Where the Creosote Blooms: Volume 19

I just finished reading "Where the Creosote Blooms" this week while visiting my Mother who still lives in the home where I grew up -- you guessed it, on Mountain Avenue, in El Paso, Texas! Although my house was "up the hill" a few blocks, and my growing up years in that neighborhood were about 30 years later than the book's author, Mary King Rodge, the similarities were still abundant. I, too, used to cross Copia Street after a day of school at Rusk Elementary to choose from the array of candy at Quinn's Grocery. Life was slow but sweet in the shadows of Sugar Loaf and Mount Franklin. And as Mafra says, there was the sun, always the sun.Because of that sun, how we cherished the rain! While on my visit to my Mother's, we had one of those "gully-washer" thunderstorms that the author describes. Ahh, the wonderful smell of the creosote and the sagebrush after a rainstorm in the desert...I'd recommend this book highly to anyone who grew up in El Paso. You will be pleasantly reminded of things you may have long forgotten! The author spins a page-turning tale of her personal memoirs of her adolescent years, but also a colorful description of life in El Paso in the 20's and 30's.

Where the Creosote Blooms, by Mary King Rodge is a delightful romp through the outer reaches of El Paso, Texas in the mid-twenties and very early thirties. MafraUs adventures are believable, and are true to the thoughts, feelings and actions of the people of her old neighborhood. The description of the flash-flood coming from McKelligon Canyon on a day when her house got only a moderate amount of rain was exactly the way those floods occur. The trash, mud, snakes and debris has to be seen to be described with such vividness. She describes this flood in an arroyo that has had houses and a park built over it for at least the past fifty years, and flood control dams upstream have reduced the floods, and books with descriptions like this are our only touch with a wilder, more unrestrained past in a city that was just becoming tame. She has caught the essence of her neighborhood that was still there twenty five years after her book closes. I can remember in the mid fifties the feeling around Rusk School that White's Grocery (Mr. Printz's) was not a good place, and Quinn's Grocery across the street was good. I don't know why we thought that; it was just the feeling that pervaded the elementary school. Now, having read about Mr. Printz and the person he was, I understand my neighborhood better. Growing up was easier in those days. The villians were clear, and friends were faithful through it all. There was humor in her neighborhood, both in thought and in deed. The chapter about learning to ride a bicycle only during lunch when it was available was very funny. I especially enjoyed her ride down the hill while hollering to all who were in earshot to tell her where the brakes were. I recommend this book to late teens and adults with an interest in history of the Twenties, the problems of growing up on the edge of civilization, and general history of the Southwest. The story is delightful and the book flow along with little effort. It is a gem of personal history.