My wife and I moved to Austin in the fall of 1972, after marrying a year earlier.

We rented a mobile home just out of Oak Hill, about a mile west of the Y. Life was very simple.

She shopped for groceries at HEB, the store at South Congress and Oltorf. That was the nearest larger supermarket to us and the one she enjoyed going to.

When I think back to the next 13 years we lived in 3 different locations, all in far South Austin, a real building boom happened. Safeway built at William Cannon at Manchaca Rd., a large HEB at Westgate and S. Lamar, another HEB at the Y in Oak Hill.

In the first several years as we started having kids, my wife would go visit my grandmother who lived in the 5500 block just off of Burnet Rd. She would drive from Oak Hill right up Lamar all the way until she’d pickup Burnet Rd, in the vicinity of 2J’s Hamburger’s. As many red lights as there were, she would make the trip in 30 minutes or so, each way. It was faster than making the east/west journey at each end of town to travel I-35.

Of course there was no Mopac Blvd.

When I hear people talk about the concrete and steel zoo that Austin has become, it’s a valid complaint. There really is a lot to miss about the old Austin. But you can’t stop progress, as they always say. You just continue moving farther away, or at least that’s what we did.