Bad blogger. Bad blogger.
I repent in sackcloth and ashes and vow never to do it again if it is within my power, which it should be providing my memory doesn’t go.
In his comment, Graham said, "Actually I have never lived in the town but 7 miles away. That may sound nothing to you but it means a lot here."
Graham, I know exactly what you mean. I identify. It’s all making sense now. Mansfield, the town I grew up in in Tarrant County, Texas, was 7 miles from Kennedale. There was very little, if any, interaction between the two towns.
Here is Mansfield:
And here is Kennedale:
The big blob just north of Mansfield is Arlington:
...and the even bigger blob in the center of the county is the city of Fort Worth:
Well, enough with the maps already. Things have changed a lot in Tarrant County since I grew up there. Like Topsy in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Tarrant County just grew.
When I was a 9-year-old boy in 1950, the census showed that Mansfield's population was 964; Kennedale's was 1,046; Arlington's was 7,692; and Fort Worth's was 278,788. Today, seventy years later, the 2020 census is being taken as we speak. The most recent population estimates from 2018 put Mansfield's population at 70, 981 (yikes!); Kennedale's at 8,543 (significant growth but still pretty small potatoes); Arlington's at 398,112 (double yikes!); and Fort Worth's at 895,008 (triple yikes and a couple of gadzooks). All of Tarrant County is currently estimated to have 2,102,515 human beings. Next door, to the east, Dallas County’s population is 2,635,516. The entire Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area is estimated at 7,573,136 people as of 2019. That is a lot of 10-gallon hats.
But getting back to Mansfield and Kennedale in the fifties, just as people in Eagleton don't want to be mistaken for Stornowayans or Stornowayers or Stornowayites or whatever they are, people in Mansfield didn't want to be associated with Kennedale either. Many outlying districts had elementary schools but sent their high schoolers to either Mansfield or Kennedale. Some of the Kennedale kids actually attended school in Mansfield, but none of the Mansfield kids attended school in Kennedale. The Mansfield Independent School District ran several school bus routes that gathered and dispersed kids from the outlying areas, and kids in our school were known by the bus they rode. There were buses for Kennedale, Rendon, Webb, Britten, Venus-Alvarado, and Sublett. Kids in Mansfield’s class of 1958 who rode the Kennedale bus included Martha Spencer, Judy Glaze, Ben Nessler, and Marshall Tyson. All of them are dead now. Martha was our class salutatorian.
Today I am proud to have known them all.
Here’s hoping it doesn’t take 70 years for the residents of Eagleton and Stornoway to appreciate one another.
I lived in many different towns when I was growing up. I have fond memories of people from most of them. Some I am even still in touch with.
ReplyDeleteEmma, I am in only occasional touch with exactly two of the people from the town in which I grew up, but not one in Orlando, no one in Nebraska, no one in New York, and only one person from my military days. It shocks me to say it, but I must be an "out of sight, out of mind" kind of person.
DeleteWow that is a population explosion, and I'm sure the town's changed a lot. Did you ever go back to your high school reunions?
ReplyDeleteI went to one reunion, but doubt if I will go to another one. Times and people change.
Kathy, I went to our 30th class reunion in 1988 but I haven't been to any of the others. I am in occasional touch, as I told Emma, with only two of the people I grew up with.
DeleteSo little travel and interaction at one time. A book I've just finished mentioned a doctor in West Somweset who could tell which local village someone came from simply from the shape of their head.
ReplyDeleteTasker, I know how you could turn that idea into a pornographic novel.
Delete'Scuse me while I butt in on the senior transatlantic bearded bromance. I grew up in East Yorkshire - in a village that is thirteen miles north of the city of Hull yet in Sheffield most people say I come from Hull. I don't. I am an East Riding lad - not a Hull lad. In fact - in our local pub (before The Great Lockdown of 2020) I was often referred to as Hull Neil. But to me those thirteen miles mattered.
ReplyDeleteNeil, I suppose it's a matter of definition. When I left the Dallas-Fort Worth area I said I was from Dallas until President Kennedy was assassinated. Then I said I was from Fort Worth. In the Dallas-Fort Worth area I would say I was from Mansfield, but in Mansfield I would say I lived two miles north of town, which was outside the city limits.
DeleteWhen I'm in Texas I say I live in Georgia, but in most of Georgia I say I'm from Atlanta. When in Atlanta I say I'm from Canton. When I'm in Canton I say I'm from East Cherokee.
I'm a living St. Elsewhere. It's hard to pin me down.