I’ve lived in Fort Worth since 1998. I moved here from Los Angeles. I was in Austin, graduated from the University of Texas, stayed there for 14 years and then went to LA. A friend and I came to Fort Worth on a sightseeing/do-I-want-to-move-there sort of trip.
I needed to get back home and be closer to my parents. Home for me is in West Texas, in the little town of Stamford. My dad’s health had not been great. I could not move back to Austin — it had become impossible.
My mom and sister came and met us here. And I liked Fort Worth. It reminded me of Austin in the ’70s. It just had a neat, young feel to it. We went to dinner at Riscky’s downtown at Sundance Square, and I learned that the Bass brothers had paid for these police officers to walk people to their car, just to give a sense of security for out-of- towners, and I really liked that.
Artist Melissa Kohout finishes signing and numbering prints of a drawing she made for a donor to TCU’s M.J. Neeley School of Business. (Scott Nishimura | Fort Worth Report) Credit: Scott Nishimura
That trip was in August. My next trip was in March. And I had a Realtor. Before we got on the plane here, I prayed about it and made a list of all the things that I wanted in my house. I wanted it to have character. I wanted a front porch. I wanted a driveway and a sidewalk. I wanted to have central air.
I looked at a house in the 2200 block of West Magnolia. It was cute, but it was under contract. I looked at six houses in Ryan Place and Fairmount. And this was March 6, the date of the fall of the Alamo and so that’s significant to me, because it just meant that I was coming home.
We drove around this neighborhood. I didn’t like anything I had seen the next day. And I prayed again. And the Realtor was in the other room, and she called out, “There’s one more house that’s just come up on the market. It’s on Mistletoe Boulevard, and it’s in your price range, $59,900.” And I said, “Alright, let’s go.” And so we pulled up out front, and I thought, “Man, if it has dirt floors, I’m still gonna go for it.” Because it just looked like everything I wanted. The inside was hardwood floors and coffered ceilings. It had all the charm and had everything I wanted to help me be inspired to work.
Fort Worth artist Melissa Kohout leans heavily on the Texas horned lizard for inspiration. (Scott Nishimura | Fort Worth Report) Credit: Scott Nishimura
I bought it. We literally didn’t even look out in the backyard. My parents and sister helped me move. And then I discovered, in my yard, there was a guest house that I could convert into a studio and the garage could be converted into my frame shop.
In LA, I had some great clients. I luckily got to meet a lot of great people that turned me on to meeting people like Joan Rivers, Tom Selleck, Leslie Nielsen. Robert Altman came during that time and I did his two kitties.
I was doing animal portraits, and because I had horses, and everybody who’s got horses has a dog on top of that, it was literally a made-for-me business.
Moving to LA, I kept clients in Houston, San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, so it was easy enough for me to keep working in Fort Worth.
I met some great friends to walk with over on the Trinity Trails. My Doberman at the time, Wanda, loved to go over there. The trails were only a mile from my house and were easy to get to.
The house came with this great front porch. There are great neighbors on this block, and this neighborhood was more about friendships than just neighbors. There was Bettye next door, Leo and Dorothy, Mr. and Mrs. Perez, Claudia and David, Beth, Jeff, Josh and Lili, Chris, Barb and Andy and Mark next door. Mark was just 12 when I moved in, and he loved coming over to my house and helping me do all sorts of stuff. He was a great kid, and so to pay him back for doing things, I annually took him on a trip to Six Flags.
I became a neighborhood block captain, which means that everything east of Forest Park Boulevard was my domain. And the following year, I got to know John Key, who was very instrumental in our neighborhood, in getting the Mistletoe Heights historical overlay, and I was glad to be a part of that.
I was walking down his street, and he said, “I need you to help me,” and that’s how I just got roped into it. He said we have to go house-to-house-to-house and we have to get signatures. And I said, “OK, I’m your man.”
And also, because the zoo was a walkable distance, I got a season pass. It was great because I’ve always loved going to zoos to get ideas and get inspiration.
In the springtime, it’s so neat, we can sit on the porch and, if it’s just still enough where you don’t hear any of the traffic or the train sounds, you hear the lions roaring. I love it.
Melissa Kohout, Texan by birth, is a longtime resident of Fort Worth’s Mistletoe Heights.
Mistletoe Heights
Total population: 1,956
Female: 50% | Male: 50%
Age
0-9: 14%
10-19: 10%
20-29: 7%
30-39: 12%
40-49: 15%
50-59: 14%
60-69: 11%
70-79: 5%
80 and older: 2%
Education
No degree: 1%
High school: 7%
Some college: 18%
Bachelor’s degree: 58%
Post-graduate: 17%
Race
White: 77% | Asian: 0% | Hispanic: 13% | Black: 8% | Two or more: 3%
Click on the link to view the schools’ Texas Education Agency ratings:
Source: Censusreporter.org, BG 4, Tract 1237, Tarrant, TX. (*) Schools listed as within 1 mile of the Census tract, plus McLean 6th Grade Center and W.P. McLean Middle School, the Fort Worth ISD’s neighborhood schools for this tract.
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