From: Clay (wcharmon@wt.net)
Date: 12/24/02-09:31:47 AM Z
In my early morning runs along the bayou, I have seen such things as
osprey, river otters, bobcats, and once, a young couple attempting a
little procreation - right in the middle of all the junk! It would
certainly be ashamed if all this were to disappear in the name of
Landry's Seafood on The Bayou. But as a cynical optimist, I have faith
that the short attention span of city government and the creative
dystopic entropy that Houston has always exhibited will combine to
bring back the junky place we know and love.
Clay
On Tuesday, December 24, 2002, at 11:11 AM, Shannon Stoney wrote:
> Clay wrote:
>
>> Shannon:
>> I figure you're out of town, so I am sending you the bad news via
>> email: The Houston Chronicle is reporting this morning that the city
>> of
>> Houston intends to put into service a garbage skimming boat to cruise
>> up and down Buffalo Bayou beginning in April. That will give you only
>> about 4 more months to make all of the ironic post-whatever
>> landscapes
>> that you will need in the future. After that, this town will be CLEAN.
>
> Yikes! That's terrible. No more floating plastic bags or dead bodies
> to
> photograph?
>
> Luckily my washing machine and dryer in the creek here in TN are
> safe! We
> have more enlightened local government here. We know that if we clean
> things up too much, we might get tourists.
>
> Geoff Winningham, who teaches at Rice and did a series of photogravures
> about the bayou, broke the news to me a few weeks ago that they are
> cleaning
> up the bayou. He had a lot of great pictures, from several years ago,
> of
> jungly scenes under the freeway, where kudzu grows up the pillars that
> hold
> up the freeway beside the bayou. But alas, that kudzu is gone. It's
> been
> "cleaned up." It's starting to look downright suburban under the
> freeway
> along the bayou, the last wild and weedy place left in Houston. Soon
> they
> will start building that fake Riverwalk thing, so that we can go
> *sculling*
> on Buffalo Bayou! Ha! They think we are really going to do such an
> effete
> East Coast thing! It's bass boats or nothing, baby. Do you think
> we'll
> still be allowed to set out catfish lines after that Riverfront
> monstrosity
> is built?
>
> Geoff said his series was about the struggle between the wild bayou
> and the
> concrete world that people have built to contain it. I said that
> eventually
> the bayou would win. Geoff just laughed. He said it would be a long
> time
> before the bayou gets the upper hand. That may be true, but what's
> that
> Walker Percy novel where kudzu takes over the interstate? The Last
> Gentleman?
>
> I will not give up hope as long as there are those big piles of
> rusting wire
> and pipe under the freeway where Montrose goes under it. I love those.
> Houston will always have plenty of junk, intermixed with tropical
> jungly
> growth I think. Save the banana trees growing out of discarded
> toilets!
>
> --shannon
>
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