why I couldn't resist putting it in the ground

And, because they're still in bloom & I want to appreciate them while I can, here are some more of our cemetery iris, Iris albicans

Little Red Taco Wagon (Dos Amigos)

My path & the little red taco wagon's finally intersected at a time when the thing is actually open (it's called "Dos Amigos," but its most noticeable feature is that it is a trailer that's painted bright red).

Since they don't post their hours and don't appear to have a website, I asked at the window. For future reference:
Saturday: 6:30am - 3:(30?)pm
Sunday: 8am - 2pm

On Saturdays, they have fajitas, tacos, elotes, and quesadillas. On Sundays, they have carnitas & some other stuff.

For those of you who have never been, Dos Amigos is located in an empty lot on the eastern leg of Main Street here in Elgin. There is only one window, and the line is long, so you don't want to lollygag. Make up your mind quickly and deliver your order snappily. The majority (about 2/3) of the clientele are Hispanic (always a good sign for a taco shack), but no Spanish is necessary to place your order.

I mention all this because their tacos are deee-licious. They actually smoke the meat in a big pit out front, so their chicken fajita tacos are beautifully tender and wood-smoky and meaty.

The tacos come with a layer of soft stewed beans at the bottom, a heaping serving of meat above, and a couple of generous spoonfuls of salsa on top (available on the side if requested, but as it's a surprisingly mild salsa, I wouldn't bother). Even the beans are good--a little smoky themselves, and cooked down to a moist flavorfulness. Easily the best tacos in Elgin, and honestly, I can't think offhand of any chicken fajitas tacos from anywhere else that I prefer.

Thank you, Dos Amigos! Long may you smolder!

Elgin's Elected Representatives

I've often wished I had a handy, compact list of my various elected officials. So I finally made one. Note that most of the links below are to online contact forms. Most of my state & national elected representatives don't have the stones to put their actual email addresses out there--instead, they want us to contact them through the more mediated and less convenient medium of their websites. Whatever.

(Don't live in Elgin? You too can find your representatives at: http://www.fyi.legis.state.tx.us/ or at http://capwiz.com/seiuorg/dbq/officials/, which lets you search by address, in case your zip code is split, district-wise. Plus, it briefs you on all the top issues of concern to the Service Employees International Union. Handy!)

U.S. President - Barack Obama

U.S. Senators - Senator John Cornyn & Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison

U.S. Representative - Congressional District 10--Congressman Michael T. McCaul

Texas State Senator - Senate District 18--Senator Glenn Hegar

Texas State Representative - House District 17--Representative Tim Kleinschmidt

Texas State Board of Education Member - SBOE District 10--[the bat-shit crazy] Cynthia Dunbar

Elgin Mayor - Marc Holm

Elgin City Council - Ward 3 - Chris Cannon & Pat Frenzel


Use them together; use them in peace, as Arthur C Clark* exhorted. Mind you, he was speaking of Jupiter's moon Europa, not of some politician's contact info, but I think the message translates.

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*Oh, bugger. It wasn't Arthur C. Clark. It was Peter Hyams, the guy who wrote the screenplay for 2010. Sounded a lot more impressive when I could legitimately claim it was Clark.

The Porch Swing Project, Bookshelves, and Miscellany

A New Cafe in Elgin
I am particularly pleased to note the opening of a new cafe/sandwich shop/ice cream parlor on Main St.: Cafe Nirvana (or Nirvana Cafe? not sure which). I am unhappy to report that, like every other business in Elgin, it's closed on Sundays. Apparently, while I am desperately roving the streets of Elgin, looking in vain for coffee, books, newspapers, pharmaceuticals, and antiques, the rest of the community is sitting silently at home reading the Good Book and, I don't know, tatting or something.

Cafe Nirvana (Nirvana Cafe?)

Anyway, we finally made it during operating hours, and it's really nice inside--small space, but high ceilings, lots of light, cool stone floor, exposed brick walls--just very nice and up-to-date and chic. It has free WiFi! The sandwiches and smoothies were fine, though the ciabatta was disappointingly soft (note to America: ciabatta is crusty, people. It's not Italian for "hamburger bun.") But all in all, it was a very respectable alternative to the rancid grease we've been treated to repeatedly at City Cafe. We still like El Maguey (and their margaritas), but one can only eat enchiladas so many times per month. Now we can vary it with sandwiches every now and then.

Window Work
Last weekend we finally did some long-deferred work on our windows. We scraped paint off the inside of the panes in the front of the house, which makes a surprising difference to how the rooms feel. I scraped so hard, I broke a window pane. I am Woman. Fear me. (Not to worry--I just caulked the broken piece back in place--I may be violent, but at least I'm resourceful.)

Matt & a partially scraped window. He didn't break anything.

And I used cement patching to cap the stones on the front window. When we moved in, this window had a piece of 2x4 wrapped (inexplicably) in a disgusting old pillowcase on the exterior sill. I think it was meant to keep water from seeping between the stones and the house as the stone-installing people neglected to cap this window off (unlike all the other windows).

I had assumed that the cement patching would dry to a nice, neutral whitish-grey, like most cement in the known universe. Not so. It dried to the vivid deep grey you see below. Will have to paint that some day. Not anytime soon, though.

My first stab at stone masonry

Progress on the Bookshelf Front
Meanwhile, we had a second meeting with Javier to clarify the style of drawer front we're looking for. That went great--we met him at his shop and saw more of his work and feel very good about the quality of his workmanship and his reliability. The surprise is that he's going to start Mon. and expects to be done by Friday! Yeep! I was expecting another pay cycle between now and the completion of the project. So the next week and a half shall be rife with Ramen and frugality.

This is where the bookshelves will go.

Happy Valentines to Us
Meanwhile, to keep from getting bored, we've started another project. We're rehabilitating the rotten old porch swing that came with with house. It's to be our Valentine's present to each other. It is also going to be stained red (with white metal), but that's just a coincidence. We'd still be staining it red even if it were a Mardi Gras present. I like red.

We thought, well here's a nice cheap little mini-project we can do as an inexpensive yet enjoyable present to each other. It'll cost, what, 40 bucks? We'll just buy some wooden slats, stain and varnish them, and screw them in place. Badda bing.

Not bloody likely. We paid $80 for the wood alone. And of course, once we starting really taking apart the swing, we discovered that the frame for the swing (not the stand, fortunately, just the swing) had rusted through in several placed. So there's also the cost of buying a long piece of steel pipe that Matt will have to cut, procuring a pipe bender from his work, cutting, bending, and drilling the pipe, as well as the cost of the stain, varnish, and new hardware (which we'll have to buy at Austin Bolt Company rather than Lowe's because Lowe's doesn't carry the right kinds of bolts nor wholes boxes full of acorn nuts.

So we really could have saved ourselves a lot of time and probably a bit of money* if we'd just bought a brand-new porch swing and thrown this one away. However, we used Texas red oak for the wood, and we're going to rustoleum the hell out of the metal, so perhaps we'll end up with a slightly better quality item in the end. And, you know, Al Gore would be proud. Reduce, reuse, recycle, right?

The pitiable condition of the swing--rusted and stained with algea.

Matt examines the rust holes glumly.

The stand, while rust-stained, doesn't have any holes and is still solid. Matt scrubbed off the algae preparatory to a thorough spraying.

Red!
The new wooden slats for the swing.

Shade Patio Pre-Groundbreaking
We're also getting started on the shade patio. This is going to be a long, slow process. We'll need to level the ground at least a little, put down metal edging, put down sand, place the pavers, then brush a dry cement into the crevices. Today we did a trial run of the central medallion thingy to figure out how big it will be and where the different components will go.

Here are all the pavers we've got.

A lot of pavers

And here's the central design of our patio-to-be.Trial run of the pavers

Flossie Returns
And finally, we picked up Flossie this weekend from Elgin Furniture Refinishers.

Flossie, all scrubbed and clean

Interestingly, Flossie turned out much lighter and brighter than Edith. I wonder if Edith hadn't been stained at some point, while Flossie was merely painted. you can kinda see the difference in the closeup below--Edith is in the back and Flossie's in the front (click on the pic to view full size).

Edith & Flossie

We dropped off Poindexter, too, so soon we'll be finished with all three of the new painted doors. Next will be either our 2 original doors that came with the house or else the stained 5-panel doors that Mom & Dad bought us. As the latter will be a little cheaper, which ones we start on next may come down to budget.


*Okay, maybe we couldn't have saved money by replacing the glider. I just did a quick web search, and the cheapest glider I could find was $250; the vast majority were between $400 and and eyeball-popping $1,200. Huh. Let's hear it for the Al Gore Way! Reduce! Reuse! Recycle!

A Little Bit about Elgin, Tx

By the bye, note that I've added a link to the right to Elgin-house.refurber.com. Refurber.com is a DIY online community where you can post questions and get answers. I've put some of the blog materials on my account there. Now back to our regularly scheduled program.
Proud to be the Brick Capital of the Southwest
I thought we'd take a break from the usual around here and do a little profile of Elgin, Tx.

First of all, its location:

We're located at the green arrow on the right. Austin is on the left.

It's about 20 mi. east of Austin on Hwy 290, past the wildly proliferating suburb of Manor. (That's "MAY-ner," not "Manner" for you out-of-towners. And, while we're on the subject, it's "EL-ghin," not "EL-jin," which is east of "BURN-it" not "Burn-ET" and north of "BARE" not "Bex-ar" County. That's just how it is.)

History
The Handbook of Texas Online says that the town of Elgin was founded in 1871 by the railroad a few miles up the road from the settlement of Hogeye, Texas, (also known, less colorfully, as Perryville), which it subsequently absorbed. The town's Hogeyean roots, however, are recalled in Elgin's annual Hogeye Festival, which, to the relief of all concerned, does not involve eating any hog's eyes whatsoever. The new town was initially named "Glasscock" until someone thought the better of it and named it after a Poobah of the railroad company, one Robert Morris Elgin.

According to the Elgin Chamber of Commerce, the railroad was originally supposed to run through McDade, now a modest hamlet to the east of Elgin, but was somehow deterred by a big flood.

By 1884 Elgin had its first brick manufactory, as well as a broom factory, cotton processing, and the beginings of a profitable coal mining industry. The Elgin Courier, founded in the 1800s, is still in print. The one brick plant eventually swelled to three, and they remain in operation today. However, somewhere along the way Elgin opted to base its claim to fame on its sausage rather than its bricks and changed its slogan from "The brick capital of the southwest" to "The sausage capital of Texas." Two popular BBQ joints (Meyer's and Southside) still export competing lines of sausage to the rest of the state, with an annual combined production of 3 million pounds, according to the Elgin CoC.

Nevertheless, as a happy result of the large Hispanic population in town, your best bet for eats may well be Mexican. The strength of the margaritas at El Maguey has to be measured on the richter scale, and they boast excellent, toasty, flavorful tortillas as well. (Our realtor warned us against this restaurant, albeit in vague terms. After a few sips of your margarita, however, you won't care--or notice--if they're serving you grilled Chihuahua--it's just darn tasty). Guadalupe, on 290, is also a solid choice.

Current Elgin Stats
The City of Elgin also has a website. Among other things, they list Elgin's three annual festivals: Western Days, The Hogeye Festival, and the Chilepepper Festival.

Their community plan ("Envision Elgin") includes efforts to improve the mediocre ranking of the school system, to preserve and enhance the delightful historic downtown, and to promote regionalism (which seems to mean looking for cooperative solutions to regional infrastructure issues).

(The chart below, from trulia.com, gives some sense of how Elgin schools are doing.)

On a related note, city-data.com graphed the results of the 2004 presidential election. Correlation? You decide.

Trulia also gives a handy table of Elgin's financial stats. To be fair to Elgin, while it is below both Texas and national averages, it isn't very far below--it's easy to misread the graphic below and think that we're practically a 3rd world country. We're actually just a little south of average.

Elgin's financials

...and now for some good news. Elgin has very low crime rates both compared to its county and to the state as a whole. We may not be rich or brilliant, but we're honest, darnit. And safe, which, joking aside, is a valuable asset.

(By the way, if you have trouble reading the charts, click on them to see a large version.)

Elgin's low crime rate

Trulia also shows the breakdown of home age in Elgin. How you feel about this stat probably depends on your perspective, but I think it's GREAT. We have a higher percentage of old houses (i.e., built before 1950) than the county or the state. Which is why, unlike Manor, Elgin has a lovely old town feel. And it's why Matt & I were able to buy our ducky little 1910-20 house. It's also why we wanted to move to Elgin as soon as we saw it.

Elgin has lots of delightful older homes

We can also learn a little about the ethnic background in Elgin from epodunk.com. Keep in mind that one person can have multiple ancestries--the numbers won't necessarily add up to 100.


For an even more thorough exploration of available data, there is city-data.com. It tells us, for example, that Elgin is 4.7 square miles, with an average of 1,852 people per square mile, which is considered fairly low.

In addition, city-data has some very nice climate charts. The long and the short: it's hot and humid here. I can tell you from personal experience, however, that it is moister than Austin--the trees in old town Elgin are much taller and more robust than trees in Austin.


Real Estate Issues
Eh. We're not doing so hot. Mind, that's why Matt & I were able to afford Elgin in the first place, but we didn't want the prices to continue to decline, as indicated in this chart from Altosresearch.com.

On the bright side, according to trulia's data, the price falloff is really confined to very high end houses--$600K or more. On our more modest end of the scale, there is only a tiny decline. And hey, that means lower taxes anyway, right?

The data below is just pitiful--from 10 to 50 days on market in a month?? There aren't even 50 days in a month! Are we selling in some sort of time warp? I suppose what's likelier is that the quantity of homes sold in Elgin is so low that it's easy to send the numbers into precipitous declines and equally dramatic elevations.
On the other hand, while overall home prices have declined, price per square foot has slightly... increased? Does that even make sense?


And finally, here's trulia's more explicit breakdown of home values in Elgin--bear in mind that these are asking prices only--not selling prices. 2-bedrooms have absolutely nose-dived. But 3- & 4-bedrooms are enjoying a slight increase. What the hell? Once again, my special little demographic (we have three bedrooms here at the hacienda, thank you very much) isn't the one in trouble, but I do think it's peculiar all the same.



On a further real estatey note, the City of Elgin site also pointed out that Elgin is the fastest growing city in Bastrop County:
1850 single family lots platted
3340 single family lots conceptual
176 duplexes platted

So I don't suppose those home values will be bouncing back any time soon. We weren't planning on moving anyway, and any return is a better investment than the renting we had been doing throughout our 20s, so I'm not too despondent.

Next in the series: the coolness of downtown Elgin, and definitive proof that we're miles worthier than our competition for Austin ex-pats and retail outlets, Manor.

Main Street: a Photo Essay

Well, okay, that's a little pretentious. I'm not sure it's an "essay" so much as "a bunch of pictures." In any event, here's a little tour of the wonderful old houses in the residential section of Main Street in my new town. (That is, a few blocks from our house.)


Lovely old Greek Revival-style house in sad disrepair. Those stumps in the front yard are the peculiar & inexplicable remnant of an avenue of crepe myrtles.

What do you call this style? There are a number of houses with this look in Elgin--brick, compact, lots of arches. I really like the red arched front door.

Same general idea--next door to the previous.

At one time, we were really considering buying this one. It's a lovely old thing from 1920, but it's SO not perpendicular, and it was pushing on the absolute outer limits of what we could afford. It just needed more work than we could really manage. No matter--somebody else snarfed it up double-quick.


This is one of a number of what I think are Craftsman-style houses on Main St. Main St. was clearly where all of Elgin's muckty-mucks used to live (probably still do, for that matter)--it has the biggest, snazziest houses in town. Since several of these big fancy houses are in (what I take to be) Craftsman style, I assume Elgin had its big boom in the 1930s. Which, come to think of it, seems rather unlikely. Nobody was having a boom in the 30s. Must have been in the 20s, then?

Right next to the big Craftsman grandiosities is this bungalowish cuteness. What a ducky little cottage!

I don't know what this style is, and I have no idea of the time period either--they still build homes that look very much like it. "Traditional Southern Cottage" or some such thing. Charming, though, isn't it? Nice use of ferns.

Here's another in that unknown style--compact, squarish, and brick. No arches on this one, though. Is this from the 30s or the 40s, do you think? For some reason, this style of houses always looks to me like it should have professors living in it.

The cupola (is that what you call it when it's only 1 story? I usually think of cupolas as having 2 stories) says to me "Victorian" but the fat pillars and deep porch say "Craftsman." (I need to get a book on this history of residential architecture in America.) Either way, it must be lovely inside. And what a marvelous, cool porch for having breakfast or dinner.

A cupola and a dormer window! What bliss! This house, unusually, is stuccoed.

For some reason, this house always looks rather British to me. Look at the details in the woodwork between the windows.

Another handsome old Craftsman (I assume) house. It wears April well--the bright spring green of all the new foliage certainly becomes it.

...and another really big old house. The more I look at it, the less I think I know its date of origin. Bottom line is, it's big and interesting. (Not exactly as pretty as some of the others, I think--that brown's a bit austere. But it's interesting.)

And that's it. Isn't my town cool?


On my specific house, we've planted a few odds and ends that really needed to get into the ground ASAP (a rose here, a crinum there), and begun the first round of the Furniture Shuffle. Now that we have floors in the front of the house, we're extracting all the furniture that goes in those rooms and filling them. Hopefully, this will make it easier to empty out the master and study when the carpet guys come (which should be right around the Crack of Doom). Even though chaos reigns in the kitchen, it's amazing how much better it looks now that the oven has been reinstalled and the island and china cabinet were brought in. Let me take that out of passive voice: after Matt & I half killed ourselves, pulled our muscles, and pinched our fingers wrestling in three monstrous leviathans of furniture. After much tribulation, the kitchen is already looking nicer (I scrubbed the island from breakfast till lunch yesterday--much ingrained grease and unidentifiable nastiness--eww.)
As our most inhabitable room, the living room has become our base of operations. A bed and an internet connection: the fundamentals of life.