Lady Bird and Me by Ken Kesselus The bluebonnets along 71 always remind me of the summer of 1966. While I worked on the Bastrop County highway department maintenance crew, the State began to establish a park across from the LBJ ranch and designate the road that ran...

Memorial Day Reflection by Ken Kesselus Memorial Day inevitably reminds my generation of the Vietnam Memorial. Seeing it moved me deeply – this overpowering and imposing black granite monument, inscribed with row after row and column after column of names – nearly...

Tennis in the Old Days by Ken Kesselus For a small town, Bastrop from the 1940s through the mid-1970s had an unusually large number of tennis courts – four at the White school and, as the prejudice of the day dictated, two at the Black school (Emile). The first state...

Homecoming Celebrations by Ken Kesselus Our summer Homecoming celebration might seem weird to newcomers. It’s based on a time when a local economic recession plagued the town after the World War II Camp Swift closed. In 1948 town leaders hoped to draw back to town...

Newcomers and Old Timers by Ken Kesselus In 1986, at a gathering of sixty members of the Tahitian Village Homeowners Association, I asked how many had been born in Bastrop. No hands went up. The county? Still none. Then I cast the circle wider and wider until I...