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A 'lil HooHaa

Messing with the blogging world since 2005

waco texas

Holga Challenge – Your Town: Waco, Texas

July 9, 2012

Note: This is the second in a series of six stories that are being done by participants of the HooHaa Holga Challenge. The rest will run through Friday. See information for the rest at the bottom of this post.

By Mike Davis

Waco, Texas – Population 124, 805 as of 2010. Waco was founded in 1849 and is named for the Huaco Indians who lived in the area.

Located in the Heart of Texas, directly between Dallas and Austin, Waco was relatively quiet for some time. It gained some notoriety, perhaps infamy is the better word, in 1993 during the Branch Davidian Standoff. While the Davidians weren’t located in Waco city limits, we were the closest town to their compound.

President George W. Bush also chose Crawford, a little town outside Waco, as the location for his ranch and spent quite a bit of time there during his terms.

The Bosque River from Lover’s Leap

One of the jewels of Waco is William Cameron Park. Cameron Park in 416 acres inside the city limits located along the confluence of the Brazos and Bosque rivers.

The cliffs in the park were formed because of the Balcones fault that runs through the area. Lover’s Leap is a popular area of the park complete with a legend — A Huacoan Indian chief had a daughter named Wah-Wah-Tee who fell in love with a member of the Apache tribe. The two lovers had to run off together, as the Apaches and Huacos were enemies, but were intercepted by her angry father and brothers.

The tale ends with Wah-Wah-Tee kissing her lover before the two of them jumped from a cliff at the east end of the Bosque River and plummeted to their deaths.

Just to the top left of the Bosque River picture is the location of the Waco Mammoth Site where the bones of 24 Columbian mammoth were buried approximately 68,000 years ago when rapidly rising waters from the Bosque River flooded the site. They are currently working on receiving National Park status for the site.

Jacob’s Ladder

The park is also home to the Cameron Park Zoo, as well as some of the top-rated hiking and mountain biking trails in Texas.

A true test of fitness is a hike up the 87 unevenly spaced steps that make up Jacob’s Ladder.

Waco Suspension Bridge

Continuing down the Brazos River, we find Waco’s iconic symbol, the Waco Suspension Bridge.

Built in 1869 by the renowned New York firm of John A. Roebling Co., the firm that had originated the suspension span bridge concept, and later oversaw the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, the bridge spanned 475 feet and contained nearly 3 million locally produced bricks.

The bridge helped Waco grow along the Chisolm Trail.

It was closed to vehicular traffic in 1971 but is still in use today.

ALICO Building

Another Waco icon is the ALICO building. Built as the home of the Amicable Life Insurance Company in 1911, the ALICO building’s 22 floors made it the tallest building west of the Mississippi.

At one point the building was entirely self-sufficient, with an electrical generator, oil wells across the Bosque River to fuel its heating system, and an Artesian well for water. The bottom floors were damaged in 1953 during a tornado that devastated most of downtown Waco.

The building is still in use and still the tallest building in Waco.

McLennan County Courthouse

Waco is the county seat of McLennan County.

The McLennan County Courthouse was built in 1901 by architect J. Reily Gordon. The Beaux-Arts style building is said to have been inspired by St. Peter’s Cathedral in Rome.

On top of the courthouse’s dome is a small lantern, crowned by a statue of Themis, the Greek goddess of divine law and justice. The statue is holding the scales of Justice in her left hand and the hilt of a sword in her right. The dome is also ringed by eight eagles.

The roof and dome have recently gone through restoration giving Themis the blade of her sword back.

Dr Pepper Museum

Waco’s most famous export product was created at Morrison’s Old Corner Drug Store.

Dr Pepper, created in 1885, pre-dates Coca-Cola by about a year. Charles Alderton, a young pharmacist working at Morrison’s store, is believed to be the inventor of the now famous drink.

The Artesian Mfg. & Bottling Company, which later became Dr Pepper Company, is now the home of the Dr Pepper Museum and Free Enterprise Institute. The museum houses all sorts of soft drink memorabilia and the Institute provides a hands-on lab where students learn how to create and market their own beverages.

If you were wondering, Dr Pepper dropped the “.” in the 1950’s. The 1906 Artesian Manufacturing and Bottling Company building is listed in the National Register of Historic Places as the “Home of Dr Pepper.”

Pat Neff Hall

Waco was known as the “Athens on the Brazos” during the 1880s because it was fast becoming the hub of education in the Lone Star State.

In 1881, Paul Quinn College moved to Waco from Austin; AddRand College (later changed its name to Texas Christian University) moved to Waco in 1895, in 1882, a city tax was levied to fund the Waco Public Schools; and in 1886 Waco University and Baylor University consolidated locations in Waco.

Waco is still home to McLennan Community College, a Texas State Technical College, and Baylor University. Baylor was founded in 1845 and is the state’s oldest continually operating private university. Baylor moved from Independence, Texas in 1885.

Baylor has actually been a university longer than Texas has been a state.

Pat Neff Hall was opened in 1939 and is home to the Administrative Offices, as well as the McLane Carillon. The instrument was built by the Paccard Bell Foundry of Annecy, France. The weight of the bells ranges from 29 pounds to 4,370 pounds, with a total weight of more than 22 tons.

Judge R.E. Baylor

Rufus C. Burleson

Robert Emmett Bledsoe Baylor, a native of Kentucky, moved to Texas where he co-founded Baylor University with the Reverend William Tryon and Reverend James Huckins, the first Baptist missionary to Texas. He was elected judge of the district and supreme courts of the Republic of Texas and was a member of the convention that framed the State constitution of Texas in 1845.

Rufus C. Burleson was the second president of Baylor.

He was accused by William Cowper Brann of fathering a child with a young Brazilian girl who lived with the Burlesons, eventually leading to his demotion to President Emeritus in 1897 despite being found innocent by a grand jury. The building behind his statue is part of the Burleson Quadrangle, the first common area to the students at the Waco campus.

Founders Mall

Just behind Old Main, and the R.E. Baylor Statue, is Founders Mall and this column monument.

According to Michael White’s History of Baylor University 1845-1861, the memorial is built of stones from Tyron Hall, a building from Baylor’s original Independence campus about 80 miles west of Houston. The memorial also contains pieces of Old Main, Carroll Science Building, Alexander Residence Hall and Pat Neff Hall.

Buried beneath the monument is a time capsule from 1945, when the stones were dedicated for Baylor’s centennial celebration.

RGIII

A visit to Baylor wouldn’t be complete without paying homage to a young man who brought a new spark to are generally less-than-stellar athletics program (with apologies to women’s basketball, this is Texas and football is king.)

Robert Griffin III led our football program to our first bowl game in years, our first bowl win in years, and then he went ahead and won the Heisman Trophy for excellence in football this year.

Lake Waco Dam

He did all of this while completing his Bachelor of Arts degree and a Master in Communications. He was the second overall pick in the NFL draft and, much to my chagrin, will be playing for the Washington Redskins. He kicked off “The Year of the Bear” that had us set an NCAA record for combined wins in football, men’s and women’s basketball, and baseball and saw all of our teams appearing in post-season play. Needless to say, I’m a touch excited.

There is much more to Waco than I could ever cover in 12 photos.

Waco has been a great place to grow up. It has just the right mix of activities and its proximity to larger cities provides one with outlets for just about everything else without having to deal with traffic. We have access to sports, great golf courses, good food and plenty of other activities.

See more of Mike on the web:

  • Tumblr
  • Flickr
  • Twitter

HooHaa Holga Challenge:

Day 1: Totness, England

Day three of the HooHaa Holga Challenge is Tuesday, with Shaima M and Geneva, Switzerland.

Filed Under: blogging, Cameras, HooHaa Holga Challenge, Photography Tagged With: film, film photography, holga, holga camera, holga challenge, holga film, hoohaa holga challenge, texas, waco, waco texas

11 Comments

Guest post: Making the case for Halloween

November 3, 2011

If you want a good spook and love Halloween, make sure you check out Mike's pad if you are ever in Waco on Halloween night!

OK, if you’ve read my blog at all this week, you know my feelings about Halloween.

Not a huge fan.

Alas, on Halloween night, a person I follow on Twitter, Mike, had a live webcam of his house. He had it all decked out. I watched for a bit as unsuspecting trick-or-treaters came on the porch and the scene came to life. There were screeches and screams and surprised people, that’s for sure.

Mike, you see, is the complete opposite of me when it comes to Halloween. A fellow photographer and geocacher, I’ve known Mike in the online world for a bit and thought it would be fun for him to share his Halloween ideas and things with the readers.

I’m always up for the opposite view point, after all.

So enjoy below as Mike’s words, videos and photos take you through his Halloween adventure in Waco, Texas.

***

Call me crazy if you must, but I am a Halloween nut!

Some say it’s really only for little kids go the other way and use it as another excuse to get drunk. These days, most costumes for the female are of the “sexy” variety; admittedly troubling when applied to the pre-pubescent girls to whom they are offered as well.

Mike said he didn't have time to dress this year, but here he is in 2010 -- all decked out!

That’s not the Halloween I’m talking about, anyway. My Halloween is full of mummies, zombies, vampires, and other assorted ghouls. This is my Halloween.

First, let’s start with a little background.

I am a child of Star Wars; I was almost 10 years old when Episode 4 was released. I became obsessed with how it was made, which expanded to how all movies were made. My friends and I started making short films. Our first was a Star Wars ripoff that my dad shot for us on his video camera tethered to a giant video deck. We needed more control of our product so we started shooting Super 8 for our next films. Horror movies are the easiest to shoot. You don’t need dialog and they were just plain fun. Dressing up as monsters became our fun time.

I don’t remember the exact year we built our first haunted house. It was 1979 or 1980-ish. I know it was in the back portion of my grandmother’s house and we just had her and my friends parents come through.

The next year, we moved to the garage. We just used stuff we had around the house as props.

We cleaned out the garage for our second year in there. We used some of the same props but did a better job of separating the garage into rooms using polyurethane sheeting. I remember that we got in trouble for bringing several yards of dirt in for a graveyard room.

We were told not to but who listens to adults, right?

We put signs up for this one and actually got quite a few people through. Somehow, even though I was the most introverted of the bunch, I ended up playing the guide every year.

In 1982 or 1983, we set out to build what would be our final, and hopefully best, haunted house. That summer, we went door-to-door collecting newspapers from the neighbors and sold them to a recycling place for money so we could buy props and plenty of polyurethane.

One of the big ones from the 1980s!

Sadly, no photos exist of the full exterior of our opus but it was huge!

We built it in my grandmother’s back yard. Her lot was more than 100-feet wide and the entire structure was another 25- or 30-feet deep. We hung lines up to hold the poly walls, put a roof on some rooms, incorporated our clubhouse as part of the set design, and even built a deck with grating to hide someone underneath.

It was quite an undertaking for a handful of high school kids. We gave tours all weekend and it was quite the hit.

We all got busy with school and quit making our own haunted houses, though no Halloween passed without us visiting others. My best friend and I both started taking film classes at college and continued making short movies with horror and fantasy-type films. After graduating, we went into film production together, working on a handful of low-budget films while paying the bills with commercials and industrial shoots.

Eventually, business dried up and I left for a “real” job but still get out to the set when a film is being made. I still love the art of film making even if it is a direct-to-DVD zombie movie. Check out Risen on the Internet Movie Database to see what I am talking about.

Now, I have kids — two boys aged 9 and 11. I have been getting back into decorating “for them.”

The process starts a week or so before Halloween. I have a pair of eyes on plastic cling that I hang in our dormer windows and light from behind. It makes the house look alive. One or two days before Halloween, I wrap my front porch with black duvetyne (a twill fabric) to create a “room” for most of my props and to keep it dark.

I’ve expanded my display over the last five years and really kind of settled on a graveyard theme last year. I bring in dirt to cover the concrete and the boys help me set up and design their own little areas as well.

A shot from Mike's 2009 setup.

Most of the work, however, doesn’t happen until the day of Halloween. The moving pieces get placed, cobwebs are hung, bulbs replaced, and fog machines are filled. I tried for several years to capture reactions as people came to the door but never got the hang of it until 2010 when I decided to hide a webcam in the display and stream it out using Ustream.

This year, I managed to hide the camera in the eye of a jack-o-lantern and streamed it live once again. This is how obsessed I am: I left for a while to take the boys out and let my wife rest. While out, I was watching the stream of my house on my iPhone. I loved hearing the screams when the folks would set the mummy off then make the other one behind them move.

Here it is, the day after Halloween, and I have spent the better part of the day tearing it all down and getting the yard back to normal. I still have boxes to pack and tubs to get in the attic. I also have to check out the sales at the seasonal Halloween stores. I always need one more prop.

Why do I do it? Is all the trouble worth it?

I do it because I enjoy doing it. I do it because I like scaring people in a safe way. It’s worth it when a kid tells me I have the best house in the neighborhood or when two teenage boys won’t even step to my door because they are afraid of what might jump out (Spoiler: Nothing ever does).

It’s all in good fun and it’s all over until next year.

***

The photos are great, but they don’t do it justice. Here are some YouTube videos Mike made walking people through what they saw.

2011

2010

2009

Highlights from this year’s live stream of people coming to the door…

To see more from Mike…

  • Follow him on Twitter
  • Check out his Flickr stream
  • His Halloween sets on Flickr
  • His old Halloween photos on Flickr

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook by clicking the button on the right side of the page!

Filed Under: Guest Post, Photography Tagged With: halloween, halloween haunted house, halloween setup, haunted house, wack, waco texas, waco texas halloween

5 Comments

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hoohaa29

Writer who loves images just as much as words! In search of perfectly poured pints of Guinness and great hot dogs. Find me on twitter @softball29.

I guess the April Fool's joke is on us, Mother Nat I guess the April Fool's joke is on us, Mother Nature? Oh .. ha ha ha.
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I also guess this is why hitting back roads to work is good -- you can stop and take a photo and not worry about anybody coming (usually)! Main roads around here are fine for now, but it's definitely quite picturesque on the lawns/trees etc.
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#snow #winterspring #springwinter #april #blackandwhite #photography #photooftheday #goawaywinter #love #instagood #picoftheday #bestoftheday #nature #backroad #road
This was pretty relaxing and fun. #lego #legos #ea This was pretty relaxing and fun. #lego #legos #easter #legoeasterbunny #legoeaster #relax #hobby #fun
It shouldn’t be so hard to find a trash can... # It shouldn’t be so hard to find a trash can... #litter #mask #masks #blackandwhite #streetphotography
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I mean, if you hold a #Wrestlemania in an open stadium... eventually rain delays had to come, right? 🤣

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28 years ago The Sandlot was released and this iconic scene was brought into our lives.

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New blog post: Photo Blogging Challenge (March 2021): Eight #photobloggingchallenge #pbc #challenge #blogging https://hoohaa.com/?p=15201

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