I didn't necessarily grow up in Bastrop but I still consider it home. My parents moved us to Bastrop over winter break of my sophomore year in high school. Man was I mad! The town was boring and I had no friends there. My first day at the high school I tried to be invisible. A wonderful girl named Heather came up to me before classes started and very insistently convinced me to sit at her table with all of her friends. Some of them became my friends as well. I made a ton of bad decisions in high school but hey who doesn't?
My husband also grew up in Bastrop but he really grew up there and can walk through downtown and tell what a few buildings used to be, yeah he's a little older than me but... He knows how much that town has grown.
The Labor Day fires of 2011 devastated my little town, and it all started from the spark of a power-line onto some very dry pine needles. Hundreds of people lost their homes, belongings, business, and vehicles. From my parents' back yard we watched the clouds of smoke billowing up into the beautiful Texas blue sky and at night we could see the sky light up a baby orange like the burning of the South in Gone with Wind.
The town has since begun healing and rebuilding but ask just about anyone you see at the WalMart or H-E-B and they will tell you about the tension and not-knowing during the time so many (maybe even themselves) were evacuated. One of the things I am thankful for is that the whole community pulled together to help each other and there weren't any horror stories such as those from the dome in Louisiana when Hurricane Katrina hit...
What are some of the ways you have helped your community? If you haven't helped yet, now is a good time to start!
