Summer Jobs for GWW Youth Many of our young residents earn income through baby sitting, yard care, pet sitting and other helpful activities, particularly during the summer months. Free listings for young residents offering these services are provided on the Notices page of our neighborhood website. Contact details need not be listed online; inquiries can be forwarded by the webmaster. Click on the ! button at the top of any page on the site for more information. •Editor

Neighborhood History: A Literary Landmark in Kyle

“ Small, dreary, empty here, full of dust,” was how the most famous occupant of a small house on Center Street in Kyle described it in 1930. Had she still been around some seventy years later, she would have changed her tune! “Today we celebrate a great honor – the designation of the Lone Star State’s Second National Literary Landmark…,” said Laura Bush, as she declared the Katherine Anne Porter House open on June 13, 2000.

Katherine Anne Porter was born Callie Russell Porter on May 15, 1890, to Harrison Boone Porter and Mary Alice Jones. It has been claimed that she was a great-granddaughter of Daniel Boone, but this appears not to be the case. It is possible that she was a descendent of his brother, Jonathan, through her grandmother, Catherine Skaggs.

Catherine Skaggs and her husband, Asbury Duvall Porter, came to Hays County, Texas, in the early 1850s. Asbury was a well-to-do farmer, with real estate valued at $2300 and a personal estate of $3548 in 1860. He had settled on rich farmland to the southeast of present-day Buda on what was referred to as “the prairie.” By 1880, Asbury had died, leaving his twenty-two year old son Harrison to run the farm with his mother and five younger siblings. They lived on the edge of the Mountain City community, some distance from the school, so a new one, called Science Hall Home Institute, had been founded. A community grew up, taking its name from the school. It had a post office (for a short time), cotton gin, store, and blacksmith’s shop. But, like many small Texas settlements, its existence was ephemeral, falling into decline with the arrival of the railroad in 1881, and the founding of Kyle and Buda. Science Hall was situated between those two towns, about a mile east of I-35, near County Road 131.

Harrison Porter appears to have been a restless, but intelligent and well-read, young man. By 1884, he had left the family farm and headed further north. His marriage to Mary Alice Jones is recorded in Lampasas on 19 June, 1884. The pair settled in Indian Creek, near Brownwood, where they produced five children, one of whom died an infant. When Callie was just two years old, two months after the birth of her youngest sister, her mother died. Harrison took the family back to their grandmother who had built a three-bedroom house in Kyle. He appears to have continued farming the family farm until his mother’s death.

Life in Kyle came to an abrupt end for Callie with Catherine Porter’s death in 1901. Without his mother as an anchor and financially insecure, Harrison Porter gave up farming and embarked on a nomadic life with his young children, living in boarding houses or with relatives in Louisiana and Texas. At the age of 16, Callie’s desire for financial and emotional stability led her to marry railroad clerk, John Henry Koontz, son of a rancher from Inez. She also converted to Catholicism. The pair divorced in 1915. Callie changed her name to Katherine Porter, and so she styled herself for the rest of her life, despite at least two (some say four) more marriages. That year she contracted tuberculosis, but recovered to almost succumb to influenza during the 1918 pandemic.

After her first divorce, the beautiful young Katherine Anne Porter led a checkered career, as a movie extra, writing a society column for the Fort Worth Critic, and singing Scottish ballads, before moving to Greenwich Village, New York. It was there that her literary career and interest in politics really took hold. Like her father, she was infected with wanderlust, and spent several years in Mexico and in Europe, as a journalist, essayist, and short-story writer.

Katherine was deeply upset when the Texas Institute of Letters passed her over and presented its first book award to J. Frank Dobie in 1936. This later led to the composition of an anonymous limerick:

From 1948 to 1958, Katherine taught at Stanford, the University of Michigan, the University of Liege, Washington and Lee, and the University of Texas. In 1962, she published her only novel, “Ship of Fools,” which was later made into a movie. This made her a household name and provided the financial security she had always craved.

After spending her declining years in the Washington, D.C., area, Katherine Anne Porter died in College Park, Maryland, on 18 September 1980. Her cremated ashes were brought back to her birthplace of Indian Creek and buried by her mother’s grave.

Sadly, Katherine was denied the joy of children, enduring only the sadness of several miscarriages and one still-born child. However, the people of Kyle have not forgotten their most famous resident. The restoration of her grandmother’s house at 508 W. Center Street, where she spent almost ten years of her life, was completed in 2000. Known as the Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center, it is leased to the Texas State University in San Marcos. Tours of the center can be arranged by calling (512) 268-6637. •©2005 J. Marie Bassett

South Austin Bass Club The South Austin Bass Club meets the first Monday of each month (exceptions being the July 6 and September 6 meetings). Meetings are held at 7:30 pm at the old Manchaca Volunteer Firehall. Tournaments monthly. For more information contact: Ralph White, President (282-5136), Buck Buchanan, Vice President (444-4653), or John Anderson, Secretary/Treasurer. (858-2790 or john@johnlanderson.com). •John Anderson

Coyote Seminar An educational seminar was presented at Friendship Baptist church by Randy Farrar on Thursday, February 24. Mr. Farrar is a Wildlife Damage Management Biologist from the Texas Cooperative Extension, Wildlife Services. This seminar was sponsored by the BOTs of GWW, Goldenwood and Radiance, and also by the Hays County Master Naturalists, in response to questions and concerns from area residents regarding an increase in frequency of coyote sightings in the area. Information presented in the seminar indicated that coyotes are highly territorial animals, and that a coyote pack is actually a single family group, with adults depending on a wide variety of sources to feed themselves and the young in the pack.

Predatorial activity increases in late spring and summer when adults must feed new pups. Coyotes can eat almost anything, including insects, fruits, seeds, compost, deer, and other animals. Where more food is available, the packs require a smaller territory. This means that while a unit of area in open range might support a single pack, the same unit of area in a suburban community might be capable of supporting more than one pack if food becomes more plentiful.

Some rural communities in central Texas and California have experienced problems with coyotes preying on cats and small dogs. In these instances the coyotes overcome their natural fear of humans because suburban communities rarely trap or disturb the animals, as ranchers or farmers do, and also because they begin to associate human dwellings with food or water. The lesson we can learn from these other communities is to avoid attempts to interfere with coyotes’ natural wariness of humans, and most importantly to avoid activities which create an unnaturally abundant food supply for the animals, thus upsetting the balance of the local ecology. When food supplies increase and coyote population density is low, females can give birth to litters of as many as twelve pups, instead of the usual four to six. Once grown, these new adults must find a new territory to hunt.

Wildlife biologists have observed seven stages of behavioral changes in coyotes toward humans:

Few communities in central Texas have experienced a change in coyote behavior above level 3 on this list, and it seems that GWW residents can promote a healthy cohabitation between our human and animal residents and the indigenous residents of our hill country environment by following some simple, common sense guidelines. The Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services Department lists ten steps suburban residents can take to prevent problems with wildlife from developing:

Any sightings of coyotes in the subdivision should be reported to the GWW administrator at 894-0650.

Coyotes are an important part of our local ecology, controlling the population of deer, rodents and other animals. Their nighttime calls are a legendary part of the southwest. By adjusting our lifestyles in the simple ways outlined above we can derive the fullest possible benefit from living so close to nature in our beautiful hill country.

For further information about coyotes, visit these websites: www.aphis.usda.gov/lpa/pubs/fsheet_faq_notice/fs_wscoyote.html or www.fundwildlife.org/coexist/coyotes.html. •Editor

Board of Trustees News

Deer In light of the information provided by area wildlife biologists, the BOT is strongly requesting that all residents refrain from feeding deer or providing water for deer within the community. Feeding the deer artificially inflates the deer population, upsetting the ecological balance of native animals and attracting coyotes into the area. The BOT is actively considering ways to discourage coyotes from visiting GWW, including trapping coyotes and reduction of the size of the deer population within the subdivision.

Pool replastering Replastering of the pool and repair of damaged facilities is underway and is expected to be completed in time for the summer swimming season. This summer, residents will enjoy a newly resurfaced pool, and functioning underwater lighting.

Welcome Committee There is a continuing need for a Welcome Committee to welcome new residents to our neighborhood, and the BOT requests that anyone interested in assisting with this group please contact the GWW administrator (894-0650) or the editor (see page 4). Dena Seligman is coordinating this effort, and all inquiries will be forwarded to her.

Pool Committee The BOT requests volunteers for a Pool Committee to manage reservations for the pavilion.

News from the APC

Spring yard recognition The APC will once again give special recognition to the most beautiful yard in the neighborhood this spring, to be selected at its April 19 meeting. The selected yard will be announced at the mail station and in the May issue of the newsletter.

The next APC meeting will be held on March 22 at 7:00 pm at the pavilion.

News from the GWW Water Board

The Water Board extends sincere appreciation to Becky Wright and Tom Watson as they step down after years of service to GWW. Both have provided valuable input on the board and will be missed. Any POA member interested in serving on the GWWWB are encouraged to sign up. We have two spots to fill. The only requirement is to have a desire to serve our community.

Two new Board positions The election process is as follows: The thirty-day nomination period ends mid-March. Election ballots and proxies will be mailed thirty days prior to the annual meeting and election, which will be held in mid-April. We encourage everyone to participate in the process. Ten percent of the GWW membership must vote to have a valid election.

The next meeting of the GWW Water Board will be on March 23 and the annual meeting will be in mid-April.

Business Sponsors

Coldwell Banker United, Realtors®Audrey Pudder
Goldenwood West resident for seven years, specializing in Northern Hays County.
Cell 512.925.9720