Pat Oakes Neighbor Columns from
Austin American-Statesman newspaper,
Austin, Texas
Pat Oakes for a number of years wrote a popular column for The Neighbor, a section of the Austin American-Statesman newspaper. In 1978, the paper began to publish the insert to counter the growing competition from small newspapers that provided neighborhood news. Sadly the strategy worked and most of the little papers discontinued publication. Pat's first column appeared on November 30, 1978. In the beginning, Pat wrote her article on a typewriter and dropped it off at the newspaper on South Congress Street. When the family got a Macintosh computer in January 1984, she began to use a word processor, MacWrite. When FTP became available over dialup phone service, she was able to phone the column in, however any glitch or incoming phone call would terminate the upload and she would have to start the long and slow process over again. The paper eventually asked her to take photos to accompany the column. She had to provide the camera and they provided the film and processing. She picked up and dropped off the film each week, so despite submitting the column online she still had to make the weekly trip to the paper. For all this effort, she thinks she received the princely sum of around $25 per week. She greatly enjoyed the experience and valued far more the contribution to the neighborhood and the many expressions of appreciation from the members of the neighborhood. She wrote her last column on June 25, 1987, a total of 430 columns over eight years and seven months! When she started the column she and her husband had three children; Beth, 11, Sarah, 9, and Mardie, 6. How she juggled all these different responsibilies is a tribute to her organization, her talent and her penchant for hard work. Many in the neighborhool have suggested she assemble the columns in a form available to others. They especially felt that the many articles that focused on the history of people and places should be preserved. Here we include all of her colums.
