This is Patricia. She visited Barton Springs for the first time in 1979. Now she comes four or five times a week, less in the winter months. Sometimes she doesn’t pay the park admission fee, instead preferring to sit at the picnic tables which overlook the pool. There, she can spend the whole day watching the people below. When we photographed her, she was sitting with a younger man, who silently moved out of the frame of the shot. He had thick, brown hair that fell in clumps to his shoulders, and wore a thin floral print oxford without an undershirt underneath. He obviously didn’t want his picture taken. As we talked to Patricia, he reached into her floppy shoulder bag and rooted around for a lighter. But he did this without looking into the bag, keeping his eyes on us the whole time.
Patricia seemed upset that she couldn’t help us more. Even though she had watched the place evolve for thirty years, all she had noticed was that more out-of-towners seemed to show up. But this wasn’t a problem: currently, she thinks the ratio is about 50/50. She remembered how segregated Austin was in the past, but it had never really affected her. She just remembers that it had been a big problem.
-Patrick Steadman
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