by Heber Taylor
La Casita by Heber Taylor
A couple bought a little house. It badly needed repairs and was in the poorest
neighborhood in San Antonio, Texas. The two found themselves stepping into a
world where the prominent language is Spanish. Gradually, they find they’ve
landed in a magical place.
La Casita placed as 2026 finalist for humor in the Georgia Independent Author Association book contest.
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An excerpt from LaCasita
An act of love or giving is the single most powerful act in making or using a place…. The most mundane building can be transformed through the spirit with which it is used, expressed in the flowers in the window, the well-scrubbed doorstep, or the smell of freshly baked bread. What counts is that someone has done the best, not the least, they could. And that comes not from necessity, but only from love.
— Thomas Bender in The Power of Place: Sacred Ground in Natural & Human Environments, James A. Swan, editor
Chapter 1: What were we thinking
La Casita de Arándanos
When people asked, I would say, “One afternoon I took a nap, and my wife bought a little house in San Antonio.”
That’s not literally true. I was awake on Oct. 6, 2017, when we signed the papers on an old worker’s cottage in what people repeatedly warned was a bad neighborhood. But the story about the nap — the briefest version of a complicated story — gets at the truth: This started as my wife’s dream. It was her passion.
The Wise Woman and I lived in Galveston, a wonderful community with a history of bad storms. Hurricane Ike had wearied her. She wanted a place where we could escape from the coast.
We were in our 60s and had been married for decades. She’s a city girl, married to a country boy, and so she tailored the sales pitch.
“How about a place in the country, a cabin in the woods?”
“I like the woods,” I said. “You do not. You do not like ticks and snakes.” She frowned and said, “You are always shooting down my ideas.”
“How about a place in San Antonio?” I countered. “I like the woods. You like La Villita.”
It was true. Whenever we needed a getaway, we headed to San Antonio. The Wise Woman loved it.
I had in mind what an old navy buddy Arturo called “the barrio,” the vast area of the west and south sides that, in some ways, is more like Mexico than the United States. It would be, for us, a new place, a new culture. It would offer a new life — as different and as challenging as a life in the woods.
To my surprise, the Wise Woman liked the idea. Within a month, we owned a little house on the West Side, about a mile and a half south of the University of Our Lady of the Lake.
Copyright © 2025 Alfred Heber Taylor, III
All rights reserved. Narrativemagic Press, LLC or Alfred Heber Taylor, III
ISBN: 979-8-9886476-4-5
Published by Narrativemagic Press — Narrativemagic, LLC
