My Growing Up Years at The McDonald Observatory

The McDonald Observatory was my childhood home. My family moved there from San Antonio in 1968 or so, just after the large telescope was built. My father’s office every day was mostly the 82-inch Telescope. My playground was the mountains ...

There were four of us at the time, myself being the oldest, and three younger brothers. We rode the bus to school in Fort Davis along with all the other children that lived on the mountain. Actually, our homes were at the base of Mt. Locke. They were all single-wide mobile homes. Some, like ours, were installed up the side of the mountain, in the shadow of Mt. Locke. Other mobile homes were located in a large circle in the valley of Mt. Locke.

The land on which the Visitor’s Center is today, was a field. There were usually Brahma bulls in this pasture and we had ‘fun’ taunting them — at a safe distance on the other side of a barbed wire fence!

Our play activities never included any regular television shows. We were too remote to get any stations except on clear nights and some mornings, we could get channel 2 from El Paso!  There was a television antenna that Dad installed in a large pine tree out the back door of the trailer — which, by the way, had no stairs to it. It was a long fall out the back door if one decided to exit that way!  Anyway, the antenna would frequently get blown around and what little reception we got would go away. Dad would climb the tree and twist the antenna around until one of us shouted out from inside “GOOD! STOP THERE!”  However, other than Bugs Bunny at 6 am on Saturdays, we really had no interest in television.

We played cowboys and Indians and made up our own games, usually with nothing other than our own imaginations and stayed outside as much as possible. We learned which wildlife to retreat from – namely skunks and porcupines. Once, we saw a mountain lion. I believe we ran all the way down Mt. Fowlkes without stopping. I’m sure the mountain lion ran down the other side of the mountain just as fast.

We didn’t know the name of that mountain then — we called it ‘flat top’ mountain because, well, it was flat on top. We regularly wandered around up there as well as the woods behind our houses that led up to the top of the mountain to the main telescopes. The Hobby-Eberly Telescope had not yet been built on our ‘flat top’ playground, so we had free reign. There were rocks to collect, trees to climb, forts to built — the possibilities endless.

Most of the residents had horses. There was a stable in the circle of houses below us. We kept an ornery sorrel named Foxy there. Foxy was gentle with us kids, but always tried to bite my dad.  There were several trips to the emergency room in Alpine for broken bones.  One was a broken collar bone that I sustained when riding someone else’s Shetland pony that brushed me off under a tree.

We left before I entered middle school and I cried and cried. I miss that lifestyle to this day. As an adult, I ended up in Houston for a job opportunity and that’s where I must stay. My children and now grandchildren are from here. I return to the McDonald Observatory from time to time and reminisce about how life would be different if my father hadn’t taken another job and taken us away from there.

It’s a wonderful, magical place in my mind. My childhood experiences there shaped who I am today and I’m very grateful for having lived there.