In August 1963, I had just turned 11 when my dad accepted a job transfer and moved our family from Fort Worth to Austin. My parents rented a house in Allandale on Ellise Avenue while they searched for the first and only brand-new house they would ever own.

This was a good neighborhood for kids my age and the culture shock of learning Austin had only one TV station — Channel 7 (PBS didn't count) — instead of four as Fort Worth had. This was the first I'd heard of cable TV, which my sister eventually convinced our dad made more sense than to keep raising the antennas on the roof.

Ellise was one of the entrances into Northwest Park; although impressed by the Olympic-size swimming pool, I was more enamored with the park itself. There was the running creek, the big pond and the mysterious "cave." One day I worked up enough courage to crawl into the "cave," only to find how carried away you can get with your imagination. It was just a hole in the hill with big rocks around it.

The baseball field where Pony League games were played is long gone, and there is a foot bridge over Shoal Creek, but otherwise the park is largely unchanged, unlike so many other areas in Austin.

The year 1963 proved memorable for Austin and the country. I was in my sixth-grade classroom at Lucy Read Elementary when President John F. Kennedy was shot. School was letting out an hour early so students could have time to get downtown to watch the president's motorcade on Congress Avenue after his arrival from Dallas. You know the rest.

Six days later, on Nov. 28, the University of Texas football team eked out a win over Texas A&M to secure the national championship. With flags at half-staff and the UT Tower lit orange, Austin was still in mourning, torn between tragedy and triumph.

My first three years in Austin, I browsed the top-40 hits on 45 rpm records at Gulf Mart on Burnet Road, while mom shopped, and at the Spartans store on Airport Boulevard, I found some really cool Mad magazine-style plastic figures that I wish I still had. I'd hang with my dad for a burger at the King Bee on Airport, although I was insulted when they served me hash browns instead of French fries.

I had a brief run watching "The Uncle Jay Show" with Packer Jack on Channel 7 after school, until Lamar Junior High taught me that if you watched Uncle Jay, you'd best keep it to yourself. A guy could get beat up for that.

In those days, it was legal to buy and use fireworks within the city limits. A fireworks stand would set up in the vacant lot on Greenlawn Parkway near Burnet Road. One night, a wayward bottle rocket landed in the stand and burned it to the ground. Some folks proclaimed it the best fireworks show ever.

Around mid-1964, a new

7-Eleven store was built on the corner of Great Northern and Stoneway. Word had it the city was planning to extend Stoneway into Northwest Hills so that area would have another link to town. It never happened.

Instead, they paved a new road less than a mile north, which became Foster Lane with its now defunct railroad crossing. It has since been bypassed by Anderson Lane and, of course, MoPac. The 7-Eleven folded sometime in the '70s and was converted into a Montessori school and remains so today.

On Aug. 1, 1966, mom dropped me off at the Texas State Optical store in Capital Plaza. I was getting my first pair of contact lenses, which would silence the taunts of "four eyes" at school. She returned an hour later, and when I got in the car, she was in a terrible panic about some man on a tower shooting at people.

I asked her, what man? What tower?

She yelled, the UT Tower! That's when I understood — my brother was a UT student and was possibly on campus.

That evening, with my brother unharmed, we watched the news coverage of Charles Whitman and his carnage. When they showed a list of the victims' names, I saw tears running down mom's cheeks, quite unusual for her. Now, when I recall that day, I think of it as the day Austin cried.

By 1970, I was a senior at McCallum, one of eight public high schools in Austin. Our football team defeated Reagan High to end their 35- game winning streak, and our student body trashed the Holiday House on Burnet Road in celebration. The senior picnic at City Park on Lake Austin was rained out, again.

The UT Longhorns had won another national championship, and the Terminix bug at Enfield and Lamar was stolen, again. Willie and Stevie Ray were relative unknowns, the construction of MoPac had barely begun, and nobody over 13 rode a bicycle except for the nuns at Holy Cross High School and the "bag lady" down on the Drag.

Time marched on, and I never left Austin. Today, I am my 92-year-old mom's caregiver, and we live together in that brand-new house close to Northwest Park that she and dad bought in 1964.

Rex Bingham lives in the Allandale neighborhood.