Mr. Underwood

Mr. Underwood

A Column About the Heights — and Why It's Still Worth Knowing

By Murray, Sergeant Major, Houston Heights Independent

Before there were area codes, before there were smartphones, before there was any of this — there was an operator.

And if you lived in the Houston Heights and you needed to reach someone, you picked up the phone and you told her: Underwood, please. The exchange was Underwood. The prefix was UN. On the rotary dial, U is 8 and N is 6. And so the Heights became, in the memory of every telephone in the neighborhood, an 86.

Look at your Heights phone number. It still starts with 86. The operator is long gone. The exchange is long gone. But the number remains, the way all good things remain — quietly, without making a fuss, waiting to be noticed by someone paying attention.

This column is named for her.

Mr. Underwood covers the Houston Heights the way the Heights deserves to be covered — from the porch, at a reasonable pace, with both eyes on the neighborhood and one ear to the ground. It is the counterweight to the harder work we do elsewhere in this publication. The investigations, the accountability reporting, the stories that need to be told because someone would prefer they weren't — those run under my other byline.

This one is different.

This is the hardware store that has been on the same corner for seventy-five years. The jazz pianist who plays on White Oak on a Thursday evening. The families spread out under the horizontal oaks on a Saturday afternoon, the children running between the roots, the parents watching the light come through. The things that are still here. The things worth knowing about the place you chose to live.

I am Murray. I am a basset hound. I cover this beat from a position of considered stillness and earned authority.

The Heights is not just a neighborhood. It is a living thing, with a memory and a telephone number that goes back further than most people realize.

I intend to introduce you to both.

— Sgt. Maj. Murray, Staff Reporter

Houston Heights Independent

Underwood 8-6-5000