About This Blog

This blog features: neighborhood restaurants, nearby restaurants, downtown restaurants, Casa View Shopping Center, nearby shopping, Downtown shops.

I will first list places and my connections with them. For the spirit of completeness, I will then list other places, known to me but not visited. I choose not to list the unknown.

I like the section entitled Places I Wish I Had Visited.

My focus is places and locations which existed from 1953, when I moved to Dallas, until 1965, when I graduated from high school. This list will continue with my college years, until I turned 21. I left Dallas in 1969 and, as I did not return except to visit my parents until 1973, my memory of East Dallas ends at that time.

Some categories were easy to separate – restaurants and shopping. Some experiences are not so easy to categorize, but are still meaningful. They may be all lumped in together, and then teased out as other connections are made.

Music wise, we may have thought we were born of the “wrong generation.” I always thought the older generation (i.e. 3 to 4 years older than me) had a richer and deeper experience.

But we, the beginning of the Baby Boomer generation, had it best – stable family life, rising expectations for the middle class and parents who wanted to give so much to their children, which most did not have in their childhood. We were left to play and roam outdoors to make our own fun. We had the best toys and the best music.

And yet we lived in tumultuous times – the Cold War, Civil Rights, Integration and the Kennedy Assassination through the killings of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King.

Hopefully we came out as loving, caring, sharing adults whose experiences made us better people and gave us the ability to show appreciation and gratitude for the neighborhood and experiences which enriched us and our loved ones.

Thursday, December 27, 2012

Pets - From Dogs to Goldfish, and the Chameleon from the State Fair

Our pets, in many ways, define us.  They become part of the family.  When obtained, we were given the responsibility of feeding and watering, and made to feel responsible for their upkeep.  Most of the time that never happened.

But sickness or loss threw us into an emotional tail spin.  Death and the absence of a loved one came to us mostly in the loss of a favored pet.
Brownie Cocoa Pretzel Reitz - Known as "Brownie"

Dog from my cousins Frank John (Skip) and Bettye
Duck Creek Venture Boy - pedigreed Beagle "Bootie"
Bought in Garland, was my dog while growing up.  In winter time he slept on my bed.

Parakeet from the State Fair - lived forever
Chameleon from the State Fair
Dyed Easter chicks from the Piggly Wiggly
Ended up donating them to the Sullivans at the Reinhardt General Store.

Goldfish from the State Fair - lived forever
One leaped out of the bowl one night while we were at school.  We rescued it but it always swam at an angle.
In Virginia we had a Dalmatian called "Spottie"
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