What can a $720M mobility bond buy? A new sidewalk and a lot of laughter
Appreciating the folks whose work making bricks or laying concrete lives on longer than their names. (Unless you're William Maufrais.)
Just last weekend, I was camping with a group of women, and one of the new friends mentioned that she was from D’Hanis, about 50 miles west of San Antonio.
If you live in Texas, you know the name D’Hanis because the town name is imprinted on millions and millions of bricks that have built school buildings and courthouses and the very brick patio we were standing on when this friend and I first met. (These bricks are everywhere, I tell you. Once you start looking for them, you’ll see…)
She grew up not far from the D'Hanis Brick & Tile Company, open since 1905, where men, mostly Mexican-Americans by the time she was growing up, made all those bricks day after day.
She remembers the bell that rang to start and end the day and signaled for lunch.
The rhythm and rituals of brick-making continue in D’Hanis and Elgin, the “Brick Capital of the Southwest.” This town 25 miles east of Austin is home to three major brick manufacturing companies, which produce 267 million bricks annually.
These are just some of the names you’ll see again and again if you keep an eye out.
I was thinking about these bricks and the people who made them last month as my soon-to-be-husband and I looked out over a concrete truck churning out a river of finely crushed rocks, as a team of three men rushed to spread it with shovels, standing ankle deep in a sea of cement.
By lunchtime, they’d poured and perfectly smoothed the entire driveway. It would be dry enough to park on the following day.
We were in awe. Just digging out the old gravel driveway and setting up the rebar and wood mold would have taken us a year, we figured.
For months, this small team had been working all along our street to pour a new sidewalk that is part of a $720 million mobility bond that passed in 2016 to bring older streets like ours up to code.
In the weeks leading up to the backyard wedding, the construction crew got closer and closer.
Four days before the event, we got a knock on the door. The construction manager in the nice shoes was here to finally fill us in on the details of the build.
Three days, one sidewalk.
Five guys who would become familiar faces as they dug out and then rebuilt a significant part of the piece of land we call home.
Yes, it would be done by the wedding, he told us.
They worked twelve hour days, only stopping for lunch breaks in the shade of the pecan tree out front, eating tacos from the corner store up the road, sometimes delivered through the car window of a loved one.
Frank kept them supplied with coffee in the morning and his homemade beer at night.
As promised, the driveway and sidewalk were finished, on time.
The concrete had already set by the time they left for the day, and there’s no way we were going to mess up what they’d spent so much time getting just right.
As a kid, I can remember putting my hands in fresh concrete as a way to say: “I was here.”
But now, when I look at bricks and concrete, with or without names, I think: “They were here.”
Not the architects who design our city, but they are skilled craftsmen and women who bring those dreams to life.
Once they finish a job, they go onto the next one, and the next one, and the next one, shaping cities in ways that are easy to overlook and yet are as close to permanent as it gets.
And now every night, the girls who live up the street use the new sidewalk as a racetrack for their scooters.
All we heard for weeks was construction noise as the sidewalk came closer.
Now, all we hear at dinner is their laughter.
If the name Maufrais rings a bell, you’ve probably spent some time on Austin sidewalks.
A little digging reveals why: According to TexasEscapes.com, whose author dug up the obituary for Chuck Maufrais in 1981, in the early days of Austin sidewalks,” the city required the concrete contractor to sign his product.”
Maufrais Brothers Concrete Contractors started in 1893 behind the Maufrais’ house in Clarksville, which was a predominantly Black community at the time.
The Maufrais family was white, and I have not been able to identify their heritage, but according to news reports, the elder Maufrais, William, moved to Austin with the intention to start a concrete company because it was a skill that not everyone had.
The company, which eventually became Maufrais Ready Mixed Concrete Company, once ran as many as 70 trucks out of its headquarters on Barton Springs Road. (Where the Yeti flagship store is located now, across from the old Statesman building.)
That’s why the sidewalks all over the city, and particularly in Travis Heights, are marked with “Maufrais.” In 2019, a hat store of the same name opened on the popular tourist strip.
No matter how long you’ve lived where you live, I hope this story inspires you to think about what gives your community a sense of place.
It’s not just the materials, but the people who make them and use them and repair them. And wait patiently for construction to resume.
Near our house is a North Austin park with these huge Donald Judd-style cement boxes that are part of a flood abatement project whose progress has stalled completely.
The park has been out of commission for a year, and these concrete boxes dare us to ask questions about art, infrastructure, legacy and how we leave our mark.
Thanks for subscribing and for reading! Look for another new post from me by the end of the week. The debut issue of The Feminist Kitchen zine is almost ready to be printed! Can’t wait to share it with you.
With love,
Addie
It was divine timing to get the new sidewalk and driveway installed just before your wedding! Thanks for sharing your childhood memory of dad in Florida.