My family moved into Oak Hollow Park when it was called Pebble Forest Neighborhood in May of 1984. We are the original owners of our house. The subdivision wasn’t complete when we moved in. My husband and I have two daughters who were ages 6 and 3 when we made this our home. Over the 37 years we have been here, all our original neighbors have moved on.
We live at the top of Pebble Peak and when we moved in, the subdivision (Pallatium Villas) which is behind us now, was not here and there was no fence, so our daughters and neighbor kids played in the woods and even built a tree house behind us where they would play and fight occasionally over who built it! We watched deer roam in the back of our house, not in the front yards like they do today. Two weeks after we moved in, I stepped on a piece of barbed wire in our undeveloped backyard and had to get tetanus shots.
There were no fences around the entire neighborhood to begin with. Many of the homeowners whose houses backed up to Thousand Oaks or Jones – Maltsberger had their own privacy fences installed. I don’t remember how many years ago, but the homeowners association priced out the masonry walls we have now and those same homeowners were asked to pay for the wall. All of us in the neighborhood were asked to chip in and help and many did.
The surrounding neighborhood was different then, too, of course. HEB was in the strip center where Thrift Town now is. The other part of the strip mall and houses around had not been built yet. After the new HEB was built, a terrified, lost deer walked in and had to be herded out. Restaurants were few and far between. Loop 1604 was not the bustling highway it is now.
One of my special memories of those early days was the record setting snow on January 15, 1985. Over 13 inches of snow fell and it was then and is now known as “the Big Snow.” As we were outside playing with our daughters in the snow, one of my husband’s friends who had been in the Marines and who lived in the subdivision across Thousand Oaks from us, came jogging up the street. It was fun throwing snowballs at each other!
Another even that used to happen on just Forest Spur (our house looks like it’s on Forest Spur) was a couple in the center of the street would host get togethers for the neighbors on Forest Spur. We would bring food and it was a fun time.
On the fourth of July, we used to have a bicycle parade for the kids. Anyone in the neighborhood could participate. Some kids and grownups would dress in costumes of the Statue of Liberty and Uncle Sam.
Pebble Bow was always a showcase at Christmas. First, everyone that lived there got plastic, gallon milk containers, cut the tops off, put sand in the bottom of them, and then put candles inside on the sand. Every night all the residents would light those candles, and it was beautiful to walk down or to ride down and see the glittering lights. After a few years, the milk cartons gave way to white paper bags that still had to be filled with sand and the candles lit every night. Of course, this caused a fire or two of the paper bags, plus if it rained, the bags were hard to redo and the milk cartons had to be totally redone. Lots of work, but it was a lovely sight!
Finally, one of the things my husband and I especially love about Oak Hollow Park is that it is such an easy, pretty and safe place to walk. Over the years, I’m sure we’ve walked around the perimeter of the subdivision hundreds if not thousands of times. Since we are an enclosed subdivision, there is not a lot of traffic speeding through, other walkers and joggers are so friendly and the houses and landscapes are just lovely. Oak Hollow Park has been and will continue to be a special place to live.