Last night, a single lightning bug (also known as firefly) emerged from the garden in the backyard while I was playing guitar on the steps. It brought to mind the spring of 1980 when, after working late on a Friday evening, a friend and I bought takeout Chinese and took it to the State Capitol here in Austin, Texas.

Back then, the Capitol was open to visitors at all hours. As we approached the front steps, dusk was turning into nightfall, and perhaps a hundred lightning bugs were darting among the trees and statues in the front grounds. The blinking fireflies in flight made the Capitol feel alive and festive.

We carried our food into the building, stood in awe under the magnificent dome, and sat on a bench to eat. A watchman walked by. "Evening, young ladies. Enjoy your visit." And we thanked him.

The Capitol is great in size, and it is also great in its details: The magnificent hinges on the doors; the beautiful granite and marble of many grades and color used to make the mosaics of the floors; the paintings and photos of former governors, legislators, and staff.

Though I haven't found it online, I've been told more than once that the Capitol was designed to resemble the U.S. Capitol. With true Texas chutzpah, the builders made sure the Texas version turned out a few feet higher than the one in D.C..

The Capitol's construction in the 1880s, like most large projects, was the subject of some controversy. One issue had to do with a place about ten miles west of the Capitol known as Convict Hill. (Perhaps the reason this sticks with me is that for 25 years, I drove through Convict Hill in Oak Hill to get from home to Austin proper and back.) Convicts were put to work quarrying limestone and transporting it to the Capitol construction site. Eight of the convicts died doing quarry work. I used to think about those workers sometimes as I drove through that area. I'd think of the heat here, and the enormity of the blocks of limestone within the building that had to be carved out and transported, and the possible lack of freedom of choice in the matter for the convicts. It occurs to me that perhaps building this amazing structure in some ways was not so different from building the pyramids many centuries back, though on a smaller scale.

I think about the prisoners. I think about the lightning bugs and the watchman and how we were welcome at any hour nearly a hundred years after the building's construction. There was something precious even then about being treated as though the Capitol was ours, a part of our home, a place that belongs to us all.


Sources and more info:

http://convicthillquarrypark.blogspot.com/2006/08/history-of-convict-hill-quarry-park.html

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fwiam

http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/oec01