MI CASA – MARK CLARK
A German chemist once used Mark Clark’s house to experiment with hair dye, practicing on local Catholic nuns.
"Apparently the stains on the floor are from the hair dye experiments," Clark said of the activities in the 1940s. "He worked out some kind of deal where he could do these hair color experiments on these nuns. So underneath their cowls or habits, or whatever you call them, were these bizarre colors: redheads, platinum blondes, ash blondes. You know in the 40s women were dying their hair like crazy."
Clark, a local artist and the owner of Galeria 409, and his wife, Betty. have lived in the home almost five years. He was standing in the room once used for those hair experiments. He’s turned it into a guest room, and colors of a different sort now occupy the room: a painting by Clark of skeletons, or calaveras, playing musical instruments, and another he calls a "torn poster" painting with images of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Coatlique (a Meso-American deity) and other figures. A colorful quilt covered the bed.
Visitors first encounter a brick structure, but upon entering the home they find themselves in an enclosed porch that reveals the clapboard that once wrapped around the entire house. The home offers a journey back in time, with an unrenovated 1940s kitchen with basket weave tile and a gas stove.
"We reversed the living room and dining room," Clark said. A small living room with rattan furniture opens into a large dining room with a gas fireplace inserted into a wooden one. A painting by Clark depicts a calavera riding a horse over skulls, while another work shows a skeleton atop a motorcycle.
An easy breeze moves casually through the house.
"The main thing about this house, it’s before air conditioning," he said. "You have all these windows and you have maximum cross ventilation."
Mary Alice Zepeda, the previous owner who sold the home to Clark, remembers the Catholic nuns visiting the home of German chemist, Franz Joseph Hanloh, and the nuns who visited him.
"He was a very, very interesting gentleman," she said. "He used the sunroom with all his solutions and chemicals, and, oh, I’m telling you, that room it just looked like a chemist’s office. He had an extremely close relationship with the nuns. He was quite religious, and they’d hold prayer groups there at the house quite often."
Zepeda’s father, Enrique, purchased the house from the chemist in the 1960s. He was a tail gunner during World War II and later owned Zepeda’s Hardware on Washington Street next to Rutledge Hamburgers. The family had lived and worked in San Benito, but when the U.S. Air Force base shut down in Harlingen, business declined.
"My parents went on to Brownsville since the business was so well in and out of the border," Zepeda said.
Apparently, Clark said, customers could find just about anything at the store.
"It had every conceivable piece of equipment, hardware that you could think of, stuff that would hold your shutters closed or special types of hinges," he said. "You think of some screwball thing that nobody could possibly have anymore and they could always find it there."
Back at the house, blue magueys line the front lawn next to the street, and a clump of rosemary grows next to the steps lined with iron railing. He’s planted a small huisache that he said is an "absolutely beautiful tree."
"It’s got tiny foliage and it produces orange-colored blossoms in the spring," he said. "For a visual artist like myself it’s just extremely aesthetically pleasing. The shape of the plant and the dappling light that the foliage makes and the blossoms are absolutely lovely."
A huge blue maguey grows in the backyard, with a small hummingbird feeder dangling from one of the daggers. More feeders, wind chimes, and even shells hang from the massive Texas Ebony. Betty especially likes the CD that dances in the breeze below a branch for all the colors that bounce off the surface.
"Even the moon will touch it," she said. "It’s wonderful."
