I was 19 years old when I moved to Houston from the huge metropolis of Galveston, TX.  When I was about 21 I took a job at a company I had never heard of called Cameron Iron Works.  It was located on Silber Road in Spring Branch and I was in the Dataprocessing Department. I think I made the queenly amount of 325.00 a month. 

The reason for telling you all of that is because of a lady I worked with back then by the name of Jodie Weiser.  Jodie was a wonderful mentor to me as a young woman...she was probably a very matronly 35ish back then...lol.  Jodie taught me how to manuever through the corporate world, how to get along with a very strict, unforgiving manager and how to share delicious recipes from her family to mine and vice versa.

One day we were talking at lunch time and Jodie mentioned that she lived in Cypress.  I had no idea where in the heck Cypress was but she said  that her husband, Cecil, had built her a new home.  A brick home.  Whoa!  THAT was a big deal back in the late 60's.  I KNEW she was a really rich lady just because of that fact.  I didn't know why someone who lived in a brick house would need to be working at Cameron Iron Works.  I lived in a one bedroom apartment and the idea of a new, brick home was a dream to me.

Well, leap forward to 1977 when my husband and I are living in the Memorial area and decided we were getting out of that rat race.  We headed out the freeways the following weekend and promptly got lost and ended up in Cypress.  We loved everything about it.  The quiet country feel, the cows and horses behind the fenced pastures, the hard working German descendants of the original families, the fresh air and the Cy-Fair schools for our two girls.
 
We found our home and bought it the following week. 

Once we were settled into our home I realized that the red brick house on Huffmeister was the Weiser home. Jodie Weiser's brick home.  I loved the idea of living in this beautiful part of the city that meant so much to her and her family and has come to mean as much to my own family. 

I read in the paper that Cecil Weiser just celebrated his 85th birthday.  I hope he has many good years ahead of him.

Jodie died a few years ago.  I hadn't seen her in a very long time. But, I have never forgotten her.  We would see one another now and then at a restaurant we used to own on Huffmeister and we would catch up on her girls and my girls.  She never knew what a wonderful influence she had been on a young woman so many years ago.  I'm sorry I didn't send her a note telling her. I'll remember her always with great affection.+