In the spring of 1982, I was a 29-year-old wife and the mother of two young children, a boy and girl, living in Houston for the second time in my life. I call Houston my hometown, even though I wasn’t born here, and had moved here with my mother when I was nine. Houston was a sanctuary and savior city for the two of us, as we left our home in another East Texas town, running from abuse and a painful past. Houston was a safe place, a better place, a place of new beginnings for us both.
After high school I moved to
Austin and the University of Texas, and instantly fell in love with my new
home. I later married and traveled with my Marine pilot husband to different
states. Eventually, after he left the Marine Corps, we moved from California
and I found myself back in H-town when he took a job here. We built our first
home in what was then a brand-new, lovely little subdivision called Mission
Bend, in the southwest part of town, ironically just a few miles from where I
live today.
Our marriage had been
troubled for a long time, but this was (another) new start for us. We had our
pretty new home, two beautiful kids, and things looked shiny and bright for a
while. We got a dog. My husband built a wonderful, two-story wooden
playhouse/fort in the back yard for the kids. I loved that thing. Often, during
the spring and summer, before the blistering Houston heat and humidity made it
impossible to be outside for very long, and when the kids were busy playing
elsewhere, I would climb up to the top of the fort myself and lie there with my
battery operated radio and listen to music while I worked on my tan. (I was
very young and much, much thinner in those days.)
That year, 1982, one of the
local radio stations ran a contest, looking for someone to write a song about
Houston. For those who know me, and in answer to your unspoken question, no. I
didn’t write one, and although I probably thought at the time, “I should do
that,” I didn’t. What I did do was to listen eagerly each day as the station
played some of their best entries. I would lie on the top level of the fort and
think of Houston and what it meant to me as I listened to the lyrics of each
entry. I recall really liking a couple of them, but there was one I loved above
all the rest, and it was the one that eventually won the contest, I believed.
It was sung in a lovely young female voice, and the words were beautiful to me.
In fact, that song has haunted me for years. For 37 years, to be exact.
I forgot, or maybe never
learned, all the words to the song, but I’ve never, ever forgotten the chorus:
“All my dreams shine
brighter here in Houston
Than any other place I’ve ever seen
My restless eyes have wandered
And my weary heart has roamed
But Houston is the only place
That I can call my home”
I remembered the melody to
the chorus perfectly, and to this day can sing it exactly as it was written. I
also remembered a line in the song about driving on Loop 610, but nothing else.
For 37 years that song has haunted me, but no one I ever asked about it knew
what I was talking about. I couldn’t remember what radio station promoted the
contest, so I didn’t know which one to call. I didn’t even know if the station
was still in existence. There was no internet back then to google, and even the
library, (the place I called whenever I needed a burning question answered and
didn’t know where else to turn) couldn’t help me.
Years would go by and I
wouldn’t think about the song for long stretches of time, but then randomly, as
these things do, it would float to the forefront of my mind and I would sing
that lovely chorus and wish so hard that I knew the rest of the song.
Eventually, the internet and
googling for information came into my life, and I would periodically type in
the words I knew, or something that I thought might help me locate the song,
but nothing ever came up. So, I assumed that I would go on forever never
hearing the song again and would have to remain content with singing the chorus
to myself. I’m sure I also sang that chorus to my youngest when she was little,
long after those days when her dad and her brother and sister and I lived in
the house with the fort in the back yard.
As things happen in life, my husband lost the job that brought him to Houston, and a few years later we lost our house in the big oil and gas crash of the 80’s. Houston, of course, was hit extremely hard at that time, and so many people lost their jobs, homes and savings. We were just one family out of many. But we were already teetering on the edge of a crash in our home life due to lots of other factors, and so we also eventually lost our marriage. Still, there must have been something about Houston and the hope that it has always extended to me throughout my life, that helped me to remember that golden song that I first heard during a bright, although brief, period of time.
During the many years after
those days, I lived in several places – in Greece, San Antonio, and of course,
for so many years in my beloved Austin. But once again, about 11 years ago, I
found myself back in Houston due to a job transfer. And, once again, Houston
was offering me hope, as I would have been out of a job if I hadn’t accepted
the transfer and promotion it offered me.
I hadn’t thought about the
Houston song for a long time, but just as it has always teased and taunted me
throughout the years, the chorus came back to me last night as I was driving
over a small overpass in Sugar Land. I was reminded of the line containing
“610,” the traffic-laden loop that runs around the city, and I started singing
the only lines I know to myself again, as I have so many dozens of times in my
life.
When I got home, I tried once
again to Google the first words of the chorus on the off chance that maybe this
time I would find something. Knowing that I wouldn’t, my heart almost stopped
when this time…I did. I found that last year, Houstonia magazine published an
article titled “Does Houston Have Its Own Song?”
As I read, I found the story of the song I’d been searching for – for 37 years – in the pages of this magazine. The article spoke of KRBE, the radio station that had promoted the contest, and the whole story was exactly as I remembered it. Best of all, there was information about the winning song and the 22-year-old woman who had written it, Diestie Savage. I was stunned. But the very best, most wonderful piece of all, was a link to Reverbnation, and there it was. Her song. My song. Houston’s song. I’m not embarrassed to say that I cried as I listened to this beautiful voice singing a song that had meant so much to me for almost my entire life.
Here’s the link to the story. I hope you, and most especially my fellow Houstonian friends, follow the link embedded in the story and listen to the song. Some could find it a little corny, but I don’t. The lyrics are only slightly dated, as the reference to the Dome was certainly a bigger deal back then than it is now. But Loop 610 is still here, even though I’m sure the traffic has quadrupled or more in size since 1982. And those rice fields that the song recalls – well, many of them are gone. For those who love Houston, I’m sure you’ll find something to love about this song. But if you don’t, that’s ok. I’ve waited 37 years to find it, and I don’t mind keeping it for myself. As the song says, “though my restless eyes have wandered and my weary heart has roamed, Houston is the only place that I can call my home.”
House of Black and Blue 