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It was 2010 when I moved from Austin to Elgin. One of the first things I noticed was how much people wave to each other here. I remember driving down Avenue C as a newly settled Elginite, seeing someone standing on the side of the road waving. As I approached, I realized it was someone I knew. That had never happened to me before in Austin. If anyone ever waved at me from the side of the road, they weren’t using all five fingers.
My first Halloween experience in Elgin was fascinating. Living in a residential neighborhood, I had anticipated a number of costume-clad kids looking for candy. What I had not anticipated was the number of people who would trick-or-treat on horseback.
The first time I had to go to the Newby-Jones Funeral Home, I used the internet to search for directions. You can imagine my surprise when I found out that the distance was 0.9 miles and the estimated time was less than three minutes.
There were a lot of little, unexpected surprises that happened in my first year here. Even though Elgin and Austin aren’t really very far apart, there are some things that are just unique to Elgin.
The most unexpected thing happened one day when I was taking my daughter to a friend’s birthday party on Avenue G. I had left my phone at home, so I was sans GPS, but I thought, for sure, I can find Avenue G.
I couldn’t find it. I was driving all over the place. I found every other street except for Avenue G. We eventually came across a man outside checking his mail. So, I stopped to ask him for directions. He said, “I’m not sure where Avenue G is.”
Then he took his phone out of his pocket and said, “Let me call my friend, Paul.”
I thought,” We don’t need to bring Paul into this.” But I couldn’t just drive off, so I waited.
After a few moments, he said, “Paul wants to know who you’re looking for.”
I answered. The man relayed the information to Paul. And then, to my surprise, he said, “They live across the street from Paul.” He then gave me directions, which included the former names of businesses and items in people’s back yards.
The crazy thing is that half of the people reading this right now probably know Paul, too. The other half are kin to him.
Our culture today is more about the individual than about the community. We have a society today that fiercely defines life as individualistic, But here in Elgin, the sense of community is not lost. One has to wonder if this really isn’t how we were all meant to live.
These stories are from, “More Stories- Elgin, Etc”. written by many determined community members to put these family tales into a book for all to enjoy. Several volumes about this area written by locals are in the Elgin Depot Museum, facebook. com/elgin.depot, in downtown Elgin in a red brick train station.
