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

Bowling - The Only Time You Wore Shoes That Were Not Yours

Bowling was a sport where you could be dropped off by your parents for a couple of hours and enjoy yourself in the company of your friends.  It was always a great place for church groups.  Bowling alleys featured a great snack shop with hamburgers and French fries.

When Lochwood Shopping Center opened, they had a duck pin bowling alley.  Duck Pins was played in the Midwest, but never in Texas.  You played with a heavy ball slightly larger than a softball with no holes.  The lanes were about 25 feet long raised about 8 inches higher than your approach lane.  The pins were short and squatty.

I liked it because the ball was easier to bowl than the heavier balls at the regular lanes.  I've talked with dozens of my friends from this era and no one remembers this bowling alley.
As luck would have it, I read an article in the White Rocker during this era describing a Girl Scout trip to visit the salt mines at Grand Saline in East Texas.  The article describes after the tour, they returned home and went bowling in Lochwood Shopping Center.  Voila!  My proof!

Jupiter Bowling Center 11336 Jupiter Road at Garland DA-7-1411
They opened in September of 1958.  Roy Lumpkin was the manager.  By 1961 they were open 24 hours a day.
Big Town Bowlanes 400 S. Buckner Boulevard AA-8-4115
A stand-alone bowling alley next to Big Town Mall.  They opened in December of 1959.  Big Town Mall, nearly vacant, was torn down in 2006.  Big Town Cinema, another stand-alone building was torn down in 1999.  Big Town Bowlanes closed in 2009 and the building was torn down.

Bronco Fun Bowl 2100 Fort Worth Avenue WH-3-7473
72 lanes, Pro Shop, restaurant, supervised nursery, barber and beauty salon, slot car racing, indoor automatic archery, indoor baseball batting, billiard and snooker parlor.  Lane 73 was a private club and home of "The Pit Club."
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