Neighborhood Voices

On a sunny April morning, four lifelong residents of the Ideal Addition in South Dallas met at the TR Hoover Community Center to recount growing up next to the Trinity bottomlands.  What began as a fact-gathering discussion evolved into evocative storytelling.

• Community

Jackie Mixon, who lives in the 100-year-old home built by her grandparents, continues to have a front-row seat in her neighborhood.  She shares what “community” means.

• ‘Good Old Days’

Jackie and Sherri Mixon and Mildred Edwards fondly remember food and small business in their neighborhood.

Local merchants brought items door-to-door and pennies could buy a treat.

Even if just beans and cornbread, they felt that they had everything they needed.

Backyard livestock and sardine treats.

Because you could go “shopping” in backyard gardens and food was shared, there was no food desert growing up. Today’s community garden is an effort to replicate this experience.

• Building Community

A small framed quote from James Baldwin on a wall at the community center carries an outsized meaning: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed unless it is faced.”  Sherri Mixon discusses the power of advocacy and conviction in community building.

While she has led efforts to restore and build homes in the neighborhood, the greater goal has been building up the people in those homes.

• Walking, Playing, and Baptism in Nature

Everyone walked where they needed to go, especially to find a place to play.  A formal park was off-limits since it required crossing a busy street, so they played, swam, fished, and had picnics at nearby Blue Lake. 

 They even had baptisms in Blue Lake.

  This is a history they wish for today’s youth to experience.

• Wildlife Relationships

Encounters with wildlife in their neighborhood generated colorful stories of discovery, delight, joy, excitement, and fear.  Jackie and Sherri Mixon and Mildred Edwards recall hopping armadillos, front porch birds and squirrels, hissing possums, and other animals.

And ducks stopping traffic.

Deep meaning is associated with animals.  Listen to redbirds as a remembrance of relatives who have gone before and the parable of the rabbit.

• Learning about Buckeye Trail

The Ideal+Bonton community is sensitive to the Trinity bottomlands since they experienced so much of it in their own backyard.  Sherri Mixon recalls no fanfare or inclusion for the creation of the Buckeye Trail until the Master Naturalists reached out to inform and educate about what was happening in their own backyard.