Pictures of Friendship Place Apartments

(I met her in Houston in 1976 when I was looking for information about homebirths and midwives in that city. She and her friend, Susie, came to the birthing because the midwife was delayed. We remained close friends for years and years after going thru my labor pains together. She moved to Austin in the early 80's during the peak of the gas and oil business. She was able to buy a small apartment complex with a partner but bought out her partner's share after several years.)                        
    A view of my living room, with the windows that looked out onto the playground.

After I came close to getting a job at a mental health hospital (answering phones) she surprised me with an offer to manage the apartments she owned. On this page are pictures I took of the place, the kids, and some of the individual families.

Here is a view of the very edge of the playground and half of the parking lot as seen from the top of the stairs outside my former apartment door. We had that big old beautiful tree at the end of the parking lot.

 You can see pieces of wood stacked up over by my car and a security fence around the place. It was being remodeled after a horrible fire that had happened a year earlier. (2 kids and their grandmother died)

That's a man who worked for Jill in the lower right-hand side and a woman who painted the place, wearing a hat. Beth had a Masters degree in Theology but chose to do manual labor instead. Emilio stayed on the property as a security guard at night. He lived in the apartment below us and sometimes we got a little too noisy for him and he would knock on his ceiling with a broom. It was a friendly kind of hint, we got along with him most of the time. For a while, it was just him and us living there until Jill had the apartments remodeled.

We had a Fourth of July Picnic for the residents

Here are a few of the little girls sitting together. One of my favorite couple's is sitting behind the children, pretending to be fighting. They did that for the picture.

One of the day's activities was a hardy game of volleyball. There was a grassy area in front of the apartments that shielded us from the busy street that we lived on. So some of the guys put up the volley ball net there. It was really hard ground, with rock just below the surface, making it difficult to put the poles into the ground.

In this picture, towards the middle right, by where the net was set up, you can see a woman bending over reaching towards her little girl. Rita, the mom, shortly after this picture was taken, broke her wrist from serving the ball. I drove her to the hospital and the maintenance man, who was my boyfriend at the time, babysat her little girl. 

Sometimes I wondered how I got so lucky to get that job, other times I thought it was too hard and sometimes dangerous. There were times when the domestic disturbances were too disturbing for me, yet I had to be there and call 911 for a battered wife. I also had to call 911 for other criminal activity I saw going on in the parking lot.

Jill had a meeting for everyone to discuss our concerns. Months before this picture was taken, a big concern of Jill's was that ever since the fire she had no income anymore. That was because she couldn't rent out an apartment until she remodeled it. She was trying to put the place back together with the insurance money and it was quickly running out. That was a hard time, but at the time this picture was taken most of the units had been remodeled and she now had lots of rent income.

That's Jill on the right, and sitting on the bottom step, is Rita, who coincidentally also home schooled her two daughters. The woman standing at the lower landing only spoke Spanish and her husband spoke slightly more English than I did Spanish. She and her husband had a little baby girl who grew from an infant to a toddler while I was there. They were the first family to move in after I started managing there.

Here is the same meeting but this picture is taken from a different angle. My daughter, Anna, is in the left top corner. Our maintenance man is sitting behind her.

Some of the children in the playground.

Here are some more of the kids. My apartment was behind them upstairs, about the top right of the picture, so you can see, I had an excellent view of the playground.

Sometimes, I was out in the playground, stopping fights.

 
  It was a hard job, managing these apartments, for many reasons. So many of the apartments still needed a lot of work, or newer appliances but the money would go just so far, and never covered everything that Jill and I wanted to do for the place.

When I moved on to a much newer, more expensive apartment complex where I was a leasing consultant, I missed the families left behind. I went back occasionally to see how they were doing and most of them begged me to come back. Even the family that I had the hardest time getting to pay their rent on time, said that they now realized how nice I had been to them.

Here's a couple of families that were there near the beginning of my residency as manager.

I especially had mixed feelings about the family on the right. Woody and his family were always interesting and Woody helped me a few times when someone tried to break in.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this little visit to Austin, there are more pages I made below. Some pages are about places I lived, and some are about the people there.

Various pages about Austin, Texas

Pictures of Beautiful Austin, Texas, areas of the city.

Here you can see pictures of beautiful Austin, Texas.

Zilker park, in Austin, Texas.

Pictures of the park known in Austin for its rose garden and other beautiful flowers, as well as a place where year round activities can be found.

Pictures of Friendship Place Apartments.

Here you can see pictures of where I worked and lived in Austin.

Pictures of Unity Church in Austin

Here you can see pics of Unity Church, inside and outside and some of the people.

Pictures of My Friends in the Singles Group.

Here you can see pics of my friends in the Unity Church Singles group.

Anna in a Fashion Show in Austin.

Anna and other models in a non profit fashion show called "Fools for Fashion in Austin, Texas."

Pictures of Wildwood Apartments.

Pictures of Wildwood Apartments, where I lived and worked, some of the people and one of the pools.

(C) Copyright 2002 Maggie Rose. All Rights Reserved