A Short History of Green Pastures
By Anne C. McAfee

    Located on the 1835 Isaac Decker Land Grant, Green Pastures was built in 1894-95 by Dr. E.W. Herndon, a minister and official of Firm Foundation Publishing.  The large two-story country home was built using first growth Louisiana pine and cypress doors, birds-eye maple and oak mantles.  The home was later purchased by the family of Judge Will Burnett.
     In 1916 lawyer Henry Faulk and his wife, former Hornsby Bend school teacher Mattie Miner Faulk, moved to South Austin with their five children.  While Mattie Faulk was devoted to her neighbors and reluctant to move from their home at 20th and Red River, Henry Faulk was enthusiastic about having enough room for 12 or 15 cows and a large garden.  Their place in town was only big enough to accommodate a small garden and 3 or 4 cows.  The new home in the country was surrounded by 23 acres and was bounded on the south by a heavily wooded area.  It had a large barn with a hayloft, a pigpen, a chicken house and a rock smokehouse.
    Mattie Faulk was soon very happy with her new neighbors and her new surroundings.  Henry Faulk planted a cornfield in the southeast pasture, and he planted a large vegetable garden in the west pasture.  He and the boys milked the cows and separated the milk.  Mattie and the girls did the churning, gathered the eggs, and did the canning.
    When the Faulk family moved to their new south Austin home, the children ranged in age from 11-year-old Hamilton to 8-month-old Texana.  The Faulk kids loved to climb the many trees at their new home, and the boys enjoyed going down to play in the nearby creek.  The Faulks joined the new Methodist Church which was meeting in the South Austin Fire Station.  And the older children started to Fulmore School.
    Henry taught a popular Men’s Sunday school class, and Mattie served as President of the Women’s Missionary Society and also taught Sunday school.  Every Thursday the Ladies Quilting Society met in the church basement where they made quilts, shared a covered dish luncheon, and caught up on all the South Austin gossip.

Over the years various nieces and nephews and assorted other friends and relatives came to live with the Faulks for short periods of time and occasionally for extended periods, either to attend school in Austin or to recover from some financial crisis.  The large house was able to accommodate them comfortable, and there was ample food from the garden.
    In 1932 daughter Martha moved back home with her 2-year-old daughter, Anne.  Mary and her husband, Chester, moved home in the late 30’s with 2-year-old Kenny and infant daughter, Karen.  Their family would expand to include 7 children.  During World War II, Texana and her baby moved back home while her husband was in the South Pacific, and John Henry’s wife and baby moved in while he was stationed in the Middle East.
    During the war the large Faulk home reached its maximum population of 17…aunts, uncles, and cousins, as well as live-in guests.  Mary and Chester lived in the front bedroom downstairs, while the Koock kids lived in the back bedroom, in a room furnished with three bunk beds.  They had a separate kitchen and bathroom.  There was a speakeasy between the two kitchens, through which was passed the telephone…and knives and forks…or whatever else was needed in the other kitchen each time a meal was prepared.

    In the cool of the evening the family sat on the front porch and snapped beans, shucked corn and talked.  The younger children caught fireflies in the front yard or climbed trees.  The porch chairs had cowhide seats, and the porch swing was located in just the right spot to catch the maximum summer breeze.  No topic was too sacred for conversation.  They loved to talk about politics, religion, education, and child rearing.  Mary’s Catholicism sometimes drew lively conversation about the infallibility of the pope of the then current belief that only Catholics could get to Heaven.
    While the conversations occasionally grew heated, they were always leavened by an attitude of tolerance and humor.  Diversity and small eccentricities were not only supported, but cherished.
    In 1946 Mattie Faulk, by now a widow, decided that she was getting too old to climb the stairs.  Although she had lived there for 30 years and had watched her children grow up there, she made the decision to move with very little trauma.  She lived with her daughter, Martha, and granddaughter, Anne, for about a year until a small house which she owned was available.  For the first time in 69 years, she lived alone.  But old friends and young neighbors dropped in, and grandchildren took turns spending the night with “Gran.”
    In the meantime, she sold the large South Austin home to the Koocks.  The rest of the family moved out, and the Koocks moved upstairs.  Mary Koock, who even as a child loved to give parties, decided to remodel the downstairs and convert it into a restaurant and catering business.  Chester Koock came up with the name Green Pastures for the new enterprise.

    The new restaurant, featuring traditional southern food, was an immediate success.  Its first customers were longtime family friends.  But friends told friends, and the word quickly spread about the good food and hospitality at Green Pastures.  They were soon catering weddings and receptions, parties at the Governor’s Mansion, parties at the LBJ Ranch, and entertaining visiting dignitaries, as well as a host of Austinites and visiting out-of-towners.  The menu expanded to include gourmet French cooking and other exotic dishes. 
    In 1946 all restaurants in Austin were strictly segregated.  It would be another 18 years, after passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act with its public accommodations provision, before Austin’s restaurants would be open to all of its citizens.  Though very southern by both tradition and culture Green Pastures, as a matter of principle, was quietly open to people of all races from the moment it first opened its doors to the public in 1946. 
    After 24 years in the restaurant business, Mary and Chester Koock retired in 1970, leaving Green Pastures in the capable hands of their eldest son, Ken, and his business partner, Lee Buslett.  They carried on Green Pastures reputation for excellent food and hospitality, and they have expanded the business to include four Tres Amigos restaurants in Austin.  Today’s owner, Bob Buslett continues the tradition begun by Mary Faulk Koock in 1946.