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Farewell to the old Brownsville I grew up in. I returned to my once quaint small town last year and spent a few months there. I was amazed at how much it has changed.
It is no longer the 50,000 population town with one high school and its one horse. Downtown is no longer a beautiful, bustling, glittery place that it was when I was growing up, especially in the late-‘50s early ’60s. At least this is the way I remember it.
It is a completely different scene now from what it was way back then. But to be fair, what has happened to the Brownsville downtown area is not an isolated incident. The mall invention has done much to deteriorate downtowns all across our country.
Now downtown Brownsville is dominated by mostly tawdry, shabby stores that are mostly selling cheap stuff from China and some of the stores are even boarded up. And the old iconic Majestic Theatre is anything but majestic! It is sad, really sad.
There are no longer any major national brand stores like Sears or J.C. Penney in the downtown area. The once-famous and luxurious El Jardin Hotel still sits there in disrepair, empty and ignored and now just a ghostly shadow of what it once was, a proud, beautiful hotel that at one time served mostly the well to do. What a shame! Many famous people stayed there at the old Jardin in the ’40s and ’50s, especially with the advent of the airplane. Skipping to the subject of schools, it is good to know that my old high school still stands, but for how long? I hope they never decide to tear it down and replace it with a strip mall or another zoo! My old high school structure is a beautiful building; it is an architectural beauty, and it should never be torn down.
I can’t say the same for my Cummings Junior High; I have heard that it is already on the chopping block. I heard it will be torn down and replaced by a zoo expansion. Sure, why not? It makes a lot of sense: Make more rooms for gorillas and less space for public school kids. Suffering succotash! Gone are my Red Ants!
One by one the public schools are being closed up and replaced by private academies. Is my old Resaca school also fated for the same result?
While I was there, I was surprised at how many of these private academies have dominated the educational landscape. I have never seen so many kids in uniforms. In my day we used to dress up in jeans and T shirts. It was much simpler then and I think better.
Why the dominance of academies and privatization of our public schools? Simple answer: money. Some folks are raking in huge profits thanks to the property tax dollars meant for public schools being rerouted to private academies and private schools.
This slow, insidious destruction of public education in Texas is succeeding. For every new private school or academy that is built you can bet that another public school will go to the chopping block.
This privatization of our public education is having its awful way in Texas. Those who champion academies and private schools call it school choice. Yes, but choice for whom? Public schools have to admit anyone and everyone while private schools can choose who attends their schools. Private schools can pick the smartest kids, the healthiest kids. Public schools, on the other hand, cannot.
While I was there, I was also amazed at how many potholes there were in the streets. I am surprised the city has not been sued for these dangerous potholes.
I also noticed the abundance of car washes that Brownsville now has. Will they ever reach the point of too many, the point where car washes will be as plentiful as service stations? Yes, it is so much easier to drive around in a nice, freshly washed car but beware: watch out for those potholes; I saw a couple that looked like mini resacas!
Jesse Dorsett lives in Norwalk, Calif.
