A Forgotten History

On Christmas day near midnight, I was driving from Round Rock back to my parents’ place in Walburg. With Spanish music on the radio, I admired how much the much the outer limits of Austin had grown in the last six months much less since I was a small child. New subdivisions, strip malls, movie houses, and well lit access roads blurred by as I opened the car up on a traffic-less I-35. Cruising at 80, I passed Oxford Place one of the few buildings standing in my childhood.

Built in the boom of the early 80s, the Oxford Place was a typical strip mall that included an odd four story, three-football field long building. With windows in every room, I’m not sure what it was intended to be used for. In its history, it served as a nursing home before being evacuated in the late 80s never to be rented again. Repeatedly a sale sign would appear on the side of the strip mall starting in the bust of the mid 80s ending a couple of years ago. Most of the time, the whole place lay vacant with at most two stores tried to entice customers before dying out due to the lack of traffic.

The Oxford Place remains relic to the boom and bust economy and our need for newness.

As I write, construction surrounds the Oxford Place. New strip malls, restaurants, and stores appear in the months between my visits. Never does one rent into the Oxford Place, nor is it torn down. It is too expensive to dismantle too odd, old, and unlucky to make work. All the while, every prospector says this boom season will never bust.